San Francisco fire chief recalls helping at World Trade Center site after 9/11 attacks
When San Francisco Fire Chief Dean Crispen comes to work, he is reminded to stay grounded. Inside department headquarters sits steel from the World Trade Center, where Crispen and other SFFD firefighters responded in the days following the attacks of September 11, 2001.
"Well, it brings you right back. Incredibly sad event. Incredibly emotional, but also, you know, steel is very strong," Crispen told CBS News Bay Area. "It was the worst thing any of us had ever seen, times 343. So, to bring that out doesn't seem like it's healthy at this point."
But now, he says, it's his duty, for the 343 firefighters killed, to make sure that history is never forgotten.
"We have members of our department who weren't even alive for 9/11. They're 25 years or younger, and many of our members were two or three or four or five, so how do we respect the tradition, honor those who died and make sure that our members use that as a tool to be better?" Crispen said.
Crispen was 32 years old on the day of the attacks. His father-in-law called him to let him know what was going on.
"Just glued to the television for the rest of the day. And then the second call I received was from a lieutenant in the fire department, my best friend Victor Wyrsch, who called and said, 'We're going,'" he recalled.
Shortly after 9/11, a crew with KPIX also flew to New York. Reporter Dana King, photojournalist Rick Villaroman reported on the 11 San Francisco firefighters who went to New York, including Crispen, who was seen in footage from 2001.
"As soon as we got there, a battalion chief from New York kind of grabbed us and said 'Hey, go over here. Here's what I need you do to and gave us about six or seven instructions on what he wanted us to do, what he wanted us to look out for, and what to do if we were to find a firefighter's body," Crispen recalled.
It was Crispen's job to help find victims under the rubble.
"I always think about the FDNY members that were digging with us for their friends and their kids and their family members. That, to me, shows a lot of incredible amount of fortitude on their part," he said.
Crispen will always remember that resiliency, one of the many things he said he wrote in a personal journal during his eight days there. It's a journal that he hasn't opened for the past quarter century.
"At some point I will," he said. "In a way, it's a defense mechanism, I think, because keeping things a little bit foggy about what happened may be a coping mechanism for myself. Once I see every little piece of it, I'm a little bit fearful of going right back to that scene and being hit by it really hard. So, at some point I will, but I haven't really been ready yet."
Twenty-five years later, from a firefighter in the Tenderloin, to leading the San Francisco Fire Department, Crispen said 9/11 was the most memorable work of his life, shaping him to be the leader he is today.
"My biggest fear is to lose one of our members in the line of duty, and I think about the chief at the time of FDNY losing 343 of his members. How do you move on from that?" he said. "It was really a testament to the resiliency of firefighting, of firefighters, EMTs and paramedics in general that those members were able to continue doing their jobs."
