CUMRU TWP., Pa. \u2013 Twenty-five years ago, Brian Winterstein, who worked in K-9 search and rescue, was one of the first responders sent to New York to help in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.\u2002\u2002\u2002\u2002<\/p>\n
But, when he arrived, he wasn’t sent to ground zero.<\/p>\n
“They said, well, \u2018We need you guys over at Fresh Kills Landfill.\u2019 And we’re like, \u2018OK, what’s Fresh Kills Landfill?\u2019” Winterstein said.<\/p>\n
After the 9\/11 attacks, more than 1.8 million tons of debris were left on the streets of New York.\u2002<\/p>\n
All of it needed to be searched.<\/p>\n
“They were bringing the rubble over from Manhattan…and they were pulling it apart, and then we were in there with buckets and dogs, looking for evidence,” Winterstein said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He says he’ll never forget what he saw as their bus rolled up the hill to Fresh Kills in Staten Island.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“I’m like, \u2018Oh, my God, it looks like Nazi Germany burned.\u2019 You know, just rubble everywhere,” Winterstein said.<\/p>\n
For two weeks, Winterstein and his team sifted through the rubble with hundreds of dogs in 18-hour shifts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
“We were finding IDs, and there were some things that I didn’t want to find,” he said.<\/p>\n
Winterstein, who is now chief of Berks County Search and Rescue Station 2, says it’s still hard to talk about his experiences.<\/p>\n
His team\u2019s work, though, was essential.<\/p>\n
“You’re putting closure in someone’s life. That’s all. That’s all it was \u2014 just closure,” Winterstein said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He said even though it can be painful, it’s important every anniversary to honor and remember the more than 3,000 lives that were lost that day.<\/p>\n
“I just think you should never forget about that day. No,” Winterstein said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CUMRU TWP., Pa. \u2013 Twenty-five years ago, Brian Winterstein, who worked in K-9 search and rescue, was one…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283551,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[115842,118254,118253,128,130,129,20753],"class_list":["post-283550","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-reading","tag-9-11","tag-brian-winterstein","tag-fresh-kills-landfill","tag-reading-city","tag-reading-city-headlines","tag-reading-city-news","tag-terror-attacks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283550","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283550"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283550\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283551"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283550"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283550"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283550"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}