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Send us a text On this, the 20th Anniversary of 9/11, I talk with long time friend and former firefighter colleague, Dr. Henry T. Christen. But for those of us that have known him for a half-century, we just call him Hank. Hank shares his stories, both tragic and amusing, through his tapestry of words. Both a public safety professional and expert and a life-long academic, he has also been known to , well... 'make shit up.' But, not during this hour-long episode. This hour is about truth and f...
On this, the 20th Anniversary of 9/11, I talk with long time friend and former firefighter colleague, Dr. Henry T. Christen. But for those of us that have known him for a half-century, we just call him Hank. Hank shares his stories, both tragic and amusing, through his tapestry of words. Both a public safety professional and expert and a life-long academic, he has also been known to , well... 'make shit up.' But, not during this hour-long episode. This hour is about truth and feeling.
You will also hear the wonderful music of singer-songwriter Antsy McClain. He was kind enough to allow me to to use his often thought-provoking and very often witty lyrics and melodies that you find yourself humming for days. You can find more of his music, as well as his art and writing at www.unhitched.com. I highly recommend that you check it out. Oh, and take a moment to hear and sample his latest critically acclaimed album, "Late Bloomer."
A Questionable Podcast Production of Peaches Patio Presents
You're listening to Gramps Just Make Shit Up.
SPEAKER_05You should listen to this My Gramps.
SPEAKER_04September eleventh is always a long day for me. It kept getting worse and worse.
SPEAKER_03I just came across an old picture of grandpa. The date on the back was all smudged, but I think it said 71.
SPEAKER_01The voice you just heard is that of Dr. Henry T. Christin. Or as I prefer to call him Hank. Hank is a longtime friend of mine, and by long time I mean well over 50 years. We met in 1971. We were young firefighters on the Atlanta Fire Department. Atlanta, Georgia, that is. Hey, did you know there are over 20 cities, counties, and villages in the United States named Atlanta? But I digress. Dr. Kristen, I mean Hank, is my interview guest today. This episode is being released on September the 11th, 2021, the 20th anniversary of what is commonly referred to as 9-11. But we're opening this episode with the music of the multi-talented Nashville-based singer-songwriter Ansie McLean. After all, I created this podcast hoping it'll make you feel make you feel with music and stories, music and stories with humor, music and stories with poignancy. And if you've been in my orbit for the past few years, you've probably known already. But let me shut up for a few minutes and let you enjoy.
SPEAKER_03A picture of me as an old man, considering what might have been.
SPEAKER_01Why? Well, Hank's a pretty interesting guy. Now he tells me that he began his public safety career as a child. He'll tell you more about that in this first of three episodes of interviews that we had recently. And I think you'll find his story compelling. During his time with Atlanta, he took advantage of several opportunities during his tenure, including training for and service as a cardiac technician. He also served as a member of the Atlanta Fire Department's dive team. And in the early 1980s, Hank served as the Atlanta Fire Department's chief of training. During this time, he and his team developed quite a few very progressive, at least for the Atlanta Fire Department, training programs including high-angle rescue. Hank was a battalion chief when he retired in the late 1980s. And then he decided to take his family to Florida. Not to bask in the sun on the beaches, but he was recruited to serve as the director of the Office of Emergency Services for Okolosa County, Florida, that's near Fort Walton Beach. And that's where hurricanes come in if you ever watch the weather channel. Not surprisingly, Hank also became the unit commander for the Gulf Coast Disasters Medical Assistance Team and responded to at least 12 national disasters, including the 2001 World Trade Center attack. Hank's unique experience in education, along with his ability to empirically scrutinize disaster events, is where his PhD comes in, led him to be invited to participate on an analysis team of the Boston Marathon attack. As you'll hear, Hank is a Miami native, and he completed his undergraduate studies at the University of Florida in 1970, I think. And soon after that received his doctorate in education. Oh, wait, that's in 2009. That's quite a few years later. From the University of West Florida. His doctoral specialty is human performance technology, whatever that is. I think you'll agree that with all his years of experience and his academic accomplishments, he really doesn't have to make any shit up, but here he is on my show. Oh, wait. Uh Hank will probably deny this, but I know for a fact that he led a special effects team made up of David Chamberlain, Joe Talbot, and yours truly. We were hired to create a very minor explosion and fireball in the very dark woods of Cowita County, Georgia. We were part of a production of a made-for-TV movie from NBC, starring Johnny Cash as the good guy and Andy Griffith as the very, very bad guy. The movie was called Murder in Cowita County and was based on a book by the same name. Like I said, he'll probably deny it. Oh, and I recently learned that our friend and fellow fireballer, Joe Talbert, a fifth generation Atlanta firefighter and also retired as a deputy chief from Atlanta Fire Department, was somehow related to John Wallace, the very, very bad guy in this story. But that's an interview for another time. Hank and I start our conversation with a reference to Lucky Street. Lucky Street was anything but City of Atlanta lost four firefighters that evening, and Hank was there. Your LinkedIn profile is pretty lean, dude. You're obviously not interested in any more professional work.
