Husband and wife firefighters Keith and Heather Macy remember vividly the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

For many Americans, the event hit home because their home country was attacked. For them, it hit home because they had lost “some brother and sister firefighters and EMS workers,” says Keith Macy.

“We’re hundreds of miles away from each other, but we’re still one big family,” says Keith Macy, who has worked as a firefighter for 30 years and as a paramedic for 26 years. Until recently, he served as the chief of the Jonesville Fire Department.

“It hit home that day that this is a dangerous job,” he said. “You know the danger’s there, and you do everything you can to stay safe.”

Almost 3,000 people were killed during the Sept. 11 attacks. Some of the most memorable scenes are of bodies being thrown from the World Trade Center, or the planes crashing into the towers.

But white-collared civilians weren’t the only ones who died.

A total of 411 emergency workers who responded to the Sept. 11 disaster died trying to rescue the victims. The majority of those – 341 – were members of the New York City Fire Department, according to a 2002 New York Times article. The rest were police officers, paramedics or other first responders.

Another 500 firefighters who survived the attacks had to retire early because of the exposure, according to the same New York Times article.

Jonesville and Elkin are about 600 miles away from New York City, and a terrorist attack may seem highly unlikely in Northwestern North Carolina. But as bigger cities have ramped up security measures and emergency personnel have worked harder to improve their response systems, terrorists are aware of the improved security measures, says Heather Macy. Some may think that rural areas are higher targets, she adds.

Even towns such as Jonesville and Elkin must be prepared for terrorists attacks. Just two weeks ago, the Jonesville Fire Department worked with other agencies to simulate their response to an attack. Under one simulated scenario, a terrorist has stolen a truck full of hazardous materials. Under another scenario, they had to simulate their response to a fire at the Starmount Shopping Center.

The first responders must enact the scenario and be knowledgeable about the surroundings. For example, they need to know what fire hydrants they can access, and they need to prevent the “fire” from reaching the trucks behind the Pepsi Bottling Company, and they need to be sure they can handle the load in case the whole shopping center catches on fire.

“We have to do a lot of pre-planning,” Heather Macy says.

Both Heather and Keith say they don’t always think about the danger they could encounter when they get a call.

They realize the potential danger, but they don’t dwell on it.

“Me personally, I know going in what the risks are, doing this day to day when the pager goes off,” Heather Macy says. “You never can be 100 percent prepared other than your training. What may seem like nothing to begin with can turn dangerous into a matter of moments… You really don’t think about it a whole lot. Because if you sit and think about it for a while, you start making mistakes.”

Usually, the calls aren’t dangerous, but they do disrupt their lives.

“The running joke that we have, I don’t get a call until I’m ready to eat,” Keith says.

He also has to be alert immediately – regardless of what time he receives the call.

Keith is a volunteer firefighter and a full-time paramedic. Both jobs present their own challenges, but the job of paramedic is often more likely to be under-appreciated, he says.

“We’re expected to go from that (being asleep) to wide awake in three minutes,” he says. “We’ve now still got to get our minds open to think about drug dosages or what to do in other situations… We work right beside the fire department and police department. We have our own (things) that stress. More of ours is mental.”

If there’s a wreck and someone is injured inside several tangled vehicles, the paramedics need to get inside the vehicle.

“We have to go in there with the patient – maybe stand in there on our heads,” he says.

But there are also the rewarding aspects of being first responders.

Heather Macy says she enjoys being able to go to schools and teach fire-safety tips to the children.

“Kids run up to you and say, ‘There’s the fire lady.’ They don’t know your name, but they know who you are,” she says. “They start rattling off the safety tips, which is really cool.”

She also says she feels confident working with other well-trained firefighters.

“I’m secure in knowing that the people I work with are trained to the best of their abilities,” she says.

And for Keith Macy, even though he’s 600 miles away from the firefighters in New York City and 2,500 miles away from the first responders in Los Angeles, he feels a camaraderie with them – even if he hasn’t ever met them.

Heather says she remembers praying for the firefighters on Sept. 11.

And even though she says she can’t imagine the hardship their families went through, she understood why those 400-plus first responders made that fateful decision 10 years ago.

“You know they were doing that because that’s what they were meant to do,” she says.

‘This is a dangerous job’

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