Remembering the victims of the September 11th terror attacks.

<div class="block">Today, we remember the victims of the deadliest terror attack on United States soil. Cheddar News senior reporter spoke to New York Police Department Lieutenant Jim McCarthy about about his experience on September 11th, 2001.</div>

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Anniversary of the September 11 Terrorist Attacks

And in honor of the anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks. I went to the World Trade Center Memorial to speak to Lieutenant Jim mccarthy. He was a firefighter who shared his memories of that day. Take a look. So you're a lieutenant now, but you were a firefighter on September 11th, walk me through when you found out about what was happening here in New York. Well, um, I was at home, we had AAA memorial mass in 73 ladder 42 in the Bronx on September 10th. My father had attended with me and we had gone back to my house and we woke up in the morning. My brother had called and live in Florida said a plane had hit the trade Center. So we turn the V on and then we saw the second plane hit the tower and then we knew immediately that something that we were under attack and we need to respond down to the firehouse and we saw the collapse of all the buildings while we were in the firehouse. And subsequently, uh later that night, early in the morning, we commandeered the bus stopped the MT A bus with the bus driver, all the passengers got out and all of our firefighters got in the bus and then came down to the Trade Center to respond on here to see what we can do to help South Tower where we're standing right here. And you said you were coming in, you remember coming in from that side. So we came down FDR around the, the lower Manhattan and you saw that iconic version of the one piece of the trade Center standing up. We came walking through that area and then started trying to find survivors, whether they be firefighters, first responders or civilians, people in here. And um you know, there was still a lot of activity and you try to take as many clues as you can finding following hose lines or following um any kind of pathways to find voids where people may have survived the collapse or had made their way up to as far as they could before we could get them. But it quickly became evident that there wasn't going to be many survivors. What was it like to actually see it in person? Well, I mean, we do training and we talk about collapses and we've been in some collapses previously in my career and you, you have the training, what you're supposed to do, you rescue people on the surface, then you find voids and you um listen for sounds and, and you uh trying to anticipate where people were going to be surviving. But this was a different area. It was so much debris and not, there weren't very large pieces of things. You didn't find a telephone or a desk or a chair, everything was fine dust, there was papers and very small items. So shortly after we started looking, you really got the feeling that there was nobody who was going to survive. And if we found somebody, it was going to be a miracle and that's the way it turns out the first 12 hours, we just kind of collected body parts and put them in body bags and trying to discern individuals that were, had got killed in the collapse. What compels people, the community of firefighters to come and help on a situation like this. When you come down to an incident like this, you know that there's going to be a tremendous amount of people affected and we're going to need every resource we have and individuals being the best resource that we can bring. Everybody came down. And, and again, you can go to any firehouse around the United States or around the country. You're going to get the same kind of person that works there that wants to help people that are willing to sacrifice themselves to save other lives. I also spoke to Lieutenant mccarthy about what needs of current first responders are at this time that were at ground zero. He pointed out that an additional 31 people have died from 9 11 related cancers. That's in addition to 300 people before they're continuously adding names on the 9 11 memorial as well. He urged Congress and the public to support more funding for 9 11 1st responders to give them more aid and medical care at this time. Something that has definitely not been looked at and he does believe that we do need to look at the lingering effects, not only as our concerns over terrorism, but also to take care of the health of those who were on the ground on that day. Now, Lieutenant mccarthy is working in a different division now, but he said that there are still plenty of firefighters who are putting their lives on the line at this point and still putting other, other considerations as they have other things that are pressing and also of public interest things.