BY JACK DELANEY | jdelaney@queensledger.com
MASPETH — If you live in Maspeth, you’ve probably heard of HAZMAT 1 and Squad 288, the two local FDNY squads that lost the most members — 19 — of any New York City fire station in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
Twenty-five years later, the neighborhood is adding another tribute to their bravery, rechristening the intersection of 68th St and Borden and Perry Aves, in front of the Maspeth Firehouse, as “The Plaza of Heroes.”
During a ceremony last Wednesday at Maspeth Memorial Park, which nearly 100 people attended despite it being a weekday morning, a string of speakers strove to keep the fallen firefighters’ sacrifices from fading into obscurity — and to convey the weight of that day to those in the crowd, some of whom weren’t yet born at the time.
On September 11, 2001, Phil McArdle rushed from the FNDY’s training compound on Randall’s Island, known as the “The Rock,” to West Street, just as the South Tower was beginning to collapse. The dust was everywhere — you could barely see objects that were an arm’s length away — but McArdle and his partner managed to navigate to the North Tower, where they stumbled upon their first injured civilian.
David Handschuh, a photographer for The Daily News, lay prone in the road. His leg was broken, and he waved the firefighters away because the pain was too intense. McArdle told him that he would die if they didn’t move him immediately, and he was right: Less than a half hour after they pulled Handschuh to safety, the spot he’d been laying on was covered in six feet of rubble.
The next few weeks were a blur. There was the work of rebuilding, and then there was the grieving — on one particular day, McArdle attended 25 funerals throughout the city.
How does someone make sense of those experiences, decades later? McArdle, who also lost his own son after 9/11, told last week’s crowd that he has turned to other catastrophic events across the globe, such as the Blitz during WWII, to gain perspective. “If we don’t learn from history, we are doomed to repeat it,” he stressed. “Life is not guaranteed. Live every day as if it were your last, and be grateful for what you have.”
Fittingly, the ceremony’s recurring theme was gratitude. “Thousands of lives were saved that day because people were willing to put another human being before themselves,” said Captain John Hansen of HAZMAT 1. “It was one of the largest rescue efforts in history, and in the middle of unnatural tragedy, we saw something incredibly powerful: people taking care of people.”
The gathering, which was sponsored by Maspeth Federal Savings Bank, featured performances by Tom Bullaro and Tim Quinn, and a closing prayer from Rev. Msgr. Joseph Calise of the nearby St. Stanislaus Kostka Church. Representatives for Rep. Grace Meng and Council Member Phil Wong spoke briefly, and state Assemblymember Steven Raga and state Senator Joe Addabbo were spotted in the audience.
Yet the main event was a moment of silence for the 19 deceased firefighters, as well as Tony Mastrelli, a former member of HAZMAT 1 who retired in 2022 and passed away due to cancer — which the organizers attributed to toxins at Ground Zero — last year.
On Wednesday, the same day as the Maspeth ceremony, Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration released more than 170,000 pages of previously classified city records suggesting that city officials misled the public for years about the hazards posed by carcinogenic particles that hung in the air of lower Manhattan long after the attacks.
Over 57,000 people have since been diagnosed with 9/11-related cancers, and research by the Health Department has found that children exposed to dust from the World Trade Center were far more likely to develop asthma, depression, and other chronic conditions.
While first responders and their families continue their push for both accountability and compensation, Queens residents have reignited their calls to landmark the Maspeth Firehouse, home of HAZMAT 1 and Squad 88.
“The story of this firehouse is still being written,” said Bill Bedell, the current captain of Squad 88. “It’s the responsibility of all of us, the firefighters and the community alike, to write it together.”
