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So I was waiting for an uptown A train at Canal Street, and heard the conductor of the downtown E announcing "Next and last stop, Chambers Street/World Trade," and that got me thinking about 9/11. Which led me to the casualty numbers. And I did a calculation that I could have done any time in the last couple of years, but hadn't: three thousand divided by 343. One in nine of the people who died in the attack were New York City firefighters.
It's one thing to know that the department lost that many people, and what that's done to it, on levels ranging from emotional trauma through lost knowledge. It's another to look at it as a simple fraction, as what a large percentage of the loss was taken by that one group.
It's one thing to know that the department lost that many people, and what that's done to it, on levels ranging from emotional trauma through lost knowledge. It's another to look at it as a simple fraction, as what a large percentage of the loss was taken by that one group.