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Excerpts from "Courage After the Crash: Flight 93" by Glenn J. Kashurba. SAJ Publishing, 2002.
King: "We stopped and I opened the door. The smell of jet fuel was overpowering. I will never forget that smell; it is really burnt into my mind. ...I walked down the power line and got my first glimpse of human remains. Then I walked a little further and saw more."
Shanksville VFD firefighter Keith Curtis: "I walked up to where the tire was on fire, probably a hundred feet past the crater. It was a big tire. I was thinking that this is a big jet. I hit it good with the hose and put it out. I stopped and 'poof,' it just started on fire again."
Firefighter Mike Sube: "We made our way to a small pond. That's where I observed the largest piece of wreckage that I saw, a portion of the landing gear and fuselage. One of the tires was still intact with the bracket, and probably about three to five windows of the fuselage were actually in one piece lying there. ...There were enough fires that our brush truck was down there numerous times. ...I saw small pieces of human remains and occasionally some larger pieces. That was disturbing, but what was most disturbing was seeing personal effects."
Lieutenant Roger Bailey, Somerset Volunteer Fire Department: "We started down through the debris field. I saw pieces of fiberglass, pieces of airplane, pop rivets, and mail...Mail was scattered everywhere. ...the one guy who was with us almost stepped on a piece of human remains. I grabbed him, and he got about half woozy over it."
[People who were early to the scene didn't know what to expect. While some people were impressed by how small the crater was, others were impressed by how large it was.] Reporter Jon Meyer, WJAC-TV, Johnstown: "There was a spot at the end where the emergency crews were gathering. I could see that it was smoking and burning a little bit. So I ran as fast as I could towards that spot. I ran right up to the crater. I was standing a few feet away, looking down into it. I was overwhelmed by the crater's depth and size, but there was nothing that I could identify as having been an airplane, except that there was this incredibly strong smell of jet fuel."
Gerry Parry, Berlin Volunteer Fire Department: "I stopped and talked to the custodian, Don Stutzman. He and a teacher, Mike Sheeler, and I were standing in the corner of the parking lot when we felt and heard the explosion. If I had been turned the other direction, I might have seen it go down. We saw the smoke immediately. ...It felt too large to be a strip mine explosion, and usually, we have some idea when they are going to happen."
Bill Baker, Somerset County Emergency Management Agency: "There was debris everywhere. You couldn't step without walking on a piece of plane part, fabric, or some kind of debris. When they said it was a 757, I looked out across the debris field. I said, "There is no way there is a 757 scattered here. At that time, we didn't know that it was in the hole. The jet fuel smell was really strong...There were plane parts hanging in the trees."
Conspiracists who claim that there was no fire, wreckage or human remains at the crash site refuse to acknowledge or contact the volunteers and other first responders who put out the fires and viewed and collected the wreckage and remains.
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