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Posts Tagged 9/11 remembrance
From the Palatine Fire Department:
The Palatine Police and Fire Departments will hold a Patriot Day Ceremony at the Palatine Firefighter’s Memorial at the corner of N. Brockway Street and W. Slade Street in downtown Palatine at approximately 9:00 AM on Sunday September 11th, 2022. Please help us remember the lives lost on this tragic day in our country’s history.
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9/11 Anniversary – stories
Sep 12
Excerpts from the ChicagoTribune.com:
About three years ago, Chuck Wehrli said he started hearing the conspiracy theories. The retired Naperville Fire Department captain responded to New York City in the days after the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01. Since then, each fall he talks to students at Neuqua Valley High School about his experiences among the detritus of the World Trade Center.
Each year, fewer kids remembered the day airplanes flew into the twin towers. As such, Wehrli said he hears more and more voices each year questioning whether two passenger airplanes really did fly into the Manhattan towers. This September, the students he spoke to were all of one year old when the attacks happened.
Wehrli responded as a member of a search and rescue team out of Missouri. So far, he hasn’t suffered side effects from inhaling dust that, in following years, caused serious health problems for many.
He remembered helping to pull a body from the wreckage that turned out to be a New York firefighter who gave him a patch off his hat seven years earlier.
Harder than pulling out bodies, was seeing faces of the firefighters that survived.
He makes sure to mention Dan Shanower in his presentation. The Naperville Central graduate died when a passenger jet hit the Pentagon on the same day as the attacks on the twin towers. A friend of Wehrli’s and Fairfax County firefighters found Shanower’s body in Washington D.C.
thanks Dan
9/11 Anniversary – stories
Sep 12
Excerpts from the DailyHerald.com:
Nothing could prepare them for the unthinkable. But as they stood by the rubble, a New York City fire chief introduced them to 16 acres of destruction that once was the World Trade Center. The New York chief laid out a few ground rules when the group arrived at ground zero. Only FDNY crews could move the body of one of their own.
“Your company goes and gets you and brings you out,” said Bob Hoff, now Carol Stream’s fire chief and then a district chief in Chicago, of a point of pride in the fire service. “And that’s what New York did. They carried their own people out.”
A group of 87 firefighters from Chicago and the suburbs volunteered in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. They took 10- to 12-hour shifts at ground zero and tried to sleep on the sidewalk a few blocks away. And yet, despite the emotional toll, they call it an honor, a privilege to help their friends in New York.
Outside the city’s fire academy, they packed trucks and vans with gear, saws, bottles of water. By a stroke of luck, Chicago firefighters had switched into new breathing apparatus. Hoff and his crew brought the older style, the same kind used by a New York department devastated by the loss of lives and equipment in the collapse of the twin towers.
“We’d come back from the site and go to where we were stationed, and there would be nurses there just to clear your eyes out, all the dust in your eyes,” Hoff said.
Hoff also speaks of trying to find the good after a tragedy. When he was 5, his father, a Chicago battalion chief, was killed battling a fire in an apartment building on Valentine’s Day 1962.
“You can have grief, but your life goes on. You’ve got to make something positive out of things,” Hoff said. “I know every one of those guys who were killed were probably thinking that for their families, their wives.
After five days, they headed home to Chicago. Hoff wished they “could have done more.” Schneidwind was “heartbroken” to leave. Both knew the job was far from over.
thanks Dan
9/11 Anniversary – stories
Sep 11
Excerpts from the DailyHerald.com:
On Sept. 11, 2001, Lloyd Miller … watched the World Trade Center towers crumble and his future came into focus. Miller enrolled in classes to become a firefighter … and iIn 2005, he was sworn in as a Mount Prospect firefighter/paramedic.
Just as 9/11 propelled some men and women to join the military or police forces, that infamous day and the heroism shown by many at the scene inspired a new wave of interest in firefighting.
Elgin firefighter/paramedic Kanen Terry, who is one of those people. He was 18 on 9/11. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy and spent two six-month tours of duty in the Persian Gulf. In the Navy, he says, “everyone’s a firefighter” and he learned a lot about chemical warfare and hazardous materials. That knowledge, plus a 9/11-fueled desire to help others, led him to become a firefighter in 2009.
For Christopher Clausen, Sept. 11 intensified a desire to serve others. Clausen, a lieutenant with the Elgin Fire Department, became the first in his family to join the fire service.
For Des Plaines firefighter Kevin Murphy, 9/11 made him re-evaluate his life and consider a firefighting career.
thanks Dan
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