YORKVILLE 9
Home / Joseph Graziano Jr.
Ladder Company 13

The Brother
Who Came Home.

Joseph Graziano Jr. survived the North Tower. The company record shows what he was doing in those final moments: helping rescue a civilian.

Ladder 13 responded together.

The surviving company operations report names six responding members of Ladder Company 13 on September 11, 2001.

Captain Walter G. Hynes. Firefighters Thomas J. Hetzel, Dennis P. McHugh, Thomas E. Sabella, Gregory M. Stajk and Joseph Graziano Jr.

They reported to command at West and Vesey Streets and were sent into the North Tower for search and evacuation, with an assignment toward the 44th floor.

The report states that the crew reached approximately the 24th floor before the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 a.m. The collapse changed the operation immediately. Members in the North Tower were ordered to evacuate.

The direction changed. The mission did not.

Ladder 13 began moving downward through Stairway B. The company report says the crew continued searching the 24th floor and floors below while evacuating.

Joseph Graziano was assisting in the rescue of a civilian, helping him down Stairway B toward safety.

That detail matters. Even as Ladder 13 was ordered out of the North Tower, Graziano was still doing what he and the other members of his company had been sent there to do: helping someone else.

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He was helping someone else get out.

Five members of his company were lost. Joe came home carrying the memory of the men he had last seen near Stairway B.

Billy Casey and Joseph Graziano

Helping a civilian down.

As the evacuation unfolded, firefighter Billy Casey was helping a civilian down the North Tower stairway. Along the way, Casey encountered Joseph Graziano, a fellow firefighter he knew through their softball league, and asked for his help. Graziano told the other members of Ladder 13 that he would help Casey get the civilian down and then rejoin his company on the higher floors.

Joe never had that opportunity. He continued down the stairway with Casey and the civilian, helping bring the man toward safety. Together, Casey and Graziano successfully rescued the civilian from the North Tower just moments before it collapsed. The other five members of Ladder 13’s responding crew — Captain Walter Hynes, Thomas Hetzel, Dennis McHugh, Thomas Sabella and Gregory Stajk — were lost.

Read the FDNY account ↗See the historical record
Joseph Graziano Jr. · Ladder 13

A survivor in their story.
A brother who came home.

September 11, 2001 — September 11, 2026