Kiwi firefighters remember 9/11 every year

Christchurch has its own disaster to recover from, but our friends in New Zealand still take time to remember the sacrifice of firefighters in NYC every year:

Next month, on September 11, Christchurch firefighter Steve Warner will do as he always does on that day.

He'll stop to remember his fellow firefighters in the United States, who died when they battled their way into New York's burning World Trade Center to rescue survivors from the terrorist attacks.

Warner says the death of 343 firefighters from the New York Fire Department is a tragedy that he and his colleagues still feel keenly.

Each year, the events of that terrible day nearly a decade ago are remembered at a ceremony at a Christchurch reserve. "After September 11, we approached the Americans and set up a firefighters' reserve," Warner says.

"We have a piece of steel girder [from the World Trade Centre] and it's been made into a sculpture."