CONNECTICUT, USA — Wednesday marked 23 years since the 9/11 terror attacks.
Nearly 3,000 innocent people were killed on that day, including 161 with ties to Connecticut. Retired Naugatuck Fire Captain Richard Alfes remembers it like yesterday.
“I was home the time. I lived in Prospect and my pager went off, and it said that we had to respond immediately that something happened in New York City,” Alfes said. “I turned on the television and I saw it and I loaded my equipment up in the car and I left."
Hours after the attack, he responded to lower Manhattan’s Ground Zero, where the World Trade Center buildings once stood, as part of a task force with the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“Everything was grey,” he said. “It looked like the movie 'Batman.' It looked like 'Gotham.'”
Their mission was to search for survivors and monitor for other potential structural collapses. About 3,000 remained people missing, but his team found no one alive.”
“We felt frustration of not finding anybody, you know, alive. Nobody to rescue,” Alfes said.
Former Beacon Hose Fire Company Fire Chief Doug Bousquet and Captain Jeremy Rodorigo also responded to Ground Zero, but for a different reason.
“I said I have to go,” Bousquet said. “I'm the chief and we're going. We wanted to help any way we could.”
They loaded up an ambulance and SUV with the first batch of supplies for search and rescue crews and drove down to New York City.
“Driving through the concrete dust, seeing pictures of families, shoes, pocketbooks, everything was on the ground,” Bousquet said.
“It looked like almost like what you imagine the surface of the moon or Mars would look like. It was just crushed concrete and it was just deep, but there was also papers and photographs from people's desks and personal items that you could see that had come out of the buildings that had come down.
His firefighters from Beacon Falls handed out masks, socks and snacks to crews on the frontline.
“They were covered in dirt, but they weren't stopping, they were covered in all of this mess,” Rodorigo said. “Before they had masks, they were breathing it all in for, hours and hours and hours and they were just, in a state of shock but also determination. They were determined to get everyone out of there.”
More than two decades later, Alfes is trying to move forward, but his health locks him in the past.
“I’ve got some particulate stuff from concrete in my lungs. It's called silicosis in the beginning stages,” Alfes said.
Like thousands of other 9/11 first responders, he battles long-term medical issues from the toxic dust he breathed in at the search site. It’s a price he paid for his country and one he would pay again.
“Despite everything, I’d still do it again,” Alfes said. “It’s who we are.”
According to the CDC, close to 7,000 people have died from World Trade Center-related cancer or illness.
At the New York City Fire Department alone, the department reports more than 360 firefighters, emergency medical technicians and personnel have passed away due to their exposure at Ground Zero. 343 FDNY firefighters died while responding on Sept. 11, 2001.
“It's easy to put history in the background and then not think about it anymore and say that that was ancient history, but it really wasn't that long ago,” Rodorigo said. “It really was a devastating event for our country and even the world because the after effects of what happened at 9/11 really had a worldwide effect.”
Bridgette Bjorlo is an anchor/reporter at FOX61 News. She can be reached at bbjorlo@fox61.com. Follow her onFacebook, X and Instagram.
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