To this day, I really have no words.

On September 11, 2001, terrorists flew two planes into the World Trade Center 1 & 2. Our country from that moment on was forever changed, but apparently, not for the better. I am quite frankly disgusted at current events. That motherfucking son of a bitch has turned today into a terrorist day of celebration. Fuck that guy.

I will not let that sully the memory of the brothers all firefighters lost that day. Hundreds of firefighters ran into those buildings, knowing there was a good chance they were never coming out. 343 did not.

“House 10” is across the street from the WTC.

I can still vividly remember sitting down on the couch with a cup of coffee, turning on the tv, and seeing death and destruction in the heart of Manhattan. I didn’t see the first tower fall, but I did watch the second one fall.

FDNY dispatch was in the WTC, and standard practice is to set up Command in the lobby of highrises. When I watched the video later in the day, you could hear the bodies landing on the roof of the lobby.

When the second tower collapsed, and this camera guy made it back in, it sounded like crickets chirping in the evening. But I knew that every one of those chirps came from a PDL(Personal Distress Locator), and indicated a firefighter down. The cameraman even says, “there’s all this noise, and I don’t know what it is”.

343 FDNY firefighters died that day, along with a number of NYPD and EMS personnel, but the lions share were firefighters. I have a tattoo on my right shoulder blade commemorating 9/11. It’s a monument to 9/11 and the sign on the monument says, “Time Passes, Memories Fade, But We Will Never Forget”. It has been 20 years, and I refuse to forget.

“Men with insight, men of granite. Knights in armor, bent on chivalry.”