(Editor’s note: On this anniversary of 9/11, we are cross-posting this tribute.)
This isn’t a long diary, but it is something that speaks to my heart. My father, for all his faults, spent his adult life running into burning buildings saving lives and property. Sometimes he wasn’t successful. I remember one time, when I was a kid, him laid up for a week because in one house he had flaming pieces of roof fall on him. Later I learned about the times he didn’t make the save. One call he was too late, and the family inside the house didn’t make it. That haunted look in his eyes will never escape my memory.
Eighteen years ago, the Fire Department of New York responded to a pair of plane crashes into the World Trade Center. The elevators had failed, and those men had to make a mountainous climb up thousands of stairs in bunker gear with equipment to save the people trapped inside. They battled for hours, guiding out the survivors and battling the blaze as best they could. The water pressure had been lost on the impacts, so all that could be done was tear down anything that could burn.
They ran in knowing the risk. They knew that the buildings had been damaged and could collapse. There was no promise of safety, only absolution should they fall. Three hundred forty-three men fell with the towers that day, along with their brothers in the police and thousands of innocent lives. The entire spectrum of mankind was wounded that day. No one was spared.
Then a man with no concept of sacrifice bragged that now his building was the tallest. He made money off the backs of the bodies. Now he spits on their memories by calling the people who aided the attackers to meet with him in the presidential retreat, without condition or council. As those who answered the call that day continue to struggle with their very survival, his toadies dare to deny them the money they need to live through another round of treatments.
Those who died that day with their boots on had no fight-or-flight. Firefighters can’t have the “flight” option. All they know, all that their brains are capable of, is “fight”. We have to learn from that example. We have to be willing to rush into those burning buildings that are our national political bodies and save what we can. They did not give their lives so cheaply that this is what would happen.
Twenty-two names will be added to the roll of honor. Two hundred more have died due to complications from the clearing of rubble and search for bodies. Five hundred sixty-five lost. Yet this year, thirteen children of the fallen will join as their fathers did. Some of them never even had a chance to know those men, yet they join New York’s Bravest. Their courage must not be disregarded.
Remember the 343.
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Written by Daily Kos user Flyboy254. Cross-posted from Daily Kos.