'I Think It Changed Us All': Texas Task Force 1 Reflects on 25th Anniversary of 9/11

COLLEGE STATION, Texas (FOX 44) — After urban search and rescue team Texas Task Force 1 joined FEMA's national response list in 2001, their first national job ended up being at ground zero of the Twin Towers. Nearing the 25th anniversary of the September 11th tragedy, few Texans were as connected to the event as Texas Task Force 1. The task force is comprised of first responders from around Texas, who get called into action in the event of a major disaster. On the morning of September 11th, Nim Kidd was waiting for his shift at the San Antonio Fire Department to begin. Most everyone on the Task force was going into, coming out of, or in the middle of a shift when word broke about the World Trade Center. Kidd says he found out from a phone call. 'I said, What channel do I turn it on? He says it doesn't matter. Just turn on the TV. And that was about the time we saw the second plane fly into the building,' said Kidd. 'So, at that point, I think that's what that was our alert.' Kidd and the rest of Texas Task Force 1 mobilized at the McGuire Air Force Base and rode into New York City on a bus. 'I tried to sleep on the bus a little bit and woke up crossing one of the bridges, and you could see the Statue of Liberty and then just the columns of smoke everywhere,' said Kidd. Upon arriving at Ground Zero, Kidd says the image was seared into his head. All of his senses absorbing one of the worst moments in American history. He says what specifically stood out to him was how unrecognizable the rubble was. '220 stories, each floor about one acre in size. So, 220 acres of real estate of office furniture, of file cabinets, of desks,' said Kidd. 'I didn't see any of that. It was all pulverized.' 9/11 was one of the first times groups like the Texas Task Force came together for an event of this size. Kidd, now the Chief of the Texas Division of Emergency Management, says what first responders were able to learn from the disaster has been instrumental to saving lives even to this day. 'I think the horrible thing is the thousands of people that lost their lives that day,' said Kidd. 'What we're never going to measure is the hundreds of thousands of millions of people that have been saved because of the lessons that we learned that day and the decisions that we made to work differently across all disciplines in this nation.' 25 years later, Kidd says September 11th was one of the most impactful days in the nation's history. 'I think it changed all of us, not just as first responders, as responders to that incident, but people that didn't even go to that event. It changed them as well. I mean, people sitting at home, people watching it on TV, people not in the emergency services, that event changed all of us,' said Kidd. Nim Kidd and Texas Task Force 1's story will be explored further in FOX 44's September 11th 25th Anniversary special, running on Thursday, September 10th at 6:30 pm.