SPEAKER_04I'm not. Don't ruin my life. I wanted to frame this, and you used the term bookends, which exactly meant I wanted to start with the Lucky Street in 1971. And then suddenly and 30 years later in 2001, I was sitting in the rubble at the World Trade Center and thinking back of Lucky Street. And so that sort of frames those were two of the worst times in my career.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_04So it frames, it frames everything. And then we'll talk about everything in between and the book writing and the funny stories, the sad stories. And I I've been taking notes and didn't realize how much had happened. But Lou, we go back 50 years. We did a few things, you know. We woke up from our nap once in a while.
SPEAKER_01You know, 50, when you think about it, go, holy shit. Hey, I have a question for you though, just to sort of kick things off. Of course, your father was in the fire service. What is your first memory of your dad's work in the fire service?
SPEAKER_04From a very early age, I can remember him. He always wore his dress uniform from the time when he came home, from the time he was a firefighter right up to district chief, same as a battalion chief. He would walk in the door with this uniform cap on, the traditional stovepipe, and come in the door because for one thing in Miami they change shifts in their dress uniform. So I always remember from a small age, here's this six-foot-tall giant walking in the door with that stovepipe hat. And I would always ask him, he reminded me of this story 40 years later when we were talking about why I got in the fire service. He said, You know, from day one when you could barely talk, you'd say, Daddy, what happened yesterday? What happened on your shift? And he said he couldn't blow me off. When I get a little older, I would say, Come on, give me some more details. Well, we did have this little thing. We had that little thing. He didn't want to come home and tell it, but I almost made him do it. And I'm still not tired of it. So that's my memory.
SPEAKER_01And do you recall the first time you uh visited one of his fire stations or rode with him in any of the his professional capacity? Do you have any memories like that?
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah. Yeah. He uh see, I grew up in Miami and my grandmother's house was right downtown, what would now be downtown in Miami on 12th Street. And you could walk to the main fire station they had right downtown that was a big firehouse, you know, two engines, ladder company, rescue company, and all of those kind of things. And it always sticks in my mind seeing that ladder truck. In fact, he told me later when I was three and four years old, I was scared of it. I wouldn't go near it, but I just look at it. And to this day, I collect pictures of hundred-foot tillered ladder trucks. I've never gotten tired of looking at them. I've tailored one in the real world, rode on one. So, you know, that's my fondest memory. Later in life, it for it kind of changed my perspective. I was bored to death working in marketing when I got out of college, right downtown in Miami, right two blocks from that firehouse. And when they go on runs, they'd go by, and I'm thinking, what am I doing here in this office? And the rest is history.
SPEAKER_01What prompted your coming to Atlanta versus staying there in the Miami area?
SPEAKER_04Well, interesting story. I worked in marketing with Southern Bell Telephone. So I had a couple of business trips to Atlanta. I had taken the test to get on in Miami, and my dad had talked to a captain, and he was going to get me on ladder two, one of the busiest, the busiest truck company in Miami. Well, it was very disappointing. I took the written test, scored very well, no problem. But they had a hiring freeze, and it was going to be a couple of years. Well, in the meantime, I met David Chamberlain when I was in Atlanta on business, because you know, the office building where I stayed was right near a firehouse. And for those listeners that don't know, David, we've all been lifelong friends, and David became chief of the department.
SPEAKER_01That's right.
SPEAKER_04Uh later, you know, much much later. Atlanta was uh had openings, and I took the test in Atlanta. No problem. They called me and said uh had my interview and hired me, just like anybody else. So went to recruit school and the rest is history.
SPEAKER_01At that time, you I think became the only the second out of let's say a thousand firefighters that had a college degree in 1971 on the Atlanta Fire Department. Did you know that at the time?
SPEAKER_04Someone they kept telling me that because the captains I would work for, and great men, they'd all been in World War II. I mean, so we're the smart ass baby boomers.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And these are the World War II guys that think we're little gnats. You know, several of them mentioned to me they thought I had wasted my life. I had a captain tell me one time, I can't believe that with your education you're here, that you've wasted your whole education and anything but. I mean, throughout my educational career, I learned how to write and ask questions. So, you know, it stuck with me. But they felt that someone with a college degree was a failure. Now, Atlanta, that was unusual for Atlanta. In a progressive fire department like Los Angeles City, for example. I mean, there were deputy chiefs with master's degrees and higher education, and that has now changed in Atlanta as well. I wouldn't doubt if you told me there's a hundred college graduates in the Atlanta Fire Department, it wouldn't surprise me. But that was unusual back then. I just wanted to do it.
