Remember the 343

Twenty-two years ago today, over 1,000 men and women, all of them dressed in 50 to 75 pounds of firefighting gear, faced the worst event of their careers.

The Twin Towers in New York City had been attacked and were burning.

At 8:50 a.m., the New York City Fire Department had established its incident command center at the World Trade Centers. The first plane hit one of the Trade Centers at 8:45 a.m.; the response was immediate. The fire department was on the scene within five minutes.

Even though a second plane hit the other tower, these brave firefighters hustled inside while everyone else was doing their best to get outside.

They were saving lives, these folks. They were doing what they were trained to do.

What they loved to do.

What they would die doing.

At 9:59 a.m., the first of the tallest towers of the World Trade Center collapsed. The firefighters who were valiantly trying to reach people believed to be trapped on upper floors, were unable to get out. As those of us who sat watching the events unfold on TV know, the collapse occurred without warning. The buildings were down before anyone could react.

And 343 firefighters died, along with over 2,000 other people. In a documentary about 9/11 that I watched one year, the most haunting sound for me was when the surviving firefighters went back to look for their brothers and sisters. It was not the tears or the shouts of names, but the oxygen alarms going off from the firefighters' gear, that brought me to tears. Those alarms meant death. And there were so many of them.

As the wife of a retired firefighter, I knew when my husband was at work that every day could be the day that things went wrong on the fire scene. Any day could have been the day that a building exploded, a roof caved in, a car crashed into firefighters standing on the side of the road putting out a burning vehicle (something that happened in Roanoke in 1985, killing several firefighters).

First responders do a job that most people wouldn't dream of doing.

They risk their lives every single time they go to work. When we are running away in fear, they are putting on their hats and heading off to face down whatever it is we are afraid of. Tornadoes, hurricanes, fire, flood, derecho winds, downed power lines or a terrorist attack do not halt these dedicated people. They go forward when the rest of us would hang back.

On this anniversary of the attack on New York City, please remember the sacrifices of these brave men and women, the firefighters who go where no one dares to go.

You might want to say thank you to them, too. You never know when the life they save might be yours.