By Kerry Burke and Leonard Greene
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — When they talked on 9/11 about facing a new world, city officials didn’t envision a fire department that would continue to suffer traumatic losses from a 25-year-old terror attack.
“I cannot tell you your lived experience in this quarter century,” FDNY Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore said at a special FDNY commemorative ceremony on the cusp of the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack at Staten Island Ferryhawk Stadium Wednesday. “I cannot pretend to know your pain. First, in losing so many in a single day, and then continuing to lose our people to illness in the years since.”
| MORE: The story of the list
“I know each of you carry a different story. Your losses fall in different years. Your loved ones wear different names. Your burdens, however, are all the same. You are united in grief and love, and that spirit is what brings us to this moment, to this stadium, to this skyline.”
In the weeks and months that followed, the number 343 was seared into the psyche of every New Yorker, representing the number of brave FDNY members who died on 9/11.
That number has since been surpassed by the 453 who have since died from cancers and respiratory illnesses related to toxic air at the site. Families and firefighters at Ferryhawk Stadium were there to remember them all.
“The terrorist attack has had a profound impact on this department,” said FDNY Chief of Department John Esposito. “There was grief, there was anger, and there was an enormous sense of loss. In two terrible and deliberate moments, we lost 343 members.”
But even in the face of that loss, that anguish, the department still had to go on.
“We had to rebuild, we had to bring new members and prepare them for a job that had changed overnight,” Esposito said. “We were faced with the new world. We had to strengthen our preparedness, and we had to learn from everything that happened that day.”
Esposito looked on as a procession of flag-carrying uniformed firefighters filled the stadium’s base paths as the sound of bagpipes filled the still, warm air.
Above them, the faces of the fallen appeared on giant monitors as their names were read to the silent crowd that included Mayor Mamdani.
“They are so much more than numbers,” Esposito said. “They are names, we know, faces we remember, people we worked with, learned from, laughed with, and relied on. I knew and worked with many of the members we lost that day. And in the year since, I have watched far too many friends and colleagues become sick. Those losses have been heartbreaking.”
©2026 New York Daily News.
Visit nydailynews.com.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
