Wilson has been on active-duty with the Fire Department of New York (FDNY) since 1999. At that time she was only the 12th African American woman out of 23 women in the FDNY.
“It was definitely disbelief,” said Wilson, “and then we went into the response mode: what are we going to need; wondering about the guys who just left—are they going to be okay?; how are we going to conquer this big emergency we see in front of us; how are we going to equip our engine? We were trying to figure out how are we going to get information about how our guys were doing…and then just the anticipation of going ourselves…and waiting so long for that call to come.
“I didn’t experience fear going, I just wanted to hurry up and get there to help…Once I got out there then it came upon me,” Wilson recalled, adding that they encountered “this white smoke that looked like a blizzard, I remember this woman was having an asthma attack, and so we rinsed her face off and told her that she had to walk out the tunnel because there was nothing we could do for them.”
Twenty-one years later, Wilson said, “The city is definitely more aware of these types of attacks and that they can happen, but we shouldn’t be asleep behind the wheel, and don’t think that it can’t happen again.
then, “The Vulcan Society wanted to help in the recruitment process and change the lack of diversity in the force.”“If you want to talk about history, let’s just make sure that the history is told with the inclusivity of everybody. So, there were firefighters that were there, there were Black firefighters there, there were women construction, there were construction people there, period, there were search and rescue people.
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