Rememberance

Sept 11, 2001

It's a georgeous Tuesday morning & I'm up early because I'm going to the firehall to work on the training house with the Chief (then Deputy Chief). We want to clean it up a little because we are having some training that weekend.

Well, it's now 945 AST and the Chief got a page from his wife. He ignores it; however, he gets another paid only moments later. He tells me that he's going to call her back & I simply keep cleaning. After a short conversation, he comes back to me & says that an aircraft has just crashed into the World Trade Center.

I'm a little confused as to what type of Aircraft this could be, so I ask - Was it a Cesna? Do they know what kind of plane it was?

We quickly finish up (as we where almost done anyways) and head back to the fire hall. Once we get there, we arrive just in time to see the Second Aircraft, United Airlines Flight 175 crash into the South Tower.

Silence

That's all there was for quite a few minutes after the flight 175 crashed into the building. I ended up staying there for another couple of hours (until 1130 or so) and the Chief (at that time - Luc Grandmaison) asked for any of the people to stand by because they where re-routing the
aircrafts still in the air to the nearest airports around; which included Moncton, Halifax and Nfld.

I remember getting home & sending an email to Allison saying that I wasn't going to work today as I was going to be on stand-by at the fire hall because of what was going on. I remember watching the buildings falling into themselves & thinking about the thousands of people that where going to be trapped inside.

I honestly felt helpless. I wanted to be albe to go & do something, but what? What was I going to be able to do?

Well, we got back to the Fire Hall & ended up going to the Airport as the aircrafts where coming in. Well, after sitting on the tarmac for a while, the Airport Fire Chief strongly suggested that we move ourselves & our vehicles to safer distances - as a precaution.

So, we moved to a location accross the street from the Airport - the Church on Champlain St. I remember thinking to myself that I wanted to be home or wherever to watch what's going on - but I quickly realised that I was as much involved as anyone else in North America that day. We all played a role in ensuring the safety of everyone who was landing.

Reflection

A few month earlier, Allison and I were married - July 14th, 2001. Well, for our honeymoon, we went to Disney land via Newark, NJ. We saw New York City from above and saw the WTC Towers. I was amazed at how tall they looked from the sky. I couldn't imagine looking at them form the ground up....

363 FDNY Firefighters where lost that day.

Lets make sure that we never forget!