Sept. 11: "Ask Any Firefighter What The Number 343 Means To Them"

As the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks approaches, Patch is remembering the day through the eyes of Vienna with a series of memoirs and reflections from local officials, police and fire personnel, veterans and residents of town.

They'll offer a glimpse of what Sept. 11 meant for Vienna and how life here has changed in the decade that followed.

Sept 7, 2011: Chief John Morrison

Each generation has events where everyone can recall exactly where they were.  9/11 was the first for mine. 

I was at work in Tysons Corner when the World Trade Center and Pentagon were hit, and I can remember seeing smoke on the horizon from the top floor of my office building. I can still picture the crystal clear blue skies that morning, and on many mornings like that since then, I reflect on how that day affected us.

After leaving work and driving to the fire station, I ended up staffing an ambulance to backfill the Jefferson Fire Station near Falls Church, running their emergencies while they were at the Pentagon. We didn’t sleep much that night, not because of the volume of calls, but because of the untold tragedy we had all been witness to.

The most haunting sound I remember is the sound I heard after the collapse of the towers on the news stations. It’s the chirping of the integrated motion alarms built into firefighters breathing apparatus.  They’re designed to alarm when there is no motion for more than 20 seconds; to alert fellow firefighters that one of their own isn’t moving and is injured. That sound was heard too many times that morning.  Three hundred and forty three firefighters were lost that day while conducting the largest rescue operation in the history of the fire service. They weren’t looking to be heroes, or trying to make a name for themselves. They didn’t care about the ethnicity or the religion or the politics of the people they were trying to help. They were helping their fellow citizens escape the mostly deadly terrorist attack in the history of the United States. 

Ask any firefighter what the number 343 means to them, and you’ll get a variety of responses; but they’ll all echo the bravery and the selflessness that represents what is best about our nation.

A lot has changed in our world since 9/11. We view our community and our country differently, more protectively. As first responders, we worry more and train more now for biological, chemical, radiological and explosive attacks. We communicate among jurisdictions and agencies more effectively and implement structured plans known to first responders throughout the country utilizing the incident command system for small and large scale events to remain at the top of our game.

Out of one great tragedy came so many stories of so many people trying to save their fellow Americans; whether it was passengers trying to take control of a hijacked airliner, soldiers carrying their fellow service members out of the rubble of the Pentagon, or the 343 firefighters who made the ultimate sacrifice. It is those stories that I will always come back to, because those are the stories that makes our nation great.