Police and Firefighters Cope With Deaths of Colleagues

The collapse of the World Trade Center towers registered a 2.0 on the Richter scale -- and sent even stronger shockwaves through the lives of tens of thousands of people.

One is Brian Farrell. He and two dozen fellow fightfighers from Brooklyn Ladder 132 raced to the scene of the Twin Towers catastrophe early Tuesday afternoon, hours after the skyscrapers' collapse. Six of them are now missing. "One day you're working alongside these guys and the next they're gone," said Mr. Farrell Wednesday, dazed and covered in soot.

I hate to be harsh, and I defintely DO have sympathy for all the cops and firefighters who have lost their lives, but for every one rescue person killed or missing, we have 100 or more civilian killed or missing, maybe more.

They way they make it sound on all the major media outlets are that the cops and firefighters are the only ones that have suffered losses. If I had a family member killed in the tragedy, I would be furious.

Everyone that lost their life Tuesday was a vicitim, and none of those lives were any more or any less important than anyone elses.

Let them all rest in peace.

You are being harsh. You fail to understand that the people who were going up the towers--the firefighters and police--while people were coming down are the people who were in the lead of the rescue operation. They are all dead--chiefs, assistants chiefs, deputy chiefs, battalion commanders, line officers, EMT's, paramedics, fron the from the highest in command to the lowest rank. These are people who were assigned to this area, who had all the plans for rescue, firefighting and triage and knew these buildings because they were assigned to this area. They have now had to bring in companies from all over the region--my daughter's boyfriend is there right now, along with others in their company. For the time being, he and other members of their company are shuttling in equipment and supplies from their fire company to NYC. But does he know the area? No. Does he know the buildings? No. But what he and so many others have done is leave their jobs--this is a volunteer company--to assist the NYFD in whatever is needed for however long it takes.

What have you done?

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