Sept. 11, 2006: The Stories

Men work to make sure victims of 9/11 are not forgotten

By James Fuller
Daily Herald Staff Writer

NEW YORK — Vinny Forras should be dead.

Forras, a volunteer firefighter in suburban South Salem, N.Y., went to ground zero on Sept. 11, 2001. His volunteer status detracted nothing from his desire to get there as fast as possible.
It did not diminish for the three weeks after the terrorist attacks he spent digging through the rubble.

His only departure from the site was to go home and wish his daughter Brittany happy birthday on Sept. 19.

The pile of rubble to sift through was daunting. The Twin Towers were the tallest buildings in Manhattan by far, and they were only part of the debris. Much of the pile remained on fire for weeks. Navigating around it was guesswork much of the time.

“It was like ants trying to attack a mountain,” Forras said.

While scaling one of the steep slopes of the pile, he plunged into an abyss. He found himself wedged like a cork in a bottle at the bottom.

“The pile shook and that was it,” Forras said. “I was in. It was panic city. You couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. I was stuffed in there like a cork. I was burning. My boots were melting because I was basically on fire.”

Images flooded his mind. The births of his three children came to him. All the sensory feelings. The smell of new babies surrounded him.

“I got to face death,” Forras said.

No one knew he was trapped. There was no way to communicate to other rescue personnel. There was no real equipment necessarily able to rescue him from his particular predicament either.

So Forras pushed and wiggled and dug himself free. It was an encounter with death that had a purpose.

Ground Zero pledge

In the aftermath of the recovery effort, Forras formed the Gear Up Foundation. The nonprofit is dedicated to bringing firefighting equipment to areas of the world that lack basics like fire trucks and ambulances. Gear Up relies on donations of funds and equipment from communities.

That’s where Barrington resident Joe Cantafio comes in.

Cantafio is a stock trader by trade, but a musician at heart.

Four years ago, he came to New York with his guitar and boxes of T-shirts on a mission with two purposes: raise money for families of fallen firefighters and, more importantly, help ease some of their pain.

It was there that Cantafio and Forras formed a friendship. Now Cantafio hopes to use his goodwill in the Chicago area fire departments to help keep the Gear Up Foundation thriving.
His first target is Schaumburg, where several firefighters connected with Cantafio during his local fundraising efforts for the families of Engine 55 four years ago.

Schaumburg Fire Department Lt. Rick Kolomay has agreed to be the Chicago-area coordinator for the effort. He spent part of Monday’s anniversary — “a wonderful day to start,” he said — appealing to area departments to donate equipment to the cause, even one set of gear.

“A lot of departments have recycled or older gear in storage or in a basement,” Kolomay said. “If every department donates one or two, that’s like 30 sets of gear to go to (a department) less fortunate. … It’s a big task, but we’ll get it.”

More 9/11 victims

Cantafio called Forras “just an unbelievable guy. He’s a hero. And what he’s doing with the foundation is just part of who he is. It’s from the heart. Everything he does is from the heart. What a great thing.”

Cantafio is considering a director’s position with the foundation. It’s partly because of Cantafio’s fundraising and event planning ability.

The other part has to do with building a leadership committee within the foundation that will outlast Forras, if need be.

He suffers a number of ailments that he traces back to his ground zero service and the “terrible, toxic cocktail” of chemicals and dust he breathed during the rescue effort.

Health and government officials proclaimed the air safe in the area at the time just after the attacks. That doesn’t explain why so many of the workers have lung problems and resulting health ailments that come with that.

“People are still dying from 9/11, even today,” Forras said.

Five years out from the terrorist attacks, Forras and Cantafio somehow find the inspiration to keep their healing missions going.

At night, the two men sit together figuring out their next steps with smiles on their faces and determination in their eyes. On the wall above Forras’ desk, in a home office cluttered with firefighting memorabilia, is a poster that describes their work: “A living memorial dedicated to doing great deeds around the world in name of those who perished in 9/11.”