The 9/11 firefighter whose death went uncounted
A firefighter’s sacrifice remains outside the official tally
Qwenews.com – On the morning of September 11, 2001, Arnold Roma was asleep at his Staten Island home after a demanding 12-hour hospital shift when a wall phone jolted him awake. He had been home for only five hours. On the line was his son Keith, calling from a firetruck amid the sound of sirens and its engine.
“A plane just hit the World Trade Center!”
Keith Roma, 27, urged his father to come to Lower Manhattan. Arnold, then 49, was a nurse, retired New York Police Department officer and volunteer firefighter. Father and son had shared calls and ridden together with a volunteer fire company in New Jersey, experiences that made the request painfully familiar.
“Dad, they’re going to need everybody,”
Keith told him.
“You better get down here.”
Arnold promised to meet him. It was their final conversation.
Two organizations, one emergency
When Arnold reached the World Trade Center, both towers were still standing, each struck by a Boeing 767 and sending smoke into the sky. Keith was believed to be inside the North Tower, where he had been deployed from Patrol 2, a firehouse near the complex.
Keith was not an FDNY firefighter. He served with the New York Fire Patrol, a private fire-salvage corps that operated alongside the city fire department for nearly two centuries before it was disbanded. Fire Patrol members and FDNY firefighters often responded to the same emergencies, though they were separate organizations. Their helmets offered the most visible distinction: Fire Patrol helmets were red, while FDNY helmets were black.
That difference would carry lasting consequences for the Roma family. At Ground Zero, Arnold searched through the crowd for the flash of a red helmet that could lead him to his son. In the years that followed, it also became central to why Keith Roma’s death was excluded from one of the attacks’ most familiar casualty figures.
Arnold’s escape from the South Tower
A fire chief assigned Arnold to establish a triage area in the South Tower. He scanned the area but did not see Keith. Determined to return to the search, Arnold headed for the lobby while debris fell around him and people trapped high above leapt from the building.
He was only feet from the lobby when the South Tower collapsed. Concrete and dust swallowed him, taking away his sight. He understood that he had survived only because he could hear desperate cries around him.
Arnold clawed his way through the rubble and joined other injured, shaken survivors trying to find a way out. He gave his protective coat to a civilian whose skin was exposed. Later, he helped carry an FDNY firefighter with a severely broken femur, taking turns with others as they moved through the destruction.
As Arnold was lifted into an ambulance, he hoped Keith’s company had escaped after witnessing the collapse. Keith had not.
Inside the North Tower
Fire Patrol 2 Lt. John Sheehan, Keith Roma and driver Joe Krasko had driven from their West 3rd Street firehouse to the World Trade Center. After seeing smoke billow from the North Tower, Sheehan radioed other Fire Patrol units to respond.
More than a dozen patrolmen arrived from locations around New York City. They assisted with firefighting, evacuation efforts and rescues as the emergency expanded into an unprecedented disaster.
In the North Tower lobby, Keith and Sheehan worked alongside firefighters who were opening elevator doors and directing workers toward stairwells. Sheehan later recalled Keith repeatedly helping people move toward safety.
“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 Sheehan, standing roughly 10 feet from Keith, heard a roar like a freight train. The South Tower had collapsed, sending a powerful cloud of dust and wind through the North Tower lobby. Darkness overtook the area.
Sheehan called for Keith, then called again. There was no response.
A legacy beyond a number
The distinction between a red helmet and a black one should not obscure the shared mission that brought responders to the World Trade Center: getting civilians out and assisting fellow emergency workers in conditions that became increasingly lethal by the minute.
Keith Roma was part of that effort. He entered the North Tower, helped people descend and remained at the scene as the destruction unfolded around him. His story also illustrates how official casualty categories can fail to capture every person who acted in the same emergency, faced the same danger and did not return home.
For Arnold Roma, the attack was both a national catastrophe and a personal rupture that began with a phone call. He rushed toward his son believing they would reunite in the response. Instead, the day left him injured, searching through ruins and carrying the knowledge that Keith’s service and loss would not fit neatly into the public accounting of September 11.
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