Local Firefighter Reflects on Helping at Ground Zero

George Keesler was at work when one of his co-workers told him a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. Then, he started watching the coverage of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on television and saw the second plane hit.

He immediately knew local emergency responders would be needed to help due to the magnitide of the devastation, by either going down to the site or relocating to lower Westchester to cover the area. New York City called for mutual aid from Westchester County police, fire and other emergency responders and many in the Yorktown area responded.

Keesler, then a captain in the Lake Mohegan Fire Department, along with about a dozen other LMFD members, was called to relocate to the Westchester County Training Center in Valhalla along with several other members of the department. 

"Everyone was focused on what had to be done and was listening to reports that were coming to the radio," he said. "Everyone had their ears to the radios and all the different news."

There were about 150 firefighters and 50 pieces of apparatus in Valhalla from various departments before they were deployed to the Bronx. Over the next two days, he said, they slept on fire apparatus and vehicles just trying to get some rest before they got sent back to Yorktown. Then on Sept. 13 they headed down to Ground Zero to help in any way they could. 

"You see the news reports and you see the buildings that had collapsed and until you get up to it and these two buildings that were 110 stories down to 10 stories high—it was amazing to see," Kessler said. "And the dust and the paper. Everything, as we were coming to the scene, was all over the place."

Keesler said he still remembers the events of 9/11 as if it was yesterday. He remembers the look, the smell, the noise, and everything around him.

"There was nothing to recognize," he said. "It was all dust, papers, high beams, pieces of metal. You couldn’t find a chair or anything like that. People have been saying over the years—that there was nothing that was recognizable."

And the experience was a little scary. There were 60-80 feet deep voids that people had to watch out for not to fall into. Keesler said he told members of the Lake Mohegan Fire Department to stay together. 

"I went to the command post to find out where they need us and two deputy chiefs were standing on the corner by Burger King," he said of when they first got to the site. "And they said, 'What are you guys standing here, get on the pile and start help digging. We got people that are probably trapped.' So our crew went up and we started digging."

Keesler remembers hearing that someone found a body part in a hole where they were digging to see if anyone was still alive. There would be intervals when everyone around would become quiet to listen for any noise or sound of a person who was still alive, but trapped. No one was found alive during the time he was there, he said. 

"To have thousands of people to just be quiet and then just stop and then they said ‘all clear’ and started working again...it was a little eerie when that happened because everyone was anxious to hear if someone was alive," Keesler said. 

After the attacks of 9/11, many firefighters, police and emergency responders were being appreciated and called heroes for the work they did and the way they risked their lives to save others. In total 343 firefighters died that day and many others responded in the aftermath.

"No matter if you are a career or volunteer [firefighter] we all put our lives on the line here," Keesler said. "And everyone did a great job that day that went down to help from this department."

And locally, those who did not go down to the site, he said, helped out by getting donations of food and boots. Keesler said if he wore his shirt with the Lake Mohegan Fire Department logo on, people would come up to him and pat him on the back. At one point he was in a restaurant and people wanted to buy him dinner.

"It took a tragedy like that to recognize the emergency services, what we do every day," he said. 

With the 10th anniversary approaching, Keesler said he wants people to think about and remember all the people who perished that day. And as a father of two girls, he said he tries to spend more time with his family. 

"We do a lot more together," he said, "because you never know what could happen."