Portland Fire & Rescue Honor Guard member Stew White, center, bows his head in silence standing with other firefighters at attention at 6:59 a.m. in front of Portland Fire & Rescue Station 1 in Portland, Ore., Sept. 11, 2026, commemorating the exact moment the South Tower of the World Trade Center collapsed in the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Eli Imadali / OPB
Mariano Masolo reclines on a cot at the downtown Portland Fire & Rescue Station, with the sleeve of his flannel shirt rolled up. He’s about to donate blood at the Red Cross Cascade Region’s annual 9/11 blood drive.
“That’s the least we can do to remember the innocent people who died 25 years ago,” he says while the blood donation bag fills up beside him.
Masolo was living in Italy during the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, when terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners and flew two of them into the twin towers of New York City’s World Trade Center, which collapsed afterward from the structural damage. A third plane was flown into the Pentagon. The fourth plane crashed in a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Nearly 3,000 people died in the initial attacks.
Masolo remembers the day after, when he read the now-famous headline “We are all Americans” in a major Italian newspaper.
“We really felt so close to the tragedy, and so we truly felt ‘all Americans,’ even if we were one ocean away and so far away from New York,” Masolo said.
Related: Tualatin Valley firefighters travel to New York to mark 9/11 anniversary
Firefighters in Portland joined those in many cities across the country Friday morning in holding multiple events to commemorate the lives lost on 9/11 and to reflect on the legacy of the attacks.
According to a new Ipsos poll, roughly half of U.S. adults say the 9/11 attacks are among the most important historic events in their lifetimes.
That was true for many who gathered at Waterfront Park, where the Portland Fire Fighters Pipes and Drums Band led a public remembrance.
Deborah Grimshaw, who was born and raised in New York, remembers taking her 4-year-old son to a gymnastics class in Massachusetts, where they lived, when she heard the news of the attack.
She stopped at a post office where a worker told her a plane had crashed into the towers.
“In my mind I pictured a little commuter plane. Some tragic accident, but not anything like what actually happened,” Grimshaw said. “When we went home, we turned on the TV and saw the images, and that is something I’ll never forget.”
Grimshaw, who was also pregnant with her daughter at the time, said she still doesn’t have words to describe that day,
“I just remember feeling very scared,” she said. “Not just scared, like terrified, just terrified of what this meant for our future and for my kids. I knew that it was a day that was going to change our history forever.”
Portland Mayor Keith Wilson said in a remembrance speech on Friday that he and several of his friends were living in New York City in the late 1980s and early ‘90s.
A decade later, living in Portland, he watched the attacks unfold on TV.
“After that initial shock gave way, I realized my friends were there, and I started calling each and every one of them,” Wilson said. All but one answered.
Terence Manning, who Wilson said was on the 107th floor of the North Tower at the time, died in the attacks.
“I could never draw myself to go to Ground Zero. Last month was the first time, and I sat there and I cried,” Wilson said. “Every one of these anniversaries hurts, and I know it hurts many of you in the same way.”
Related: On the 25th anniversary of 9/11, a divided US gathers to remember and grieve
The 9/11 attacks were the deadliest in U.S. history, claiming nearly 3,000 lives. The attacks were followed by U.S.-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and creation of the Transportation Security Administration, which oversees security at airports among other things.
Grimshaw’s daughter, Sarah, who was born shortly after 9/11, was too young to remember the attacks.
“I definitely think it affects people born afterward differently, because we weren’t there to feel all those feelings and experience it in the moment,” Sarah said. “So it feels less personal, and almost less real, because it’s so hard to even imagine something like that happening.”
During the remembrance ceremony at the waterfront, Portland Fire & Rescue Chief Lauren Johnson urged people to continue telling their stories of 9/11 to younger generations, who were too young — or not yet born — to experience it.
“It’s not just my kitchen table, and it’s not just the one at the firehouse. It has to happen in council chambers, has to happen at City Hall, where decisions about public safety, training, staffing get made,” Johnson said. “It needs to happen in a patrol car, at school, in your neighborhood … It helps the next generation understand why we are the way we are.”
We will never forget….. pic.twitter.com/1RnL7BXw6N
— Portland Fire & Rescue (@PDXFire) September 11, 2026
