Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic
I was on duty on September 11, 2001.
I was twenty-two years into my career with the City of Manistee Fire Department, and it was the longest shift of my life. There were a lot of reasons for that, but the one that sat heaviest was that none of it was happening to strangers. It was happening to firefighters I knew. It was happening in the state where I grew up, in a city where I had been stationed, at a place I had visited many times. Being on duty, in service and ready, while the job you would give anything to be on is hundreds of miles away is its own particular weight. You carry it through every run and every quiet hour until relief comes through the door.
That was twenty-five years ago today.
This morning the families gathered again on the Memorial plaza in Lower Manhattan to read the names aloud, as they have every year. Six times the reading stops. At 8:46, when Flight 11 struck the North Tower. At 9:03, when Flight 175 struck the South Tower. At 9:37, when Flight 77 struck the Pentagon. At 9:59, when the South Tower collapsed. At 10:03, when the passengers of Flight 93 fought back, and the hijackers put the plane into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. At 10:28, when the North Tower collapsed. After each silence, a bell.
What a bell means to us
People outside the fire service tend to hear a bell and think of a church steeple or a school hallway. For us it is the sound of the job itself. Long before radios and pagers, the bell called members to the station, marked the start of a shift, sent companies out on alarms, and told everyone when a call was finished and the unit was back in quarters.
Alarms in those days came in over telegraph circuits from the red boxes on street corners, and when a firefighter died in the line of duty, the fire alarm office tapped out a special signal to every firehouse on the circuit. It was notice, and it was honor. It meant that member’s last alarm was over and they were going home. We still sound it at funerals and memorial services. The count and the pattern vary from one department to the next, but the meaning never has.
So when a bell rings on that plaza, a firefighter hears more than a pause in a program. We hear the sound our service makes when it sends its own home.
The seventh
This year there is a seventh bell.
8:46 · 9:03 · 9:37 · 9:59 · 10:03 · 10:28 · ______
The 9/11 Memorial & Museum announced in May that the 25th anniversary ceremony would add a seventh moment of silence, and that it will stay in the ceremony permanently. It honors the responders, recovery workers, volunteers, and survivors who later died of illnesses tied to the attacks and their aftermath. It comes after the last name is read, at about 12:30 p.m. Eastern, according to a Memorial spokesperson. At 11 a.m., survivors who are still living and the families of those who died in the years since join the ceremony while the names continue.
The Memorial was plain about why. Its announcement notes that hundreds of thousands of people from across the country and around the world took part in rescue, recovery, and relief in New York City, in Arlington, Virginia, and in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. At Ground Zero, crews searched for victims and then removed nearly two million tons of debris while fires burned for more than 100 days, and the hazards and toxins they worked in led to chronic illness and the deaths of thousands. Dr. Kerry Kelly, the FDNY’s former chief medical officer and a Memorial trustee, said at the announcement that the number of responders and survivors developing severe 9/11-related illness is still growing.
Think about what the first six bells mark. Every one of them has a time. You can set a watch by them, and every September people do. The seventh has no minute on the clock, because what it marks didn’t happen at a minute. It started that morning, and it has not stopped.
It happened to Billy Gormley, an FDNY firefighter who spent months working at the World Trade Center site and died of bladder cancer in 2017. CNN reported that only after he died did his daughter, Bridget, begin to understand the connection to his recovery work, or how many others shared it. She told ABC7 in New York that she sees the new bell as “the perfect educational opportunity,” a way to tell the rest of the country that people are still getting sick and dying from 9/11.
The rest of the country is where most of us live. It is also where many of the people who answered that call came from, and went home to.
One minute
“Still Counting,” which I reposted today, is about the toll that has kept adding up over the twenty-five years since. I’m not going to repeat those numbers here. They’re in that piece, with their sources, including an honest note about where two of the FDNY’s own figures don’t line up. What matters today is that the people who keep the ceremony at Ground Zero looked at that same count and decided the day itself had to make room for it.
