09/12/2026
Founder and Co-owner, CALLSIGN brewing.
From STEVE SIROIS, USAF, MSgt retired
THIS WAS MY SEPTEMBER 11
There is a story I don’t talk about very often. Only a few close friends know much about it.
For almost 25 years, there hasn’t been a single day that I haven’t thought about it. Every September hits me hard. Sometimes it comes back in nightmares.
Today, I think I’m finally ready to tell it.
On September 11, 2001, after watching the buildings fall to the ground, I threw on my uniform and headed to my base at Westhampton Beach, Long Island.
There wasn’t much we could do at that point. There were no initial orders sending our base into New York City.
But our PJs decided they were going to drive down and see if they could help.
I decided to follow them.
I didn’t know what I could do. I just knew I had to do something.
The closest I could park was near FDNY Ladder 8 on North Moore Street, about 10 blocks from the rubble. I remember arriving around 7 that evening.
Nothing on television could prepare me for what I saw.
Steel that had once been part of the World Trade Center was sticking 60 or 70 feet into the air. The smell reminded me of an old campfire that had been smothered out. Dust covered the ground like eight inches of fresh snow.
There were lines of people stretching from the bottom of the pile to the top, passing Lowe’s and Home Depot buckets hand to hand.
Empty buckets went up.
Full buckets came down.
At the top, probably a hundred people were taking turns with shovels, filling those buckets as quickly as they could. Store owners were climbing through the debris carrying cases of water.
I don’t remember seeing anyone sitting down.
Everyone just worked.
Eventually I made it near the top and somebody handed me a shovel. That person headed down and I took his place.
At some point I stopped and looked around.
Night had fallen.
Huge portable light towers had been brought in, extending 25 or 30 feet into the air and shining down on the dust, drywall and twisted steel. Somehow I hadn’t even noticed them arriving.
Then somebody started yelling for medics.
About 100 feet away, they had found a body.
I could see enough to understand what was happening. Nothing alive was coming out of that spot.
We kept working.
Later, alarms sounded from a tall building on Church Street. Loudspeakers told everyone to move north. We ran from the rubble because we thought another building might be coming down.
About two hours later came the all-clear.
Everybody picked up a bucket and went right back to work.
At some point that night, medics were called again.
Then there was more shouting.
Every shovel stopped.
Every bucket stopped.
We watched.
About 20 people were working frantically in one corner of the debris. I was on the other side of the twisted steel and dust, but I could see enough to understand what everyone believed was happening.
They pulled someone out.
I have no way today to confirm exactly what I witnessed or what ultimately happened to that person, but at that moment we believed they had found a survivor.
The entire mountain of debris erupted in cheers.
For just a moment, there was hope.
It was one small victory in a search-and-rescue effort that wouldn’t end nearly as well as we wished.
We kept digging.
Eventually my arms were shaking so badly that I couldn’t continue. I was dehydrated, filthy and so tired I could barely stand.
There was no way in hell I could drive home.
Walking back toward my car, I passed Ladder 8.
Their trucks weren’t sitting inside. Mattresses had been laid across the floor where the apparatus normally parked. I found an empty one, laid down in my filthy flight suit and passed out.
I woke up to firefighters jumping over my head, grabbing equipment and running out the open doors.
Then I started hearing the construction equipment.
At first it seemed like it was getting louder and louder.
It wasn’t.
It had been running the entire time.
I had simply been too exhausted to hear it.
I probably slept five or six hours.
I got something to eat, drank some water and went back to digging.
The second day was more of the same.
Shovels.
Buckets.
Water.
Digging.
Wishing.
Hoping.
That night I finally decided to go home.
The drive home is one of the things I still think about constantly.
I headed north on I-95 toward Bridgeport, Connecticut. I was struggling to keep my eyes open and eventually pulled off at an exit looking for caffeine.
I walked into the first little deli I found and grabbed a couple of Coca-Colas.
My flight suit was ripped and filthy. I smelled like I hadn’t showered in a hundred years. And if lack of sleep had an odor, I smelled like that too.
Behind the counter was a little Italian woman with broken English.
She looked at me, smiled and said, “You look tired tonight.”
I put the Cokes on the counter and reached for my wallet.
I looked at her and started to say:
“I just came from…”
She immediately put her hand over my mouth.
She wouldn’t let me finish.
She looked at me and said:
“I know exactly where you came from.”
