It’s been 12 years since the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center towers. In that amount of time, many have moved on.
Firefighters across the country cannot move on and will never forget.
A brotherhood.
“We live together, we play together, and fight just like normal families,” says Captain Steve Boyersmith. He led us around the Ashland Fire Department, where fire fighters like him, leave their family for 48 hours at a time to live at the fire station: ready for any emergency.
“I consider all our firefighters are a second family,” he says.
That’s why even though it’s been 12 years since the World Trade Center came down, firefighters feel such a tie to the loss of 343 of their brothers and sisters.
In the course of his work, retired firefighter George Karnazes, met a New York Fire Department survivor who shared with Karnazes how he lost six of his comrades that morning at ground zero… Karnazes relays that for those six firefighters it was: “That was their first day on duty. They were New York firefighters for 43 minutes.”
Karnazes, Boyersmith, staff, and residents held a moment of silence on the steps of the Ashland Fire Department- at 6:58 in the morning, the local time when the first tower fell. Then headed inside to remember.
Although it’s been so long, the memory of that morning is still
clear: “I think most people remember what they were doing when they first heard,” comments Boyersmith.
But even clearer still for firefighters in this brotherhood and sisterhood of heroes, that risk life and limb each day… just as 343 firefighters and paramedics did that fateful day when they gave the ultimate sacrifice.
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