SPEAKER_01Clearly. And it was a good choice all around for Atlanta and for yourself personally, I believe. One other question before we get into some uh some of the meat of the stories is that it seems that your family has been in service to others. Uh, that's what they do. You have a brother, I think, that chose another career also in service to others. What was his choice?
SPEAKER_04Well, my brother retired just recently as a chief test pilot and airline pilot for American. And uh, but coming up through the ranks, he uh of his flying, he was a firefighter in North Carolina and on his off days flew airplanes delivering checks for banks of all things. So he was a combination of a firefighter and pilot. So he eventually, you know, went on, and and of course, as I said, right in fact right now he does simulation training for other pilots. He's over 65 and had to had to retire. So he was involved in it and several other family members. My uh brother-in-law was a Miami firefighter, then became a fire inspector, and uh eventually he didn't retire but started his own business. Of course, um you know my son Ryan, who has been a contractor out in California for the last eight months. He was retired here in Florida as a battalion chief and is now working in California. So uh, and I'm half joking and half serious when I say there's a point when maybe the grandchildren will get a real job uh instead of instead of the fire, you know, instead instead of the fire service.
SPEAKER_01Well, you got three generations working there.
SPEAKER_04Maybe they'll you know, here's an interesting quick side story, too. My dad kept trying to talk me out of it. And I had a family, I'm the firstborn son in a family that believed in education, and I worked my way through college, and my dad kept saying, Don't do this, do something else. It'll pay more, it has more prestige. But the problem was, as I was growing up, there's nothing cooler than being a firefighter's kid. You got to see stuff. Probably the height of it, where my dad made a mistake, was he used to teach on his off days to the Dade County fire department, heavy rescue. It's the same heavy rescue units that now they call them urban search and rescue that in fact worked on the collapse of the Champlain Towers. So, way back then, he was already teaching at the time. It was called Civil Defense Heavy Rescue. Well, my point is we would go to these major disaster exercises with simulated collapsed buildings that they had built for training. And I got to be a victim, and I'd go in and hide in some collapse area where they told me to be. When you're eight years old, there's nothing cooler than suddenly you're laying in there under some plywood and a bunch of firefighters go, we got a kid in here, we got a kid in here, get the stokes basket. So, on one hand, my dad's telling me, grow up and make something of yourself. Don't be a firefighter, but he's sending me, I'm getting to play in these disaster exercises.
SPEAKER_01Those are some strong imprints, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah. And, you know, growing up too, when there's a firefighter in the neighborhood, my house, when something bad happened, the neighbors ran to our house. And I can remember two different occasions, like my dad was a rescue firefighter, and in one case, a guy down the street, his wife died. He doesn't call for help. He first runs down to our house. So my dad can run down there, and you learn that being a firefighter's kid. And that's happened to me in my neighborhoods coming up through the ranks. People would run over and hey, something just happened. Come to the house, and you knew.
SPEAKER_01Powerful stuff, that's for sure. And here we are 50 years later.
SPEAKER_04We're still trying to make something of ourselves. When is this gonna happen?
SPEAKER_01I said that last prompt was gonna be the last one, but I got one more here, and then I want you to get started on some of your uh material that I know that you've uh prepared for. As long as I've known you, you have strived to learn and teach everything that you've learned. In fact, first time that I met was at one of the Georgia Fire Academy sessions where you and Phil Chauvin were teaching fire ground management, and that was probably in 1972.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_01And of course, you're as much an academic as you are a public servant. So I think you said a little bit about what your motivation there was. But you know, after you graduated from your undergraduate work, you became a firefighter, but now you have a PhD behind your name. So, what was the motivation to uh continue with your master's and your PhD?
SPEAKER_04Well, I guess innate curiosity. I remember I did my undergrad at University of Florida, and when I graduated, my thought was I will never have to do this again. Thank God this is over. Term papers, no more, none of all the other crap. All right, so we go 20 years, and I'm in the Atlanta fire department, and people were talking about getting master's degrees at this point, especially a few in the senior ranks. And one day I'm at a meeting and I had just made battalion chief, and there's a couple of city planners that uh were grilling us. I mean, we felt you've been through that, you know, the city would send planning experts over. Well, we're having discussions on, they're asking me how the fire service should run and my ideas, and finally one of them says, Well, we know best because we have master's degrees. And I thought, okay, I had been debating about the master's degree. You've just forced me to spend three more years of my life and go get one. So I started going to class, and I think, didn't you and I both go to Brunel College at first? Yeah, we did.
