Where were you the day of the 9/11 terrorist attacks?

It’s been 25 years since the nation was attacked on 9/11. Roughly one-third (30%) of the United States population was born after the event, with 10% of them currently now reaching adulthood. Ask the remaining two-thirds of the population where they were that day and what they were doing — and most can tell you.

It was a clear and beautiful day in New York City when a hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 struck the 93rd to 99th floors of the World Trade Centers North Tower (One) at 8:46 am, East Coast time.

Part of the reason so many people found out so quickly is because the media coverage directly after the attacks was the largest, longest and most watched breaking news events in the history of modern television.

As people and reporters contemplated whether the act was accidental or intentional, they had their answer on live television as a hijacked United Airlines Flight 175 struck the 77th to 85th floors of the South Tower (Two) at 9:06 am. Shortly thereafter after, at 9:37 am, the Pentagon was struck by hijacked American Airlines Flight 77.

As the Special Operations Captain for the Menlo Park Fire Protection District and Program Manager for California Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) Task Force 3 (CA-TF3), one of the 28 National Response Teams (NRP) for the Country, I was asleep when the first attack occurred at 5:46 am, Pacific Coast time.

It was my first day on vacation, and I had planned to sleep in that day. Almost simultaneously, my three pagers (local, State and Federal) went off, followed by my house phone in an other room, where I could hear an excited message being left.

I got up, listened to the voice mail, which simply said “turn on your TV”. So I did, and from that point forward my life was changed for years to come. When the second tower was hit, there was no doubt we were under attack so I headed into work fielding calls from fire dispatch, the State Office of Emergency Services (Cal-OES), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), team members and reporters.

I was on the road driving when a reporter called and asked about the “collapse”. I remember asking him “What did you just say?”, he responded that South Tower had just completely collapsed. It was 7:00 am, Pacific Coast time. By 7:30 am the North Tower had collapsed too, but by that time I had arrived at Fire Station 77 in Belle Haven, where our warehouse was located — and saw it for myself.

In some ways it reminded me of when the Oklahoma City Bombing occurred in 1995, which we had responded too. I’ll admit, I was angry because someone had successfully orchestrated a fairly sophisticated set of multiple, almost simultaneous attacks of terrorism on America soil. Judging by the emergency response, especially significant casualties and fatalities were inevitable, including the first responders themselves.

Later that morning, the three closest National Rescue Teams to each of the sites were deployed. FEMA placed the remaining 22 National Task Forces on alert for deployment, and we began our preparations for immediate response.

The lingering questions weren’t about if we would be deployed. The questions were about which possible attack site, were there viable secondary threats, and could more terrorist attacks occur — especially on new targets.

The initial damage assessment, especially from the Trade Center was grim. Hundreds of first responders were “missing and unaccounted for”, thousands of people were feared dead. Many of our fellow Urban Search and Rescue Team members with FDNY were included in those that were “unaccounted for”, specifically my counterpart, Chief Raymond Downey, the program manager for NY-TF1 whonwas missing.

Ray was a friend, co-worker, and leader in our national system. He had become a mentor and fellow founder of the National Response System. He was even my boss on what was called the Incident Support Team (IST), and I had gotten to directly work and train under him. To say that this incident had gotten personal would be an understatement.

We moved our equipment cache to Travis Air-force base a few days later, for both security reasons and to make sure we were in compliance with military air cargo rules and regulations for transportation.

Based upon air quality reports from the World Trade Center site, we ordered more respirators and filter cartridges than allowed on the Federal Cache List. It was a move I’ll never regret, but one we would eventually be punished for.

On September 18, at 8:00 am, FEMA activated California Task Force 3 (CA-TF3) for immediate response to the collapse at the World Trade Center. I was both honored and excited to respond, but I also dreaded what I knew would come with it. The Oklahoma City Bombing recovery operations had sobered me to that harsh reality. As one of two Task Force Leaders, it was my job to take care of our team. But these types of high risk operations can come with very real consequences — not only physically, but mentally.

Prior to our departure, all of our team members voluntarily provided a mouth swabbed DNA sample. No one had any false expectations of what we were walking into, but in the days ahead, as we eventually stood at ground zero, it was worse than we could have ever imagined.

Photos courtesy of Harold Schapelouman, who is the retired chief of the Menlo Park Fire Protection District pictured top at the 9/11 site; second photo is FDNY Chief of Special Operations Raymond Downey