Former FDNY captain Dan Daly recalls 9/11 recovery 25 years later

Dan Daly was captain of Riverdale’s Engine 52 when the towers fell. Nearly 25 years later, he returned to the same firehouse and sat at a familiar long, wooden table where he once sat waiting anxiously for deployment orders from headquarters.

Seventy-seven-year-old Daly — born in Kingsbridge — was at his home at the time in Ossining when a friend called to tell him the news. He grabbed his gear and rushed out the door to the Engine 52 firehouse. News reports played on the car radio, conjuring vivid scenes — the billowing smoke, the second tower collapsing. He pressed harder on the gas pedal.

He and other first responders fought the urge to pile in a rig and charge downtown. They had to wait for instructions, as commotion ensued citywide and fears of a bigger attack loomed. He recalled moving through the motions: Eyes glued to the TV. Walk outside to shake the stress off. Back to the TV.

Word finally came through that buses in the South Bronx would take the firefighters to the towers, but Daly had to figure out how to get his team to the buses. He stood at the Henry Hudson Parkway, eventually hailing down a mail truck and commandeering it. The bus ride into the city was dead silent, he said, the men watching as plumes of dark smoke came into view from the window.

“It was like entering a city I’ve never seen before,” Daly recalled.

Everyone was covered in dust and blood, Daly saw when he arrived. Authorities patrolled with machine guns in hand, he said, and the once clear, blue sky was completely obscured by smoke. Fires were still ablaze. He walked amid rubble and steel girders, thousands of bodies lying underneath the wreckage. Other first responders approached Daly, sharing several names of people he had known and cared for that were now gone.

In the initial days, few people were able to be found, and it soon became a recovery operation. Daly and his men traversed the scene with buckets in hand, searching for pieces of human beings, he said. He remembered responders seeing something that appeared like a rock, and then a cadaver dog would start barking. The body part was tenderly picked up with a shovel, placed into a bucket and walked toward a makeshift morgue, while other rescue workers saluted or said a prayer, he recalled.

“We would try and be as respectful as we could for that moment,” Daly said. “And those moments happened frequently, all day and all night.”

An odor started to become apparent as time went on, which Daly described as smelling like burning insulation. One day, after a long shift of recovery, Daly returned to Engine 52 to shower off the stench. Outside, he saw an array of flowers, candles and letters, put there by community members to thank the team for their service. Tears in his eyes, he returned to that same wooden table, and wrote a letter of appreciation that was later published in The Press.

“The people of Riverdale have been extraordinary,” Daly wrote in the Sept. 20 issue, signed by him and another captain from the station, Roger Gagnon. “They have come with food in their hands, and tears in their eyes, and prayers in their hearts … Someday we hope to mute the pain of this tragedy, but I hope we never forget the kindness we have been shown by our neighbors.”

Daly remembered what he called “tent city,” a line of volunteers posted on a street near the towers that offered clothes, food and prayer. When rescue workers “came off the pile” — a phrase to describe finishing a recovery shift — they were met by volunteer college students who wrapped them in a warm embrace.

The contrast was stark.

“When you step back and look at it, you had this scene from Dante’s ‘Inferno’ on one side,” Daly said. “This hellscape of burning fires and the smell of death. And then you walked across the street and you had all these people and they’re helping you.”

Throughout this tumultuous period, Daly said his thoughts lay with the younger generation, and how kids growing up would cope in a world where something as tragic as 9/11 could occur. A former teacher before he joined the fire department, Daly started speaking at schools in the area. His message was that the attacks were an exception to a world of peaceful, loving people, he said.

His work evolved to include lessons on initiative, teamwork, compassion and volunteerism, as well as “The Five Golden Keys to Happiness and Success,” which is geared toward teenagers. Daly’s work has taken him worldwide, including Canada, Chile, Nicaragua and Nepal — at the request of the U.S. Department of State — where he’s given presentations and keynotes to community organizations, corporations and schools, according to his website.

Daly retired from the FDNY in 2002. Two weeks prior, The Press wrote a profile on him. The November issue described Daly as someone who, despite the high-profile public speaking, talks “in cadences that give away his Kingsbridge roots,” with “solid features that give him the look of an honest, rugged laborer.” He told The Press at the time that he’s not a politician, and he doesn’t pretend to be. Daly is a “‘little kid from the Bronx who grew up to be a firefighter,’” he said.

Daly now lives in Hopewell Junction with his wife, Annie Daly. They run a nonprofit together called Fruits of Caring, where they deliver food, clothes and personal hygiene products to those experiencing homelessness in Midtown. The nonprofit operates at a church, across from another one of Dan Daly’s former firehouses, Engine 1/Ladder 24.

“To me, the legacy of 9/11 wasn’t what individuals can destroy,” Daly said. “It’s, ‘Look what we can do when we come together’ … We were all thinking with one mind then. We were unified.”