So I’m asking two things of you today.
The first is one minute. The seventh bell rings at about 12:30 p.m. Eastern. Wherever you are when it rings, in the station, on a rig, at a desk, or out in a field, stop for it. If you’re reading this after it has rung, take the minute anyway. The whole point of this bell is that it doesn’t belong to a time.
The second is for anyone who was there. If you responded at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon or the Shanksville site, or if you lived, worked, or went to school in the New York City disaster area, you may be eligible for monitoring and treatment of certified 9/11-related conditions at no out-of-pocket cost through the federal World Trade Center Health Program. You don’t have to live in New York; members elsewhere are seen through a nationwide provider network. The program’s number is 1-888-982-4748, weekdays 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern, and the website is cdc.gov/wtc. If that isn’t you but you know someone it might be, get them the number today.
Twenty-five years ago I finished the longest shift of my life and went home. A lot of the people who went to work on that pile went home too, and it followed them there.
Six bells for one morning. One more for everything that morning is still doing.
Fred R. LaPoint is Fire Chief and paramedic of Stronach Township Fire Department in Manistee County, Michigan, with over 50 years in emergency services. A Vietnam-era Coast Guard veteran and Team Rubicon disaster responder with more than three dozen deployments, he writes Behind The Alarm and Guardians of Truth.
Sources
9/11 Memorial & Museum, “News Release: 9/11 Memorial & Museum Adds Moment of Silence to 25th Anniversary Commemoration, Honoring Those Lost to 9/11 Health Effects,” May 12, 2026. https://911memorial.org/news-release-7th-Moment-of-Silence-Added
9/11 Memorial & Museum, “25th Anniversary Commemoration.” https://www.911memorial.org/connect/commemoration/25th-anniversary-commemoration
9/11 Memorial & Museum, “Plan an Anniversary Commemoration” (moments of silence and their times). https://911memorial.org/connect/blog/plan-anniversary-commemoration
ABC News, “9/11 Memorial & Museum adding 7th moment of silence for victims of 9/11 illnesses.” https://abcnews.com/US/911-memorial-museum-adding-7th-moment-silence-victims/story?id=132890406
CNN, “Why there will be a new moment of silence at this year’s Ground Zero ceremony,” September 10, 2026. https://www.cnn.com/2026/09/10/us/seventh-moment-of-silence-9-11
CNN, “Thousands have suffered and died from 9/11 health effects. A new moment of silence will honor them,” September 10, 2026, as published by ABC17 News. https://abc17news.com/news/national-world/cnn-national/2026/09/10/thousands-have-suffered-and-died-from-9-11-health-effects-a-new-moment-of-silence-will-honor-them/
WABC-TV (ABC7 New York), “9/11 ceremony 2026: Seventh moment of silence to be added for commemoration ceremony,” May 13, 2026. https://abc7ny.com/post/911-ceremony-2026-seventh-moment-silence-added-commemoration/19088479/
National Bell Festival, on the fire service last alarm signal and the National Fallen Firefighters Foundation bell tribute. https://www.bells.org/node/170 and https://www.bells.org/blog/bells-join-national-remembrance-fallen-firefighters
U.S. Air Force, “Final alarm sounds worldwide for fallen Air Force firefighter.” https://www.af.mil/News/Article-Display/Article/134979/final-alarm-sounds-worldwide-for-fallen-air-force-firefighter
World Trade Center Health Program (CDC/NIOSH), “About the Program” brochure, July 2026. https://www.cdc.gov/WTC/pdfs/outreach/2026WTC-AboutBrochure.pdf
September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, “The World Trade Center Health Program: Were You There?” flyer (survivor eligibility and nationwide provider network). https://www.vcf.gov/sites/vcf/files/resources/WTCFlyer.pdf
This article first appeared in Behind The Alarm, the newsletter of Fred R. LaPoint, Fire Chief Paramedic of the Stronach Township Fire Department, on September 11, 2026. Read the original.