On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Barrie Fire Department Acting Platoon Chief Jeff Noble was driving to his home in Orillia when he received a phone call from his mother informing him that a plane had just hit the World Trade Center in New York City.
As soon as he got home, Noble turned on the TV and, like the rest of the world, watched in horror as America fell under attack.
Immediately, Noble’s highrise firefighter instincts kicked in and he started strategizing on how New York’s bravest might begin fighting a fire that was nearly 110 storeys high.
“You can’t take elevators, so those guys are going to have to take the stairs with all their equipment. Before even fighting the fire, these guys are going to be exhausted from climbing up there,” Noble remembers thinking.
“As it progressed, I thought there is no way they are going to be able to put this out from inside. All I could think about was they should have these guys retreat and get back downstairs before anything else could happen,” he recalled.
As that thought came to Noble's mind, the South Tower collapsed to the streets below.
“I knew right away that there were firefighters in there still trying to save civilians, trying to fight the fire, trying to go about their work," he said.
The images of firefighters running into the Twin Towers, knowing they might not ever come back out, still haunts Noble. Of the 2,974 victims who died on 9/11, 343 of them were New York City firefighters.
“I’ve kept those guys very dear to my heart ever since. They are so brave for what they did,” Noble said.
After watching the devastation unfold, Barrie firefighters knew help was needed at Ground Zero. Four Barrie firefighters immediately jumped into their vehicle with bunker gear and made the nearly nine-hour drive to the heart of the chaos.
“We were all biting at the bit. Every one of us wanted to go down. To sit there and see those guys helpless, trapped in the rubble, guys trying to dig through the rubble, they needed help and we wanted to go help immediately,” Noble said.
Just a few days removed from the attacks, Barrie businessman Jamie Massie arranged for a group of 18 Barrie firefighters, including Noble, to fly down to Ground Zero on a company-owned airplane. They had to be granted special air-space access to make the journey as, essentially, the skies were closed following the attacks.
During the trip to New York, the eager-to-help Noble became fearful there could be other attacks, maybe planted explosive devices; there was a danger and uncertainty ahead for the visiting firefighters.
“We tried to push that to the back of our mind because the firefighter in us needed to kick in so we could go and help our brothers and sisters no matter what the dangers were,” Noble said.
Once they landed in New York City, the platoon of Barrie firefighters made their way to a fire station that was close to where the Twin Towers once stood tall and proud.
“We stopped and talked to the crew and you could see that it was like they had been punched in the stomach numerous times. There was such a somber mood with them and at the same time, they were so thankful to see us come and offer our assistance,” Noble recalls.
“We told them, 'Don’t thank us. We should be thanking you guys for the job you have been doing, going above and beyond despite what you’ve endured already.'”
The next stop before arriving at Ground Zero was the secured fencing along the perimeter of the area that was being put up to keep people away from the world's largest crime scene.
Noble and the crew were asked to show ID and passports to confirm they were legitimate first-responders and were there to assist in the search-and-rescue mission.
“When we got past the gate, it took the breath right out of me. We could see the yellowish-green smoke in the distance, it permeated everything that was down there,” Noble vividly remembers.
As the firefighters got closer to the destruction, Noble’s heart started racing faster and faster, he says.
Once they arrived, he felt sick.
“I couldn’t believe what I was witnessing ... it didn’t look real, it looked like an absolute war zone…it was a war zone,” Noble said.
“The enormity of what took place wasn’t even close to what you saw on TV. There was blocks of twisted metal, debris and devastation. It was unfathomable.”
The Barrie firefighters were tasked with looking through the debris for trapped victims which Noble likened to looking for a needle in a haystack.
“The debris was crazy, the way it was pilled and how deep it was. It was dangerous to be walking around,” Noble said.
The atmosphere at Ground Zero during the search-and-rescue reflected the pain that had been suffered just days earlier.
“It was eerie quiet. It was warm and the stench wasn’t a typical fire smell, it had a real strong pungent smell to it. I can honestly still smell the smells from 9/11 today and it takes me back,” Noble said.
“The thing that got every one of us was the twisted steel ... it looked like Twizzlers; it was like someone had taken all the metal and bent and twisted it like it was plastic. We couldn’t believe it.”
Suddenly, the search had come to a standstill as just a short distance away two firefighters and a police officer were found in an elevator shaft. Unfortunately, they were located too late.
New York City first-responders pried them out from underneath the rubble and covered them with an American flag, then a lined formed where they were saluted as they crossed over the rubble and were taken away from Ground Zero.
“That was quite the experience seeing how they take care of their own. You hear about the bond of firefighters and wow, we saw it first-hand that day,” Noble said
After working for hours without finding any survivors, Noble and the crew headed to a small church nearby that was being used as a headquarters for workers to get some rest and move away from the overwhelming emotions at Ground Zero.
“There were firefighters sleeping on the pews. They were beaten up from numerous days of working in the rubble. The sombre feeling was so overwhelming in that church, it’s something I’ll never forget. Looking at the faces of those firefighters who knew their brothers and sisters were still buried, it was such a humbling experience,” Noble says.
During their visit, the Barrie firefighters were asked to go and represent the brotherhood of firefighters by attending two funerals in midtown Manhattan. When New Yorkers saw the out of town firefighters walking up their streets, they stood on the sidewalk and applauded and people in their cars that were passing by honked their horns and waved.
“I thought, 'Wait a second, you guys went through the most tragic thing that has ever happened. We should be saluting you people and thanking you for your bravery and everything you’ve gone through, we should be clapping for you,'” Noble said.
After a long 24 hours of searching through the rubble, shedding lots of tears, and numerous life-changing and humbling experiences, it was time for the firefighters to return home.
“It was really quiet on the way home. You could have heard a pin drop,” Noble recalls.
“As days went on guys would start to open up a bit more and talk about it a little easier, but it did take some time before guys would talk about what they saw. There are a couple of guys for sure who I know have never said a word about it," said Noble.
The experience taught Noble many life lessons and he says it has made him a much better firefighter during the last 19 years of his 30-year career.
“It taught me to be more compassionate about the people we are trying to help out, and the desire to better myself as a firefighter grew. From that point on, I better equipped myself to protect my crew and I while working with any kind of emergency in a house or a building,” he said.
The biggest lesson that Noble took from 9/11 was that life is precious and no day should be taken for granted.
“When we got back home, I hugged my wife and my son like there was no tomorrow,. I just held them and I didn’t want to leave them. I just wanted to be with them. I cried in their arms and I couldn’t express enough to them how much I love them and how thankful I was to have a family to come home to,” he said.
Every year Noble uses the anniversary of 9/11 as an opportunity to reflect on the sadness that is in his heart from experiencing first-hand what the victims, survivors and their families went through on that fateful September day.
It’s also a day that Noble uses to celebrate and appreciate the gift of life as it’s his son Kaden’s birthday.
(Special thanks to the Orillia Public Library who assisted with research for this story.)
