Every Fire Station in Los Angeles stood at attention and saluted the flag at 5 pm on Saturday.  Of all the LAFD stations number 88 has the strongest connection to Ground Zero. On September 11, 2001 Urban Search and Rescue California Task Force 1 responded out of fire station 88; the first urban search and rescue team called to action.

“We went for 10 days,” said Hollyn Bullock, one of the CA-TF1 members who helped with search and rescue at ground zero. Bullock let FDNY know that they were there to support them in whatever was needed and her team did exactly that.

Now, 9 years after the September 11th terrorist attacks, Los Angeles Fire Dept. fire station 88 held its remembrance ceremony for fallen firefighters in what could be a necessary reminder of the pain, heroism and unity that existed on September 11, 2001.

Candy Clemente who attended the ceremony said, “it’s not about politics, it’s not about religion, and it’s not about who’s right and who’s wrong. It’s to remember the lives of the lost. That’s, to me, what 9/11 was about.”

Clemente was bothered by the focus on politics and the potential Park51 mosque being built in New York City this year. She says people might have forgotten the pain that was caused on that tragic day. Pain that she still carries with her.

Brad Burlingame, brother of American Flight 77’s Captain Charles “Chic” Burlingame whose plane crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11, said, “in the days after September 11th what I will never forget is the fire trucks. The American flags flying on those trucks.”

Burlingame added: “I hope when I see firefighters that my neighbors are as grateful to them now as we were then… it’s that sense of unity that I wish we could restore every single day.”

Assistant Fire Chief Patrick Butler, reminded attendants of the ceremony, “we should never ever have that mindset that nothing could happen to us.” Butler said that such a mindset makes Americans complacent and leaves the U.S. vulnerable to such attacks.

Burlingame said fire station 88 was special to him because “this is, as far as I know, in southern California, the only memorial that has a piece of the Pentagon.”