To the firefighters in New York and even around the nation after 9/11, 343 wasn’t just a number. It was family.

“You do 24-hour shifts and one-third of the year you are with [your fellow firefighters],” Knightdale firefighter Mike Boshart , an N.C . State graduate and Long Island native, said. “So pretty much they are family because a lot of times, you see them more than you see any other person even at your house.”

Looking back on the last 10 years, local firefighters expounded on what the members of FDNY Engine Company 219 and Ladder Company 105 described as the “brotherhood of firefighters.”  They spoke of how the North Carolina firefighting community has drawn close to its New York brothers and how firefighters have learned from the fallen.

Bryant Woodall , former Raleigh assistant chief and current chief of the Swift Creek Fire Department, said on 9/11 he was, ironically, headed to a meeting with the Wake County Terrorism Task Force.

“It was just all fairly new to us. We were seeing what was happening around the world and everybody knew we had to prepare for it here,” he said. “You just can’t imagine it happening, you know? But obviously it does.”

Woodall said it was hard to think that the 343 firefighters that died all went to work that day just like he did.

“If you equate it to Raleigh, it was like wiping away two-thirds of our department,” he said. “You think about 343 lives snuffed out—it was just shocking.”

After the attacks, State Fire Marshal Jim Long commissioned former captain Andy Woodall (no relation to Bryant Woodall ), then chief of operations for the North Carolina Fallen Firefighter’s Foundation, to go to New York to see what was needed. Woodall has since been to New York 168 times.

“[Long] didn’t want North Carolina to buy a fire engine or anything,” Woodall said. “He wanted to do something for the families that would be beneficial.”

One of the first tasks was raising money, and Woodall said firefighters set out on a Fill-The-Boot campaign, taking their boots to the streets for the families of the victims.

“The firefighters of North Carolina collected about $7.5 million,” Woodall said.

Sam Griggs, NCSU alum and volunteer at Swift Creek Fire Department, said his department alone collected more than $40,000, mostly from in front of their Tryon Road station.

Woodall said another, smaller fund through the state fire marshal’s office was allocated for special needs, and that the FDNY Fire Family Transport Foundation, a foundation providing transportation for families to hospitals and funerals, needed help.

“At that time I think they had one 15-passenger van and one suburban for all five boroughs,” he said.

Through that fund, North Carolina donated four 15-passenger vans right when they needed it most. As soon as the remains of a firefighter were identified at Ground Zero, the families were called for an onsite memorial service.

 ”They were so appreciative of us doing that and the firemen, you know, collecting the money — we’ve just got a good rapport with them,” Woodall said. “It meant a lot to them. So they actually brought the original van they had down to North Carolina and donated it to the North Carolina Fallen Firefighters Foundation.”

While they were here in North Carolina, they found what has become a treasure and honor to fallen firefighters around the nation.

“They saw a 1950 Mack fire engine and they wanted one just like it, and we found one in Wade, North Carolina,” Woodall said.

Named Engine 343, all the firefighters that died were assigned in honor to that company.

Even as the fires burned in New York in the months after 9/11 and firefighters were rebuilding their lives, firefighting was undergoing tremendous change.

“I think about it a lot now—the last 10 years—at least indirectly as a result of 9/11, I think the fire service has changed more than it had probably in the previous 30 years,” Bryant Woodall said.

He attributed much of the change to massive increases in government funding for equipment and training, many exercises of which took place on or through the University.

“They were a tremendous asset to us,” he said.

Griggs said firefighters are now more conscious of their own safety.

“You know if the roof’s on fire and it is sagging in, and you know is it worth risking two or four, or maybe six of my firemen to go in there,” Griggs said.

Still, several of the men said that while the growth and unity of the past 10 years was good, the overwhelming outside support that contributed to that growth has dwindled.

“For instance, in 2004, North Carolina received, if I remember correctly, $60 to $70 million on just Homeland Security grant money,” Bryant Woodall said. ”In 2010, the North Carolina share of that funding was $7 million.”

He said while they do not need as much as they did, the funding drop is a testimony to how the passage of time affects our actions.

“It is like a lot of other things. The longer you go away from it, the more you forget about it,” he said.

Boshart said while the thanking and the helping still happen today, it occurs less often than right after the attacks. 

“It was just kind of a different world to be in,” he said. “It would be interesting to see if it could have lasted longer, but it was just different, I guess. Different for the better, though.”