"At the historic Gerritsen Beach Volunteer Fire Department, retired Chief Doreen Garson recalled the nightmares of a city covered in dust. "Driving through the tunnel, you could not see anything. You couldn't see your hand in front of your face. It was just ash coming at us," Garson said. The 100-year-old department's first female chief served for 32 years before stepping down in 2018."
""We were passing the buckets through to wherever the end of the line was. And the dogs went in and searched, you know, to see if they could find anybody," she recalled. Garson also took photographs of her time at the site, to document a city rattled by tragedy. "It was just very, very frightening that something like that can happen to us when we felt so comfortable. That comfort is not there anymore," she said."
"The Gerritsen Beach vollies are Brooklyn's only volunteer-run firehouse, one of eight in the city, scattered across the outer boroughs. Ed Wilmarth III, former chief and department historian of the Broad Channel Volunteer Fire Department, comes from a long legacy of firefighters. "Every male Wilmarth going back to the 1700s has been a [fireman], a volunteer fireman at some point in their lives," Wilmarth said."
Volunteer firefighters from Brooklyn and other outer boroughs responded to Ground Zero alongside FDNY and NYPD crews, stepping in to protect and support neighbors. At Gerritsen Beach Volunteer Fire Department, retired Chief Doreen Garson described driving through tunnels filled with ash, passing buckets in recovery lines, and search dogs entering the rubble. Garson documented the scene with photographs and described a lasting loss of comfort and ongoing nightmares. The Gerritsen Beach house is Brooklyn's only volunteer-run firehouse, one of eight citywide. Broad Channel veteran Ed Wilmarth III described a multi-generational family tradition of volunteer firefighting and also rushed toward Lower Manhattan.
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