CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Two Corpus Christi firefighters were members of Texas Task Force 1 during the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks. They are Lee Rogers and Stephen LeBlanc.
The two immediately deployed to the Pentagon and were shortly after diverted to New York. That is where they were most needed.
“Long evenings but that’s what we put our training… we put it to use,” LeBlanc described. “We’d gone through all that to be ready for an event.”
LeBlanc served as a rescue specialist in the 9/11 recovery efforts. Rogers was a planning team manager.
“Nobody expected this type of event,” LeBlanc said. “You go to hurricanes and natural disasters, but we didn’t realize we were training for this type of disaster - a terrorist attack.”
Even though LeBlanc and Rogers have retired from the Corpus Christi Fire Department and Texas Task Force 1, their 9/11 experience, they say, will stick with them forever.
