Adams County Fire Rescue unveils World Trade Center motor in 9/11 remembrance

Nestled against the backdrop of Adams County Fire Rescue's Station 11 is where people can now see a piece of history and a reminder of the lives that were lost on 9/11.

"The piece that you're looking at behind me came from Tower 1, and it is an elevator motor in Tower 1," said Fire Chief Clinton Garner. "It's about 14,000 pounds."

For the last three years, Adams County Fire Rescue has been working behind the scenes to get their own piece of steel from the World Trade Center.

"For me personally, it means a lot to me," said Garner. "It brings up a lot of emotions inside, and it makes me think about things deeper."

The reasoning for getting a piece to Adams County is simple; it's not just about remembering what happened to the emergency responders who sacrificed their lives that day, but to create a space where people can come together to talk about that day, and what it meant to the nation.

"It first [started] with, can we even get a piece from the World Trade Center? Is that possible for us?" said Garner. "Once we found out that that was possible for us, we put a team together, and then that team consists of different ranks in our organization that went and looked and went out and looked at many pieces of the steel that were available. Through some coordination with our team and with some of our staff, we chose to select this piece"

For Garner, this piece takes him back to the moment he was heading home from the fire department and heard the initial calls that the towers had fallen.

"That's not normal things that you hear on the radio. So, when you start getting phone calls from some of the other firefighters, are you and we looking at the same thing? Is everybody seeing the same thing?" said Garner. "Then you begin to watch it on television, and as that day unfolds, you have a lot of conversations, a lot of phone calls."

For the last 25 years, the memories of 9/11 have stayed with him. Whether it's through the work he does for the fire department or the annual climbs he and other first responders have done to honor the 343 firefighters who lost their lives that day.

"It made us think a little bit more creatively, a little bit more critically," he said. "How do we do our job every day? How do we protect the firefighters every day? How do we make sure that we have the best equipment available every single day, no matter what the emergency is that they respond to? More than anything, that's what it did for the fire service. It brought up our situational awareness."

Now, he hopes this piece from the past gives first responders and the community a place to gather, heal, and never forget.

"We came together that day as a nation, and if this brings people together to talk about common things and to talk about how much we mean as human beings to each other, then that's fantastic. That's what it should do," said Garner.

Adams County Fire Rescue is unveiling the World Trade Center motor to the public 25 years after 9/11.