Firefighting still feeling effects of 9/11 as first responders nationwide remember those who’ve fallen
This Wednesday, it will have been 23 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and it’s an occasion observed with great reverence by firefighters around the world, including in Red Deer.
Annually in September, these first responders gather to mark Firefighters’ National Memorial Day — recognized previously, but officially established in Canada in 2017.
Ken McMullen, Red Deer’s fire chief and manager of emergency services, as well as president of the Canadian Association of Fire Chiefs (CAFC), was working for the Municipal District of Rocky View on Sept. 11, 2001, and recalls helping with 300 families who’d come off grounded European flights.
“There were things happening in New York that just blew my mind,” he tells rdnewsNOW. “I vividly remember all of the events of the next three days.”