A piece of limestone from the wall destroyed at the Pentagon during the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks was given to the Arlington County Fire Department Thursday to commemorate its rescue efforts immediately following the attack. Fire Station No. 5, where the ceremony was held, was home to the first emergency response team to be activated that day. It remains the first responder for the Pentagon.
The Joint Force Headquarters National Capital Region and U.S. Army Military District of Washington presented the department with an 800-pound piece of the Pentagon’s wall.
Arlington County Board Chairman Christopher Zimmerman said the
department’s reaction to the American Airlines Flight 77 crash into the Pentagon at 9:37 a.m. that day still serves as a model of what cooperation can do.
“It’s hard to believe it’s been so long,” Zimmerman said. He said the subject of Sept. 11 comes up more often than he would expect in issues outside emergency preparedness, such as transportation and health care.
Since the attack the stone was kept at Fort McNair, where it recently was cut into three pieces. Two more ceremonies for the FBI Washington Field Office and the New York City Fire Department will be held soon. The Arlington stone will bear a 10-inch pentagon-shaped plate, shielded by the metal diamond-plate sheet that protects fire trucks, with a damaged left side symbolizing the blow to the Pentagon.
The block will combine with the 13-foot, 1,200-pound steel beam from the World Trade Center, donated last summer by the New York City Fire Department, to commemorate both the 184 lives lost at the Pentagon and the unique, unplanned collaborative efforts of local and national rescue forces.
“It was a rare instance of national cooperation,” said James Jackson, then the commanding general of the U.S. Army Military District of Washington.
After the presentation, 150 firefighters, military personnel and public officials exchanged handshakes and hugs as the U.S. Army Brass Quintet played “Auld Lang Syne.”
Arlington County Fire Department Chief James Schwartz, who led the fire crew on Sept. 11, said the cooperation that day “cut through the bounds of bureaucracy.”
