On Sept. 11, 2001, FDNY Fire Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore was a 10-year department veteran serving as a senior instructor at the EMS Academy at Fort Totten in Queens.
That morning, her EMT refresher class was interrupted by the announcement that a plane had hit the north tower. Gathered around a television, they watched in horror as a second plane struck the south tower.
“It was surreal,” Bonsignore said. “The first thing that went through my mind was, ‘Oh my God, these buildings are filled with people.’”
Bonsignore and her fellow instructors immediately went into mission mode, rounding up equipment and supplies and mobilizing students for the response. With only a few ambulances available, officials commandeered several city buses to carry the rest of the group into Manhattan.
Then, at 9:59 a.m., they watched one of the towers crumble and disappear from the New York City skyline.
“The towers stood over us for our entire lives,” Bonsignore said, the disbelief still evident 25 years later. “They were part of our everyday existence.”
The rest of the ride was quiet.
“There was an eerie silence of disbelief,” she said. “How do you wrap your head around that happening?”
Then, quiet gave way to chaos.
When rescue becomes recovery
Just as they exited the bus near the WTC site, the north tower collapsed, immediately submerging the team in the dust and debris of the wreckage immediately.
They retreated to the auditorium of a nearby school to set up a staging area.
Bonsignore was assigned to forward triage the most critical patients on scene so they could be removed for immediate care. But as she made her way to the perimeter of the collapse site, a gnawing feeling from years of experience was already preparing her for the reality — this was not going to be a traditional large-scale rescue effort: “If you don’t immediately see people running away or asking for help, there are likely very few survivors,” she noted.
Her intuition was correct: “There was nobody to triage, nobody who needed care down there, nobody alive.”
Bonsignore transitioned to the new objective: Locate the remains of victims and catalog any contextual details so families could be notified.
“We were in a morgue situation,” she said. “We were trying to identify people and write everything down, knowing that so many people would be looking for their loved ones. We needed to get this right.”
Aware that FDNY leadership had staged at the base of the buildings, Bonsignore feared many had been killed in the collapse. But due to overloaded cell phone networks and dispatch channels, there was no way to find out.
“We would come across bunker gear or a helmet or a boot,” she said. “We knew we had lost a lot of people, but we didn’t know how many.”
“We just went to work”
For a day and a half, Bonsignore worked the pile, stopping only when pushed to her physical limits.
“I was exhausted,” she recalls. “Like the type of exhaustion where you can’t hold the weight of your own body up.”
Back at the school where the staging area was located, a collection of donated supplies for first responders had been dropped off in front of the building. Bonsignore remembers curling up on a garbage bag full of blankets in the street to sleep.
“There was no fighting it,” she said. “My body was done. It could have been a couple of minutes, or a couple of hours, but I just passed out. And then I woke up and went back to the site.”
Time ceased to exist for Bonsignore as she worked. A few days passed before it occurred to her that her loved ones had no idea whether she was alive or dead.
“I needed to get home,” she said. “I told my family I was going down to the World Trade Center before the towers had fallen, and then they didn’t hear from me.”
The West Side Highway was empty — a sight New Yorkers wouldn’t see again until the rise of COVID-19. Bonsignore flagged down a police officer who was headed uptown and, still covered in dust from the collapse, hitched a ride straight to her daughter’s high school.
After an emotional reunion with her family and a hot shower at home, Bonsignore made her way back to Manhattan. For the next month, she continued combing through the wreckage of the towers’ collapse before returning to her role at the EMS Academy.
“People were still having heart attacks, cardiac arrests, strokes and other traumas. We had to get training back up and running,” she said. “We had to find a sense of normalcy.”
The legacy of 9/11 heroes
Though first responders are notorious for rejecting the “hero” label for themselves, they also know when to call a spade a spade.