SPEAKER_01Yes, correct.
SPEAKER_04In that program. It was there was a college outside of Atlanta called Brunell College, and we were both working on master's degrees in public administration. I didn't graduate there. I finished after I moved here to Florida, Troy University. So I'm finally done with that. I don't know why, but I just started thinking 20 years later. So uh this is, you know, I graduated in 69, got my master's in 80 in 89, I did my doctorate in 09. So I'm not some genius. It took me 40 freaking years.
SPEAKER_03I believe 45 of these 50 days. 50 count and nine in a bit.
SPEAKER_04I just I just wanted to do it. And I just had this innate curiosity for it. And I love the doctoral program because finally people would say, Hank, there's no wrong answer. It's whatever answer you come up with is okay, and you just have to justify it. Now don't tell me something like that. I mean, I fit right into that. So you can make it up and support it, and there you go. That's a doctoral level education. It's a little more than that, but it fit.
SPEAKER_01Well, you earned it. So let's go back to the Lucky Street Fire. You were an extremely green firefighter when that tragic moment happened. And I was working in um Southwest Atlanta at the time. On the radio, we couldn't, those of us that were listening to the radio couldn't believe what was happening. But you were right there. Tell me a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_04Well, yeah, I had been on about three months, and I could start with it was a dark, stormy night. Actually, it wasn't, but it became it became one very quickly.
SPEAKER_05Yeah.
SPEAKER_04You know, it was a Saturday night, a run came in at 104 Lucky Street, L-U-C-K-I-E. So you have to decide that somewhere in the universe is a sense of humor. We're going to Lucky Street. We turned the corner, and in my rookie wisdom, I remember saying to the guy next to me, this doesn't look too bad. I will never forget me saying that. We have light smoke coming out of a basement dumbwaiter shaft right up on the sidewalk. It's a shaft that leads into the restaurant basement. So our job was we were first due engine. We took a hose line to the back of the building and went down the stairs. And it was an oven. It was unbelievable. In fact, there's a side story, and Lou, you remember this. You know, as a rookie, they told you that if you ever run away from a hose line, you might as well run back to the fire station and unpack your locker because you're gone. You never run away. Well, we open the door, and I'm the third guy in the back with two experienced guys on the nozzle. And they suddenly drop the nozzle. We're at the base of a stairwell and run right on top of me, right over me. And I'm laying at the bottom of the stairwell watching them run, and I'm thinking, maybe I should run. And that's how this fire started with that little funny saying. And it was maybe 20 minutes later, uh, we were calling extra alarms, and I walked around to the front of the billing. I was sent to get some air cylinders or something. I don't remember. It had settled down and defensive attack, and I saw these guys go in, and suddenly the floor just collapsed. And it was right in front of me. I was just out on the side. I didn't get a scratch from that fire. And suddenly hose lines are just shooting all over the place. It broke several lines in half, and we know guys are in there. Well, I was ordered to get me and two, three other guys from different companies. At this point, there's people laying on the sidewalk, everything else. We managed to grab a hose line, and at first I thought we had it. It was completely dark. This place was a small diner. I mean, it was maybe 20 feet wide and 50, 60 feet deep. And I slowly see the fire in the back coming up, and we put everything we had on that fire, and it kept getting worse and worse. We suddenly realized that anybody in there wasn't going to come out well. We ended up losing four people, Captain Lewis, and I want to say their names, Captain Lewis Grady, firefighter Verland Kreider on engine 15, and two firefighters on Ladder 11, Charles Fernander and Beck, Howard Beck. The interesting thing was the shift later, and we're all kind of zombies at this point, you know. And you remember hearing on the radio, I mean, there are calling in people, 23 guys in the hospital, four guys missing, and we know they're not coming out. In fact, David Chamberlain, who became chief of the department, was one of the guys out on the street. Part of his uniform was burned off, his firefighting coat was burned, and he was in shock, ended up in a burned ward and everything. The interesting thing was I didn't know how to act. What I mean by that is I looked around at the other guys and we came back on duty on the next shift and nobody said anything.
SPEAKER_03I just came across an old picture of grandpa. The date on the back was all smudged, but I think it said seventy one. He was smiling that big chip tooth grin. I remember his blue overalls and grey jacket, his white whiskers shown in the sun.
