Interview Date: October 12, 2001
Transcribed by Elisabeth F. Nason

MR. ECCLESTON: Today's date is October 12,
2001. The time is 747 hours. This is Christopher
Eccleston of the New York City Fire Department.
I'm conducting an interview with the following
individual.

Q. Please state your name, rank, title, assigned
command area of the Fire Department of the City of New
York regarding the events of September 11, 2001.

A. My name is Faisel Abed. I'm an EMT assigned
to Battalion 8 and my unit is 08 David 2.

Q. Also present in the room is --

A. Christine Bastedenbeck of the New York City
Fire Department.

Q. Were you assigned to the World Trade Center
disaster on September 11, 2001?

A. Originally, basically we weren't assigned,
but we heard so much commotion over the radio, we
decided, you know, we asked Central, send us and we
went even as they dispatched us to the World Center.

Q. Who were you working with that day?

A. Charles Beshett.

Q. So they assigned you to the World Trade
Center?
A. Yes, I mean there was so much noise when the

first call came over, everybody just went like
ballistic over the radio. Whoever was there. There
was 01 Adam that was like the under the building at
that time and then there were a couple of other units
that said we will go, we will go. We said we will take
you. It sounded legit. It did sound legit, but in the
back of our of minds, we thought maybe it's one of the
generators that blew up, something electrical,
something mechanical. It's just such a tall building,
things happen, you know.
So we asked Central to send us the job and we
are driving down 34 Street and we get to 23 Street and
you see tower one. It's like oh, shit, oh, god. Look
at this. The first thing that comes to your mind is
oh, it's an act of god, it's a terrible tragedy. I
mean you think you know -- you look at it and say --
it's not the first time a plane hit a building. You
had the Empire State Building. My parents told me back
in 1945 when a big bomber hit the building, so it's an
accident, god, it's a tragic accident.
But then we are driving and now we are like,
we are about a half mile out, halfway from the World
Trade Center and we see this shiny object coming and me
and my partner are going, what the hell, what's wrong
with that plane. What is wrong with that plane. There
is something not right with that plane. And he just --
the tower blew.

So my partner said stop the freaking bus,
stop the freaking bus. The building's going to fall.
The building's going to fall on us. It was coming --
the force -- you see like the -- shit, the whole top of
the building go off and just the junk that was coming
out of there and the explosion was -- I thought it was
Hollywood. I thought this was an act. I said this
can't be happening. In New York. It's not happening.
I slowed it down. He got scared and I got
scared so we kind of just slowed down a bit, you know,
and he says listen, we really can't go in there. There
is too much coming off the building. You could see
stuff flying out of the building and people way before
you get there. So we do it. We go, we go. We finally
go to Vesey and West. Turned there.
There was a couple of other units there.
They set the staging area up. We had about 15, 20
people coming out of the building and there were nurses
from, they're from AMEX. I think they are from the
American Express building. A couple of their nurses.
They were bringing patients out. They were sitting
down right on the sidewalk. Some were badly burned,
some were injured. Some were just in shock. Basically
we are there. We are treating some.

Q. Could you indicate where you parked your
vehicle.
A. Here is north, we are right here. I would
say we are right here. Exactly right here. We are
right here.

Q. Just make a number 1 there.
A. Okay. We were right here. West and Vesey
and the water is right here and you can't go past the
water.

Q. Okay, what vehicle were you in?
A. 350.

Q. 350?
A. 350.
So what happened at that point we get out.
We get out our stuff, we are just starting to take care
of the patients. We are tagging them red, yellow,
whatever color might be at that situation at that
time. We were there on the scene maybe -- I know the
second plane hit a little bit after nine, if I'm
correct. If I remember. We got our stuff out. We
started triaging the patients. We stayed right there.

I mean we didn't go any further because of the fact
that it was just a dangerous situation.
We stayed there, people were coming out and
we triaged them. We were there, I would say
approximately maybe an hour. I know it started -- I
think that building starting coming down around 10
o'clock or something like that. I don't exactly
remember what time, but it was about that time the
first tower came down.

Q. We have the time.
A. Yes, I don't remember exactly, but I know it
did come down, the first building, right. 9:55. About
an hour from when we were first there. With the grace
of god we had gotten all the people out of there. We
had gotten all the patients out of there. They were
transported and everything.
Next thing you know, you hear another -- they
had said there were jets out there that day. They were
out there. I started to hear another jet, right, it
sounded like a flush of a jet. What it was was
actually the building coming down. I didn't actually
see the building coming down but you heard it. Why I
didn't see it, I don't know. We were just so busy
concentrating on what we are doing.

You just heard this thrushing, thrushing noise like a rocket. I
thought the building was under attack again.
You just start seeing this smoke coming
down. We just took off. We went north. We actually
-- sorry, we went west. We went towards the river.
All right. Then we just went towards the river and
went up north a little bit behind the building. That
was after the first one went down.

