John J. McCole

John McCole is my hero because he risked his life for the sake of others. John McCole has been a member of the New York Fire Department for seventeen years now, and he was in the fire department for nine years when the World Trade Center disaster happened. He is also lieutenant now. John McCole was called in when the first tower went down. He wrote a book called The Second Tower Down.

John McCole said, "When the plane hit the second tower, twelve units a total of 72 men went in and they all died because the entire tower collapsed on top of their heads." When he heard that he got sad and one of the other firefighters said to John, "They died trying to save countless lives."

John said the aftermath was a disaster. There was smoke everywhere. When freon is vaporized it turns into a deadly gas which kills people by burning and blistering their lungs. Ninety thousand pounds of freon stored in the basement of the World Trade Center spilled. A few weeks later John McCole realized he was suffering from the gas. That was only a fraction of it. He had mood swings. He suffered from painful memories. John McCole said that was the worst thing he had ever witnessed. He started a program that would expose him to drugs in order to cure him and forty days later he was cured. Eight months later, he went back to what was left of the World Trade Center.

This is the book that John McCole wrote The Secon (ecx.image-amazon)

I think that there is another reason he is a hero. I think it is because he suffered so much and he put it all into a book to help others, like people who are going or were going through the same thing he is going through. Maybe if he never wrote this book some people might not have ever gotten over the big disaster.

This is very similar to the natural disaster in Haiti. It killed a lot of people. It harmed people mentally and physically. There are people who went down there and came back in a state of shock because they saw things they couldn't even begin to imagine. So people thought they where able to handle being there but it turned out that is was too much for them. That is why John McCole is a hero. Even though he was in a state of shock, when the time came, he did what he had to do and helped other people that rescued people.