DENVER — This Sunday marks 21 years since the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, a day that changed the country forever.
Less than two weeks after the attacks, a group of local firefighters boarded a plane at Buckley Air Force Base headed to Ground Zero.
At the time, they were tasked with searching for survivors that they soon realized were not going to be found.
Longmont Fire Department firefighter Jack Davis was part of Task Force One, a Colorado based Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) search and rescue team.
His group was sent to the epicenter to search by a hand-and-bucket brigade in what became known as "the pile."
“When we were on the pile working we were still finding forks, knives and spoons, which means that was the restaurant on the top of that one tower," Davis said. "So all the other stuff was still in the ground. There was nothing bigger than a fist other than those big steel girders holding up the building, and they looked like twisted metal.”
Davis and his team worked 12-hour, overnight shifts for two weeks. Each morning before trying to get some rest, Davis would write down what he could remember.
“The piles are mind-boggling… total destruction… It was a long night we only found one piece of a body…what an unbelievable sight," he wrote after a long night at Ground Zero. "It's so massive. The power it took to bring these buildings down.”
Davis' time on the pile forever changed him.
“I have become a lot more tearful than I used to be," he said. "Things strike me totally different, just thinking about the firefighters that were in the tower when it came down, and to reflect because you never know when it's your time.”
Time that is never promised, something Davis knows more personally now.
“Recently, I was diagnosed with prostate cancer and evidently it's one of the top cancers for firefighters," he said.
Doctors believe his diagnosis is directly related to his time as a firefighter and his time on the pile.
“It was a life-changing scene," he said. "I don't think it changed me in a bad way, it changed me in a good way, being more realistic and living for the day.”
And despite all Davis saw and his recent cancer diagnosis, he said he wouldn't change a thing.
“I’d do it all over again," Davis said. "I worked for 25 years and I felt like I never worked a day in my life.”
Davis recently had surgery to remove his prostate. He is doing well and is expected to make a full recovery.
About 9,000 first responders who worked Ground Zero in the days and weeks after the attacks have been diagnosed with cancer. About 600 have died.
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