N.Y. visit: Firefighter stops by LV station

Wednesday, Oct. 3, 2001 | 9:49 a.m.

New York City firefighter John McLean, filling up a 5-gallon bucket with rubble from the World Trade Center, stooped to pick up a dust-smeared photograph.

It was Sept. 12, and the chaos from the day before still reverberated.

A man and a woman, their arms around each other, posed in straw hats. They were smiling, the background a tropical setting. Who are these people and where were they now? McLean asked himself. Did they make it out of the inferno or perish along with thousands of others?

"Picking up the picture, that's when it hit," McLean said. "The people in the shot were strangers, but they're what made it real for me."

Rescue workers had been instructed to divide the debris into three categories -- building rubble, wreckage from the two airplanes that crashed into the twin towers and human remains. McLean put the photograph in his pocket.

"I didn't want to just throw it away," said McLean, a firefighter for nearly five years with Engine 220 in Brooklyn. "I hope I can find out who it belongs to and give it back to them."

McLean recounted his experiences Tuesday during a visit to Clark County Fire Station No. 19 near Mandalay Bay. For months he had been looking forward to visiting Las Vegas and celebrating his mother's birthday. After the attacks, the family decided to not reschedule the trip.

"Everyone's saying we need to get back to normal and not let fear run our lives," said McLean, 36. "Coming to Las Vegas seemed like a good way to get away from everything for a few days."

No matter what state he visits or where a vacation takes him, McLean insists on visiting fire stations, said his girlfriend, Louise Wilkins.

"I think I'd be worried if we went by a firehouse and he didn't want to stop," said Wilkins, who accompanied McLean on the trip to Las Vegas.

Such informal drop-ins are common for traveling firefighters and police officers, and usually involve friendly chats and exchanges of T-shirts and patches. Clark County Fire Capt. Steve Webster, who wore a black ribbon pinned across his silver badge, said he was glad McLean took the time to visit.

The loss associated with the deaths of more than 300 firefighters in New York was felt in station houses across the country, Webster said.

"Essentially, we're all doing the same job, no matter what city we're doing it in," Webster said. "We try and be prepared for the dangers, but there's no way to prepare for what the guys in New York faced."

McLean and Webster visited for nearly an hour, touring the station and exchanging details on policies and procedures. The tour was interrupted only by McLean's frequent trips to the water fountain. Three weeks later he still has a persistent cough from the smoke and dust left from the World Trade Center.

In the firehouse garage, McLean paused in front of a yellow firetruck. He placed his hand over a newly applied decal -- a shield that reads "FDNY. In Memory, Sept. 11, 2001."

"I must know 30, 40 guys who never came back," McLean said. "There are 10,000 firefighters in New York City, but it's a small town."

McLean was off duty on Sept. 11 when he heard a radio report of the first plane hitting the World Trade Center. He was in his car on the way to visit an aunt. He immediately changed routes and headed for the firehouse to which he was assigned.

He called his girlfriend.

"You know what I have to do," McLean said.

"I know," Wilkins replied, promising to call McLean's sister and mother.

It would be 15 hours before she heard from McLean again.

At one point, after the buildings fell and the television news began talking of firefighters and police officers being trapped in the wreckage, McLean's sister, Cathy Whitaker, went searching for her brother. She made her way to McLean's station house.

A captain told Whitaker her brother had logged in and gone to the scene, but that he hadn't been in contact with the station for hours.

"The captain said, 'If he calls you, would you tell him to call us' " Whitaker recalled. "No one knew where anyone was at that point, and a lot of guys were already missing. We were so afraid."

Shortly before midnight on Sept. 11 Whitaker's phone rang. It was her brother calling to tell her he was safe.

"We know our family was very lucky," Whitaker said. "You can't even imagine what it's like back home. Everyone has been touched by this devastation."