SAN DIEGO COUNTY, Calif. — On September 11, 2001, San Diego Fire Department Captain Paul Moscoso was on duty, as he watched the first tower burn.
"I just remember someone saying, 'I think a war just started,'" said Moscoso. "Everybody below is going to get out, I was thinking that's going to be tough to knock down, how are they going to get to the people on the upper floors."
SDFD Assistant Chief John Wood was with SDFD Urban Search and Rescue Task Force.
"We were told to pack our bags; you will be going to New York to help with the structure collapse," said Wood.
He knew that first responders were in the buildings.
"Every firefighter and police officer knew a lot of firefighters perished."
SDFD Task Force Unit 8 deployed 80 team members, including Captain Johnny Flores.
"Immediately you come around a corner and there's a big opening," said Flores. "You see a seven-story pile of rubble, twisted steel, and the smell in the air."
Captain Moscoso puts that in perspective.
"If you take what was QUALCOMM, the entire site ... that's what we were trying to search."
Captain Flores is a technical search specialist.
"There were times we'd crawl in some spaces; we were able to make recoveries and bring closure."
Assistant Chief Wood on seeing the pile.
"There were huge pieces of metal, there were fires ... that's what we saw when we marched in."
But as firefighters, they take an oath.
"We have a job to do, to save as many as we can. If you get emotional you can't be effective."
They all knew that it was about helping those still living.
"One thing people forget is the recovery aspect, it's huge for them."
Looking for individuals meant being in harms way.
"You'd slide down a girder and all of a sudden it opened, there were cars untouched covered in dust. If somebody would have been there, they would have been untouched."
While searching with a New York fire department team, they came across equipment.
"A firefighter asked the chief, 'did 54 leave their gear?' the chief said ... we lost the whole battalion."
Unit 8 stayed for two weeks and this is a small take away, 20 years later.
"The one thing I noticed is that we all came together, we were all on the same page. Our country was unified on that day and I look forward to being unified again. We came together in the United States, and there's still humanity and there's still good."
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