A FDNY fire truck that served during the September 11th recovery has been restored and is moving through North Texas.
"This is a traveling piece of history," said Jeremy Painkin, president of the Allen Fire Association.
Rescue 4 responded to the Twin Towers with eight crew members.
All of the men assigned to it died trying to help their fellow New Yorkers.
"This is a shrine to them, to honor what they did and to honor their sacrifice," Painkin said.
The truck, however, remained in operation under 2010, when it was sent to the scrapyard.
It was then that a group of firefighters jumped in, saving the truck, and restoring it into a kind of mobile memorial, through the Remembrance Rescue Project.
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As Rescue 4 travels through the western half of the United States, it’s stopping in DFW for about three months.
“I think it’s a reminder and a memorial,” said Liz Fagen, medical director of the emergency department at Baylor McKinney, which hosted the truck as part of a push to encourage emergency preparedness.
Over the next several weeks, Rescue 4 will also be included into some curriculum for students in Allen Independent School District.
Painkin noted that many children were not alive, or at least old enough to remember, the terrorist attacks more than ten years ago.
"9/11 to my generation is like JFK to my parent’s generation," he said. "You can open at a history book all day and look at pictures, but how often can you walk around it, can you see it, can you read the names. It’s pretty powerful."
Rescue 4’s display is only exterior.
The truck’s inside is kept private, out of respect to the family members who lost loved ones and may not have been able to properly bury certain remains.
When Rescue 4 finishes its tour, the first non-firefighters allowed inside will be the family members of the fallen.
