This is an I-Heart podcast.

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories,

the show where America is the star and the American people. And to search for the Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people.

And to search for the Our American Stories podcast, go to the I Heart Radio app to Apple Podcasts

or wherever you get your podcasts.

Up next, an American story and an immigration story featured in the book Five Floors Up by author Brian

McDonald. It's the story of New York's fire department is told through one family that served

the department through four successive generations, the Thian family. From the days just after

the horse-drawn fire truck to the devastation of the

1970s when the Bronx was indeed burning, to the unspeakable tragedy of 9-11 and beyond,

a fian has worn the shoulder patch of the FDNY. We start the story of this remarkable American family, not in the beginning, but on September

11, 2001.

Here is author Brian McDonald.

The family gathering might have been a late summer barbecue.

The evening was warm and the fading summer's air carried the scent of ocean

salt. But there was nothing ordinary about this day. In the backyard, Billy Finn cupped his hand

over one ear with his cell phone pressed to the other as F-16 fighter jets screamed overhead.

He and his family had just arrived from Princeton, New Jersey where they lived. Free police departments, the Princeton Junction, the New Jersey State Troopers, and the NYPD

had formed the relay team to escort them to his sister and brother-in-law's house in Bell Harbor, New York.

It was mid-span on the Verrazano Narrows Bridge when Billy had his first glimpse of what was left of the

World Trade Center. Even from that distance, the enormity of it shocked him. The thick black smoke

seemed to reach a mile into the sky. John Fee and Billy's brother and Brian Davin, both firefighters,

...