SF Fire Chief Dean Crispen Recalls Joining the 9/11 Recovery Effort at Ground Zero

San Francisco Fire Chief Dean Crispen was a 32-year-old firefighter with about a decade of experience when four planes were hijacked on September 11, 2001, and he was one of a battalion of local firefighters who flew to New York City to help with he recovery effort at Ground Zero in the days that followed.

You may not be aware that inside the San Francisco Fire Department headquarters, there is a piece of mangled steel, now showing some rust, that came from the rubble at Ground Zero, kept in a glass case beside a commemorative photograph of the Twin Towers and a small exhibit about the 343 firefighters who lost their lives responding to the disaster.

"It brings you right back," Crispen tells KPIX, regarding the hunk of metal that he sees nearly every day at work, adding that it is "incredibly sad, incredibly emotional" to think back on that day. "But steel is very strong. And so is the United States, so is the fire service," Crispen says.

Crispen joined a group of ten other San Francisco firefighters who flew to New York immediately after the towers fell to help their New York brethren with the recovery effort. They spent eight days at Ground Zero, volunteering.

"As soon as we got there, the battalion chief from New York grabbed us and said 'Hey, go over here, here's what I need you to do,' and gave us about six or seven structures and said what he wanted us to do, what he wanted us to look out for, and what to do if we were to find a firefighter's body," Crispen says, speaking to KPIX.

He added that he recognized the "incredible amount of fortitude" it took for members of the FDNY to be digging through the rubble for their colleagues, and in some cases, friends or family members.

Crispen appeared emotional in his KPIX interview, talking about the journal that he kept during his eight days in New York in September 2001, a journal that he says he hasn't looked at in 25 years. "In some ways, it's a defense mechanism," he said. "Keeping things a little bit foggy about what happened may be a kind of coping mechanism for myself. Once I see every little piece of it, I'm a little bit fearful about going right back to that scene, and being hit by [it]."

Dozens of Bay Area civilians also died in the attack when they went down with United Flight 93 in Shanksville, Pennsylvania — on a plane out of Newark that was bound for SFO, and was tracking toward Washington, DC, where it was allegedly going to strike the White House or the US Capitol Building.

The Chronicle has a piece today about the various memorials to passengers on Flight 93 around the Bay Area and beyond — including the visitors' center at the Humboldt Bay National Wildlife Refuge that now bears the name of Richard Guadagno, whose Fish & Wildlife badge was found near the cockpit in the plane's rubble, suggesting he was part of the counterattack against the hijackers that ultimately led to the hijacking pilot nosediving into a field rather than allowing the passengers to take control.

The most famous names among those counterattackers became Mark Bingham, the openly gay Cal rugby player and member of SF's gay rugby team the Fog, and Todd Beamer, who was heard saying "Let's roll" before the group of men began their fight back against the hijackers. It's believed that Tom Burnett and Jeremy Glick also took part, but likely others did as well.

"I liken them to the minutemen of 1776 — they acted to save lives," says Jack Grandcolas, who lost his wife Lauren on Flight 93 that day, speaking to the Chronicle. "History should represent that in a more important way, because it signifies the melting pot of this country and uniting together. It probably was the fastest resistance in our country’s history."

Related: Group of Bay Area Firefighters Depart On Cross-Country Bike Trip to Mark 20th Anniversary of 9/11