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    Remembering 9/11

    Remembering 9/11

    Photo By Cpl. Sarah Cherry | New York Battalion Chief David Simms spoke with firefighters aboard Marine Corps Air...... read more read more

    MARINE CORPS AIR STATION BEAUFORT, SC, UNITED STATES

    09.18.2014

    Story by Cpl. Sarah Cherry 

    Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort

    MARINE CORPS AIR STATION BEAUFORT, S.C. - “It’s the nature of this job; you go from zero to 60. It’s something we train for,” said Fire Department of New York Battalion Chief David Simms on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, speaking to the Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort base firefighters. “I don’t usually talk about it.”

    Simms was scheduled to be on shift when the attacks occurred, but swapped shifts when his friend, Lt. Kevin Pfeifer of the FDNY, talked him into going to see a New York Jets game.

    “I was the first of many lives he would save,” said Simms. “I wouldn’t be standing here if it wasn’t for Lt. Pfeifer.”

    Watching the game the evening before the attacks would be the last time he saw Pfeifer.

    “That’s got to be something weighing on his conscience,” said Joe Laferrera, firefighter and emergency medical technician aboard the Air Station. “You can’t hold that in.”

    Simms responded to the attacks from home the next morning.

    “We worked about 48 hours straight. The dust was incredible,” said Simms. “Nobody ever imagined this would happen.

    “We were told those buildings would withstand the impact from a jet aircraft – and they did. No one imagined what burning jet fuel would do to thousands of pounds of steel.

    “It was a horror show, it really was.”

    In the years after the attacks, tactics for the fire department changed. They use self-evacuation, assume attacks have a secondary device, and will look for symptoms of a chemical attack.

    “It’s a more cautious, slower approach,” said Simms.

    Between deaths and retirements, the fire department was depleted. Between 2002 and 2007, they brought on 6,500 new firefighters, said Simms.

    “The job got very young very fast. We are as good now as we have been,” he said.

    Simms said grief and health issues started popping up later, years after the attacks.

    “It didn’t manifest itself right away,” he said. “Dealing with grief, we all deal with it in our own way.

    Laferrera said the most important thing he learned from listening to Simms is that you have to talk to people that understand your lifestyle as you go through stages of grief.

    “Sometimes we can’t save somebody. He’s battling guilt, he’s battling anger, he’s battling grief,” said Laferrera, a native of Staten Island, N.Y. “While it helps us all to hear about the attacks and their impact on the United States, it helps him more.”

    “Even the smallest act of service, the simplest act of kindness, is a way to honor those we lost, a way to reclaim that spirit of unity that followed 9/11,” said President Barack Obama in a radio address.

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    NEWS INFO

    Date Taken: 09.18.2014
    Date Posted: 09.18.2014 17:38
    Story ID: 142625
    Location: MARINE CORPS AIR STATION BEAUFORT, SC, US
    Hometown: STATEN ISLAND, NY, US

    Web Views: 427
    Downloads: 0

    PUBLIC DOMAIN