Ardmore Firefighters Heard News of 9/11 While at Fire Scene

At the 9 a.m. hour on September 11, 2001, the , made up almost entirely of volunteers, was doing something fairly unusual for a weekday morning on the Main Line: fighting a fire.

It was a fairly serious one, too, recalled Tom Hayden Jr., then and still the company’s chief, who owns .

“We were working a basement fire when it happened,” Hayden said. “We were hearing reports about it on the radio. It was odd that it was happening while were out on a call.”

Hayden and some of his fellow volunteers couldn’t help but think of several New York City firefighters who taught them certain high-rise techniques at seminars in New York and in Ardmore before the attacks. Ardmore, Merion and Wynnewood have no office towers, aside from the one at , but there are plenty of multi-story apartment buildings in the towns where those practices have come in handy.

“We were actually taught some of our high-rise procedures by some of the fellows that perished,” said Hayden, one of 40 volunteer firefighters at the company, which employs three full-time staff.

The chief went to work on a banner soon after, and one has hung above the station to this day. A new one is about the width of a one of the engines that usually sit below it, and the banner says, simply, “We will never forget.” In black against an American flag is the number “343”—the number of firefighters who lost their lives that day.

“When I made it, I thought, ‘This thing is so damn big,’ but when we put it up, it looked like a postage stamp,” Hayden said. “But it was definitely the right thing to do.”

Check back later Sunday for coverage of the Merion Fire Co. of Ardmore's noon time 9/11 memorial service.