Primary records first.
Where a surviving FDNY company operations report establishes an assignment, stairway, approximate floor or action, that record is the starting point.
The historical record
Remembering carefully.
This memorial separates contemporaneous operational records, official memorial records, family recollections and later reporting so visitors can see not only the story, but how the story is known.
Later memories are labeled.
Family and firefighter recollections can preserve details unavailable elsewhere. When they go beyond the contemporaneous record, the site identifies them as later testimony.
Silence where the record is silent.
The memorial does not invent precise floors, conversations, final moments or movements that surviving sources do not establish.
Company operations
Engine 22 & Ladder 13
FDNY Company Operations Reports
The central source for the North Tower reconstruction. The surviving Engine 22 report documents members assisting civilians while evacuating through Stairway C. The Ladder 13 report documents the six-member responding crew, the assignment toward the 44th floor, reaching approximately the 24th floor, evacuation through Stairway B, and Joseph Graziano assisting a civilian before exiting seconds before collapse.
Archival status: the memorial uses the strongest complete public copy currently in hand for the company-report text. A first-generation or certified FDNY copy remains a future archival enhancement; the historical claims on this site do not depend on receiving it.
Open current public reproduction ↗CBS News · “Just Regular Guys”
A 2002 report independently documents Engine 22 firefighter Peter Clinton as one of the firefighters from the East 85th Street house who survived September 11, supporting the memorial’s decision not to describe Graziano as the only survivor from the entire firehouse.
Open CBS News ↗FDNY 9/11 archive
World Trade Center Task Force interviews.
FDNY World Trade Center Task Force Interviews · 2001–2002
FDNY conducted hundreds of interviews with firefighters and other responders in the months after September 11. The records were publicly released in 2005 after litigation and became an important near-contemporaneous oral-history archive.
Firehouse.com’s August 15, 2005 archival resource page still identifies the FDNY release and links to the New York Times collection of the oral histories. Because some individual archived transcript links are now fragile, this memorial treats the collection path and the original FDNY interview metadata as the authoritative provenance trail.
Firehouse 2005 archive index ↗New York Times archived oral-history collection ↗
Engine 21 testimony connected to Ladder 13
Published historical citations identify World Trade Center Task Force interviews with Engine 21 firefighters William “Billy” Casey (December 17, 2001), Sidney Parris (December 14, 2001), and John Snow (January 13, 2002). Casey is especially relevant because later FDNY-community testimony places him with Ladder 13 and Joseph Graziano during the North Tower evacuation.
The project preserves the original FDNY oral-history provenance trail and treats later summaries only as corroboration. Original transcript PDFs can be added when obtained.
First-generation copies requested
The prepared OpenRecords request asks FDNY for the highest-resolution available copies of the Engine 22 and Ladder 13 company reports, the relevant World Trade Center Task Force interviews, and the 2005 release manifest/index so that the permanent memorial can cite first-generation agency records wherever available.
The project team maintains a private archival request packet for future FDNY record upgrades.
Firehouse artifact
The riding boards.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art · 2002
The Met documented and conserved two chalkboards—known as riding boards—used by Engine 22 and Ladder 13. The boards still bore in chalk the names of firefighters who signed out on the morning of September 11, including the nine who were lost. Met conservators stabilized, preserved and framed them, displayed them publicly for one week in September 2002, and stated that they would then be returned permanently to Engine 22.
This artifact offers a direct physical connection between the men, the firehouse, and the morning of September 11. A high-resolution image should be added to the public memorial only after the appropriate image/reproduction permission is secured.
Metropolitan Museum archival description ↗Biographical record
The nine men.
National Fallen Firefighters Foundation
The NFFF Roll of Honor biographies are the backbone for verified family relationships, service histories, interests and personal remembrances used throughout the nine individual pages.
National Fallen Firefighters Foundation ↗Portraits of Grief / Legacy
Contemporary and republished obituary material preserves family voices and personal details that help the site remember how the men lived, not only how they died.
VOICES Center for Resilience
Family photographs, memorabilia and memorial materials are used as corroborating sources, especially for Thomas Hetzel and Gregory Stajk.
VOICES Living Memorial ↗Civic legacy
Names carried into the city.
New York City street co-namings
New York City legislative records are used to verify civic co-namings, including Captain Walter G. Hynes Way, Firefighter Thomas A. Casoria Way and Firefighter Michael J. Elferis Street.
Yorkville memorial stones
Published neighborhood reporting documents nine memorial-stone locations established after 9/11. The site intentionally describes these as historically documented locations until each stone is physically re-verified for 2026.
Open neighborhood record ↗Dennis P. McHugh Piermont Public Library
The library’s own institutional history documents the McHugh Foundation’s major contribution and the 2007 opening of the library bearing Dennis McHugh’s name.
Open library history ↗Joseph Graziano Jr.
Later testimony.
Division 7 Training & Safety Newsletter · September 2018
The newsletter’s account of Engine 21 firefighter Billy Casey says he encountered a distressed civilian on the 26th floor, assisted the civilian to the 19th floor, met Ladder 13 there, and was assigned Joseph Graziano by Captain Walter Hynes to help with the civilian. It records Casey and Graziano bringing the civilian to the street and later places the three outside the tower as the North Tower began to collapse.
This is later FDNY-community testimony, used as corroborating context—not as a replacement for the contemporaneous Ladder 13 company report.
Open newsletter PDF ↗Wofford College and later profiles
Later family and media accounts provide additional context about Graziano’s survival and its continuing impact. Where those details exceed the company report, the memorial attributes them accordingly.
Open Wofford account ↗Publication standards
Accuracy before drama.
“Yorkville 9.” The site uses “the nine men who came to be known as the Yorkville 9,” recognizing the established historical/community name without presenting it as an FDNY administrative designation.
Joseph Graziano. The site describes him as the surviving member of Ladder 13’s six-member responding crew—not as the only survivor from the firehouse.
Exact birth dates. Dates with conflicting or secondary-only evidence remain out of the main memorial text until family or stronger archival confirmation is available.
Photographs. Family-approved originals are preferred. Temporary research images remain visibly marked in the working build and are tracked in the permissions ledger.
Memorial stones. Historical locations are distinguished from stones physically re-verified in 2026.
Working archive
Photo rights & verification.
The project team maintains private source, permissions and archival-verification records outside the public memorial.
FDNY currently directs Freedom of Information Law requests through NYC OpenRecords. The project packet contains ready-to-paste request language for first-generation copies of the company reports and targeted oral histories.