By Chief Thomas E. Kost
Executive Director, Suffolk County Fire Academy
August 11, 2006

 It has been five years since that tragic day September 11, 2001. Working here at the Fire Academy has made it impossible to forget what happened on that infamous date. There are reminders all over the building that let us know of the sacrifices that were made on that day by many uniformed and civilian heroes. We lost two of the finest individuals you would ever want to meet. They were firefighters, husbands, fathers and overall good citizens of their communities.  

To put what happened that day into its proper perspective, we witnessed the most successful rescue operation in the history of the fire service. Our heroes evacuated approximately 25,000 civilians from the twin towers alone. You probably want to know why they put themselves in harms way. To make a long story short, they did it because they are firefighters. Firefighters are a special breed of people that run into a building when everyone else is trying to run out. They risk their lives on a daily basis and sometimes they make the supreme sacrifice. They are fathers, mothers, sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, nephews, nieces etc. just like you and me.  

What is disturbing and must be stopped is, people all over our great country are starting to forget what happened on that date. I have traveled around our country and it seems 9/11 never happened in some of those places. We must remember that we were attacked by a group of terrorists who murdered almost 3,000 people. We must never forget that they will do it again and again if we allow ourselves to forget. We must be vigilant and prepared to handle every situation that these murderers can dream up and throw at us. We can only do this if we train ourselves to recognize, analyze and take the appropriate actions to mitigate a wide variety of potential attacks. The most important thing we can and must do is “NOT FORGET OUR HEROES AND THE VICTIMS of  9/11”.