SPEAKER_04The captain didn't even call sand and so we talk about it. Now that was back then about okay, this goes with it. No nobody knew how to handle. Now, as you're aware, we have critical incidence stress management, which I highly believe in, because there is a point when the what when the macho code rather collapses. But we just didn't have it back then. Nobody said anything. And to add to it, the same day we hadn't been back to work more than an hour. We catch a working basement fire on Spring Street. Okay, now we just got four guys killed in the basement fire. We pull into this fire and pretty heavy fire condition and an auto paint and body shop. We get it knocked down, and as the smoke clears, I see a whole wall of oxygen tanks and acetylene tanks. That this fire was about 30 seconds away from getting into that. And I'm thinking, okay, my dad never told stories like this. Are we, is this how it's gonna be? And um, yeah, there was a fortunately, there's a lot of long, boring days in between that we won't waste time on this podcast with. But that's how it ended. And there's another side story of the Lucky Street fire. Howard Beck, one of the guys killed, had been in the firehouse just the week before. He his wife was pregnant, finally, and it was such a big thing. And he was telling everyone that his wife was pregnant. Well, uh, they did not have other children. He dies a week later and never got to see his son. But I stayed in touch through our memorial service with D-Bex, uh, which was Howard's wife, and she called me, geez, I don't know, four or five years ago and said, My son Eric wants to talk to you. And that was Howard's son. And he wants to, he just wants to hear more about his father, talk to people that knew his father. So we had uh I knew the call was gonna come, and probably the hardest phone call in my life, but I had to do it, and the phone call starts with Eric Pick saying tell me life's gone about my father You're young and you want to just pick up and go.
SPEAKER_03It's funny how life brings its changes around. Give it twenty more years, and you'll be saying slow down. It's all right I told just long enough.
SPEAKER_04I I rehearse not doing this. Um anyway, I told him about his father and told him some stories, and he asked me questions, and I'm just telling this because some of these things that happened, this is 30 years, 35 years later, they stick with you. And the PTSD and stuff, I mean, we didn't even know that term, but you you just carry it with you. I'm I'm doing fine, but that was that was a bad story, yeah. And a long one, and there's a lot of people, again, I personally didn't get a scratch, but uh it kind of summarizes how that happened. So you fast forward to 30 years later. I'm living in Florida at the time, I had retired, and I'm part of a federal medical disaster team. I'm shopping and I'm at Home Depot to get something, then my cell phone goes off, and they said our team is deploying to the World Trade Center attack.
SPEAKER_00So this, Justin, you were looking at uh obviously a very disturbing live shot there. That is the World Trade Center, and we have unconfirmed reports this morning that a plane has crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center.
SPEAKER_04So here we are, we're gonna we're gonna fly to that. And then I tell that one because that was the um the other extreme in my career. And we flew into New York, and I remember coming over in the North River that approached Gender LaGuardia, and there was just this big cavern where the building was. I knew one of the battalion chiefs that had been killed at that point was missing. And the mindset, now keep in mind we're a medical disaster team, and the mindset is we're still thinking that there's a possibility of rescue. There could be voids. When I saw the Champlain Towers collapse recently, it's like instant replay. Maybe there's voids, maybe we're going to get them out, maybe there's hope. It's it's still going to be a rescue. Well, no one came out. So we treated the cops and firefighters there on the scene for 17 days, but it was a strange environment. It's like we were in the center of the world to one degree. By that I mean we stayed up in Midtown, nice hotel, nice accommodations. We'd take a bus down to the World Trade Center, and then Lower Manhattan, below Canal Street, was suddenly dark. Power was out, everything was dark except one area where giant searchlights are lighting up, and that's where the World Trade Center attack is. So you go from dark to this, every media agency or entity in the world was there. You're in the middle of this. And as we were going into the final checkpoint on Canal Street, because security was tremendous, cops would literally come on the bus, and we had to have two IDs and have them in my scrapbook now that got us in there. But on the walls of the buildings were pictures of eight and a half by 11 printouts done on computers that would say something like, Our daughter, Mary Beth Jones, Lisa Fernandez, our father Ralph O'Connolly or John Levin, didn't matter, was last seen working at Cantor Fitzgerald on the 85th floor. Please call us. Has anybody seen him? And people were walking around the hospital. And of course, we weren't there to see that, but we heard it. But you saw these pictures on the sides of the buildings. It it was that was the atmosphere. The whole area was covered in dust. And I remember when we first got there, we went in this parking garage, and that was eerie. It was right next to the actual building. And we're setting up these treatment areas, and the cars in there, you know that the owners are dead. A few of them might have gotten out, but they haven't come back. And the cars are covered in dust, but each window you could see where the cops are firefighters had scraped the dust off the window and looked in the car to see if anybody was in there alive. Another memory was it rained