FF Bill Spade - FDNY Rescue 5
Photo Credit: Bill Spade
Bill Spade served the people of the City of New York as a member of the FDNY for eighteen years, starting in 1985. In September 2001, he was a member of one of the FDNY's elite rescue units, Rescue 5, in Staten Island. He was at Rescue 5 on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001 when he took a call from another firefighter he knew, who told him that a plane had just struck the World Trade Center. Acting on instinct, he hopped into his personal vehicle and drove as fast as he could to Lower Manhattan.
He was one of twelve members of Rescue 5 who responded to the World Trade Center on that terrible Tuesday morning. The other eleven members of the house - who arrived on scene together from the call to which they had been responding when FF Spade received that fateful phone call - all died there. Bill Spade had just evacuated the North Tower when it collapsed. By his recollection, he was only about 30 seconds away from the building when he heard an ominous rumble behind him. The force of the collapse picked him up and threw him into a wall. When he was in the hospital later that night, his brother informed him that his eleven brothers from Rescue 5 were all missing.
In 2003, Bill Spade retired from the FDNY, which had placed him on light duty following September 11, 2001. In 2007, he began giving walking tours around Ground Zero through the 9/11 Tribute Center. Thereafter, in 2014, he started to volunteer at the National September 11 Museum and Memorial. He became a docent, leading visitors through the Museum and sharing with them various stories of heroism from that day, including his own occasionally.
Bill Spade still volunteers as a docent. He still gives back to a city he has served since 1985. Twelve members of Rescue 5 risked their lives on September 11, 2001 to save innocents. Eleven of them died. As the last man standing, Bill Spade has honored the memory of his fallen brothers for the past twenty-two years.
-AK
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