Now-Retired Apple Valley Firefighter Recalls Experiences in Post-9/11 New York

Diesel fuel and wet cement.

Those were the odors Stew Shepard smelled at Ground Zero in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when he was at the former site of the two World Trade Center towers that fell that day.

“It was just a very solemn place,” Shepard said.

Shepard and Michael Hammerstad, both Apple Valley firefighters at the time, traveled to New York during the October after 9/11 to assist with recovery efforts.

For two weeks, Shepard, who retired from the fire department two-and-a-half years ago, and Hammerstad took firefighters’ shifts, attended funerals and helped families of firefighters.

They also had a $60,000 donation in hand—raised through efforts by the —which they gave to one fire station there.

Shepard said he could tell many stories about things he saw and heard while he was in New York.

At one station, 14 firefighters died in rescue efforts at the World Trade Center site, he said; nobody was left to drive their fire truck back to the station.

In another instance, a firefighter had taken the shingles off his home’s roof, planning to finish the work the following week.

He never came home, Shepard said.

Shepard said many firefighters and their families didn’t get all the assistance they needed because they weren’t employed at the World Trade Center, Shepard said.

Meanwhile, firefighters who survived continued to work on cleanup at Ground Zero, attend funerals and pull regular shifts.  

“They were physically and emotionally exhausted,” Shepard said.

But in each fire station community, the firefighters embraced each other, he said.

“Everybody’s like a big family,” he said.

Shepard is still friends and corresponds with a few people he met while in New York. He still thinks about 9/11 and his experience often.

“It was life-changing,” he said, recalling the loss of life experienced by many people he met, as well as the close-knit, family atmosphere at the fire stations there.

He said he hopes the memory of 9/11 will cause people to treat others well, and also to think of the work firefighters do every day—not just locally, but throughout the nation and overseas in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It goes much further than just here,” Shepard said.

See the attached PDF—a presentation Stew Shepard created—for more photos and stories from Shepard's two weeks in New York.