‘We can never forget’ 9/11: Las Vegas fire station honors victims — PHOTOS
For the past dozen years, New York City resident Patti McCabe and her husband, Frank, have made it a point to attend the 9/11 remembrance gathering at Fire Station 5 in west Las Vegas.
True to form, the McCabes were front and center at Thursday morning’s “tolling of the bells” ceremony at the station, which started promptly at 6:45 a.m., right about the time when the World Trade Center’s south tower began to collapse in Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001.
“We started coming to Las Vegas in 1981,” Patti McCabe said. “I wanted to observe other (9/11) ceremonies, and my husband said, ‘let’s go away to your favorite place, Las Vegas.’ I called the fire department here and talked to Tim’s assistant, and she said to come here and be a part of the ceremony here. So, this started to be the place where we spend Sept. 11 every year.”
Tim Szymanski, a longtime Las Vegas Fire and Rescue spokesman who retired in 2022, still presides over the annual 9/11 remembrance ceremony at Fire Station 5.
Las Vegas has been holding the annual ceremony every year since 2004, which is when the city received a flag that once flew over the World Trade Center from New York City leaders.
On Thursday morning, like every other year, the flag was raised at the station before the ceremonial tolling of the bell, which was done by Szymanski. Several dozen fire and police personnel attended the event, which took place outside the station.
“As fire service people, there wasn’t much they could have done that day in New York,” Szymanski said. “That was a one-in-a-million-type of incident. It made us all a little bit more aware that bad things can happen. We can never forget what happened on 9/11.”
For Patti McCabe, who has worked in a number of roles for the Fire Department of New York for the past 25 years, the losses she felt on 9/11 years ago were personal.
“I lost a lot of friends,” she said. “We love coming to this because Tim and everyone else, they do such a great job with this ceremony.”
The terrorist attacks on 9/11 in New York, at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people.
The event at the fire station was just one of the 9/11 remembrance events that took place around the Las Vegas Valley.
Also Thursday morning, a ceremony took place to honor Barbara Edwards, a Palo Verde High School teacher who was a passenger on the flight that hit the Pentagon.
Contact Bryan Horwath at bhorwath@reviewjournal.com. Follow @BryanHorwath on X.
