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This article written by Jeremy Warren courtesy of the Star Phoenix
Two names were added to a Saskatoon firefighters memorial as retired and active members joined the public to remember the rescue and recovery efforts of emergency responders in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001.
Since 2003, the local firefighters union has used Sept. 11 as a day to remember both its local members who died in the line of duty and the firefighters and other emergency responders who died in the attack on the World Trade Center towers. On that day, 343 firefighters and paramedics, 21 New York police officers and 37 Port Authority police officers were killed at the World Trade Center site.
Nine names of Saskatoon firefighters have been added to the memorial at the No. 6 station on Taylor Street since 2003, said International Association of Fire Fighters Local 80 president Bruce Siemens.
"It's a difficult day sometimes," Siemens said after the memorial ceremony on Sunday morning. "You don't always realize the impact the job has on families - these are fathers and sons. But people need to know what firefighters risk every day."
Local firefighters, the public and politicians representing civic, provincial and federal governments gathered at the memorial event before 8 a.m. The crowd held a moment of silence at 7: 58 a.m., the time at which the first tower collapsed, and then again at 8: 28 a.m., when the second tower fell.
Captains Elvin Mierau and Werner Bauer were added to the memorial on Sunday. Both died from cancer related to their jobs. Siemens calls cancer the "silent bullet" that kills firefighters, but he said the deaths are no less heroic just because they didn't die in a blaze or rescuing people from a burning building.
"When people die in service to their city, province or country, you can't forget what they've done," Siemens said.
"Firefighters are one of the first lines of defence when responding to incidents - not just fires but a bridge collapse, a river rescue or mass shooting. All-hazard response is what we do and 9-11 brought that out."
Family members of both men were on hand for the ceremony. Mierau's family said the provincial government's recognition of cancer as something that can be caused by a firefighter's work - an issue for some responders who were involved with rescue and recovery operations at Ground Zero in New York - was an important decision.
"The fact that it's recognized that his cancer was work-related helped to really take care of him later in life," said Mierau's sister Dorothy Shillington after the ceremony.
Any bit of comfort is good for firefighter families, she added.
"He went to work, did his job and came home," Shillington said. "When you stopped to think about what he did, you never knew what fire he was going to or if was coming back."
Several politicians spoke to the crowd in between moments of silence. Mayor Don Atchison talked about the sacrifice made by firefighters to protect their communities.
"So often we hear about firefighters running into disaster and it's hard to comprehend them going in while we're going out," Atchison said. "There are men and women out there looking after us each and every day. It's important to thank them."
Michele Rajput, an American-born epidemiologist living in Saskatoon, came to Sunday's memorial to give her support for the front-line emergency workers.
"We forget that they're always waiting to take care of us," she said.
A memorial held in a small Canadian city more than 3,000 kilometres away from New York is just as important as any U.S. event remembering the 9-11 tragedy, Rajput said.
"For a while, but not so much lately, it seemed Canadians defined themselves by not being American," Rajput said. "This makes it feel like we're all in the same community, like the attacks weren't just on America. It was on Western democracies and freedom and liberty."
http://www.thestarphoenix.com/news/9-11-anniversary/Firefighters+honour+fallen+colleagues/5386693/story.html#ixzz1Y1s5Qykp
Click read more option for more pictures. All pictures courtesy of Greg Pender
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