Photo by Eric Tichy Matt Coon was 28 years old when he and a group of Chautauqua County residents traveled to New York City for a 24-hour shift to provide relief efforts after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Coon is pictured with a stuffed animal and hat he received while volunteering.

The images of so many memorials and missing person posters near Ground Zero in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in New York City remain etched into Sam Salemme’s memory.

“It’s hard to describe,” Salemme said. “In lower Manhattan, there were all these spots where families put up pictures and these makeshift memorials.”

Two weeks earlier on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Salemme — then a lieutenant with the Jamestown Fire Department — watched the nonstop television coverage of the attacks in which terrorists flew two planes into the World Trade Center, one into the Pentagon in Washington and another into a field in rural Pennsylvania killing 2,977 people.

“It was my day off, and like everyone else, my eyes were glued to the TV,” Salemme said.

For Matt Coon, the sight of fire trucks left abandoned and crushed after the Twin Towers had collapsed still stands out to him today.

“We were driving by vacant lots where there were pieces of fire equipment that were flattened by the collapse of the buildings,” he said. “That was one of the most striking things.”

Coon, currently the city’s deputy fire chief but in 2001 a 28-year-old firefighter, said he was in the middle of a vehicle inspection when he received word of a plane hitting the World Trade Center.

“When I finished having the car inspected I went straight home and, like the rest of America, was glued to the television to try to see the events as they unfolded in real time,” Coon said.

Salemme and Coon were among dozens from Chautauqua County who volunteered to assist in the days, weeks and months after the World Trade Center collapsed. Both were interviewed this week leading up to the 20th anniversary of 9/11 to recount what they experienced in New York City while the nation mourned.

A CALLING TO HELP

“Honestly, as a firefighter, you want to go down and help,” Salemme said.

As a firefighter himself, Coon understood the massive undertaking that was taking place at Ground Zero.

“From a firefighter’s perspective, your mind immediately goes to those firefighters that were there and the overwhelming sense of the task that they had in front of them,” he said.

Not long after the attacks, and as first responders were sought across the state, the chief of the Jamestown Fire Department put out a call for anyone interested in going to New York City to assist in relief efforts. A group that included Salemme and Coon drove in two ambulances to Manhattan on Sept. 24 and stayed for a 24-hour shift.

Even two weeks after the attacks, security was extremely tight as armed National Guardsmen dotted otherwise barren streets toward Ground Zero. After they arrived, the local group went to the Chelsea Piers, which had been established as the staging area for volunteer rescuers and medical staff.

They were later deployed to Battery Park, and each of the two crews utilizing the local ambulances were assigned to different posts.

“By that point it was a recovery effort, and we were tasked with relief efforts if a firefighter got injured or something,” Salemme said.

Coon’s crew, while inside the “hot zone,” were located next to the World Financial Center west of the World Trade Center complex. “My specific crew, we did not treat any of the firefighters,” he said. “We did treat some of the other workers that were there. We treated an iron worker that was there helping with the rescue effort.”

On their down time the group stayed aboard the USNS Comfort, a massive hospital ship that had sailed in to NYC after the attacks and served the first responders near Ground Zero.

It was while at the piers that Coon and other volunteers received a stuffed animal from the families of those rescued or killed in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma. Written on the tag of the animal Coon received was “God bless. We love you.” He also received a hat with the USNS Comfort on it.

Coon, who was touched by the gesture at the time, has kept both items.

A ‘SURREAL FEELING’

For both Coon and Salemme, the memories of the relief effort remain just as vivid 20 years later.

“The smell of the burning fires is embedded in my head,” Salemme said, “and for just blocks the pictures for missing people and memorials on the sidewalks for those who wanted to know where their loved ones were.”

He added, “It was a surreal feeling, lower Manhattan — driving the wrong way on a one-way street. And just looking at the firefighters, the FDNY, and how tired they were. Not just the firefighters, the police department and port authority, just all the workers and how hard they were working.”

Coon recalled the appreciation they received.

“It was a very surreal experience.” he said. “When we were driving back out, I remember Sam was actually driving the ambulance and I was sitting on the passenger side and the other crew members were in the back. And when we drove out on the West Side Highway there were all these people. It was in the middle of the night, and all these people were lining the streets cheering. They all had signs. It was amazing to me — it was the middle of the night and there were hundreds of people on both sides of the road.”

Since that volunteer effort, Salemme and Coon have been back to New York City. Both have also visited the 9/11 Memorial & Museum, located at the World Trade Center site and which commemorates the 2001 terrorist attacks and 1993 bombing at the same location.

Salemme, who went on to become deputy fire chief before his retirement last year, called the experience at the 9/11 memorial sobering. “There were no words to describe what it was like,” he said.