Wave Wire Services
LOS ANGELES — Mayor Eric Garcetti joined firefighters and police officers Sept. 11 in a remembrance ceremony of the 19th anniversary of 9/11, and he announced more than 4,000 meals will be delivered to first responders, firefighters and health care providers.
The meals will be provided by the nonprofit 9/11 Day, and representatives said meals will be delivered to 54 fire stations throughout Los Angeles.
“This is a day that is solemn, a day that every single year, we’ve usually come to Elysian Park, to the memorial to see one of the beams from the World Trade Center,” Garcetti said. “We all remember where we were. We all remember how it felt. We all remember the pain and the panic … and we know, too, the bravery of people who went into those heaps to find survivors.”
Garcetti was joined by Los Angeles Fire Department Chief Ralph Terrazas and Police Chief Michel Moore during the ceremony.
“As we speak, we do have firefighters up in Northern California fighting those brush fires,” Terrazas said. “We do have firefighters manning our COVID-19 test sites, and we have firefighters staffing all 106 fire stations throughout our city.
“For firefighters and police officers, this day has special meaning beyond the enormous grief this event created for so many people. The [adage] ‘We will never forget’ has become a normal part of our vocabulary, and when said, all firefighters know that it refers to 9/11.”
Terrazas said during years when there hasn’t been a pandemic, Los Angeles firefighters and police officers gather in front of the Frank Hotchkin Memorial Training Center in Elysian Park for the 9/11 memorial, where there is a 23-ton steel beam from the south World Trade Center building that was struck by a plane 19 years ago.
“Whether you are Christian or Jew, Muslim, Sikh, Hindu, we would not let this event be defined by any one … act against us, and instead would show our values as this very country that we are,” Moore said.
According to a Sept. 3 news release, 9/11 Day is also teaming up with Chef Jose Andres and World Central Kitchen to deliver at least 30,000 meals to first responders and health care workers on the front lines of the COVID pandemic in about 30 cities across the nation.
