A Fire Fighter Remembers
The town of Paradise was still sleeping when he was driving to work.
The Poe Fire had been burning for five days now, since Sept. 6, and Cal Fire Division Chief Mike Santuccio was headed to the morning briefing.
At 5:30 a.m. everything was dark and the only sound through the night was the music coming from the radio in his truck.
While driving down Clark road the music stopped and a voice came on to announce that an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center. The details were unclear, but Santuccio knew that the firefighters in New York were dealing with something much bigger than the Poe Fire.
The Life of an Army Soldier after 9/11
The night was as hot as a fever, 105 degrees. Too hot for 2:30 a.m.
It was May 15, 2003 and Tom McGuire spent 2 days traveling on a Boeing 747 from Travis Air Force Base to his camp in Kuwait. When he arrived, a lunar eclipse greeted McGuire and his unit. It felt like a sign.
Since Sept. 11 McGuire embarked on a journey that was part hell and part divine intervention. He was the only soldier selected from his original unit to be deployed, both a compliment and a curse. He lived amongst death and ruin, but somehow he still feels like he was blessed.
“I should have seen angels four times,” he said. “Prayer works in mysterious ways.”