“When people die for others, we revere them,” Bonsignore said. “We see them as heroes, the responders who went into those buildings, who saved thousands and thousands of lives by evacuating people before the collapse. Many went in knowing they weren’t coming out, walking up the steps until the buildings came down.”
With only an estimated 1,000 FDNY members still serving who also responded on 9/11, ensuring the younger generation of recruits understands the gravity of the anniversary and the impact the attacks had on the department, the city and the country, is a priority.
“We start training them the minute they walk in the door,” Bonsignore said. “You have to carry this now. You own the legacy, carry it forward.”
The names of those killed in the attacks and from post-9/11 cancers in the decades since adorn a wall at the FDNY, honoring both their memory and sacrifice: “For those of us left, we acknowledge that today is a gift. Tomorrow, we could be on the wall.”
A family’s commitment to service
No one understands the weight of sacrifice than the children of those who were serving that September day, including Bonsignore’s daughter, Joanna, who was a teenager in 2001.
“Watching my mom serve in EMS during 9/11 filled me with an incredible sense of pride, but it also left me terrified that I could lose my best friend,” Joanna shared in an email to FireRescue1.
Channeling that fear into action, Joanna joined the FDNY as a firefighter and served for three years.
“The day my mom finally walked into my high school and I saw her again, I made a promise to myself that would ultimately shape my career,” Joanna said. “She would never stand on the front lines alone again. Wherever she went, I would be by her side — always.”
That’s what makes the sacrifices of first responders so remarkable, Bonsignore noted.
“It’s literally the type of job where, when all hell’s breaking loose, you leave your family to fend for themselves so you can help a stranger,” she said. “I was honored she wanted to follow in my footsteps.”
In the wake of 9/11, the department welcomed several legacy members — responders who joined the department after the loss of a family member who died in the line of duty.
“It speaks to the fabric of who FDNY people are, to say, after a tragic event, ‘The best way I can honor this person is to show up in the name of service,’” Bonsignore said. “That we’re so committed to service that we’re willing to put our lives on the line, knowing the kind of impact it has on a family.”
The resilience of New York
One of the ways Bonsignore stayed grounded while working the pile was through the support and encouragement of the city.
“It’s hard to be a first responder,” she said. “Everything you do is tragic. You see the worst of humanity every single day. We see things during a regular workday that no one should see in their lifetime.”
And New Yorkers know it. Mere hours after the collapse, donations were already pouring in to support the responders on the ground.
“It was incredible to see they immediately understood how heavy, mentally, this was on first responders and then offered us encouragement,” she recalled. “It meant everything.”
It comes with the territory of living and working in one of America’s most iconic cities, she noted.
“New Yorkers are not a group you mess with,” Bonsignore said with pride. “When we need to get through something, we get through it together. That’s what I’ve seen.”
Leading with the memory of 9/11
Bonsignore’s career itself is a love letter to the city. Joining the department as a young EMT, she had a decade of experience behind her when she responded on 9/11. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she guided the FDNY as EMS chief through the city’s highest call volume since the 2001 attacks.
As commissioner, that experience impacts how she leads: “Coming up the department’s ranks shifts the perspective,” she said. “I know the sacrifice these first responders make every moment of their day.”
That applies to her, as well. Just being near the collapse site triggers the memory of the smells from the days and weeks she spent sifting through the wreckage — a mixture of smoke, ash and human remains.
“It’s been 25 years, and I still smell it as though it was day one,” she said. “I know it’s not there, but it’s imprinted; it’s embedded.”
And she knows she’s not the only one who deals with triggers from that day.
“This time of year is difficult for a lot of people,” she said. “It’s like ripping a scab off, particularly during major anniversaries because there’s so much more attention on it. There’s less time to rehab in between events.”
Ultimately, she hopes the anniversary is a day of grace for all who were impacted by the events of Sept. 11.
“We should be able to come together and honor those who gave everything,” she said. “Not just FDNY members, but everyone who went to work like it was a normal day and never came home.”
