Pennsylvania firefighters remember deadly 1994 airliner crash

Jones remembers looking at the debris: “It was a man’s hand, just a hand. He had a class ring on. At that point, we were able to look up and we saw everything. It was like a veil was lifted off you. All of a sudden, you could recognize everything. There was debris. There were body parts.”

Suddenly there were crews from everywhere.

David Bufalini, a former US Airways employee, went to the scene with his neighbor who is a volunteer firefighter. He still remembers someone yelling at them as they were moving in.

“He yelled, ‘Everybody stop! Everybody look down! Watch your step. Watch what you touch.’ You know, ‘Be careful.’ And that’s what I did, looking down. I looked, I saw a seat back and I yelled. I turned around and I yelled, ‘Does anybody know what kind of plane that was?’ I needed that, for somebody to tell me what I thought, that it was a US Air plane.”

Bufalini realized that he was not only at the moment of a plane crash with no survivors, but also at the grave of his colleagues.

“I knew the flight attendants, I never met them in person, but I spoke to them on the phone. So I'm processing all of this and everything I've seen, I'm trying to take it all in.”

When Bufalini realized what he was in for with no experience as a first responder, he retreated from the scene of the accident.

“I saw more than I wanted to see. I heard more than I wanted to hear. I felt more than I wanted to feel.”

However, first responders on site were also struggling.

“We're taught to save lives and protect property. And once we got there, there was nothing we could do. It was basically just salvage damage and protect the perimeters from fire,” Canton said.

“I can see – I remember seeing the engines, the landing gear, the tail,” Jones said.

The two firefighters spent hours working among the debris and victims.

Chief Newkirk ran the command center a mile away in Green Garden Plaza. His job: to keep track of the crews, where they were and what to do next.

“A lot of those memories are personal memories of what I did – who was in the truck with me,” Newkirk said, sharing with us his mementos that he has kept for 30 years.

And then there are the memories and reminders you can't see: “The smell of diesel was something very important to me. I hate that smell.”

These are the reminders that first responders say are hard to remember with the images that stay with them.

“The sleeve of the blouse was always undone, and she had this beautiful diamond ring and her wedding band,” Jones said. “It was hard. It was hard to go through that…”