Twenty-five years after the Sept. 11 attacks, two retired Miami-Dade firefighters are sharing their memories, their expertise and the images they say they will never forget.
Retired Miami-Dade Fire Capt. Gabe Nemeth was deployed to New York as part of Miami-Dade’s Urban Search and Rescue team.
As his team approached Lower Manhattan, Nemeth remembers the dust, debris and crowds.
“As we were approaching the area, lower Manhattan, you could see the dust still, paperwork, all kinds of debris and people, crowds gathered around,” he said.
When they reached the World Trade Center site, he said the scale of the devastation was overwhelming.
“And then when you approach the site where we approached it from, it was almost overwhelming — the sheer size of it,” Nemeth said.
Their mission from the start was to find survivors.
Nemeth said rescuers knew from previous disasters that people could sometimes survive inside voids and spaces created by collapsed structures.
“There’s documented after documented even back then of people surviving in what we call voids and spaces,” he said. “And so that’s where it was focused on, to try to search and rescue the survivors.”
But for his team, there would be no rescue.
What has stayed with him are the families and friends desperately searching for loved ones.
“The crowds, the signs of family members, friends missing — those things, those images do not go away,” Nemeth said.
Retired Miami-Dade Fire Assistant Chief Carlos Castillo was sent by FEMA to help lead the Urban Search and Rescue response at the Pentagon.
He remembers approaching Washington, D.C., and seeing smoke rising from the building.
“The first thing I remember was as we were crossing over in Washington, D.C., where you could see the color of the smoke coming from the Pentagon, and it was an awesome sight,” Castillo said. “Arguably one of the most secure buildings in the world had been penetrated by an aircraft.”
Their priority was still to search for anyone alive. Their work later turned to recovering remains and preserving evidence.
After 10 days at the Pentagon, Castillo continued his work in New York.
“There were photos everywhere,” he said. “People would be around with photos asking us if we’d seen them, and that was always difficult.”
He also remembers subway walls covered with photographs of people who were missing.
A total of 2,753 people were killed in New York on Sept. 11, 2001. Another 184 were killed at the Pentagon. Among those who died in New York were 343 firefighters.
For Castillo, the loss was deeply personal.
“It was personal because firefighters and some friends were among the ones that died,” he said. “That changed me forever because knowing that every time we have a mission, that’s a possibility.”
Nemeth said that 25 years later, he also hopes Americans remember how the country came together after the attacks.
“One of the things we can look back, especially today, is how this nation came together,” he said. “Remember that we came together as Americans, as a nation.”
He added that people should not only remember the lives that were lost, but also “what we’re capable of.”
Both men spoke with us at Miami-Dade Fire Rescue Station 3, a station dedicated to honoring the 343 firefighters who lost their lives on Sept. 11.