GAITHERSBURG – Firefighter Donny Boyd admitted that on Sept. 11 it was a little harder to treat his unit’s deployment to the Pentagon as just another call.
His wife had an appointment on the 37th floor of the World Trade Center in New York.
“I just figured she was dead,” he said.
Boyd was concerned he might not be able to go with his team members if they were called up. He was preparing to leave for his part time job and he had his two daughters with him.
An hour later, his wife’s company, Air Cargo Inc., called to say the group in the trade center had gotten out safely.
Boyd and his colleagues in the Montgomery County Urban Search and Rescue Team are now safe at home, but Boyd’s experience and those of his fellows reveals that the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11 in New York, near Pittsburgh and just outside Washington, D.C., were unlike any call they’ve ever had.
Boyd, who lives in Gambrills, shrugged off the emotions he felt, saying it’s his job to respond to every emergency, regardless of the magnitude. Not being able to respond to a call would be failing to do his job.
“When the bells go off, I want to go,” he said.
His colleagues feel the same way.
“Wherever it’s at, it’s a call. It’s what we’re trained to do,” said Capt. Mike Dean, a Laurel resident and communications commander for the team. “No matter the location it’s the same task.”
Seventy team members, funded by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, responded to the Pentagon and spent a week doing mostly recovery work at the wrecked building.
The team worked 12-to-14-hour shifts looking for victims, even though they knew that with an explosion of that magnitude the chances of finding survivors even a few hours after the crash was slim.
Boyd and two other team members, firefighters Pat Colella and Rick Triplett, were involved in the recovery effort.
Although they kept up hope that they would find survivors, the rescuers said they treat a recovery effort just as seriously as a rescue effort.
“We were successful in being able to bring closure to many families and that in itself is rewarding,” Boyd said.
The rescue efforts worked perfectly considering the large number of people each trying to accomplish the same goal. The team returned home a week later on Sept. 18.
“We’re all working for the same results and the same goal. We were all one big team,” said Triplett, who lives in Thurmont, referring to the cooperation between the five different branches of the FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Team, including Fairfax County, Va.; Virginia Beach, Va.; Tennessee; and New Mexico.
They don’t like to be called heroes, the Montgomery County team members said, noting they are career firefighters so this is part of their job. Even the long hours didn’t even bother them.
“You were looking to be busy. Twelve hours goes by pretty quickly,” said Colella, a resident of Taylorsville.
The magnitude of the attacks has meant Sept. 11 has had a more significant impact on them than Oklahoma City or Hurricane Floyd, the three said.
Boyd said he thought about his family more because at Oklahoma City he didn’t have children. Now he thinks about how the terrorist actions affect his two young daughters.
“(The attacks are) always in the back of your mind,” he said.
“We’ve always suspected we would be hit by some attack,” Dean said, although that doesn’t mean the nation should live in fear. “This is still America. People shouldn’t walk around scared.”
“Three hundred firefighters died in New York City,” Triplett said, “but we didn’t come in and turn in our resignations.”
– 30 – CNS-10-12-01
As members of the Montgomery County Urban Search and Rescue Team watched the devastation of Sept. 11 unfold on television, they were already thinking about how fast they could get to the Pentagon.
About an hour and a half after planes hit the World Trade Center, they got the call from the Federal Emergency Management Agency, asking them to pack up their gear and come help in the rescue efforts in Arlington, Va.
Captain Mike Dean and a few of his team members were at Andrews Air Force Base participating in a training session run by FEMA on the morning of Sept. 11. The team is part of a national group of urban search and rescue team that FEMA funds and federalizes during mass disasters. About 70 people are on the team from Montgomery County, the only one in the state.
Dean said as soon as they got the official word that they would be going to the Pentagon, they didn’t have a chance to really think about the magnitude of these attacks compared to other disasters they have responded to.
“Wherever it’s at, it’s a call. It’s what we’re trained to do,” Dean said, a resident of Laurel and the communications commander for the team. “No matter the location it’s the same task.”
Firefighter Donny Boyd, who live in Gambrills, admitted this time it was a little harder to focus on the task ahead of him. His wife had an appointment on the 37th floor at 9:00 a.m. on Sept. 11. He was coming home from his part-time job when he saw it on the television and thought immediately of his wife.
“I just figured she was dead,” he said. He was concerned he might not be able to go with his team members if they were called up. Finally about an hour later he got a call from his wife’s company, Air Cargo Inc., that said the group in the trade center had called to say they had gotten out safely.
Boyd was now able to prepare himself for the task ahead, explaining being mentally prepared and willing to go to any call, no matter what the magnitude, was his job. “When the bells go off I want to go,” he said.
The 70-member team and about 30 support staff began packing up their equipment at the Fire Training Academy in Gaithersburg. They left at about 2 p.m. with a police escort to the Pentagon. All their equipment was packed into two 40-foot- long tractor trailers.
Firefighters said none of the pictures on television prepared them for the devastation that awaited them.
“I don’t think anybody had any idea of the magnitude,” Dean said.
“The pictures didn’t do it justice,” Boyd said, describing how you couldn’t even tell a plane had crashed into the Pentagon by looking at the crash site. “There was very little left of the plane at all.”
The team worked 12 to 14-hour shifts primarily focused on recovery of victims. They said with an explosion of that magnitude the chances of finding survivors even a few hours after the crash was slim.
The impact of the airplane crash took out dozens of 16-inch concrete columns in the building and if any more collapsed, then the more areas could cave in trapping some rescuers. Since the team is an urban search and rescue team they are trained in partially rebuilding damaged structures.
Members of the team went to work shoring the columns to stabilize them. They put in about 25 rows of six-by-six pressure treated posts stacked on top of each other by lincoln logs. By the time they were finished a week later, they had put in well over thousands of feet of lumber back into the building.
Boyd and two other team members, firefighter Pat Colella and master firefighter Rick Triplett were involved in the recovery effort.
Although they kept up hope that they would find survivors, the rescuers said they treat a recovery effort just as seriously as a rescue effort.
“We were successful in being able to bring closure to many families and that in itself is rewarding,” Boyd said.
He said the rescue efforts worked like a well-oiled machine and added everyone was proud of the work they did. The team returned home a week later on Sept. 18.
“We’re all working for the same results and the same goal. We were all one big team no matter what your initials were,” said Triplett, who lives in Thurmont, referring to the cooperation between the 5 different FEMA Urban Search and Rescue Team, including Fairfax County, Va, Virginia Beach, Tennessee and New Mexico.
They all acknowledge they don’t like to be called heroes, noting they are career firefighters so this is part of their job. Even the long hours didn’t even bother them.
“You were looking to be busy. Twelve hours goes by pretty quickly,” Colella said, a resident of Taylorsville.
The rescuers admit that because of the magnitude of the attacks this has had a more significant impact on them than Oklahoma City or Hurricane Floyd. Boyd said he thought about his family more because at Oklahoma City he didn’t have children.
“It’s always in the back of your mind,” he said.
“We’ve always suspected we would be hit by some attack,” Dean said, but added that you can’t live the rest of your life in fear. “This is still America. People shouldn’t walk around scared.”
“Three hundred firefighters died in New York City but we didn’t come in and turn in our resignations,” Triplett said.