When they talked on 9/11 about facing a new world, city officials didn’t envision a fire department that would continue to suffer traumatic losses from a 25-year-old terror attack.

“I cannot tell you your lived experience in this quarter century,” FDNY Commissioner Lillian Bonsignore said at a special FDNY commemorative ceremony on the cusp of the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attack at Staten Island Ferryhawk Stadium Wednesday. “I cannot pretend to know your pain. First, in losing so many in a single day, and then continuing to lose our people to illness in the years since.”

“I know each of you carry a different story. Your losses fall in different years. Your loved ones wear different names. Your burdens, however, are all the same. You are united in grief and love, and that spirit is what brings us to this moment, to this stadium, to this skyline.”

In the weeks and months that followed, the number 343 was seared into the psyche of every New Yorker, representing the number of brave FDNY members who died on 9/11.

Among them was firefighter Robert Evans of Engine 33, who perished when the towers fell and whose body was never recovered. His mother joined the crowd at Wednesday’s ceremony to honor and remember her fallen son.

“My son was always interested in helping people. You could call on him for anything,” said Christine Evans of New Hyde Park, Queens. “Even if he didn’t know how to do it, he would give it his best shot. He was a real man and a good son, too.”

But the number of those firefighters who, like Evans, were killed on 9/11 has been surpassed by the 453 who have since died from cancers and respiratory illnesses related to toxic air at the site. Families and firefighters at Ferryhawk Stadium were there to remember them all.

“The terrorist attack has had a profound impact on this department,” said FDNY Chief of Department John Esposito. “There was grief, there was anger, and there was an enormous sense of loss. In two terrible and deliberate moments, we lost 343 members.”

But even in the face of that loss, that anguish, the department still had to go on.

“We had to rebuild, we had to bring new members and prepare them for a job that had changed overnight,” Esposito said. “We were faced with the new world. We had to strengthen our preparedness, and we had to learn from everything that happened that day.”

Travis Barro was heading to work at a gift shop in lower Manhattan when he exited the subway and looked up to see the towers fall. He traveled to Staten Island from his home in Brooklyn on Wednesday with his wife and 4-year-old son “to remember those we lost.”

“Being there when it happened, it was so very strange. Looking back at the changed skyline, it brings back all the memories. It’s traumatic when you look and do not see the towers there,” said Barro. “I was heading to work. I came out of the subway. I saw the fire and the papers falling, and then the towers fell. It was like a war.”

Esposito looked on as a procession of flag-carrying uniformed firefighters filled the stadium’s base paths as the sound of bagpipes filled the still, warm air.

Above them, the faces of the fallen appeared on giant monitors as their names were read to the silent crowd that included Mayor Mamdani.

“They are so much more than numbers,” Esposito said. “They are names, we know, faces we remember, people we worked with, learned from, laughed with, and relied on. I knew and worked with many of the members we lost that day. And in the year since, I have watched far too many friends and colleagues become sick. Those losses have been heartbreaking.”

©2026 New York Daily News. Visit nydailynews.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.