The sad and familiar sound of bagpipes echoed through a quiet Brooklyn neighborhood Thursday morning as colleagues and family mourned one of two firefighters killed in last weekend's skyscraper fire at ground zero. The body of Joseph Graffagnino arrived at St. Ephrem's Church in Bay Ridge atop an FDNY fire truck, just three days after the firefighter would have marked his 34th birthday. Instead, he died Saturday in the long-vacant toxic tower once owned by Deutsche Bank.
Ladder 5, the hook and ladder truck that Graffagnino himself often drove on fire runs, led the procession past hundreds of firefighters in dress blues with white gloves, standing in ranks outside the large brick church.
Even as Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Mayor Michael Bloomberg were promising to "aggressively" pursue answers to what caused the fire that killed Graffagnino and fellow firefighter Robert Beddia, 53, two more firefighters were injured when scaffolding fell from the same derelict building.
"We are going to demand answers and then make sure a tragedy like this never happens again," said Spitzer, who delivered a eulogy along with Bloomberg and Fire Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta.
The church was filled to capacity with 1,400 mourners, who heard the late firefighter's mother, Rose Marie, take note of the bonds between members of the FDNY.
"Joey always wanted a brother," said Mrs. Graffagnino. "Who would have thought that 20 years down the road he would have thousands?"
Capt. Patrick McNally, commander of Ladder 5, described Graffagnino as "born to be a firefighter," recalling that his boyhood bedroom overlooked a neighborhood firehouse. He initially was assigned to that Brooklyn unit when he joined the department in 1999.
He said Graffagnino was a great chef, preparing ravioli and other Italian meals from his mother's recipes, and was also a talented mimic. "If you had a quirk, Joey could find it and do it better than you could do yourself," he said.
One of Graffagnino's sisters delivered a baby by Caesarean section on Monday -- her brother's birthday -- so she could attend the funeral. The service ended with the bagpipers performing "America the Beautiful."
Graffagnino, who left behind a wife and two small children, and Beddia worked out of a Greenwich Village firehouse that lost 11 members in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, and both survived the brutal day that claimed the lives of 343 firefighters.
The adjoining 41-story Deutsche Bank building on Liberty Street was damaged by debris from the south tower and rendered useless. Demolition crews were in the process of dismantling the skyscraper when the fire broke out, and the cause of the blaze remained under investigation.
Graffagnino and Beddia became trapped on one of the burning floors, dying of cardiac arrest after inhaling thick smoke that was trapped inside plastic sheeting designed to contain asbestos and other toxic substances.
The firefighting effort was crippled when a failed standpipe system sent thousands of gallons of water into the building basement, rather to upper floors. Pieces of the standpipe have been found lying unattached in the building's basement.
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