DR-1391-NY
9-25-2000
WA-TF1
HEROES RETURN HOME
NEW YORK – On the eve of the demobilization, Washington Task Force-1 (WATF-1) saluted the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) in a brief ceremony that honored the nation’s largest fire department for their loss of more than 300 firefighters.
Donald Henry, Jr., a technical search specialist with the FEMA Task Force and a firefighter with Seattle Fire, presented a bicentennial flag recovered from the collapsed Hotel Marriott, along with a helmet signed by all 62 members of the Seattle-based Task Force.
Washington is one of 20 FEMA Task Forces that have been working around-the-clock to support FDNY’s search and rescue efforts at the World Trade Center Complex in New York. This is the fourth time the Washington team has been deployed by FEMA.
Cheers and tears from crowds that line the streets of lower Manhattan greeted the rescue workers as they marched from the billowing smoke that continues to rise from wreckage of the World Trade Center.
