Ohio-native firefighter shares 9/11 memories

  • Published
  • 100th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs
RAF MILDENHALL, England --  Tech. Sgt. Christopher Gerwick, 100th Civil Engineer Squadron Fire Department, remembers the day the world stood still ...

I think everybody knows where they were Sept. 11 - it's one of those moments you never forget.

Ten years ago, I was a senior airman in the fire department, and going through Airman Leadership School, at Hurlburt Field, Fla., at Air Forces Special Operations Command Headquarters.

On Sept. 11, I'd just finished working out and gone into the break room, and I noticed on TV that one of the twin towers was a fire on. My first thought was that it was pretty cool (from a firefighter's perspective), but thought it was pretty big for what they usually had in New York.

I carried on watching the TV, and all of a sudden, the other tower got hit - at the time I didn't know the first tower had been hit by a plane as well. But as soon as the second plane hit, I realized that something big was happening ...

Then everyone came into the break room to watch what was happening on TV - they were all glued to it, before our instructors called us all in to have a talk with us.

The base went on lockdown, and into Force Protection Condition Delta; everyone was trying to get off base. One of the guys I was at ALS with was a combat controller, lived on my road and we were car-pooling. He was tasked to deploy downrange, right after we graduated ALS. Usually when you graduate, everyone is in blues uniform - but because of what had happened, we all had to be in battle dress uniform, as we were in a wartime environment, and that was kind of eye-opening.

My friend ended up deploying immediately, and he said he was ready to go.

I was due to move in October, but had to extend my assignment so I could attend ALS, before heading to my next station in the Azores, Portugal.

Because we were stationed in Florida, we were too far away to be able to respond to what was happening in New York. But the effects were immediate; it became very difficult to travel because of all the new regulations in place. Everything was scrutinized, and nothing was overlooked.

When I got to the Azores, you knew it was getting spun up, because a lot of aircraft were arriving there. It's a refueling base, and before 9/11, they didn't really have any assigned aircraft. But once operations started to kick off, the flightline was soon full.

At the time, you didn't know how many firefighters were killed up in the towers, but many people have seen the movies that have come out since then, and the after-action reports; it's just amazing that since all the elevators were out, they had to go up all those flights of stairs.

To hear about the 343 firefighters who died - it's just mind-blowing. That equates to whole city departments; for me, that would have been a daunting task, just to go into a building that you might not come back out of.

But they didn't know that; they didn't know the fuel load was so hot that it would cause a collapse. Those firefighters were just doing their job, and I would probably have done the same thing - that's what you do. You go into burning buildings when everyone else is running out.
I've never seen anything on that scale in the whole of my career. Firefighters in the Air Force are pretty safe by fire department standards.

When you hear about all those firefighters that died, you wish you could have gone up there to do something; in the aftermath after the buildings collapsed, there were firefighters from all over the country - all over the world - going to ground zero. To not be able to be one of them was regretful; I wish I could have been there. But being in another country, they weren't just going to send me there.

I can't believe it's been 10 years - it doesn't feel like it's been that long. Every anniversary, there's always something that the fire department does, some type of ceremony, ringing the bell to mark a moment of silence to remember those who died that day.

It makes you think about it; I go back to that day and relive it. People sit around and talk about it, asking questions about what you were doing that day. Quite often you're in a different place (each anniversary) so there are different stories to hear, and different perspectives you learn about.

Unfortunately I think people have lost sight a little bit of what happened, especially those that have come into the military since then. New Airmen that come in were only about 8 or 9 when Sept. 11 happened.

But even though some of the impact has been lost, it's up to (my military generation) - the people that were serving at the time and joined before Sept. 11 - to keep that memory alive.

Editor's note: This story is the personal recollection of the events of Sept. 11, 2001, based on interviews with the subject. It is compiled and written by Karen Abeyasekere, 100th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs.