"The very first thing you saw, even from a distance, this huge cloud of smoke and as you go closer to the site, that obviously got much more compact, to the point where every building is coated in ash, windows broken, stacks of destroyed cars stacked on top of each other," Hines said.
"There's no way to describe it. You could watch every movie and every show and read every book about 9/11 you want. But unless you saw that, there's no way to wrap your mind around that," he said.
"We were just north of the North pedestrian bridge, which if you can envision that engine that's at the New York State Museum, a rescue rig from New York City , they were essentially buried underneath these bridges and the whole thing was packed with steal beams and debris," Hines said.
"They wanted us to cut off the steel out riggers of the truck so they could drag the truck out of the way and see if there were any buried firemen. The worst thing was you went down there mentally prepared to wow, dig through and tunnel through this rubble and I'm going to be pulling people out," he said.
"After a couple of days, you're realizing we're just not finding really anybody, and certainly not anybody alive," Hines said.
"There's this one guy, he was the captain of a rescue company down there. And he made a huge impression on me the first time I met him. And I always tried to model my fire service career after his. His rescue truck was the one that was crushed under that north pedestrian bridge. And then you know. He he did his job...and didn't come out of the building," Hines said.
"The emotions were very raw. It was just so overwhelming. Hearing things and smelling things and seeing things and you just kind of shove those emotions inside and suppress them. It was hard. I think my immediate family couldn't understand why I wouldn't talk to them. They wanted me to talk about it and feel better but I just couldn't," he said.
"Time has made it easier for me in my daily life, like with my family and stuff along those lines. But every time I come to work, and I see the guys, there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think about the guys that I knew that died. I've always tried to put myself in their shoes in those stairwells as they came down. And I just, I just miss the guys that I knew. And that's never gotten easier. That's gotten worse over time," Hines said.
As part of the healing process, Captain Hines says someone recommended he put his thoughts down on paper, so he did. That was about 6 months after 9-11. He has since donated those pages, along with a number of pictures, to the State Museum.
