In ceremony, firefighters remember those lost in Sept. 11 attacks

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A large group of local residents and first responders gathered Friday morning on the front lawn of the St. Augustine Fire Department’s main station to remember the nearly 3,000 people lost in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

The Ceremony of Remembrance marked the 19th anniversary of the al-Qaida attacks on the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and United Airlines Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania. The first ceremony was conducted two days after the attacks and has continued each year on Sept. 11.

St. Augustine Fire Chief Carlos Aviles praised the men and women of the fire service who responded that day and the days that followed.

“It takes loyalty to remain there for weeks after the attack, painstakingly digging through rubble looking for your fallen brothers,” he said. “It takes duty to drop everything that you’re doing, whether you’re on shift or not, and race into the city as hundreds of thousands of people are fleeing on foot in sheer terror.”

The featured speaker was Gerard Durkin, retired Fire Department of New York officer.

“At 9:10 a.m., I was in New Jersey with my wife and my children,” he recalled. “The phone rang. It was my mother-in-law in Brooklyn telling me frantically to turn on the TV.”

He did so and watched as a plane flew into the south tower of the World Trade Center, where his sister-in-law worked. He kissed his wife, hugged his children and raced to the scene 40 minutes away.

“Upon my arrival, I could see the north tower still in flames, but the south tower no longer existed,” he said.

Heading to the site from a fire station, he watched in horror as the north tower collapsed.

Durkin described what he saw that day and how he and his fellow first responders searched through the rubble for anything to help identify the victims.

“With every item I found, I prayed that I would find something that would lead to my sister-in-law,” he said.

In the end, they never found her.

“The empty chair at Thanksgiving and Christmas still haunts us,” he said.

Friday’s ceremony concluded with a minute of silence precisely at 8:45 a.m., timed to coincide with the moment the first plane hit the first tower.

Afterward, a member of the department struck the historic 1900 fire bell in four intervals of five rings each. This is a tradition signifying the last alarm of a firefighter. The ringing was performed to honor the firefighters, law enforcement officers, military personnel and civilians who died on Sept. 11, 2001.