Capt. Richard Weir has the image forever printed on his mind of a fellow firefighter picking up a Gatorade bottle at Ground Zero in the aftermath of 9/11 with anguish in his eyes.
“He was with the group that was trying to identify and recover equipment and stuff in a stairwell elevator shaft that had some fatalities … but he was wanting to find his son, and his son was on the New York Fire Department as well,” Weir said.
He remembers the man picking up that bottle, beginning to scoop debris into it and saying, “I’ve got to take something home from here, for his mother, for us to bury.”
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Weir said it was a poignant memory.
“I know our whole team was impacted by that,” he said.
Weir was serving on a 72-member Texas Urban Search and Rescue team in the days following the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. Half of the group worked during the day, and the other half worked at night.
“I tell you, it was almost like a like a like a dream, if you will, because of the fact that it was just something you’d never seen before, the … enormity of the space,” Weir said. “If you can imagine five or six football fields square, you know, with two towers on the ground, and we’re seeing it at night, illuminated. So, so you’ve got floodlights on it, and smoke still billowing out of the surrounding buildings that had burnt.”
He said one of the things he “still can’t get over” is that he “never saw a computer office chair, a conference table, a file cabinet … it disintegrated everything.”
Hear Richard share his story in his own words
As he took in the scene day after day, Weir said he wondered how something like this could happen — it felt like something had shifted in the world.
“Thinking the world has changed, and you’re a part of it. You’re in that history. Things are not going to be the same after this,” he said.
Weir said his faith has been crucial in processing this and other disasters he’s responded to in the 25 years since.
“I think if you don’t have yourself a way to turn to God … and give you that support, it would drain on your mental health,” Weir said.
