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a Federal Emergency Management Agency’s New York task force. Al Fuentes’s life ended and With that team, he worked resbegan anew on one single day: cue missions in the Dominican Sept. 11, 2001, now two decades Republic, Puerto Rico and Oklaago. homa City. He was well prepared Fuentes, of Long Beach, then for disaster, but nothing like the a captain and acting battalion worst terrorist attack on Americhief in the New York Fire can soil, which took the lives of Department in about 3,000 people in charge of its Marine the twin towers. Division, had a habit Fuentes jumped of reporting to work aboard a fire rescue early, and he did so boat, and he and a that day. crew headed for the Not long after, his towers. He got to secretary rushed Lower Manhattan into his office at the and was immediateBrooklyn Navy Yard, ly struck by a chaotwhich was “close Al FuENTES ic scene: Smoke, ash enough to touch” the Retired NYFD and dust swirled twin towers, Fuentes captain about him from the recalled. debris that fell off “She said, ‘Capthe North Tower, tain, a plane hit one of the tow- which was struck at 8:46 a.m. ers,’” Fuentes recalled. “My People were screaming hysterimmediate response was that ically and running from the towthere were hundreds of floors in ers. Fuentes turned around, and that tower.” over one of his shoulders, he saw “My thought was, What can a commercial airliner. It was a we do for the civilians?” Boeing 767—United Airlines Under his command were Flight 175—that appeared out of three large boats and several the sky. At 9:03 a.m., it turned smaller ones, and about 100 fire- sharply toward the World Trade fighters. Fuentes, then 50, had Center, slicing into the South spent most of his career in elite Tower between the 77th and 85th rescue units, and became part of Continued on page 11
By JAMES BERNSTEiN jbernstein@liherald.com
Courtesy Long Beach Police Department
Former NYPD officer felt ‘sense of duty’ on 9/11 jbernstein@liherald.com
On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Rich DePalma was a 26-year-old New York City police officer assigned to the 6th precinct in Greenwich Village. He was off duty that day. Soon after he woke up, he turned on the news. “I saw what was happening,” he said of the attacks on the World Trade Center in
l
A firefighter recalls 9/11 pain, struggle
RiCH DEPAlMA, Now a Long Beach police inspector, was a New York City police officer on 9/11, a day that remains with him 20 years later.
By JAMES BERNSTEiN
save.
Lower Manhattan and the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. He saw one commercial airliner hit one of the towers. “I got in my car,” he said, and raced to the precinct stationhouse. He was immediately assigned to assist in any way he could at what is now Saint Vincent Catholic Medical Center. He was to help conduct triage — the assignment of degrees of urgency to wounds or illness. But, he
said, there was nothing to do at the hospital. “There were no survivors,” he said in an interview last week. DePalma left the NYPD in 2002 and joined the Long Beach Police Department, where he is now an inspector as well as the department’s executive officer. DePalma said these days, he does not watch television programs Continued on page 4
Your Health Family Wellness Inside
T
hey did not die as victims. They died as heroes.