Q. Were you still with your partner at that
time?
A. No. At that time, forget it, we were gone.
We separated. It was just one of those things. We
separated. I was looking for him. He was looking for
me. I asked all around if -- someone told me he saw
him. He was okay. I heard at one point that he went
to the hospital with another co-worker of mine, but
that wasn't true.

We were there, I would say for maybe another
20 minutes, half an hour or so, and then the second
building came down, so we had to run even more
further. We ran up north further, and then what
happened we ran into the school. Actually the school
was coming out, Stuyvesant High School, the kids
started coming out. They didn't have a clue what was
going on.

So we have like 3, 4,000 kids coming out of
the school, not realizing the magnitude of what's going
on. So we are starting to walk. Now it's coming down
and we are starting to walk, but the school is funny,
the school is like a break wall for the smoke that is
coming from the building, so when the kids got past one
end of the school they started panicking. So we all
started getting nervous, because the only place else to
go was the Hudson River. I'm a good swimmer, but the
Hudson River?

So I started telling the kids, everybody,
just calm down, everybody keep on walking. Keep on
walking, keep on walking. We finally got out to West
Street and went just go all the way up till we stayed
at the -- what's the place up there.

Q. Chelsea Pier?
A. Yes, Chelsea Piers. After that, then there
was a gas leak. There was another explosion, the gas
went. At that point it was just total helplessness.
We felt terrible. We felt bad.

Q. Where your vehicle was left --
A. The vehicle was left right there. It was
left right there at West and Vesey Street. Just left
it there, left everything. Just left everything. They
tell you if running, don't look back. I was running
looking back, making sure that cloud was coming,
because it was coming. It was a horrific cloud.
It was like this monster coming out of the
sky that was going to swallow you up. Then I noticed
people jumping off the building. I caught this one guy
over there. My eye caught him. It was just one of
those things. My eye caught him. I was watching.
That's pretty much it.

Q. Once you got to the Chelsea Piers, and they
had you staged there --
A. Well, I tell you, everybody -- it was so
-- at that point, at that point, I think right after
the first building collapsed, people were just walking
around. They didn't know what to do. Everybody was
just walking around. I was walking around like I lost
my little puppy. I was definitely just total shaken.
Forget it.

It got more organized at one point. At one
point it started to get organized. I think after the
second building went down, it finally started to get
organized. Started getting all the ambulances lined up
on West Street. It just really started to get
organized, but like I said, there wasn't really much
for us to do. You had 400 ambulances there, just
idling their engines. Not really doing anything. It
was a shame.

If you ask me, can we ever prepare ourselves
for something like this, not this magnitude. Not this
magnitude, no. This was something else way beyond our
comprehension and something that we, you know, can
never handle again. It's impossible. It really is.
As much training as we get, MCIs and things like that
every year, I never want to see this again. I really
don't.

I'm staged by the Empire State Building, so
every time I stage by the Empire State Building, I'm
like, I'm looking up all the time now. I mean I'm just
like, oh. My partner is saying what are you looking
at? Terrible terrible thing, really was.

Q. Did you eventually get to finding your
partner?
A. Thank god, yes. We hugged each other. We
gave a big hug, yes, we found each other.

Q. How long were you separated?
A. Almost until -- Jesus, almost until -- it had
to be afternoon, one o'clock, 1:30, 2:00. I finally
found him down around the command center. What
happened was that I had gotten pulled off. I had a
Chief come pick me up and drive me to the hospital,
because our Captain was hurt, so he saw me walking up
the street and he says do you have a unit? I said no,
he says hop in with me and he took me up to the
hospital.

Q. Who was your Captain?
A. Captain Stone.

Q. Okay. He had gotten hurt on the scene?
A. Apparently. Now that I've opened my mouth,
I'm sorry, but he actually escaped. He was in the
building. He almost -- from what I know, he almost --
escaped with his life just about. He really did. You
didn't hear this from me, please. I'm afraid I'm
opening a can of worms.

Q. No, you are not, no.
A. He almost escaped with his life. He really
did. He just missed it. The building almost fell on
him.

Q. Thank goodness he got out.
A. Yes, he got out. So I was in the command car
with him. He drove me up to Bellevue and then I was
told to take the command car and I went back downtown
to the command center. That was pretty much it.

Q. Is there anything else you would like to add
to this regarding the events from the time the plane
hit until about 12 noon?
A. It was just mass chaos. That's all I could
say. It was just mass chaos. I think everybody was
just saying, you know, there really isn't much we can
do when the buildings went down and that we just got to
look out for ourselves and take care of ourselves.
That's basically what it was. We were just taking care
of ourselves. We had no choice.
If we get hurt, who are we going to help. It
was just basically be safe, keep yourself, keep your
distance, keep your ears open, keep your radios open to
see what was going on. That's pretty much the whole
thing in a nutshell.

MR. ECCLESTON: Thank you very much for
conducting this interview with me. This interview
is concluded at 758 hours. The counter on the
cassette recorder is 194.