On September 11th, 2026 firefighters from New York City Fire Department Engine 226 on State Street in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn along with Department EMTs from (probably) the ambulance company on Tillary Street responded to an elderly woman having some kind of medical episode on Livingston Street. The truck got there first – 226 is closer and a straighter shot to the scene – and rendered whatever assistance they could before the EMTs showed up with a stretcher. Some might ask what the hell’s the point of sending a full fire truck to handle the beat of the ambulance company, but maybe given the area’s narrow, traffic-choked one-way streets (especially around the station itself) it’s simply better for the engine to be out and about than parked in its bay.
Whenever they do park the engine, the firefighters will back it into the station with a little more care than their brethren at suburban volunteer companies or in Newark or Chicago or wherever else where there’s a brick wall or the chief’s duty Ford Excursion. For 226, to screw that up means damaging a shrine to the four members of Engine 226 who were killed when the World Trade Center collapsed 25 years ago this morning. Other firehouses lost more men – nearby Squad 1 on Union Street in Park Slope lost twelve, the most of any single FDNY station – but 226 is a small house.
The building dates to 1889 and basically the size of the neighboring townhouses crammed into the crowded neighborhood. Firefighters Brian McAleese, Stan Smagala, David DeRubbio, and Bob Wallace were four of the five men on duty that morning. “It will always be painful. It will be painful thinking about the loss, but there is a tremendous amount of pride in making sure we honor them, and we do the right thing by their families,” their captain Pete Culkin told CBS New York this week.
The drive was no doubt different for Brooklyn guys than a lot of the Lower Manhattan guys: Engine 226, Squad 1, and all the other bridge and tunnel companies who responded would’ve got a much wider view of the cataclysm that awaited them. The men of 226, just probably 11 or 12 minutes away at most when driving at full code, across the Brooklyn Bridge and seeing the smoke pouring into the sky. Culkin hinted at this, saying “The second tower was hit when they were en route, but nobody asked to get off that rig. They were committed to doing their job as professional firefighters, and that’s where they went,” when asked if there was any fear or hesitation among them.
Most of the rest of the interview was focused on the heartbreaking details of the men’s loss. “I mean, it was a massive, massive hole in this firehouse, and they were all great guys. They all had families. They all had children. Stan Smagala, he knew his wife was pregnant, but he never saw his baby… We’re still here, we still remember them, we honor them, and we’re trying to do the best we can for their families,” Culkin said during a memorial gathering at the house.
Culkin has since retired as did the very vast majority of FDNY personnel who responded to the World Trade Center that morning. It’s all but certain that none of the other men who worked out of 226 in 2001 are still there in 2026, CBS didn’t mention any of them, the current members of the house a generation removed from the horrific loss. The torch is still carried. “To show the respect and keep the memory alive and how important it is, especially now when we have members who might not have been alive during 9/11, that they know the boots they have to fill and the ground they stand on,” said firefighter Mark Bolevice, the back of whose head may or may not be in the National Zero EXCLUSIVE photo at the top. Might’ve helped if their duty t-shirts had their names on them.
CBS didn’t ask Culkin for how many years he stuck around after 9/11 but it does not seem like he faded out in the aftermath. The man’s still got vigor to him, however old he is. Strong both inside and out, kept showing up and doing the job because the smaller emergencies don’t take a leave of absence after Mohammed Bonesaw’s half-uncle thrice-removed crashed a plane into the World Trade Center. There had to be some day in the days and weeks that followed that he drove the truck over to that same block of Livingston Street for the same kind of everyday call that isn’t even a fire because that’s the job and the Halal cart guys don’t know CPR or how to operate a hose.
From the perspective of that one particular spot on Livingston Street on Friday night, the flashing lights of Engine 226 on Friday night obscured the view of the Towers of Light, the ultra-powered high beams deployed every September 11th to honor the victims of the World Trade Center attack.
Walk a block or two away and you could see it again, but where the FDNY was in action, the loud red lights of response up close drowned out the more distant white beams of remembrance.