FIREFIGHTERS & COPS : What provoked the scuffle? - Ground Zero - Brief Article

Commonweal, Nov 23, 2001 by Julia Vitullo-Martin

New York writer Kitty Barnes used to say that you had to pass a "handsome test" to become a New York City firefighter. Firefighters have always had a glamour edge over other city workers. The many black-and-white photographs of firefighters since September 11 have the feel of Armani ads--great-looking men, covered in soot and sweat, doing their arduous work with the nonchalant grace of natural athletes.

But 250 of them still lie beneath the rubble of the World Trade Center. The sadness of the Bravest seems nearly unendurable. So when New York firefighters attacked New York cops at Ground Zero on November 2, injuring five of them, their assault was covered by newspapers and television around the world--but with restraint. The media chose to be subdued about what, at any other time, would have been a sensational front-page tabloid story.

What's going on?

Firefighters had mounted a peaceful midmorning march to protest City Hall's decision to reduce the fire, police, and emergency crew members who spot human remains in the debris. When the spotters identify remains, construction crews halt their work and recovery teams come in. Firefighters drape the remains in mourning and pray before carrying them out. Some of the men have beautiful voices and sing the ancient chants--I heard one softly singing the Dies irae.

Debris with no known remains is shipped off to the Fresh Kills Landfill on Staten Island, where the Medical Examiner makes a second effort to identify any body parts. You can see the problem immediately: Remains that are not recognized by the spotters are dumped on one of the most infamous garbage heaps in the world--no mourning, no prayers, no Mass. Just "carted off on a garbage scow," as the father of a missing firefighter wrote recently in the New York Daily News. The drive of firefighters to keep this from happening to the bodies of their brothers is unrelenting. The fire union called the site "sacred ground." And of course it is--New York's own Gettysburg.

Fires rage beneath the surface, and Mayor Rudolph Giuliani called the site unstable and dangerous. It is now being cleared by crews using heavy cranes, clamshells, and backhoes. The two-hundred-plus firefighters on the site were in harm's way--and impeding the cleanup. Giuliani is almost surely right, but emotions are raw. Thomas Lynch, a poet and undertaker who runs a funeral home in Michigan, says that "Mourning is romance in reverse. If you love, you grieve. There are no exceptions. There are only those who do it well and those who don't." Firefighters have always done it well.

Resolute in honoring their dead, firefighters chanted "Bring our brothers home," before breaking through police barriers and punching several cops on November 2. Reinforcements were called in, and mounted police and cops in riot gear appeared. The photos were shocking. Everyone was stunned, including Giuliani whose romantic attachment to firefighters had long predated September 11. He stayed patient for several days. But when firefighters derided his efforts to clean up the site as "scoop and dump," he angrily called them "sinful." To be sure there was no misunderstanding he added, "And I mean that in a moral sense."

This is in many ways a peculiarly Catholic dispute. The fire department is overwhelmingly Catholic, as is the mayor and the City Hall contingent close to him. Rites matter to these men. New York's Catholic churches, including Saint Patrick's Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, have been ceaselessly busy with funerals.

Bringing his sense of ritual to the public square, the mayor organized an October 28 memorial service in which family members of those killed in the attack were given polished cherry mahogany urns containing soil and ash from the site. The New York Times reports that the urns were "respectfully assembled by the police ceremonial unit." Police officers in full dress uniform wearing white gloves had solemnly and silently filled the four thousand urns as if each urn were the only one.

But firefighters saw this memorial service as a pretext for converting the public understanding of Ground Zero from a burial site to a construction site. They have a point. But City Hall also has a point. The site is dangerous and must be cleared.

The complex question of the war dead--and we are now at war--is not easily resolved, if it ever is. The remains of soldiers from World War II, Korea, and Vietnam are still being identified and returned. It is generally acknowledged, even by the firefighters, that the bodies of most of those lost were cremated in the extreme and lasting fires at the site. Dies irae is fitting.

Julia Vitullo-Martin is a New York-based writer who contributes regularly to Commonweal.