Jackson fire department to break ground on 9/11 memorial Wednesday

Groundbreaking for a 9/11 memorial on the grounds of Jackson’s Fire Station No. 1 is set for 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, 18 years to the day after terrorist attacks on U.S. soil killed nearly 3,000 people, including 343 New York City firefighters.

A project of Jackson Fire Rescue, the memorial also will honor firefighters from Cape Girardeau County who have died in the line of duty.

Jackson Fire Rescue Capt. Sam Herndon said the memorial plaza will have a pentagon-shaped base made of pavestones and a statue of a kneeling firefighter facing two black granite “towers” resembling the World Trade Center. The names of the New York firefighters will be inscribed on the towers.

The memorial will also feature three flagpoles — flying the flags of the United States, Missouri and Jackson Fire Rescue — and benches engraved with facts about the 9/11 attacks.

Jackson Fire Rescue began raising money for the memorial just over a year ago. To date, Jackson firefighters have raised about 60% of their goal.

“We are needing $50,000 to get everything put in place that we have designed,” Herndon said. “We are having everything custom made for the memorial with the exception of the firefighter statue.”

In addition to the fallen firefighters’ names on the 7-foot twin towers, the names of Cape Girardeau County firefighters who have died in the line of duty will also be added to a pavestone walkway leading to the memorial plaza.

The overall footprint of the memorial will be about 1,500 square feet, Herndon said.

“Concrete will be poured in the next few weeks and we’d like to have it completed by the end of next spring,” he said.

The terrorist attacks Sept. 11, 2001, killed 2,977 people, excluding 19 hijackers who commandeered four passenger airliners, crashing them into the World Trade Center towers in New York, the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., and a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Those killed included 265 on the four planes — including the hijackers — 2,606 in the World Trade Center and surrounding area, and 125 at the Pentagon. The attacks were the deadliest act of terrorism in world history and the most devastating foreign attack on U.S. territory since the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941.