On September 11, 2001, those were the people Spade went into the World Trade Center to save. He was one of thousands of firefighters to respond to the attacks – 343 died that day, including 11 members of Spade’s own unit, Rescue Company 5. In fact, of all the members of Spade’s team who reached the Twin Towers that morning, he was the only survivor.
After starting a family, Spade joined Rescue 5, a specialised search-and-rescue unit, closer to home on Staten Island. "In New York, there are only five rescue companies," he explains. "One for each borough." The training was intense, including scuba diving, rappelling down buildings, auto extraction and confined-space training.
But, as Spade puts it, "nothing has ever compared to 9/11". He describes the morning as a "beautiful, blue-sky Tuesday," and remembers having breakfast with his fellow firefighters. When the call came in that the North Tower had been hit, Rescue 5 headed into Manhattan. On the drive in, Spade even saw the second plane hit the South Tower.
He entered the North Tower and teamed up with NYPD officer John D'Allara. Spade was on the second floor, helping people evacuate, when the building began to collapse. "Twisting metal. Deafening sounds. This unsureness about what was happening. I was in Stairway C, and the windows were right there – bodies flying past."
Almost immediately after Spade had cleared the stairwell, the building collapsed – with him still inside. "I’d been in other collapses, where you hear wood squeaking and stuff like that, and you jump in a corner, but this was different. I thought it was the upper floors, maybe the top four or five, not the whole building." During his collapse training, Spade had been taught to make himself as small as possible, so he got under a desk. "I was buried by a lot of debris, pulverised material, concrete and glass. But I couldn’t breathe. So, to survive, I had to stick my finger in my mouth to create a small airway."
During his third day in hospital – and after discovering he was the only Rescue 5 firefighter to survive – Spade hand-wrote an 11-page account of his experience. "I went to the local paper and asked the editor if he’d print it, to honour the guys from Rescue 5. But I asked that he not change a word. They printed it the following day."
Spade also appears in a new National Geographic documentary series, 9/11: REUNITED, for which he met D’Allara’s sons for the first time and discussed their father’s final moments. Both sons have careers in uniform, and both understand the importance of helping others – what Spade calls "the mission".
9/11: REUNITED is streaming on Disney+. It premiered on National Geographic on Sunday 23 August, with the series repeated on the channel on Friday 11 September at 8pm.
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