Unforgettable
It was 8:46 a.m. On one side of the Brooklyn Bridge, Dr. Sarah Nafziger sat in a hotel conference room researching emergency medicine. On the other side, a plane had just slammed into the north tower of the World Trade Center. The date was September 11, 2001.
By the end of the day, Nafziger would see the smoking remains of ground zero from the back of a New York City ambulance. She has seen plenty of disaster areas as the Hoover Fire Department’s medical director, but none of them can compare to that terrifying day.
Crumbling down
Inside the hotel room, Nafziger had no idea at first that anything was amiss. A fellow researcher received a frantic pager alert, but no one thought it was serious until the hotel was evacuated. Nafziger found herself “shoulder to shoulder” with a sea of strangers, staring across the river at the burning towers and the fighter jets speeding over the city.
“That’s when everything changed,” Nafziger said.
Solemn and stunned, the crowd watched as the twin towers collapsed to the ground. Nafziger couldn’t help but think of the people who were still trapped inside. Without smartphones or access to a TV, no one knew yet why this had happened. Cell phone lines were overloaded, and Nafziger remembered seeing a pay phone with a line of 20 people waiting to use it.
“I still, to this day, think about it and have a hard time grasping the enormity of it,” Nafziger said. “It’s the most surreal thing I’ve ever been involved in.”
Her most vivid memory from that day was standing outside the hotel and wondering if she was going to die. Nafziger thought of her family and friends, hoping she had done enough to show that she loved them, and decided she was ready to face death if it came. She was going to do whatever needed to be done.
‘An outpouring of neighborly love’
After they finally saw a TV news report, Nafziger and the other researchers decided to head to Manhattan and put their emergency medical training to work. Nafziger remembers people everywhere in the streets, but the mood was surprisingly subdued.
“You would think that people would be panicking and crying and screaming, and really nobody was,” Nafziger said. “Everybody was really somber.”
At ground zero, Nafziger worked from an ambulance to treat the crowds of people streaming away from the rubble. She recalled that the victims either walked away with very minor injuries or had been instantly killed. There was little they could do, but Nafziger and her companions handed out bandages and bottles of water and lent their cell phones to anyone in need. A few even offered to share their hotel rooms with total strangers.
There was a complete lack of selfishness in the streets that day. Nafziger watched people share their clothes and wash the soot out of each other’s eyes. People eagerly volunteered to donate blood or be a part of dangerous rescue missions. It was “an outpouring of neighborly love between complete strangers in this massive city.”
After the first day, Nafziger said there was a lot of “sitting and waiting” until she was able to return home. Eventually she was able to take a train to Washington, D.C., and drive a rental car back to Alabama, passing the smoldering Pentagon along the way. Nafziger said she will always remember looking back at New York City as her train left Penn Station. She caught a glimpse of the Statue of Liberty with a heavy plume of smoke hanging behind it and nothing but empty sky where the towers used to be.
Never forgetting
Nafziger returned home with a new appreciation for her family and the national defense. She joined the military and served for eight years, including a two-week deployment at ground zero in October 2001, providing medical services for the emergency teams that continued to work. New York City was still grieving, and she remembers seeing “We Shall Overcome” painted on a piece of the rubble.
As the fire department medical director, Nafziger now oversees emergency medical services on a much smaller scale, but the image of the falling twin towers is still seared in her mind. She hopes the impact of that tragic day is never lost.
“It’s important that we don’t forget,” Nafziger said. “We have a pretty short memory for things like that.”
September 11 memorial events
- Each Hoover Fire Department station will host a short observance around its flagpole at 8:46 a.m. and 9:03 a.m., the times the north and south towers of the World Trade Center fell. Fire Station 2, located at 1591 Patton Chapel Road, will host its annual memorial ceremony beginning at 8:30 a.m. The ceremony will include tolling of the station’s bells and feature retired Navy Rear Admiral and Hoover City Council Member Jack Natter as the speakers.
- Cahaba Valley Fire & Emergency Medical Rescue will hoist a 20-by-35-foot flag at Station 181, located at 5487 U.S. 280. Uniformed first responders will gather around the flagpole, and the station’s air horns and sirens will be sounded at 8:46 a.m. and 9:03 a.m.