Then she came around that counter, grabbed me and hugged me with more strength than I could imagine coming from such a small woman.
She started crying.
She held onto me for what felt like five minutes.
I think, at that moment, that hug may have been the only thing holding me together.
She refused to charge me for the sodas. I left five dollars on the counter and walked back to my car.
I continued toward home.
I got off I-95 at Exit 25 in Bridgeport. I was about four blocks from my mother’s house when apparently I made a left turn against a red light.
I made it into her driveway before I saw red and blue lights behind me.
I remember sitting in the front seat of a Bridgeport police car giving the officer my information.
The next thing I remember was him telling me to wake up.
I had fallen asleep sitting there.
He told me to obey the red lights next time and sent me inside.
I slept like crap.
Every time I closed my eyes, the events just replayed.
They still do.
I spent the next couple of days driving back into what used to be the World Trade Center and doing the same thing.
Digging.
Wishing.
Hoping.
Crying.
Then the call came to report for duty.
Our unit was being deployed to Ground Zero.
About 20 to 25 of us went. We worked alongside members of the New York Army National Guard, establishing communications and perimeter security around the site.
Once the perimeter was established, at least two of us would work each street corner, keeping non-essential personnel out.
After the first day, we learned to carry napkins or tissues every time we worked a shift.
Not just because of the dust.
Because of the people.
One night, a gentleman came to the line with his little boy, probably three or four years old.
His wife had been inside the World Trade Center.
She was three or four months pregnant.
He just wanted to see the rubble.
He wanted to see the place where the mother of his little boy—and their unborn child—might remain forever because he knew he might never get to see her again.
Another night, a mother came with her three daughters.
They told me the entire story of the man they had lost.
They told me about the day he got his job at the World Trade Center. They told me how proud they were of him and how successful he had become.
And then they told me about the day the towers fell.
They had come to say goodbye.
Another gentleman came to the perimeter only about a month after marrying his bride.
Five days had passed since the towers came down.
He still believed she might be alive.
He still believed that one day she might walk back through their front door.
I don’t know if she ever did.
There were many more stories.
But those three have stayed with me as though they were told to me last night.
There was another night on perimeter security that has never left me.
Authorities had begun allowing some of the residents who lived near Ground Zero back into their apartments.
A young woman came toward my position. She was crying hysterically. She had something in one hand and was covering it tightly with the other.
She didn’t know what to do.
When she reached me, she still wouldn’t uncover what she was holding.
Eventually, I gently moved her hand away so I could see.
She was holding a computer circuit board.
Embedded in it was a small piece of human skull with about a one-inch patch of hair still attached.
From what we could tell, that circuit board had become debris during the collapse, passed through someone’s body and somehow ended up inside the kitchen of her apartment.
She had gone home and found it.
And now she was standing in front of me, holding it in her hands and crying.
There wasn’t anything I could say that was going to make that moment better.
We contacted local law enforcement. They took possession of it so it could be properly bagged, documented and handled.
Then I went back to my position.
That’s what those days were like.
You could be standing on a street corner doing perimeter security, and suddenly someone would walk into your life carrying a piece of September 11 that neither of you would ever forget.
After about a week of perimeter security, another airman from the C-130 side, Gerald, and I were given a different assignment.
Specialists from Verizon needed telephone lines installed throughout PS 89, an elementary school in Manhattan that was being used as part of the Ground Zero response.
Gerald and I probably installed more than 200 phone lines throughout those classrooms.
I don’t know exactly what happened with those phone lines after we left.
I just hope they helped.
In total, I spent about 30 days in Lower Manhattan after September 11.
It’s strange.
I remember that month like it happened yesterday.
And somehow, at the same time, it feels like it happened 100 years ago.
Every September since then has hit me hard.
And there honestly isn’t a single day that goes by when something from those 30 days doesn’t cross my mind.
For almost 25 years, most of this has stayed with me and only a few people close to me have heard the whole story.
Today I needed to finally tell it.
I wasn’t a firefighter.
I wasn’t a police officer.
I wasn’t one of the PJs performing rescue operations.
I was simply an Airman who watched his country get attacked, put on his uniform and went toward the smoke because there might be something I could do.
So I dug.
I passed buckets.
I stood the line.
I listened to families.
I ran telephone wire.
I cried.
And I hoped.
This isn’t the story of September 11.
There are thousands upon thousands of those stories.
This was my September 11.
