Captain (Retired) Brenda Berkman
New York Fire Department
Captain Eric Smith of the Eaglehawk Fire Brigade had the privilege to introduce Captain (retired) Brenda Berkman to an informal gathering of 75 members from the Fortuna Group on Monday 8th October 2007 at the Eaglehawk Fire Station.
Eric and his wife Eileen met Brenda whilst participating in a Ground Zero escorted tour during their recent American trip which included New York.
Brenda has an interesting history in that she has 3 University Degree’s including Law and was deeply involved in getting women fire fighters into the NYFD (being one of the first to do so) battling very hard for a number of years to ensure that the department hired women fire fighters and that they were fairly treated. She was a NYFD Fire Fighter for 20 odd years before her necessary retirement in late 2006.
She also ran marathons when a fire fighter.
Brenda agreed to speak of her experiences with the 9/11 disaster and some of the effects it had on the NYFD post that time.
Interestingly she had vivid recollection leading up to the time the two towers fell, but little straight after including who she gathered together to assist at the time. She was off duty (and a Lieutenant) when she was made aware of the disaster and had to borrow equipment and PPC along with transport to get to the scene.
Brenda advised us that they lost 343 Fire Fighters on the day (including 3% women) 80 odd Riggs (appliances) and a considerable number of the departments Senior Command (Battalion Chiefs etc. [roughly equates to our Area Manager, Ops Manager and Ops Officers]).
This of course made Incident Command a little difficult.
Brenda knew 250 of those lost including her Battalion Chief who was transmitting from the 74th floor when the building collapsed.
The scene that Brenda and her gathered team were confronted with was a total of 7 buildings collapsed into a seven story high pile, all on fire with no Riggs that could pump water as the water mains were destroyed and the only supply was the Hudson River a short distance away. They eventually used Fire Boats to supply water.
Following the disaster many officers were promoted to fill the structure including Brenda being promoted to Captain, which added enormous responsibilities on “young” officers who where not really equipped for the roles which they took on including arranging funerals (5 from her station) welfare of lost members and their families, the staff on station and their families with little CISM type support (“they only lost 5 they’ll be right” type attitude).
Crews worked on the site continuously up until May 2002, putting additional enormous strain on all involved.
Mention was made that little to no decontamination of anything was undertaken for weeks / months resulting in contamination of home stations by crews returning to station and in many cases sleeping there for weeks on end. This will in the long term prove detrimental to all involved as every where they went they carted talcum powder fine dust which included asbestos. The rigs were “decontaminated” after about 3 months however the air conditioners were still full of the dust after 6 months resulting in further contamination of the crew and equipment. Dust was found inside the head light assemblies after that period when the globes had to be changed.
A few points or lessons learnt, that are relevant to our situation both at brigade and across CFA levels are that on the day it was change of shifts, and despite the requirement to keep accurate “crew sheets”, all that were there “rode the Riggs” to the incident, resulting in no one knowing who in fact was on scene. The problem then arose that it took weeks to determine who was in fact not accounted for.
What is different for us? We arrive at an incident in our own car, get to work, often don’t make contact with the IOC, finish the job and go home, still not contacting the OIC. The only difference – a lot smaller scale. The loss would be just as devastating.
IT is Vital to keep accurate and up to date documents of Family / relationship contact information. The records were well out of date at the time which made family contact very agonizing for all concerned, and in many cases the wrong people being contacted.
Brenda was asked if there was an influx of new members following the disaster, which she advised there was. However, many joined the job for totally the wrong reasons, thus are very much Gung Ho attitude on the fire ground. Another similarity you could say.
There is no doubt that we all should look at why we joined the job, and instead of charging in, take a step back and seriously consider the situation first.
It just Might Save Your Life and the life of your fellow Fire Fighters.
The night was certainly beneficial for all that attended with every one taking away with them a better understanding of the longer term effects of 9/11 both on personnel and the NYFD, together with plenty to consider in their own life’s and their service to their respective communities through the CFA.
