Battalion Chief John Norman, Special Operations Command (FDNY):
"I started to go down Vesey toward West, but there was a lot of debris blocking the way and they were telling me no, you don't want to go down there. They're worried about that building collapsing. I looked at 7 World Trade Center. There was smoke showing, but not a lot and I'm saying that isn't going to fall. So I went up Church Street two more blocks and went across to West and went right down behind 7 and got a good look at three sides.
Again, there were a lot of fires on the ground, some crushed mail trucks, some burned-up engines. It was a scene out of a war zone. I continued around to West and Vesey and reported into the command post. They were very concerned about fire extending into the telephone company building.
They gave me a couple of companies and said get into the telephone company building and check on extension there. We had extension on the first and second floors, so we took some standpipe lines, put them in operation and knocked that down. From there, we looked out at 7 World Trade Center again. You could see smoke, but no visible fire, and some damage to the south face. You couldn't really see from where we were on the west face of the building, but at the edge of the south face you could see that it was very heavily damaged.
But I never expected it to fall the way it did as quickly as it did, 7. But we took some defensive positions, actually tied the lines off and pulled the companies back from the building. I didn't feel too bad once we got back away from the perimeter just because that's a real, real heavy, old-style building. We knocked down any fire and checked for extension in the phone company building. We tied the lines off and left them flowing out into the street onto the debris piles that were burning out in the street there between the phone company and 7."
Glad this thread is here. More info on Bldg 7 than I've seen in one place before.