Working alongside fellow firefighters, an emotional storm struck Rudy Alvarado as he dug through the smoky rubble, looking for innocent victims and fallen heroes amid the loud noises of heavy machinery.

First came the surge of heated hostility and then the painful sadness.

But then he quickly shook off his strong feelings and focused on the task at hand.

His job: “Go through the rubble and find people, find what we could,” he said.

The former Redmond fire captain, along with four other Redmond fire personnel — Tom Langton, Stacey Baker, Mike Curtis and LaFond Davis — were part of the recovery efforts following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 in New York.

Alvarado is now retired after 33 years with the Redmond Fire Department (RFD). Langton, now a captain, along with Baker and Davis, who are paramedics, still work for RFD and Curtis now serves for the Phoenix Fire Department.

The emotional memories of their efforts will never fade and always seem to flood back this time of year.

“That first night of work, the feeling that went through my body went from very angry to very sad, then I went into rescue mode,” said Alvarado, 59.

He said digging through the 16 acres of rubble was difficult, especially when he found a member of the firefighter family beneath the broken buildings.

“You feel the lowest level of sadness you can feel,” he said.

Langton said the level of destruction was something he had never seen before.

“It was 16 acres of utter destruction,” he said.

Langton, a logistics section chief at Ground Zero, said he didn’t allow his emotions to interfere with his work, but one early morning as he was driving to work, he couldn’t help from breaking down. At 3 a.m. in the pouring rain, he drove past a group of people cheering on the recovery crew, hoping they would find more people.

“People would cheer your efforts at all hours of the day,” he said. “They were maintaining hope, hoping somehow, some way we would be able to find their family member or friend. It just overwhelmed me with the amount of hope people had.”

It’s an experience that continues to have a profound impact on all the firefighters involved in the recovery efforts, just as it does for millions of Americans shaken by the 9/11 disaster.

“It definitely all comes flooding back this time of year,” Langton said of the memories. “But it reminds me what we are all about. … It reminded us we have a common purpose in this thing called freedom and sometimes we have to pay a really big price to maintain it.”

NATIONAL TASK FORCE

Alvarado and Langton, along with Baker and Curtis, were deployed to New York on Sept. 18, 2001 as members of the state’s Urban Search and Rescue Task Force (WATF-1), which is part of collection of nationwide teams that respond to large-scale disasters. Davis, a Redmond firefighter and dog handler, and his dog, Sunny, were deployed to New York before that and worked with a team from Arizona, according to Langton.

Alvarado was in Tacoma getting ready to teach a rescue class for disaster first-responders when he saw terrorist attacks on television. He couldn’t believe what he saw and he knew right then and there that his task force would soon be deployed to Ground Zero.

Alvarado, who worked the night shift, said the recovery work was an “emotional roller coaster.” One day he was digging through rubble, looking for bodies and another day he was being served lunch by Sigourney Weaver and meeting David Letterman.

Alvarado talked highly of his fellow firefighters and the unified recovery effort, calling his work at Ground Zero “an honor.”

“I saw what America is really about,” said Alvarado, who frequently wore a red, white and blue bandanna on his head during his service at Ground Zero. “Like any disaster, our true colors came out. That red, white and blue came out strong.”

MOMENT OF REMEMBRANCE

Redmond officials are asking residents to take to take a moment out of their Sunday morning to remember the lost lives and heroism of the 9/11 tragedy 10 years ago.

The Redmond City Council approved a resolution at Tuesday night’s meeting at City Hall encouraging all residents to commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks by observing a moment of remembrance at 10 a.m..

The resolution asks all residents to stop all work or other activity for at least one minute.

“Cities are being called upon to ring bells and sound sirens for one minute … This will serve as a signal for people to stop and remember the people we lost and demonstrate the perseverance the American people have shown since that day,” Redmond Mayor John Marchione wrote in a Tuesday memo to City Council members.

Redmond Police Chief Ron Gibson said 9/11 changed the face of public safety forever.

“Now public safety in our country is thought of as the first line of defense in protecting our communities from not only criminal acts but acts of terrorism. … Public safety employees are now responsible for being prepared for everything from community care taking efforts with little or no criminal nexus to acts of international terrorism. This can be a very challenging mandate for our public safety professionals,” Gibson said.

Redmond Fire Chief Kevin Donnelly agreed, saying that while the arena of public safety has expanded, so too has the “awareness by the public of the role they must play in prevention and preparedness.”

Donnelly said the country has become stronger in the face of this tragedy.

“I am convinced that as a whole we are better prepared now than we were in September 2001,” Donnelly said. “That is not to say that all risk has been eliminated, but we are better prepared to collectively respond to emergencies, largely because of the awareness following the 9/11 tragedy.”