Santa Barbara paid tribute Friday, remembering 9/11 victims on the 25th anniversary of the 2001 terrorist attacks that shocked America, in a solemn and heartfelt morning ceremony.
Honoring first responders and lives lost, officials and residents gathered at the Santa Barbara County Courthouse Sunken Garden. Two fire trucks—their ladders extended along Anapamu Street—held a large, suspended American Flag.
County Fire Captain Howard Orr, the keynote speaker, said he remembers the fall of the World Trade Center in New York, the attack on the Pentagon in Washington, D.C, and the weeks that followed all too well.
Orr recalled flying to New York with his search canine, Duke. They worked 12-hour shifts for eight days as part of a rescue team for the Federal Emergency Management Agency, or FEMA.
“I remember thinking on the plane, ‘I’m going to a part of history,’” he said at Friday’s event, organized by the county Sheriff’s Office, the county Fire Department and the Santa Barbara city Police and Fire departments.
In addition, fire stations around the county lowered their flags to half staff Friday.
In the hours after the attack, 6,000 people were unaccounted for, Orr recalled. In the final tally, more than 2,700 people died in New York on 9/11, and hundreds more eventually died from exposure to toxic chemicals released as the twin towers fell.
As Orr made his way to Ground Zero day after day, photos and descriptions of missing people covered the walls he passed.
Orr said he can still see their faces.
“We still remember them,” Orr told the courthouse audience. “And I hope after today you will too.”
City Fire Chief Chris Mailes said the days that came after 9/11 “revealed the best of the human spirit” as firefighters from across the nation assisted the New York City Fire Department.
County Fire Chief Garrett Huff quoted the Alan Jackson song “Where Were You (When the World Stopped Turning)” and said it’s a question anyone who lived through the event could answer.
Sheriff Bill Brown stressed how the attacks united people across the county.
“When America was attacked, there instantly wasn’t any distinction between East Coast and West Coast, North and South, Black and White, rich or poor, truck driver or scholar, Democrat or Republican,” Brown said.
The ceremony ended with a gun salute from law enforcement, and a helicopter flyover by the Santa Barbara County Air Support Unit.
In his keynote, Orr said his experiences working search and rescue in the days after 9/11 still feel like they happened yesterday.
“The twin towers, each 110 stories tall, each story one acre in size,” Orr said. “Two hundred and twenty acres of offices, desks, computers—gone.”
