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Eight years after 9/11, youth answer the call
Young volunteers remember sacrifices
Friday, Sept. 11, 2009
 Click here to enlarge this photo Staff photo by DARWIN WEIGEL
Solomons Volunteer Rescue Squad and Fire Department volunteers Kiersten Shea, left, Curt Collison and Sherwood Jones Jr., all of Lusby, stand in front of one of the company's fire trucks. All of them are firefighters and EMTs. Shea joined in July 2007, Collison in August 2008 and Jones in February 2007.
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Each one remembers where they were.
Most were at school, in class or eating lunch when they first found out. Some heard it from teachers who received phone calls. Others saw it when live feeds came over school televisions, interrupting class to display the breaking news reports.
"I remember it was a weird day because we only had four students in our class from everyone else getting picked up" by parents, said Reid Colomo, a 15-year-old volunteer at the Mechanicsville Volunteer Fire Department.
For schoolchildren like Colomo, who was 7 at the time, it was a difficult day to understand. Their generation had lived their young lives in a time of relative peace. The world's conflicts were distant affairs, separated by oceans and a veil of disconnect, and all that American children knew of them was what they heard on the evening news, leaving them unaware, unconcerned.
Sept. 11, 2001, changed all that.
Across Southern Maryland, there are hundreds of volunteer firefighters and rescue personnel who lived through the 9/11 attacks but were too young at the time to fully comprehend their impact.
Some of them are still in school. The rest have since graduated and moved on to careers or college degrees.
They remember where they were when they first saw it. One moment, there was a plane, a 90-ton airliner that was still dwarfed by the size and grandeur of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. Another moment, and the silhouette was gone, engulfed in a flash of steel and jet-fueled fire. About 15 minutes later it happened again, this time to the South Tower. Two planes, 146 combined passengers incinerated along with untold hundreds working inside.
Half an hour later, another plane flew into the Pentagon, killing 59 passengers onboard and 125 people inside, most of them civilians. Then, just before 10 a.m., the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed, killing thousands trapped inside. Thirty minutes later, the North Tower followed.
"It was hard to believe and we just knew from what our teachers had said that thousands of people worked in those buildings," said Kiersten Shea, an 18-year-old volunteer in the Solomons Volunteer Rescue Squad and Fire Department. "It was just unbelievable to imagine."
Moments after the South Tower's collapse, a flight believed destined for either the U.S. Capitol or the White House crashed in rural Pennsylvania when passengers, by then aware of the day's events, forced their captors and the plane into the ground.
In less than two hours, so many had been killed. The official death toll from the attacks rests at 2,993, including 343 members of the New York City Fire Department, 60 policemen, eight EMTs and the 19 hijackers.
"The fact that so many lives were lost at almost that instant really didn't hit me at that age, but I definitely knew things were going to change a lot," said Greg "Booger" Hadsell, a 19-year-old volunteer at the Waldorf Volunteer Fire Department. "The way people would act, the way they would think, the way things were going to be done, I knew things were going to change. I knew it was big."
Still, it took days, weeks and years for some of these young people to fully understand what happened that day and what it meant for them, their country and the world. On the day of the attacks, most remember an exodus of students as worried parents flocked to school to pick up their children. They remember watching it on television, feeling confused, even numb to the images they were seeing.
Some were frightened, concerned for family members and friends.
Some wondered what they could do. On a day when so many felt helpless, they wanted nothing more than to help. But they were so young, there was little they could do.
But eight years later, the events of that day have played a seminal role in their lives, and for many served as a major influence on their decision to become volunteers. Others were born into firefighting families, and some recall wanting to serve ever since their first fire truck ride as a child. A constant for each volunteer is the pride they take in their work, stations and fellow volunteers. For many, it comes before their jobs, with the firehouse serving as their home and fellow firefighters as a second family.
‘It was like something from a movie'
Most children only got to see replays of the day's events because they were in school when the attacks actually happened. That was not the case for Hadsell, who had stayed home from school with a head cold.
Hadsell, who received his nickname when an officer at the Waldorf station suggested his resemblance to the character "Booger" from the movie "Revenge of the Nerds," was laid up when his father called the house between 9 and 9:30 a.m., saying a bunch of "wing nuts" had crashed a couple of planes into the World Trade Center. Hadsell, 11 at the time, watched live as both towers collapsed.
Colomo was in his elementary school lunch line, wondering why so many kids were getting picked up early when his principal tapped him on the shoulder.
Colomo's mom had come to the school to take him and his two brothers home. She said there had been a terrorist attack in New York City. Colomo remembers arriving home, rushing to the television and watching a replay of the second plane hitting the towers.
He didn't know much about terrorists — not too many 7-year-olds did in 2001. All he knew was that a lot of people had died and he wanted to help.
"And I just felt like I could have done something," Colomo, now 15, said. "I felt that if I joined the fire department, if something like that happens again I will be able to do something."
