Franconia Firefighters Mark Passage of Steel from World Trade Center

Around 9 p.m. Thursday night, firefighters from the Franconia Fire Station gathered on the Franconia-Springfield Parkway over I-395. They weren't there to respond to a new disaster, but rather to remember an old one–the 2001 World Trade Center attack that killed 403 emergency responders.

The firefighters were marking the passage through Franconia of a piece of steel from the World Trade Center. The steel, which is traveling from New York City to Wellington, Florida, down I-95, will eventually be installed in a memorial in front of Wellington's City Hall on September 11, 2011.

The 1o-ton steel beam comes from an exterior column panel on the World Trade Center's South Tower. Because the steel beam has a GPS device on it, its passage down the East Coast can be tracked online.