paper when those buildings collapsed. I have a slide of a fire escape from a block away that next again to one of our treatment centers. And each step of that fire escape for four stories had two feet thick of paper. And people told stories of paper from the World Trade Center landing in Brooklyn and Queens in New Jersey. And if you ever see a video of the collapse, you see these little dots up in the air. It looks like confetti. It's paper. It just rained paper. So that sticks in my mind. We didn't save anyone. But there was a positive side. We gained weight at this because the top restaurants in New York supported us. And I remember one morning, about 4:30 in the morning, I go in for a little breakfast snack. We're on the night shift. And here's this half-damaged restaurant. And Tim Robbins, who starred in the Shawshank Redemption, and he was in Top Gun, is serving us breakfast. Another time we're waiting at the hotel to get the bus to go to the night shift, and Bill Murray walks up and he's talking, and you're thinking, Am I sitting here having a conversation? Well, hey, Bill, how's things going? You know, but that's that's the way that they treated us in New York. You know, you have to appreciate, too, growing up in Miami, raised by New Yorkers, that's where I get the strange accent. Um, I'm used to the New York way of thinking and New York cab drivers having been to New York. I remember one quick trip, this cab driver picks us up. He's gonna take us to dinner. We got off today shift. And we get to where we're going, and I reach in and I go, How much is it? And he goes, How much is it? You came here all the way from Florida, and you think I'm gonna chob you? Get out of my cab, get the hell out of here. You know, so we step out of the cab, and as we walk on the way, the cab driver goes, Hey, thanks. Now, this is a guy that makes a positive comment once every 10 years. And we and we got what it was a side story on the World Trade Center attack that you know, the support and and everything we got. And I will say that, oh, another quick New York cop story. You gotta love New York cops. They're parked in a car, sitting security guys, and we turn the corner in this legit. It's a John Deere tractor. What do they call him? Gators, I think. Well, the guy drive and does the turn too white, and he peels the whole side window off this police car, scrapes it all the way down the side, and there's two cops sitting in the front seat. And the guy, I'll call him Rick, not his real name. And Rick says, Hank, I think we should just keep going. I said, No, stop. Well, this New York cop gets out of the car, hooks his thumbs in his gun belt, and slowly saunters towards us. It took him 10 minutes to walk 20 feet, and he looks at me, I get up, and he says, Hey, you know, we got procedures here. And I thought, all right, there's only one answer he's gonna live with. And I said, You're right. We just hit a police car and that with two cops in it, and that makes us the stupidest freaking guys on the planet. And he goes, That's right, that's it, that's it, and turns and saunters back away. So what's my point? Well, it's a mixture throughout these sessions. You're gonna hear me say more than once, it's such a mixture of tragedy and humor and funny things. And I'll close on the World Trade Center by saying September 11th is always a long day for me. And May 29th, the date of the Lucky Street fire, is always a long day. I remember those. I don't want to forget them. And you know, I I think that I think that covers it.
SPEAKER_01Can you tell us a little bit about your team members? At the beginning of that story, you just said your team. Tell us about your team and what was the the official name of the team that you were part of uh during your time in Florida?
SPEAKER_04It was part of a federal disaster medical team called Florida One DMET DMAT, which stands for disaster medical assistance team. And we had gone to disasters all attack. We went to Hurricane Andrew in Miami, not far from where I grew up. We deployed to St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands for Hurricane Maryland, all kinds of so there was four about 35 people on the team. And they were comprised of doctors, nurses, physician assistants, firefighter medics, some communications specialists. Some of those earlier deployments, I was the unit commander of the team. I stepped down to kind of take a break. So in this case, I was a logistics operations center for the team, which my job was to get him equipped, medical equipment, and so forth. So we were designed to treat massive trauma, everything down to forcing. Most of the time it was supportive care to cops and firefighters and people working on a site that had some fairly minor injuries. We at no point did we find someone that had been rescued and had been injured, and we treated that. We were hoping for that, but it didn't happen. A lot of us stay together. Uh, as far as what I mean by that is stay in contact with each other, and we talk about that time, and we were an experienced team, but we weren't ready for that. In fact, when the attack happened, I didn't think we'd go. I figured New York would handle it. New York takes great pride in we take care of ourselves, so forth and so on, like any big city does. So we ended up there. You know, in my own case, I dropped off the team for two or three years. And I was glad we went. I would have gone crazy sitting there watching it on CNN and not knowing we were part of it. But after it happened, I thought about Lucky Street, I thought about the World Trade Center, and I I dropped out of the team. And that lasted about three years. And then I thought, what am I doing sitting here watching this on CNN? Okay, I went through some bad times, but I got to go back and so I link back up. And a lot of people, there were some that just said, I'm never gonna do this again. But that put that happens.
