Mainly clear. Low 44F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph..

Mainly clear. Low 44F. Winds NNW at 5 to 10 mph.

Residents of the New Hampshire Veterans Home stand and salute during the playing of taps Sunday morning at the  9/11 Remembrance Day observance. 

Tilton-Northfield Fire Chief Michael Sitar addresses residents of the New Hampshire Veterans Home on Sunday about his experiences at Ground Zero following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Residents of the New Hampshire Veterans Home stand and salute during the playing of taps Sunday morning at the  9/11 Remembrance Day observance. 

Tilton-Northfield Fire Chief Michael Sitar addresses residents of the New Hampshire Veterans Home on Sunday about his experiences at Ground Zero following the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

TILTON — Like many Americans, Michael Sitar remembers exactly where he was and what he was doing when al-Qaida terrorists slammed two hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001.

Then a captain with the Tewksbury, Massachusetts Fire Department, Sitar, who is now the chief of the Tilton-Northfield Fire Department, knew he had to do something in response to what had just observed on the “Today Show.” That was to join 11 other firefighters, jump into a van and head to “Ground Zero.”

On Sunday, during a 9/11 Remembrance Day observance at the New Hampshire Veterans Home, Sitar recalled how he and his comrades, beginning Sept. 12, 2001, spent four days on the mass of rubble known as “The Pile” that a day earlier had been the North and South towers of the World Trade Center.

That experience began with Sitar being glued to the TV for a “solid two hours” on Sept. 11, he said, and being “awestruck” by the powerful visual images and the haunting sounds of numerous, activated personal-alert safety-system (PASS) devices.

The loud chirping of the devices, Sitar explained, “meant firefighters were in trouble,” and within 24 hours, he was in lower Manhattan.

“We worked ‘The Pile,’” he said, likening the experience to “almost like a ballet” in that “hundreds, if not thousands” of firefighters and fellow emergency responders worked together in a choreographed “bucket brigade” in a search for victims.

Regular debris was conveyed down from the top of “The Pile” in white buckets, said Sitar, but “if you came to a body part, you put it in an orange bucket” for possible later identification.

In “The Pile,” Sitar said there were only two things that were easily recognizable: twisted steel and paper, although in his 48 hours there, he did recover the keypad of a telephone.

Sitar’s account followed welcoming remarks by Kimberly MacKay, the Veterans Home commandant, who said it was important to honor both the victims of and responders to the 9/11 attacks.

In total, the 9/11 attacks killed 2,977 people, the majority of them at the World Trade Center.

Anthony “Tony” Schroeder, who is the chaplain of the NHVH Resident Council, offered thanks for the “selfless souls” who ran into the World Trade Center to help others. He asked God to “breathe new breath into clouded lungs,” a reference to the many medical ailments, including respiratory ones, that responders suffered — and continue to suffer, said Sitar — after being exposed to toxic substances on “The Pile.”

U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan and U.S. Rep. Chris Pappas attended Sunday’s Remembrance ceremony, while Gov. Chris Sununu and Sen. Jeanne Shaheen sent letters and U.S. Rep. Annie Kuster addressed attendees in a video.

Hassan said 9/11 was a horrific, terrible day in U.S. history but was also an event that drew many people “into a life of service,” including in the global war against terror.

She said 9/11 united Americans in our mutual love of freedom, country and “of our fellow Americans.”

Pappas said Americans met 9/11 with “grit, with patriotism, with determination and with passion.”

“America is at its best,” he said, “when we stand united.”

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