One of the first lessons I learned about fire safety and burning buildings was not to call the fire department while you were still inside said burning building. This may seem fairly obvious but when your brain is being flooded with adrenaline you don't always think straight. So, after the 911 operator yelled "GET OUT!", I did.

Fortunately for myself and the other tenants who survived, the arsonists our landlord hired to pour gasoline in the hallways while we were sleeping turned out to be amateurs. Of course, none of us knew that at the time. Those shocking details came out during the trial where my landlord was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison. What I did know at the time was that something inside the building had exploded with enough force to jolt me out of my bed and send me darting around my apartment in a fear induced panic until I finally had the composure to climb down a frozen fire escape wearing only a winter coat over my pajamas and a frightened feline clinging to my body.

It took the New York Fire Department less than 30 minutes to put the fire out but it took nearly a day until we could go back inside the building. Miraculously, the damage was relatively minimal. While the hallways were a bit charred and covered in a thick black soot, the apartments themselves, except for a few broken doors, remained untouched. Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the men who set the building on fire. Their stupidity and malice required the two of them to be taken to the Burn Unit at Presbyterian Hospital where they were treated for 3rd degree burns. Eventually they turned state's evidence and the district attorney was able to put a case together against my landlord.

Grateful that I still had a place to call home, I decided to visit the firefighters who made that possible with a box of Krispy Kreme Doughnuts and a personal thank you. My initial feelings of awkwardness as I peered through the entrance of their firehouse evaporated immediately when the fireman of Engine 3/Ladder 12 actually remembered me. They invited me inside, smiled at the familiar package I held in my arms, and seemed genuinely touched that I made the effort. As we munched on mouthfuls of glazed doughy goodness, we talked about my situation and the recent spike of similar cases in the neighborhood where landlords went to criminal lengths to get their rent stabilized tenants out of their buildings. It was a development in property ownership that clearly offended, on every level, the firemen who risked their lives to save others. As I got to know these young guys, I realized they shared a deep sense of moral courage and duty from a long line of firefighters in their own families.

Subsequent visits followed where I would update them on my landlord's case. Sometimes they would talk about their families and the neighborhoods they lived in. Sometimes I would see them grocery shopping at the local D'Agostino's and we would try and guess what each of us were making by the contents of our shopping carts. Other times I'd walk by the station and see them give children tours of the firehouse and hand out ice cream afterwards. In the winters they would serve as the donation point for Toys for Tots and coat drives for the needy. Each Christmas they would festoon the outside of the firehouse with lights and a laughing Santa on his sleigh.

On September 11, 2001, I watched an explosion of concrete obliterate the lives of 363 firemen while standing on the roof of my building less than a mile away. In the days that followed, firehouses everywhere in New York City shrouded themselves in black bunting that reminded me of the funeral processions I had seen in the past where the presence of hundreds of firemen would stand at attention when one of their own died. Now they would have to mourn an unbearable loss of unbearable proportions.

The firemen of Engine 3/Ladder 12 lost six of their own men, two of whom I knew personally. When I could bring myself to walk over there, I was barely able to choke back the tears. With a lump in my throat that felt as large as a grapefruit, I just stood there facing them unable to express what my brain could not yet comprehend. Then, as naturally as if we were family, we held each other and wept. The weight of the horrific loss of life was like strapping on an ox-cart the moment you woke up and then having to drag it behind you for the rest of the day. Many of us at that time did not recognize that we were collectively suffering from shock and depression.

For weeks after, firefighters from around the country came to New York to help the survivors dig out their own. Each morning I would join the dozens of volunteers on the West Side Highway who were handing out supplies to the firemen on their trucks as they drove down to the hellish pile of burning chemicals and twisted steel to recover the dismembered parts of their friends and colleagues.

Their graves barely cold, George W. Bush and his coterie of shameless opportunists descended upon Madison Square Garden for the 2003 Republican National Convention ready to capitalize on our public pain. Ten blocks away from my apartment and the firefighters who saved my home, these political power brokers wrapped themselves in a cloak of pious patriotism for the benefit of the media and then privately entertained themselves in the heart of a recovering city. Almost immediately, outraged New Yorkers began gathering in front of the Garden to protest their nakedly cynical exploitation of 9/11. Police barricades blocked off sidewalks up and down 7th & 8th Avenues while policemen on motorcycles served as sentries as far down as 14th Street. City officials were tone deaf and law enforcement cracked down with an unprecedented show of force arresting people who were guilty of nothing more than wanting their voices heard.

Nearly 18 years later and the reputations of these powerful men who used 9/11 as a pretense to engage in lucrative war profiteering are now being rehabilitated by the corporate media, while men, women and children are butchered everyday in the wars these wealthy men finance and support. It is because this kind of moral turpitude exists in the world, I need to remember that courage and grace has the power to shine through our worst human failings.

Thank you, Hecate, for that reminder and for sharing the courage and humanity of your neighbors and the firefighters who went beyond the call of duty when faced with the harrowing events that destroyed the town of Paradise. It comforts me to remember that when the heartbreak of life overwhelms us there are lighthouses in the storm.

Shine on dear friends. Shine on.

"And as for the firefighters, they were the bravest hero’s in all the hero’s that day in my opinion. They were just as trapped as us with little communication going through during the worst parts and they still kept us all safe, together and strong for each other. I remember one fireman saying we were on our own but we were in it together now and it was up to us to stay together, help each other and try to stay alive."

November 8, 2018, Paradise, CA, #Campfire

[video:https://youtu.be/DFCkwti0JyA]