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No one was in, but he scaled the roof to break a skylight and release the explosive gases building up inside. A photo of Mike perched atop a row of Brooklyn brownstone houses appeared in New York’s Daily News the following morning. The guys at the fire station joked for a few minutes that he was almost famous His mother cut out the photo for her scrapbook. His mother cut out the photo for her scrapbook.
Mike didn’t notice the second time he was photographed on the job. It happened on a crowded stairwell of the burning 1 World Trade Centre. A Port Authority contractor had grabbed his digital camera as he rushed down from the 71st floor, and released the shutter just as Mike was climbing to the scene of the blaze.On the Friday after that Tuesday, the photo hit the Daily News. More than any other, Mike’s picture gave a face and a name to the horrors of that sweaty stampede out of the towers Suddenly, everyone wanted a piece of him.

There were 40 messages a day from reporters; well-wishers sent cheques, whiskey, prayers, cigars…The photograph quickly became part of the redemptive fairy tale spun by Americans to make sense of 11 September. But to those who lived that story, resolution is nothing more than a mass-marketed myth For them, the reality is raw and unending Firefighters and police have brawled at ground zero. Tales of divorces spawned by 11 September circle around the fire department. Widows squabble with one another over money; one has taken her own life.For Mike, myth and reality collide at nearly every juncture. People who see his compact frame in person insist he is shorter than the beefy man in the photo. The guys at work grumble that all the attention is going to him instead of the six men missing from his station.

His wife, EJ, demands to know why they have had only a 30-second conversation about 11 September. Everyone wants to know how many people the superhero pulled from the towers. The answer never changes: “I saved one person that day, and that was me, and it was by running for my life.” ON THE morning of 11 September, Mike and EJ drove into Manhattan together from their Staten Island home. Shortly after 7am, he dropped her off at the downtown Manhattan radiologist’s where she works.The first and second alarms sounded in unison at 8.47am at fire stations across lower Manhattan. The third was transmitted at 8.48 as a 10-60, code for a major emergency. No fourth alarm was necessary; at 8.56 the blaze was upgraded to a five-alarm fire. Because the night shift was just then being relieved, two teams of men were milling around most fire stations, bantering about the previous evening’s calls.