SPEAKER_01Well, it definitely takes its toll, but it created a source of information that people can't get in any other way that you've been in a position to share with other people for generations to come. And what I'm thinking about primarily is with your friend, I'll call him friend too, Paul Minaskalko, and you guys writing a series of books on the topics of mass casualty and the results of terrorism and things like that. When did you and uh Paul connect? Was that after the World Trade Center?
SPEAKER_04No, this was way before that. In fact, oh that's Paul probably would have been Paul would have been killed at the World Trade Center. Uh he had he was in an accident, uh, and at the time he was deputy chief of uh New York EMS. And uh at that time they were NYC EMS before they merged with the fire department. But anyway, and about a month before that, he and his aide were seriously injured in an auto accident in the line of duty. So he was off at the time, or he'd have been, again, right in the middle of this. But the way we met was middle 90s, and I kept thinking about writing a book on the incident command. System and how it should be used and mascot the operations. So I wrote a draft of the book, and what the editors did at that point was they sent out, it's commonly done all the time. It's a peer review of the material. And several different people had comments, most of them positive, but there were some real points of comments, especially from Paul. And I didn't agree with all those comments. I didn't know the guy. So he's just at the time he was the captain in NYC EMS in their special operations area, which you want to talk about a guy with a background. There's a background. Found that a lot of his comments had irrelevance, especially every one of them. I learned if you're going to be a writer, you better have a thick skin. I've learned after all these different books that the best thing you can have is someone competent coming at you because it wakes you up and you start thinking about you don't learn anything. I like praise like anybody else, but Hank, what a wonderful job. It doesn't teach me anything. When someone says, I can't understand why you would say this or why you would say that. So that that's how we met, and we've had a long-term friendship since the middle of the 90s. And in fact, during the World Trade Center attack, you know, he was off on injury leave, but we had dinner together a couple of different times, and obviously throughout the years we've talked continuously. Ironically, too, Paul was in mass casualty operations. He he was uh I don't know the term an incident command. He was he was dealing with mass casualty operations in the 93 attack when he was a special uh operations captain in New York. So today we would have called that maybe an operation second chief. And so he actually had experienced the 93 attack and all the problems, then saw this again happen in 2001. So that's that's pretty much the story there.
SPEAKER_01I don't know if you can see in my background, but can you see that book?
SPEAKER_04Yeah. You and three other people bought my book. Wow.
SPEAKER_01Well, I'm sure there was many, many more than just three. But that book was actually based on the incident uh prior to the 9-11 incident.
SPEAKER_04The ironic thing, our book came out in August of 01. And on the first page is a picture of the World Trade Center left over from and we thought about that especially based on Paul's experience in the 93 attack. And I didn't have anything to do with that part other than listening to Paul's reports and and the things he wrote on it. So in the dark humor in our profession, friends would call us later after the World Trade Center attack and say, Hey, your book comes out in August, and there's this is there something you're not telling us? And of course, there's a little bit of dark humor there, but um we weren't heroes there. We just did our job and we still supported, we were one of thousands of people that worked there. And all of us still uh I still get a yearly physical uh that there's a program for anybody that worked at the site of the World Trade Center attack. Uh so we still get physicals for support. So far, uh nothing major has happened. But of course, you've seen in the media there are people with cancer-related lung problems and so forth. And so, and there's still deaths, especially within the fire and police services in New York, NYPD, FDNY, and to a degree FDNY, EMS, where people had long-term problems from that. So it sits on you.
SPEAKER_01Long-term effects that uh you know people don't even realize uh happen and sort of follow you through your entire life. Are you in touch with any of the people that you worked with on that incident from your team or any of the people that you met in New York?
