Phoenix firefighters remember Ground Zero

A team of Phoenix firefighters, including current Fire Chief Bob Khan, was sent to Ground Zero in New York City to help in the days after the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.

"To this day, it was a surreal experience," Khan remembers. "It changed the United States."

Khan -- who also was with Phoenix teams dispatched to Oklahoma City after the bombing of the federal building and New Orleans in the wake of Hurricane Katrina -- said, "New York is a very resilient place. It is obviously recovering much better than New Orleans has and Louisiana and the Gulf Coast. But, just the psychological toll that it took on the whole country is still there. We're still scarred by it."

Arizona Task Force I, comprised of 63 firefighters highly trained in rescue and recovery operations, headed for New York a few days after the World Trade Center's twin towers toppled in piles of rubble after terrorists flew hijacked jetliners into the buildings. Team leaders arrived on Saturday, following the Tuesday attacks, and the team was airlifted in on the following Tuesday.

Khan remembers an anxious atmosphere in the hours and days following the attacks.

"There was anticipation of other attacks. We were trying to put together local plans and taking a lead from the federal government. At that time, there was a lot of speculation as to where the whole thing was going to end up."

In New York, members of Arizona Task Force I spent more than a week searching the rubble for any sign of survivors, including the 343 New York firefighters who had responded to the towers and were caught when they collapsed. The team found no survivors.

Phoenix Fire Assistant chief Rick Bartee said he knew firefighters were dead when he watched the towers collapse on TV.

"Knowing New York, knowing how they operate, I knew they must have had 400 to 500 in those buildings and around those buildings at the time that occurred. My first thought was for them, then of course for all the citizens involved in the incident."

Bartee said his service in New York is burned into his memory for life.

"It was so massive. It was truly surreal, like everybody would say, as far as going in there. To be on the pile and working on the pile, knowing that over 2,000 -- up to 3,000 -- people were lost, somewhere within that pile."

At Ground Zero, Bartee worked next to a retired New York City firefighter who was searching for his two sons -- one a police officer, the other a firefighter. They were not found alive.

Bartee said support from loved ones and colleagues at home in Phoenix helped members of the Arizona team cope with the tragedy.

(Photo caption: Phoenix Assistant Fire Chief Rick Bartee looks at photos of his work at Ground Zero in the days after 9-11.)