“We made him like the prince of the firehouse,” confirmed Peter Connell, recently promoted to captain and given the command of Engine 168. 168's former commander, Bill Small, is one of the men this company lost. “Kevin was two when his father died. We sort of adopted him. No kid should have to grow up without a father.” Captain Connell looked back through the open firehouse door to the apparatus floor. Engine 168, damaged in the maelstrom that was September 11, has been repaired and repainted. The captain said, “I guess there are going to be a lot of kids to adopt now.”

When the call came in to Engine 168 on September 11, off-duty firefighter Kevin Keegan asked Captain Small for permission to ride along. By then the extraordinary nature of the event was clear, though not yet its true and terrible extent. With the other members of the company, Keegan rode the engine into a cataclysm for which no level of experience could have prepared anyone.

“They had the bridge open for emergency vehicles, but it was slow going.” In an interview last week, Keegan sat with a visitor at a picnic table on the rolling grounds of the Burke Rehabilitation Center in White Plains. “By the time we got there, the second plane had hit. The fires were burning pretty bad.”

Keegan is a cheerful red-haired, freckled young man. But when he speaks of the events of that day, he turns his gaze away. He peers across the distant hills like a man hoping for the first glimpse of travelers returning home.

“Everything was chaos,” Keegan said. “Girders crashing down, glass breaking. People on fire falling from the sky. It was unbelievable.” Here in the green serenity of the hospital grounds, it did seem almost unbelievable that such horrors had ever been real.

“They sent us to the north tower,” Keegan went on. “We were massing to go in-there was a chief there, I don't know which chief, but my captain reported to him. And there were, I think, four other companies. And we were getting set when part of the building just came twisting out of the sky. Someone shouted, and some guys ran, but some guys didn't have a chance to run.”