SPEAKER_04Oh, yeah. There's phone calls, especially on September 11th. I always call Paul. I do a private little ceremony. I have a fire bell in my collection, and 343 firefighters died in New York, and actually it's a little more than that now if you look at the long-term effects. But I always go in and ring that bell three times, then four times, and three times, and it's sort of a little way to stay acclimated to it. And part of the secret in this business, and you've seen it too, is you know, I can tell anybody that's having problems, and I've talked to people, not at any point in this profession. You don't tell people put it behind you. You see that in so many military movies. You know, top gun. Okay, you've got your back theater just died, put it behind you right now. You have to learn to carry it, and there's cause I wish I had back, and I can't get him back, and so I'll tell you one, I debated even telling this story, but I will. We had a fire on Bell Street in the projects in downtown Atlanta, right on the outskirts of downtown, and I was pretty much a rookie still, and my job on the ladder company was to do an interior search. Ladder companies do the search, the engine company has the host lines, and we got zero visibility in one of these project places. It's rolling pretty good, meaning there's pretty good fire. The engine's working on that, and I did a search with the team, and what I mean by search now, you cannot see your hand in front of your face. You can turn your flashlight on, hold it up to your mask, and you can barely see it. And I did a right-hand search pattern, which means your hand is up against the wall, and I came to a dresser, went under it, didn't feel anything, and then my hand went right over to the bed right next to the dresser. Didn't find anything when we come out. Five minutes later, a new crew's in there, and they go, We got a victim in there, we got a body in there, and I couldn't believe it. It was my job to find him. I went back in, and between the bed and the dresser was a space only about a foot wide. And this guy was middle-aged, a very small stature man, I mean maybe five feet tall, very small, and he was in a fetal position behind the bed and the dresser. Correction between the bed and the dresser, and his eyes were open, and he's just looking at me, and he's dead. I will do this today, but I you know, I had to admission by half an issue, but it had it was my job to find him. I missed him, and I will always wonder, and I'll never know, was he dead already, and it didn't matter, or could we have pulled him out? And that's the kind of thing, and I know you've got stories like that too. You I'd like to have that 30 seconds back in my whole career. If you could give me 30 seconds, 10 seconds back, I would have I I just bumped into the bed and my hand had to go right behind me. But I missed him, and I wasn't supposed, I was supposed to pull them out. So that's kind of a side story of hey, we've all screwed things up, and uh I like to be candid on a discussion like this instead of saying, hey, the sharp guy with the PhD who did it all, saw it all, and everything. Let me tell you a few days I wish I had back. That's one of them.
SPEAKER_01Well, thank you for sharing that story. I hadn't heard that story from, even though we've shared a lot of them. And you're right, I have a couple of those uh myself that you know someday we'll uh we'll catch up on those.
SPEAKER_04I see the look on your face uh about those stories. I know you got one. This isn't the time, but we've got it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, my friend, this is uh this has been a good 45 minutes, and I think we got some great material, but uh would you be open to us doing this again uh in a couple of days, maybe next week? Because there's some more. I'd love to because we got the Boston Marathon attack to talk about. We have so many other circumstances that I think we could go forever.
SPEAKER_04And you know what I'd like to do in the next session, I have some funny I have a list of some of the some real funny things because maybe today painted the tragedy. This was tragedy that day here. Dark day, yeah, you know, and and some good things and bad things, and so many positive things and funny things that I'd I'd like to share. So yeah, you didn't groom grill me too bad.
SPEAKER_02We're coming to the world with our eyes thrown open, like motel drapes at 10 a.m. The world outside is dead in motion. The light is bright and the air is dead Coming to a nightmare, leaving a dream. Our very first sound is a final dream And anger and fear are the first emotion out in the cold with a potion along with the cold evolution, come along further with this thing, but on the right side of the turn Don't come around here if you're looking for answers Cause I'll probably just tell you what another guy said I'm a one-legged man in a room full of dancers. I'm the fella in the corner with the lamp on his head. How much further would this thing go if I never get pushed a bad go? Here we go now. When my time on earth is ended. I just hope the good outweighs the bad. And you can tell anybody I might have offended. I did the best I could with the little. Where you going?
SPEAKER_01We were almost done with this song. I hope you enjoyed this episode. So I'd like to thank Dr. Henry T. Christin for sharing some of the stories about his career in public safety. I'm honored to call Hank a true lifelong friend. And I hope that you'll join us in our next episode when he talks about, well, who the hell knows? I'm also grateful to Ansi McLean, my adopted little brother. He is truly one of the good guys. He is so kind to allow me to use his music in this episode, and to find more of Ansi's music, his art, and his literature, please go to his website www.unhitched.com. That's www.unhitched.com. In this episode, you heard three of Ansi's songs, including We're Not Here Long Enough, Until We Get There, and finally on the Right Side of the Dirt. If you would like to learn more about the May 29, 1971 Lucky Street Fire, also known as the Davis Brothers Restaurant Fire, there are many resources available through online news articles, of course, but a wonderful tribute was written by Donna Bowman, whose book, Tragedy on Lucky Street, was published in 2012. Donna is the wife of another friend of mine, Chief Danny Bowman. Danny, who also retired from the fire service as the fire chief of Versythe County, Georgia, after a 50-year career, was a young firefighter also at the Lucky Street Fire. Our intro music, courtesy of Dave Pascoe, a founding member of the folk band Late for the Train, you can find their music at www.lateforthein's band, all one word.com. Finally, much gratitude to our grandson, JD Petros, for inviting you to listen during the intro of this podcast. I have to go now. It's time for my nap.
SPEAKER_02Dave is all monitoring for us. I think I saw the door open. Wait, dance, hold on. I just hope the good outweighs the bad. And you can tell anybody I might have offended. Like this gal that just went to the bathroom. I did the best I could with a little eye.