Bill Spade always knew he’d be a fireman. “There was something about it,” he says. “The big red trucks. The sirens. Everything about it attracted me.” Growing up on Staten Island, New York, he began taking the ferry to Manhattan as soon as his parents allowed him, visiting museums, street fairs and sports games. “And the people,” he adds. “I really loved the people.”
On September 11, 2001, those were the people Spade went into the World Trade Center to save. He was one of thousands of firefighters to respond to the attacks – 343 died that day, including 11 members of Spade’s own unit, Rescue Company 5. In fact, of all the members of Spade’s team who reached the Twin Towers that morning, he was the only survivor.
“I took my test for the fire department back in 1982, on September 11, as it happens,” says Spade. “I was assigned to a firehouse in lower Manhattan, and that was a dream come true – riding in a fire truck, responding to calls in New York City.”
After starting a family, Spade joined Rescue 5, a specialised search-and-rescue unit, closer to home on Staten Island. “In New York, there are only five rescue companies,” he explains. “One for each borough.” The training was intense, including scuba diving, rappelling down buildings, auto extraction and confined-space training.
Before 9/11, Spade says the most extreme callout of his career was to the site of the Golden Venture, a cargo ship transporting 286 undocumented Chinese immigrants that ran ashore in Queens. “Complete darkness, and these big, heavy waves,” he recalls. “Helicopters above with lights on, dead bodies washed ashore. An overturned Coast Guard boat that was trying to help. I described it at the time as being like Night of the Living Dead, all these people coming out of the water. It was eerie.”
But, as Spade puts it, “nothing has ever compared to 9/11”. He describes the morning as a “beautiful, blue-sky Tuesday,” and remembers having breakfast with his fellow firefighters. When the call came in that the North Tower had been hit, Rescue 5 headed into Manhattan. On the drive in, Spade even saw the second plane hit the South Tower.
He entered the North Tower and teamed up with NYPD officer John D’Allara. Spade was on the second floor, helping people evacuate, when the building began to collapse. “Twisting metal. Deafening sounds. This unsureness about what was happening. I was in Stairway C, and the windows were right there – bodies flying past.”
“But the people coming down the stairs?” he adds. “There was only one person, the whole time I was there, who was panicking. I always describe it as a first-grade fire drill, kids just listening to their teacher, walking in a straight line, not talking and exiting the building. I remember a blind man coming downstairs. Somebody had his dog, somebody had him by the arm. I was so proud of everyone working together, helping each other escape.”
Almost immediately after Spade had cleared the stairwell, the building collapsed – with him still inside. “I’d been in other collapses, where you hear wood squeaking and stuff like that, and you jump in a corner, but this was different. I thought it was the upper floors, maybe the top four or five, not the whole building.” During his collapse training, Spade had been taught to make himself as small as possible, so he got under a desk. “I was buried by a lot of debris, pulverised material, concrete and glass. But I couldn’t breathe. So, to survive, I had to stick my finger in my mouth to create a small airway.”
Eventually, Spade dug himself out and, another hour later, he and three fellow firefighters made it out of the ruins of the North Tower. D’Allara did not. “I went down the street and looked back – for one reason,” says Spade. “Because I knew I would never be a fireman again, due to my injuries. This was going to be my last job. So I just looked back, and remember saying: ‘This looks like combat. It looks like war.'”
During his third day in hospital – and after discovering he was the only Rescue 5 firefighter to survive – Spade hand-wrote an 11-page account of his experience. “I went to the local paper and asked the editor if he’d print it, to honour the guys from Rescue 5. But I asked that he not change a word. They printed it the following day.”
For the past 25 years, Spade has continued to share his story. “After receiving counselling,” he says, “I’m able to talk about it better.” When the National September 11 Museum opened on the site of the attacks in 2014, Spade began volunteering there on Friday mornings. He still does, alongside six others. “We call ourselves ‘Friday’s Finest’.”
Spade also appears in a new National Geographic documentary series, 9/11: REUNITED, for which he met D’Allara’s sons for the first time and discussed their father’s final moments. Both sons have careers in uniform, and both understand the importance of helping others – what Spade calls “the mission”.
“Every call you went on with the fire department,” he says, “whether it was a car accident or a lost dog, you were always helping people. And that day, to have helped people? To have saved lives? There’s nothing better.”
9/11: REUNITED is streaming on Disney+. It premiered on National Geographic on Sunday 23 August, with the series repeated on the channel on Friday 11 September at 8pm.