When Ryan Sekuterski came home from school in Spotsylvania County, Va., that day, he knew about the attacks in New York, but hadn't seen them. He also hadn't heard about the Pentagon or the crash in Pennsylvania. His father, a policeman who was supposed to be off work that day, was suiting up when he walked in the door. Ryan's dad was being called into Washington, D.C., in case another attack happened. Wondering what he had missed, Ryan turned on the television.
"It was like something from a movie," said Sekuterski, who at 21 is an assistant engineer and lives at the La Plata Volunteer Fire Department and works as a paid firefighter at Patuxent River Naval Air Station. "I would never have expected to see people jumping out of windows and ... two great big towers coming down and just the impact it had."
While most volunteers stop short of pegging that day as their singular motivation for volunteering, they all acknowledge the key role it played.
Hadsell had always admired the structure and discipline of the military and was active in ROTC until his graduation from McDonough High School. He wanted to join, but the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq made him reconsider.
"Growing up, seeing us invade Iraq and knowing that's probably where I'm going to end up, in an actual war zone when I join, that's not something I was really entirely prepared for," he said.
But Hadsell found another way to serve during his junior year at McDonough, when he and a friend, after months of toying with the idea, decided to join the Waldorf station. Now, Hadsell has lived at the station for the last two years and wants to pursue firefighting as a career.
"This is probably one of the coolest things I can do in the world so this is what I'm going to stick with," Hadsell said.
‘You don't want to let them down'
Corey Ianiero grew up in a family of volunteers. His grandfather and uncle were firefighters, his mom is an EMT and his aunt was a paramedic. Growing up around the firehouse, Ianiero, 21, of La Plata guesses he's wanted to join since he was 6. Signing up at the La Plata station was one of the first things he did when he turned 16, the earliest age to join.
He has since become a station lieutenant and three years ago suffered burns to his head, neck and ears while helping save a fellow firefighter from a burning house. Ianiero knows that each time he runs into a fire, there's a chance he won't be coming out. But it doesn't matter, he said, you have to do it anyway.
"You've got to stop and look at the big picture before you go in, but if someone's in there and they need help, then this is what you signed up for and you need to get in there and get them," Ianiero said.
Carl Pyles, 19, is still a probationary member at the Mechanicsville station, meaning he can't yet respond to fire calls. While he says he's never been antsy around fire, Pyles concedes that he might be nervous before running into one for the first time.
"When you're getting ready to go into the house is when they say you actually find out if you're cut out to be a firefighter or not," he said.
Pyles estimated he spends anywhere from 40 to 50 hours a week between the fire station and rescue squad, where he's also a member. Such hours are common, and many choose to live at the stations where they volunteer. For young members, such dedication often means sacrificing much of their personal lives.
"I've lost a lot of friends over this place," Sekuterski said. "For the past almost five years I've been volunteering I've never spent a Christmas with my family. I've always been here."
Sometimes it's hard for friends to understand why someone would devote so much time to something that doesn't pay them a nickel.
"A lot of people look at it as if you're not getting paid, so why would you go into a burning house?" said Sherwood "Woody" Jones, a 17-year-old member at the Solomons firehouse. "And my thing always is what if you called 911 and nobody was coming ... How would you feel?"
But once a member, what motivates each volunteer the most is their fellow firefighters, who serve as an extended family. Fear, Hadsell said, is part of the job, but that all gets wiped away once the engine sirens start screaming.
"You're always afraid. You need to push through that, remember your job," Hadsell said. "Also what's most important, what really keeps you going is the guy next to you. You don't want to let them down."
‘They did their job'
Since the 9/11 attacks, there has been a slew of stories, movies and television shows focused on recreating and dramatizing the events and the actions of those on scene, particularly at the Twin Towers.
For young firefighters, who spend a good portion of their time soaking in stories and advice from the veteran members, the courage displayed by fictional 9/11 characters often misses the point.
"I've seen movies and stuff where they try and re-enact it, but I still don't think that really conveys what it must have been like for them," said Ryan DeGruy, an 18-year-old volunteer at the Mechanicsville station.
"I don't think they really knew what was going to happen as they were going in. It's just one of those things you get ingrained is, you have to save them whatever it takes."
And even if they did know, Sekuterski thinks the 343 New York firefighters who died that day wouldn't have done anything different.
"I bet if you could actually talk to any of them, you say would you change anything, they would say no," Sekuterski said. "They did their job and that's what they chose to do and that's what they loved to do, just like all of us."
Still, the sacrifice of so many in the service of others gives each volunteer extra motivation, in case they ever need it.
Curt Collison, a volunteer at the Solomons firehouse, makes sure to always keep a reminder close by.
"With my helmet I actually carry a sticker on it in remembrance of them that says ‘FDNY 343' on it," Collison, 18, said. "I know for a long time I've always wanted to be a firefighter in New York just because of that, just because I want to go up there and do my part."
