This book was created and published on StoryJumper™

©2014 StoryJumper, Inc.   All rights reserved.

Publish your own children's book: 

www.storyjumper.com

This is Fire Chief Steve Sullivan. He was 

moved from his usual Squad 41 to help 

another team and just had been sent off when 

the attack had begun. They call him the 

luckiest man alive. He is a dad of three and 

was traveling between fire stations 

throughout New York

The rest of his team were sent to the Twin Towers. 

Not a single man survived.

By the time he got to Squad 288, 20 minutes 

away, that group had already left to tackle the 

nightmare, too.

When Steve arrived at Ground Zero an hour later, 

all those colleagues and friends were dead too, 

except one – the fireman he had been meant to 

replace.

Steve’s name was on the official list of dead and 

missing, and for hours his family had no idea 

where he was

The firefighter, now 47, says: “I still can’t believe what 

happened that day.

“I have never spoken about it publicly before. I fully 

understand how lucky I was. I am so grateful.

“I lost so many friends that day and spent a lot of time 

with their families in the following months. I didn't feel 

comfortable talking about how lucky I was with so much 

sorrow around me.

“People who know me well are still surprised to hear 

about my experience

There are still people to this day that grieve over 

9/11. Steve is not the only one it affects; family, 

policeman,and most of all firefighters. As you see 

in this picture this is a brother and sister. The 

sister thought that he was lost in the flames. On 

the other hand the brother thought that he lost 

his sister. They end up uniting at the funeral that 

was held for the fallen.

Tom Canavan, who worked for First Union Bank, stayed 

on the 47th floor of the North Tower until after the 

South Tower was hit, after which his evacuation was 

slowed by congestion in a stairwell. Canavan had just 

passed through revolving doors into the darkened, 

glass-strewn underground shopping mall between the 

two Towers, and had turned back to help a couple when 

the rumble of the South Tower's destruction began. He 

was thrown to the ground and trapped in a small space 

by slabs of concrete. Canavan and another man crawled 

to an opening near The Sphere -- the World Trade 

Center Plaza's centerpiece bronze sculpture. The other 

man crawled out, but Canavan, being larger, was unable 

to. Canavan continued to struggle, and extracted 

himself and walked to safety over smouldering rubble 

that burned the bottoms of his shoes.

When Steve arrived at Ground Zero he had left his 

mobile at the firehouse and could not contact his wife, 

Patricia, who was at home with their three young 

children. She thought he was dead.

Steve says:   “We were ordered to go in to one of the 

smaller World Trade Center buildings, which had a 

huge crater in the middle and was burning.

“There were reports of people trapped. I searched that 

building, but found no one. I spent the rest of the day 

searching around the site and removing firefighters 

and civilian victims.

You've previewed 13 of 20 pages.

To read more: