The 9/11 firefighter whose death went uncounted

The merciless ring of the wall-mounted telephone forced Arnold Roma out of the kind of heavy sleep that only his 12-hour hospital shifts could lull him into. He’d only been home from work for five hours, anyway.

Squinting against the morning sunlight threatening to consume his Staten Island living room, the then-49-year-old pulled the corded phone to his ear and, before he could even open his mouth to say hello, was greeted by piercing sirens on the other end.

“A plane just hit the World Trade Center!” a voice bellowed. It was his son, Keith, yelling into the receiver over the horns and chugging engine of a firetruck.

The father – a nurse, volunteer firefighter and retired NYPD officer – stiffened for an instant as fond memories of running calls with his son and riding on the truck at the New Jersey fire company they volunteered at together flashed in his mind.

“Dad, they’re going to need everybody,” 27-year-old Keith said. “You better get down here.”

“Thanks, I’ll meet you there,” Roma replied.

But that promise would never be fully realized. Roma hung the phone in its cradle, not knowing it was the last time he would ever speak to his son.

Roma arrived at the World Trade Center while both towers stood defiantly tall, each pierced by Boeing 767s , bleeding with jet fuel and spewing smoke that promised to eventually bring them down. Keith was somewhere inside the North Tower, his father knew. His son had been working that morning at Patrol 2, a firehouse only blocks from the World Trade Center, as a New York Fire Patrolman.

For nearly two centuries, New York had had two organizations responding to fires across the city: the New York City Fire Department and the lesser-known New York Fire Patrol , a now-defunct private fire salvage corps that worked intimately alongside the FDNY but remained a separate entity. To a bystander, the only difference between them was the color of their helmets, either red or black.

On September 11, 2001, those helmets became more than a distinction between two fire organizations. For Roma, they became a compass in the search for his son and, eventually, the reason Keith would never be counted in one of the most recognizable numbers in the history of the attacks.

At the World Trade Center, a fire chief told Roma to set up a triage area in the South Tower. Once a fire patrolman himself, he looked around the sea of black FDNY helmets, none of the scattered flashes of Fire Patrol red being his son.

I’ll get back to Keith, I know, he told himself.

Courtesy Roma family

He turned, running toward the lobby, dodging falling shards of glass and plummeting bodies of trapped workers jumping to escape – and to certain death – from 90 stories up. He was mere feet away when the South Tower started collapsing around him.

Roma was engulfed in concrete, blinded by debris, and inclined to believe he was still alive only because he could hear the choking screams echoing around him.

Still without his sight, he dug himself out of the crumbled fragments and joined another group, battered and sobbing, working to escape the wreckage. He gave his protective coat to a civilian to cover her exposed skin, and took turns helping carry an FDNY firefighter whose broken femur was jutting through his overalls.

Keith’s fire company had to have seen what just happened , Roma thought as he was hoisted into an ambulance. I hope they got the heck away from here.

Fire Patrol 2 Lt. John Sheehan, Keith Roma and driver Joe Krasko drove their rig from the firehouse on West 3rd Street to the World Trade Center, and the lieutenant radioed other patrol units to respond when he saw the smoke billowing from the North Tower.

From across the city, more than a dozen patrolmen descended onto what would become Ground Zero and helped put out fires, rescued trapped civilians and evacuated the towers . Inside the North Tower lobby, Keith and Sheehan joined firefighters forcing open elevator doors and guiding workers down the stairs.

“I witnessed Keith carry at least a half a dozen people to safety,” Sheehan said. “Bringing them down steps, handing them off to cops or EMTs.”

Then, standing about 10 feet from Keith, Sheehan heard what sounded like a freight train, and everything went black. The South Tower had fallen, creating a blinding wind tunnel in the North lobby.

He yelled for Keith. No answer.

Again, he screamed. Nothing.

When the air cleared enough to see, Keith was gone.

A wall of debris stood between Sheehan and the place where Keith had stood. Sheehan escaped the lobby, bleeding from the head, and told fellow patrolmen Keith was still inside.

As they turned to run toward the North Tower, it came down. Of the 16 patrolmen who responded that day, Keith was the only fatality.

In the weeks that followed, at least one member of the Fire Patrol family could always be seen looking for their missing brother at Ground Zero, Sheehan, now 70 and retired from the fire service, told CNN.

Roma, Keith’s father, spent three days in the hospital after 9/11 with intense breathing difficulties, temporary blindness from debris and a broken arm, wishing each night that tomorrow would finally be the day he heard from his son. Once released, he didn’t even stop at home to change clothes. He went straight back to Ground Zero, still without word from Keith.

There, Roma assumed a new, nightmarish job: digging for his son’s body. He retired prematurely from his nursing job at the hospital and began spending 12 hours a day, 7 days a week tossing aside any movable block of concrete on the north end of the pile looking for Keith – despite his own injuries from the attack.

It would be 104 days before Roma finally saw his son again.

On Christmas Eve 2001, rescuers discovered Keith stories below where the North Tower once stood, after sifting through the 1.8-million-ton pile of steel columns, shattered glass, computers, concrete, stray office supplies and human remains left behind after hijacked planes tore through the two towers defining the Manhattan skyline.

Keith was found among a group of civilians, who rescuers believed he had been escorting to safety when the towers came down.

It became tradition after 9/11 that when a deceased firefighter was identified in the rubble, his unit would honor him by carrying him out. Sheehan and other men of Patrol 2 got the call and descended the long ramp, several stories deep into the debris pile, and helped bring Keith back to the top.

“I mean, it was Christmas, and it was probably one of the worst things I had ever experienced in my life,” Sheehan said.

In the fire service, he explained, Christmas shifts were always busy.

“But this – this was something else. It was just horrible,” Sheehan said. “But he deserved the honor.”

At the top of the pile, Roma helped bear his son’s lifeless body – still clad in his Fire Patrol coat and suspendered trousers – across Ground Zero and into an ambulance.

After more than three months encased in wreckage and rubble, Keith didn’t look the same, but Roma didn’t need to see the wallet or ID in his pockets to know it was his son. He just knew.

Roma took one last lights-and-sirens ride with Keith that day, clutching his son’s red helmet, now soiled by debris. As they drove, a familiar solemn tune filled the New York streets dotted with firehouses, their intercoms blaring four sets of five strikes of a bell – a signal to honor a firefighter who was killed in the line of duty. Roma then personally unloaded his son at the 30th Street morgue.

But for Roma, the agony for his missing son did not end that day. It only changed, evolving into an entirely new – and even longer – search for answers.

For 25 years, Roma has moved through a strange ritual of watching the country remember the September 11 attacks and honoring its heroes on each anniversary but without his son’s name part of the number everyone knows.

Ramin Talaie/Corbis Historical/Getty Images

343. The number quickly became part of the national vocabulary, printed on memorials, spoken at ceremonies and repeated every September as the number of FDNY firefighters who died at the World Trade Center.

Indeed, Keith was not an FDNY firefighter. He was a New York Fire Patrolman and New Jersey volunteer firefighter. So, when the FDNY counted its dead – which also included an EMT, paramedic and chaplain – the 27-year-old was left out.

For a quarter century, that distinction has followed Roma, who has called, written, argued and begged for his son to be recognized alongside the FDNY firefighters whose fate he shared.

“Every waking day of my life the number upsets me,” Roma told CNN.

Despite dying after responding to the call, helping to stretch hose and carry victims to safety, Keith’s status as a patrolman has meant his name is absent from the memorial that stretches along Ten House on Liberty Street, the closest firehouse to the Twin Towers, or on the black marble monument inside the city’s fire museum that photographed the 343 heroes, and his name is scantly uttered during 9/11 tribute services across the country.

“September 11 brought so many heroes to the forefront, and we continue to mourn them all,” Amanda Farinacci, FDNY Deputy Commissioner of Public Information, told CNN in an emailed statement. “The number 343 maintained by the FDNY for decades comes from the number of active members of the FDNY who were killed in the World Trade Center attacks.”

Roma believes the number should be 344, but more than anything, he just wants his son’s heroism to be remembered.

“If it wasn’t for my family’s fight and the guys on the Fire Patrol, Keith’s memory would have been just tossed away,” Roma said.

He said: “If they just included him, the world would know that he died a hero.”

New York City Fire Museum

Before there was the New York Fire Patrol or FDNY, there were men with bags .

When a fire tore through a building in New York, there was more to worry about than the flames. Smoke could ruin furniture, water might destroy merchandise and whatever survived the fire could still be lost in the rescue chaos that typically followed.

So men began showing up with canvas bags, blankets and a peculiar assortment of tools, ready to save whatever they could as part of a tradition dating back to the 1700s .

The first half of the 19th century brought the earliest traces of what would become the New York Fire Patrol, as volunteer fire-salvage and policing corps evolved into increasingly organized operations, according to Timothy Regan, author of “Images of America: New York Fire Patrol.” By 1835, the Association of Fire Insurance Companies had hired four men to attend to every fire across the city and protect the property at risk.

Their mission was practical, if somewhat charmingly literal: Get inside, get the valuables out and keep them from becoming an insurance claim.

The men, pocketing a $250 annual salary, became the pioneering New York Fire Patrolmen, and thus the first paid fire service members in all of New York City. Their wagons carried brooms, buckets and protective covers. It would be another 30 years before New York abolished its separate volunteer fire companies and created a paid city fire department – the beginning of what became the FDNY.

Fire salvage corps popped up across the country. In New York, the “patroleos,” as they were affectionately called, kept riding to fires in their own trucks, from their own firehouses, alongside FDNY firefighters for nearly two centuries. Many FDNY captains and lieutenants – and at least one legendary commissioner – got their start in the fire service at New York Fire Patrol.

To a bystander, the difference between the groups was nearly impossible to see. Both wore black turnout coats and pants marked with high-visibility stripes, steel-toed boots and breathing apparatuses. Both answered the same calls around the clock and ran toward burning buildings.

For most, they were distinguishable only by the color of their helmets, as FDNY donned black ones, and the New York Fire Patrol wore red.

“You go back and look at any New York fire footage, you’ll see the red helmets,” Roma told CNN.

But the line between salvage man and firefighter could become especially thin once a building was burning. Patrolmen entered the same smoke-filled rooms and faced many of the same dangers as the firefighters beside them, helping stretch hose and forcing open doors to perform lifesaving rescues.

And like many FDNY firefighters throughout the years, some patroleos never came home.

Thirty-one New York Fire Patrolmen died over the organization’s history, including Keith Roma.

Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images

Arnold Roma first heard the number 343 in the days after 9/11, while he was digging through the ruins at Ground Zero searching for his son. A list of missing firefighters had circulated among FDNY officials on the night of September 11 before eventually making its way to the rank-and-file.

“People were coming up to me thinking Keith was off that day because he wasn’t on the list, so he must have been okay,” Roma said. Because of the closeness of the two groups, many in the fire service assumed any missing Fire Patrol members would have been included in FDNY’s list, he said.

Former FDNY Commissioner Sal Cassano, who was, at the time, the department’s assistant chief of operations, said on the night of the attacks he began calling firehouses in trying to determine who had been riding firetrucks that morning and who was still missing.

“Our first count was over 500,” Cassano said. As firefighters were located at nearby hospitals or otherwise accounted for, the number fell and the department settled on 343.

But no one called the Fire Patrol firehouses asking if they were missing anyone.

“To be honest, we weren’t thinking of it,” Cassano said. “We lost people, 98 pieces of apparatus — that’s engines, ladders, ambulances — so we had our hands full.”

Roma said he immediately began calling FDNY officials, including Cassano, asking why Keith wasn’t included. Cassano told him there was no way to add him to the department’s count.

“It’s a conversation that we had at headquarters, there was a lot of teeth gnashing saying, ‘We should count Fire Patrol,’” Cassano said. “But there were also retired members that were lost, and people wanted to include them in.”

“The powers that be at that time said, ‘No. The number is going to be the number of members of the New York City Fire Department that were active that day, working,’” Cassano said. “There was a lot of consternation in the room.”

Roma didn’t know it then, but the 343 number would become a haunt, mobilizing him into decades of fighting, and of being told no.

The FDNY declined CNN’s request for an interview or to elaborate on its statement that only active-duty members of the agency are included in the count.

25 years later, undeterred, Roma continues to appeal to the FDNY and others, so they may acknowledge Keith’s work as a firefighter on that day, resulting in the ultimate sacrifice.

“We work with them, we die with them, and they’ve acknowledged all of that, but the biggest thing, they won’t acknowledge him a fireman,” he said.

While not including Keith in their official tally, the department did later bestow upon him the FDNY Fireman’s Medal of Supreme Sacrifice. His bereaved father also points to other posthumous recognition, including a line-of-duty death medal from the International Association of Fire Fighters union – in which Keith was enrolled – and a 9/11 Heroes Medal of Valor and certificate from the White House declaring Keith’s death occurred “while serving a public safety agency as a firefighter,” signed by then-President George W. Bush.

“Keith was just a good guy at heart,” Sheehan, Keith’s lieutenant at Patrol 2, said. “He always gave more of himself – he was early for his shifts, even eating dinner with the guys when he was off that night and was just a pleasure at work.”

The 25th anniversary of the terrorist attack has brought a new wave of commemoration , with planners scaling up events to make the milestone more impactful. The Romas fear that, once again, they will have no way to honor their son on the same terms as families of the other 343.

“I want Arnold (Roma) to keep fighting because if it was me, I would have been fighting ‘til I had no more breath,” Cassano said.

Sheehan said he has never been comfortable with the number 343, which he believes makes the death toll too definitive and leaves out scores of other sacrifices.

“I would be the first one to go with 344,” Sheehan said. “But there’s so much focused on the number 343, but what about the hundreds of other guys that died of 9/11 cancer and illness, who were also in that building, including other Fire Patrol guys?”

Sheehan himself has battled several cancers as a result of 9/11 and must visit the World Trade Center Health Program multiple times a year.

Arnold Roma also goes in for regular checkups to monitor his decreased lung function, stomach problems, post-traumatic stress, anxiety and other health issues developed after the attacks: “I relive this thing 100 times a day,” he said.

So, if nowhere else, Keith is honored every day inside the Pennsylvania home where Roma now lives with his wife. Keith’s red helmet, still covered in soot, and a photograph of him grinning, sit proudly on display.

“Every day at 3:44 p.m., I come into the bedroom, and I salute him and the number 344,” he said. “I’ve done it for the last 25 years, and I won’t stop now.”

Over its legacy spanning three centuries, the Patrol’s place in New York’s firefighting world became so intertwined with the FDNY that its history even became part of the department’s traditions.

Captain Albert S. Johnston, the son of one of the four original members of the Fire Patrol, received three FDNY lifesaving medals during his 40-year career with the corps in the early 1900s. The award could be given to members of either the FDNY or Fire Patrol. It was later renamed in Johnston’s honor, and the Albert S. Johnston Medal is still awarded to FDNY firefighters today.

In 1968, patrolman Ed Pospisil of Fire Patrol 3 led the effort to locate the bodies of 12 FDNY firefighters killed in a raging East 23rd Street fire the year before. Some were men he had spent his career working beside.

For his work, Pospisil received the highest award a patrolman could: the FDNY Albert S. Johnston Medal, named for a Fire Patrolman, but seldom given to one.

“Working patrol was the best job I ever had,” Pospisil, now an 85-year-old retired Hartford fire chief, said. “Any of them still alive would say the same thing.”

For the men who worked there, Fire Patrol was not simply an insurance company’s salvage operation. It was a firehouse with bells, trucks and traditions. It had old men who taught young ones how the job was done.

Craig Buccieri knew all about firehouses long before he ever put on patrol turnouts.

In 1973, after years hanging around his father’s firehouse as a boy, listening to the bells and watching the firefighters come and go, he took the test, did the training and joined Patrol 2.

“I grew up going to firehouses, I could count the bells in my sleep, and a lot of those guys on Patrol were like brothers to me,” Buccieri said. He would eventually leave Patrol for the FDNY, retiring as a lieutenant.

By then, Fire Patrol had become something much bigger than the men with canvas bags who had first appeared at New York fires more than a century earlier.

The decades passed in the archives, from pencil sketches of horse-drawn wagons to grainy black-and-white photographs, then to the saturated colors of 1970s film, with GMC Patrol firetrucks chugging through a changing New York. Through it all, the red-helmeted Fire Patrol kept appearing in the frame, evolving with the city it served.

Keith’s old Patrol 2 firehouse, now privately owned, still stands in Greenwich Village, bearing its red-brick facade and arched bay where horse-drawn wagons once waited beneath a stone carving of Mercury, the Roman god of speed.

At its peak, the organization employed nearly 400 patroleos across several firehouses and saved tens of millions of dollars in property over the years, including over a thousand irreplaceable objects from a 1958 fire at the Museum of Modern Art. When Philadelphia closed the doors of its last fire salvage company in 1962, New York Fire Patrol became the last of its kind in the country.

But the insurance industry’s reason for funding the Fire Patrol was becoming harder to justify as fire departments grew more sophisticated, buildings changed and the annual budget had climbed to roughly $8.5 million.

In 2006, the New York Board of Fire Underwriters, the insurance conglomerate signing its checks, decided it was no longer worth the cost. After nearly two centuries, the bells stopped and Patrol trucks pulled out of their firehouses for the last time.

Many of the men who had worn the uniform weren’t ready to let it disappear.

Arnold Roma became one of the most persistent voices behind an effort to resurrect Fire Patrol, arguing that New York had lost more than an antiquated insurance service. It had lost a specialized force whose job was to keep fires, and the damage they caused, from becoming worse.

The effort won support in City Hall and Washington. In 2011, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer announced more than $100,000 in federal funding for a proposed Staten Island Fire Patrol program, while state legislation advanced to bring the organization back.

But it never did. The bill stalled, and the money never revived the group.

The Fire Patrol is survived in photographs, old firehouse stories and the memories of the patroleos who answered its bells.

And, for Arnold Roma, in the fight to keep Keith’s heroism alive.

墙上电话那刺耳的铃声把阿诺德·罗马从沉睡中惊醒，那种沉睡只有在医院12小时轮班工作后才能让他安然入睡。反正他下班回家也才五个小时而已。

清晨的阳光仿佛要吞噬他位于斯塔滕岛的客厅，当时49岁的他眯着眼睛，把有线电话拉到耳边，还没来得及开口说“你好”，电话那头就传来刺耳的警笛声。

“一架飞机撞上了世贸中心！”一个声音大声喊道。那是他的儿子基思，他正对着电话大喊，声音盖过了消防车的喇叭声和引擎的轰鸣声。

这位父亲——一位护士、志愿消防员和退休的纽约市警察局警官——脑海中闪过与儿子一起出警、一起在他们共同担任志愿者的新泽西州消防队里坐消防车的温馨回忆，他顿时僵住了。

“爸，他们需要所有人，”27岁的基思说。“你最好赶紧下来。”

“谢谢，我会在那里等你。”罗玛回答道。

但那个承诺永远无法完全实现。罗玛把电话挂回底座，却不知道这将是他最后一次和儿子通话。

罗玛抵达世贸中心时，两座塔楼依然巍然耸立，傲然挺立，每座塔楼都被波音767飞机撞穿，燃油泄漏，浓烟滚滚，预示着它们终将坍塌。基思的父亲知道，他当时就在北塔的某个地方。那天早上，他的儿子在距离世贸中心仅几个街区的第二巡逻消防站工作，是一名纽约消防巡逻员。

近两个世纪以来，纽约市一直由两个机构负责应对全市火灾：纽约市消防局（FDNY）和鲜为人知的纽约消防巡逻队（New York Fire Patrol）。后者是一个现已解散的私人消防救援队，曾与FDNY密切合作，但始终保持独立运作。在旁观者看来，这两个机构唯一的区别在于头盔的颜色，一个是红色，一个是黑色。

2001年9月11日，那些头盔不再仅仅是两个消防组织之间的区别。对罗玛来说，它们成了寻找儿子的指路明灯，最终，也正是它们让基思永远不会出现在恐怖袭击历史上最令人难忘的遇难者名单中。

在世贸中心，一位消防队长指示罗马在南塔设立一个临时救护区。他自己也曾是一名消防员，环顾四周，只见一片黑色的纽约消防局头盔，零星闪烁的红色消防巡逻队标志中，没有一个是他儿子的。

“我会回复基思的，我知道，”他对自己说。

承蒙罗姆家族惠允

他转身朝大厅跑去，躲避着坠落的玻璃碎片和从90层楼高处跳下试图逃生——却注定丧命——的被困工人的尸体。就在他离南塔只有几英尺远的时候，南塔开始在他周围坍塌。

罗马被混凝土掩埋，被瓦砾遮蔽了双眼，他之所以还活着，仅仅是因为他能听到周围回荡的窒息般的尖叫声。

尽管双目失明，他还是设法从废墟中爬出来，加入到另一群伤痕累累、泣不成声的救援人员中，他们正努力从残骸中逃生。他把自己的防护外套给了一位平民，让她遮住裸露的皮肤，并轮流帮忙抬着一位纽约消防局的消防员，那位消防员的断股骨从他的工作服里露了出来。

基思的消防队肯定看到了刚才发生的一切，罗马被抬上救护车时心想。我希望他们已经安全离开了这里。

消防巡逻队 2 中尉约翰·希恩、基思·罗马和司机乔·克拉斯科驾驶他们的消防车从西 3 街的消防站前往世界贸易中心，当中尉看到北塔冒出浓烟时，他用无线电通知其他巡逻队前来支援。

来自全市各地的十几名巡逻队员赶到后来成为世贸中心遗址的地方，协助扑灭大火、营救被困平民并疏散世贸双塔内的人员。在北塔大厅内，基思和希恩与消防员一起破门而入，引导工作人员下楼。

“我亲眼看到基思背着至少六个人脱离险境，”希恩说。“他把他们抱下台阶，交给警察或急救人员。”

随后，站在离基思大约十英尺远的希恩听到一声巨响，像是货运列车呼啸而过，眼前顿时一片漆黑。南塔倒塌了，在北侧大厅形成了一个刺眼的风洞。

他大声喊基思的名字，无人应答。

他又一次大喊。还是没有回应。

当空气变得清新，能看清东西时，基思已经不见了。

希恩和基思之前站立的地方之间隔着一道瓦砾墙。希恩头部流血，逃出了大厅，并告诉其他巡逻队员基思还在里面。

当他们转身朝北塔跑去时，塔楼倒塌了。当天出动的16名巡逻队员中，基思是唯一遇难者。

在接下来的几周里，总能看到至少一名消防巡逻队成员在世贸中心遗址寻找他们失踪的兄弟。现年 70 岁、已从消防部门退休的希恩告诉 CNN。

9·11事件后，基思的父亲罗马因呼吸困难、被瓦砾暂时遮蔽双眼、手臂骨折，在医院住了三天。他每晚都盼望着明天能听到儿子的消息。出院后，他甚至没回家换衣服，就直接赶回了世贸中心遗址，仍然没有基思的消息。

在那里，罗玛承担了一项新的、噩梦般的工作：挖掘儿子的遗体。他提前从医院的护士工作中退休，开始每周七天、每天十二小时地在废墟北端翻找任何可以移动的混凝土块，寻找基思的遗体——尽管他自己也在袭击中受了伤。

罗马直到104天后才再次见到他的儿子。

2001 年圣诞前夜，救援人员在北塔曾经矗立的地方下方几层楼处发现了基思。此前，他们从 180 万吨重的钢柱、碎玻璃、电脑、混凝土、散落的办公用品以及被劫持飞机撞穿曼哈顿天际线两座塔楼后留下的人类遗骸中搜寻了一番。

救援人员在一群平民中发现了基思，他们认为世贸双塔倒塌时，他正在护送他们到安全地带。

9·11事件后，消防队形成了一个传统：当遇难消防员的遗体在废墟中被发现时，他的所在单位会将其抬出以示敬意。希恩和二号巡逻队的其他队员接到通知后，沿着长长的斜坡向下，深入到废墟堆中数层楼高的地方，帮助将基思抬了出来。

“我的意思是，当时是圣诞节，这可能是我一生中经历过的最糟糕的事情之一，”希恩说。

他解释说，在消防部门，圣诞节期间的班次总是很忙。

“但这件事——这件事完全不同。简直太可怕了，”希恩说。“但他当之无愧。”

在人堆的最上面，罗玛帮忙抬着他儿子冰冷的遗体——他儿子还穿着消防巡逻队的制服外套和背带裤——穿过世贸中心遗址，抬进救护车。

在废墟中被困三个多月后，基思看起来判若两人，但罗玛不需要看他口袋里的钱包或身份证就知道那是他的儿子。他就是知道。

那天，罗玛最后一次陪着基思，警笛闪着灯，紧紧抱着儿子那顶沾满碎片的红色头盔。车子行驶在纽约街头，熟悉的庄严肃穆的旋律响彻云霄，消防站的广播里传来四组五声钟响——这是为纪念殉职消防员而鸣放的信号。之后，罗玛亲自把儿子的遗体送到了位于30街的停尸房。

但对罗玛来说，寻找失踪儿子的痛苦并没有在那一天结束。它只是发生了变化，演变成一场全新的、更加漫长的寻子之旅。

25年来，罗姆经历了一种奇怪的仪式：他看着全国人民在每个周年纪念日纪念9·11袭击事件并向英雄致敬，但他儿子的名字却不在其中，每个人都知道这个数字。

Ramin Talaie/Corbis Historical/Getty Images

343。这个数字很快成为国家词汇的一部分，被印在纪念碑上，在仪式上被念诵，并且每年九月都会被重复提及，因为它代表在世界贸易中心殉职的纽约市消防局消防员人数。

事实上，基思并非纽约市消防局的消防员。他是纽约市消防巡警和新泽西州志愿消防员。因此，当纽约市消防局统计死亡人数时——其中还包括一名急救员、一名护理人员和一名牧师——这位27岁的年轻人被遗漏了。

二十五年来，罗玛一直背负着这份殊荣，他打电话、写信、据理力争、苦苦哀求，希望他的儿子能与那些和他命运相同的纽约市消防局消防员们一起获得认可。

“我每天醒来看到这个数字都会感到难过，”罗玛告诉 CNN。

尽管基思在响应呼叫后牺牲，他帮助拉开水带并将受害者转移到安全地带，但由于他是一名巡警，他的名字没有出现在自由街十号消防站（距离世贸双塔最近的消防站）的纪念碑上，也没有出现在市消防博物馆内拍摄了 343 位英雄照片的黑色大理石纪念碑上，而且在全国各地的 9/11 纪念仪式上，他的名字也很少被提及。

“9·11事件涌现出众多英雄，我们至今仍在缅怀他们，”纽约市消防局公共信息副局长阿曼达·法里纳奇在发给CNN的电子邮件声明中表示。“纽约市消防局几十年来一直沿用的343这个数字，指的是在世贸中心袭击事件中殉职的纽约市消防局现役成员人数。”

罗马认为这个数字应该是 344，但他最希望的还是儿子的英勇事迹能够被人们铭记。

“如果不是我的家人和消防巡逻队的队员们努力争取，基思的记忆可能早就被遗忘了，”罗马说道。

他说：“如果他们把他算进去，全世界就会知道他是一位英雄。”

纽约市消防博物馆

在纽约消防巡逻队（FDNY）成立之前，有一些人带着袋子。

纽约一场大火吞噬了一栋建筑，令人担忧的远不止火焰本身。浓烟会毁坏家具，水灾会毁掉商品，而那些在火灾中幸存下来的物品，也可能在随后的救援混乱中付之东流。

于是，男人们开始带着帆布袋、毯子和各种奇特的工具出现，准备尽可能地保存任何东西，这是可以追溯到 18 世纪的传统的一部分。

据《美国影像：纽约消防巡逻队》一书的作者蒂莫西·里根所述，19世纪上半叶出现了纽约消防巡逻队的雏形，当时志愿消防救援和警务队伍逐渐发展成为组织化程度越来越高的机构。到1835年，火灾保险公司协会已雇佣了四名消防员，负责处理全市所有火灾并保护受灾财产。

他们的任务很实际，虽然有点直白：进入屋内，取出贵重物品，防止它们变成保险索赔。

这些男子每年领取250美元的薪水，成为了纽约消防巡逻队的先驱，也是纽约市第一批领取薪水的消防员。他们的马车上装着扫帚、水桶和防护罩。又过了30年，纽约才废除了原有的志愿消防队，建立了有薪的城市消防部门——这便是纽约市消防局（FDNY）的前身。

全国各地涌现出消防救援队。在纽约，这些被亲切地称为“巡逻队”（patroleos）的队伍，近两个世纪以来一直驾驶着自己的消防车，从各自的消防站出发，与纽约市消防局（FDNY）的消防员并肩作战，奔赴火场。许多纽约市消防局的队长和副队长——以及至少一位传奇的局长——都是从纽约消防巡逻队开始他们的消防生涯的。

在旁观者看来，两组人员之间的区别几乎难以察觉。他们都穿着带有醒目条纹的黑色消防服和裤子，脚蹬钢头靴，佩戴呼吸器。他们都全天候响应同样的呼叫，奔向燃烧的建筑物。

对大多数人来说，他们只能通过头盔的颜色来区分，因为纽约市消防局 (FDNY) 的消防员戴的是黑色头盔，而纽约消防巡逻队的消防员戴的是红色头盔。

“你去看看纽约的任何火灾录像，你都会看到红色的头盔，”罗马告诉 CNN。

但一旦建筑物着火，救援人员和消防员之间的界限就会变得异常模糊。巡逻人员会进入同样充满浓烟的房间，面临与消防员类似的危险，协助铺设水带、破门而入，进行救生救援。

和多年来许多纽约市消防局的消防员一样，一些巡逻队员再也没能回家。

在纽约消防巡逻队的历史上，共有 31 名消防员殉职，其中包括基思·罗马。

Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images

阿诺德·罗马第一次听到343这个数字是在9·11事件发生后的几天，当时他正在世贸中心遗址的废墟中寻找他的儿子。一份失踪消防员的名单在9月11日晚间就已经在纽约消防局官员中流传，最终传到了普通消防员手中。

“有人跑来问我，说基思那天没来上班，因为他不在名单上，所以他肯定没事，”罗马说。他还说，由于这两个小组关系密切，消防部门的许多人都认为，任何失踪的消防巡逻队成员都会被列入纽约市消防局的名单中。

时任纽约市消防局助理局长萨尔·卡萨诺表示，袭击当晚，他开始打电话给各个消防站，试图确定当天早上谁乘坐过消防车，以及谁仍然失踪。

卡萨诺说：“我们最初统计的人数超过500人。”随着消防员被送往附近医院或找到其他安全地点，人数逐渐减少，最终消防部门确认的人数为343人。

但是没有人打电话到消防巡逻队询问是否有人失踪。

“说实话，我们当时根本没想那么多，”卡萨诺说。“我们失去了人员，还有98件设备——包括消防车、云梯车、救护车——所以我们忙得不可开交。”

罗马说他立即开始致电纽约市消防局官员，包括卡萨诺，询问为什么基思没有被列入统计。卡萨诺告诉他，没有办法将他加到消防局的统计中。

卡萨诺说：“我们在总部讨论过这个问题，当时很多人都咬牙切齿地说，‘我们应该把消防巡逻队也算进去。’但也有一些退休成员不幸遇难，大家也想把他们算进去。”

卡萨诺说：“当时的当权者说，‘不行。数字必须是当天在岗的纽约市消防局成员人数。’房间里一片哗然。”

当时的罗姆并不知道，343 这个号码将会成为一个挥之不去的梦魇，驱使他进行了数十年的战斗，并不断遭到拒绝。

纽约市消防局拒绝了 CNN 的采访请求，也拒绝就其声明（即只有现役消防员才被纳入统计）做出进一步解释。

25 年过去了，罗马依然不屈不挠，继续向纽约市消防局和其他机构呼吁，希望他们能够承认基思在那一天作为一名消防员所做的工作，他为此做出了最终的牺牲。

“我们和他们一起工作，和他们一起牺牲，他们也承认了这一切，但最重要的是，他们不承认他是一名消防员，”他说。

虽然基思的殉职人数并未计入官方统计，但消防部门后来还是授予了他纽约市消防局最高牺牲勋章。他悲痛欲绝的父亲还提到，基思还获得了其他一些追授荣誉，包括国际消防员协会（基思生前是该协会的成员）颁发的因公殉职勋章，以及白宫颁发的“9·11英雄英勇勋章”和证书。该证书由时任总统乔治·W·布什签署，证明基思“在为公共安全机构担任消防员时”殉职。

“基思心地善良，”基思在第二巡逻队的上司希恩说。“他总是尽心尽力——他总是提前到岗，甚至在休息日晚上还和同事们一起吃晚饭，在工作中也总是令人愉快。”

恐怖袭击25周年之际，新一轮的纪念活动接踵而至，组织者们纷纷扩大纪念规模，力求使这一里程碑事件更具影响力。然而，罗姆人担心，他们将再次无法像其他343名遇难者家属那样，以同样的方式缅怀他们的儿子。

卡萨诺说：“我希望阿诺德（罗马）继续战斗，因为如果是我，我会战斗到筋疲力尽为止。”

希恩表示，他一直对 343 这个数字感到不自在，他认为这个数字过于绝对，忽略了其他许多牺牲。

“我会第一个选择344，”希恩说。“但是现在大家都很关注343这个数字，那么还有数百名在9/11事件中死于癌症和其他疾病的人呢？他们当时也在那栋楼里，包括其他消防巡逻队员。”

希恩本人因 9/11 事件患上了多种癌症，每年必须多次前往世界贸易中心健康计划就诊。

阿诺德·罗马也定期进行体检，以监测他肺功能下降、胃病、创伤后应激障碍、焦虑症以及袭击后出现的其他健康问题：“我每天都要重温这件事 100 次，”他说。

所以，即便没有其他地方可以缅怀基思，在罗玛和妻子如今居住的宾夕法尼亚州家中，每天都能感受到他的存在。基思那顶沾满煤灰的红色头盔，以及一张他笑容灿烂的照片，都骄傲地陈列在那里。

“每天下午3点44分，我都会走进卧室，向他和344这个数字敬礼，”他说。“过去25年我一直这样做，现在也不会停止。”

在长达三个世纪的历史中，巡逻队在纽约消防界的地位与纽约市消防局紧密相连，其历史甚至成为该部门传统的一部分。

艾伯特·S·约翰斯顿上尉是消防巡逻队四位创始成员之一的儿子，在20世纪初的40年消防生涯中，他曾三次荣获纽约市消防局（FDNY）的救生奖章。该奖项既可授予纽约市消防局成员，也可授予消防巡逻队成员。后来，该奖项被重新命名，以纪念约翰斯顿，如今纽约市消防局的消防员仍可获得艾伯特·S·约翰斯顿奖章。

1968年，消防巡逻队3号的巡警埃德·波斯皮西尔带头寻找12名在前一年东23街大火中丧生的纽约市消防局消防员的遗体。其中一些是他职业生涯中一直并肩作战的战友。

波斯皮西尔因其工作获得了巡警所能获得的最高荣誉：纽约市消防局阿尔伯特·S·约翰斯顿奖章，该奖章以一名消防巡警的名字命名，但很少颁发给消防巡警。

“巡逻是我做过的最好的工作，”现年85岁、已退休的哈特福德消防队长波斯皮西尔说。“任何还活着的人都会这么说。”

对于在那里工作的消防员来说，“消防巡逻队”不仅仅是保险公司的救援行动。它是一个有铃铛、有消防车、有传统的消防站。那里有老消防员教导年轻消防员如何做好工作。

克雷格·布切里在穿上巡逻消防服之前，就已经对消防站了如指掌。

1973年，他从小就在父亲的消防站附近闲逛，听着警钟，看着消防员来来往往。后来，他参加了考试，接受了训练，加入了第二巡逻队。

“我从小就去消防站，闭着眼睛都能数清警铃声，巡逻队的很多兄弟都像我的亲兄弟一样，”布切里说道。他最终离开巡逻队，加入纽约市消防局，并以中尉军衔退休。

到那时，消防巡逻队已经发展成比一个多世纪前首次出现在纽约火灾现场的那些拎着帆布袋的消防员们大得多的组织了。

数十年时光在档案馆中流逝，从马车的铅笔素描到颗粒粗糙的黑白照片，再到20世纪70年代色彩饱和的电影画面，GMC Patrol消防车穿梭在日新月异的纽约街头。在这一切变迁中，头戴红色头盔的消防巡逻队始终出现在镜头里，与它所服务的城市一同成长。

基思以前所在的第二巡逻消防站，现在归私人所有，仍然屹立在格林威治村，保留着红砖外墙和拱形车库，马车曾经在那里等候，车库里有一尊罗马速度之神墨丘利的石雕。

鼎盛时期，该组织在多个消防站拥有近400名消防员，多年来挽救了价值数千万美元的财产，其中包括1958年现代艺术博物馆火灾中幸存的一千多件无可替代的藏品。1962年，费城关闭了其最后一家火灾抢救公司，纽约消防巡逻队也因此成为美国同类机构中硕果仅存的一支。

但随着消防部门变得越来越复杂，建筑物也发生了变化，年度预算已攀升至约 850 万美元，保险业资助消防巡逻队的理由越来越难以令人信服。

2006年，负责支付保费的纽约消防承保人委员会（一家保险巨头）认为，这项工程已不再值得继续运营。近两个世纪后，钟声停止，巡逻车也最后一次驶出消防站。

许多穿过这身制服的人都不愿让它消失。

阿诺德·罗马成为恢复消防巡逻队最坚定的倡导者之一，他认为纽约失去的不仅仅是一项过时的保险服务，更是一支专门负责阻止火灾及其造成的损失进一步恶化的专业队伍。

这项努力赢得了市政厅和华盛顿的支持。2011年，纽约州参议员查克·舒默宣布将为一项拟议的斯塔滕岛消防巡逻队项目提供超过10万美元的联邦资金，与此同时，州立法也取得进展，旨在恢复该组织。

但最终未能如愿。法案搁浅，资金也未能使该组织重获新生。

消防巡逻队的故事只能通过照片、老消防站的故事以及响应警钟的消防员们的回忆来保存下来。

对于阿诺德·罗马来说，这是一场为了让基思的英雄事迹永存而进行的斗争。