September 11, 2026
Kristin Hunt/PhillyVoice
John O'Neill, a Philadelphia fire battalion chief who joined the rescue crews at Ground Zero after 9/11, shares memories of the tragedy during a ceremony honoring city workers dispatched to the scene.
One image has stayed with John O'Neill in the 25 years since the Sept. 11 attacks. The Philadelphia fire battalion chief, who was dispatched to Ground Zero to aid in the emergency response, remembers stepping onto the scene his first day and feeling like he'd entered a blizzard.
"It looked like it had just snowed," he said. "The white of the pulverized concrete in the building showered every spot you looked. The only thing that was not was the sunshine in the sky. ... The concrete and the steel all around us was white. The firefighters, the police officers. All the other responders were covered white because they wouldn't leave the area."
MORE: Skill games could be seized from Pa. businesses in October, state police warn
O'Neill reflected on his experiences inside the Fireman's Hall Museum on Friday afternoon as Mayor Cherelle Parker honored Philadelphia's 9/11 responders for their bravery with a plaque bearing each of their names. It will hang in City Hall.
O'Neill was one of 34 city firefighters, police officers and housing authority workers deployed to Manhattan in the wake of the 2001 terrorist attacks, which killed 2,977 people in New York City, Washington and Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Thousands more died in the years afterward as residents and emergency workers developed fatal medical conditions.
Craig Murphy, a retired fire commissioner, recalled the same concrete dust blanketing the roads and spires of Manhattan, but also the smell of fire still burning underneath the rubble. His usual mode of operation, he said, was useless in this context.
"As firefighters, we are trained to establish an orientation at any collapse," Murphy explained. "We identify landmarks, we create sectors and divisions. We bring order to chaos. But at the World Trade Center, those landmarks were gone.
"I remember looking at this enormous debris and thinking, where's the front? Where's the back? What floor is which? The buildings themselves no longer existed."
The scene posed numerous dangers, among them the partially collapsed and unstable structures that remained. When engineers identified a potential hazard, retired police sergeant Greg Masi recalled, they'd sound a horn to alert everyone to clear the scene. A different horn blared when the responders identified a potential sign of life. The worst was the third horn, indicating the discovery of human remains.
The outpouring of public support helped carry the responders through these dark days. Thousands of New Yorkers stood along the West Side Highway to cheer on the caravan of emergency vehicles traveling to Ground Zero each day, Murphy said. They waved flags and held signs reading, "Good luck" and "Be careful."
"These were people whose city had just been attacked," he continued. "People who had lost friends, co-workers and family members — or who still did not know whether someone they loved was coming home. Yet they stood there to encourage us. We were going to support them. But every morning, they gave us strength in return. And when we saw these faces, the mission became personal."
As the men acknowledged, a growing share of the U.S. population has no memories of the Sept. 11 attacks. Census data indicates that roughly one third of the country either wasn't born yet or is too young to remember anything. But as these younger Americans learn about that time and those who lived it reflect on it, Philadelphia's first responders hope they feel a sense of community and unity.
"On 9/12, something I witnessed that I probably have not seen it since then, I've never seen a wave of patriotism in our country between everybody," Masi said. "It didn't matter what race you were, what gender, what your political beliefs were, what your religious beliefs were. Everybody came together.
"People ask me, 'Do you think you'll ever see another 9/11? And I say, 'I hope not, but I'd rather see a 9/12 any day of the week.'"
Follow Kristin & PhillyVoice on Twitter: @kristin_hunt
| @thePhillyVoice
Like us on Facebook: PhillyVoice
Have a news tip? Let us know.
