Most of us remember September 11, 2001 as a horrific day. For the Fire Department of New York (FDNY), however, the horror stretched on. Fires around the World Trade Center Plaza, including two of the biggest in New York’s history, took three days to subdue. It took three months to extinguish the smoldering fires in the stories upon stories of rubble, rubble which included more than 90 vehicles and spewed out toxins and hampered the search for identifiable remains. All the while, the FDNY was grieving the loss of 343 colleagues, including many of its officers and several of its top leaders, preparing for the possibility of additional terrorist attacks, and tending to ongoing needs of its surviving firefighters — and of the massive and complex city it serves.