‘Our enemies have made the mistake that America’s enemies always
make. They saw liberty and thought they saw weakness. And now, they
see defeat.’
– George W. Bush, President of the United States
Attacks send grant money to local jurisdictions
By Melissa Flores
Pinnacle city editor
When Brad Klemek was recruited to join the Federal Emergency
Management Agency’s Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 3, one of 28
regional task forces that can be deployed in times of natural
disaster or for national security reasons, the medical exam to
qualify was extensive.
‘Our enemies have made the mistake that America’s enemies always make. They saw liberty and thought they saw weakness. And now, they see defeat.’
– George W. Bush, President of the United States
Attacks send grant money to local jurisdictions
By Melissa Flores
Pinnacle city editor
When Brad Klemek was recruited to join the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 3, one of 28 regional task forces that can be deployed in times of natural disaster or for national security reasons, the medical exam to qualify was extensive.
“That’s something that changed since 9/11,” he said, noting the number of first responders from around the country who developed what he termed 9/11 cough. “It’s way beyond what anyone can imagine – blood work up, respiratory work ups.”
He said the thorough exam is to make sure that task force members are healthy, but also so that if health problems do arise it will be easier to trace the causes.
Klemek didn’t know anyone directly involved in responding to 9/11, but he said it still hit him because of his work in fire service since 1985.
“It’s always a case when a firefighter goes down, it rattles everyone,” he said. “It’s always in the back (of your mind.)”
Klemek, who joined the task force two years ago, has not yet been deployed but his unit has been ramping up their training in preparation for an assignment in November. They will attend the Asian Pacific Economic Cooperation Summit in Hawaii, providing extra security for Pres. Obama’s visit.
Klemek said one of the ripples he’s seen from 9/11 is that FEMA has given out many grants to local jurisdictions for equipment, first responder training and to start volunteer corps.
In San Benito, Klemek has worked with San Benito County’s emergency services manager Jim Clark, to start a Community Emergency Response Team training program. Klemek served as an instructor for a recent session of the program and started a CERT board with some of the graduates, who will help the program keep its momentum.
Klemek and Clark applied for a FEMA grant to run the first session, which Klemek referred to as “seed money.” His goal is to prepare as many local people to survive on their own in an emergency because many disasters since 9/11 have shown that government officials and first responders will not be able to help everyone.
“It’s not so much the 9/11 event,” he said, “But we’ve seen severe (disasters.) Nature, terrorists. It seems like the pace has picked up. I do feel an immense urge to snap people out of it and show them they have to do something (to prepare.)”
He referred to Hurricane Katrina, which flattened Louisiana and its surrounding states, and the more recent storm to touch down, Irene.
He noted recent news that some politicians are asking for federal budget cuts to augment FEMA’s budget as the agency runs low on funds.
“What we need to take away from 9/11 is that we are not in control,” Klemek said. “We need to say enough is enough and take responsibility for our families and neighbors.”
Though current funding is in question, FEMA has been giving out grants to local agencies for the last 10 years. In September 2010, a task force on preparedness reported to Congress on the progress made since 9/11. One of the key resources for local jurisdictions was to provide grant-based investments to allow for “development and sustainment of emergency operations centers, interoperable communications systems, information and intelligence sharing mechanisms, specialized response assets, and myriad planning initiatives focused on everything from mitigation and incident management to long-term recovery.”
As a communications specialist with Monterey and San Benito Calfire, Klemek was recently deployed to the Arygle fire that started in Lockwood on Aug. 27. At the incident, he used the Monterey Peninsula Airport Fire Department’s incident command mobile unit. The vehicle was purchased with federal grant money and is available for use by Calfire when they respond to fires around the region, including potential incidents in San Benito.
The state-of-the-art unit can provide communication in remote areas of the region that do not have cell phone reception or Internet service. Klemek is in charge of getting the mobile unit set up when it arrives on scene. The center is equipped with satellite, a radio system and voiceover IP phones.
“It’s a technical monster,” Klemek said.
When Calfire responded to a Soledad fire early in August with an older communications unit, Klemek said they were without Internet access.
“We had to send runners from Soledad, 18 miles to drive all the way to Monterey with digital files,” he said.
With the higher tech unit, they can get much more work done on site, including creating incident action plans that can be printed up right onsite.
One of the few, the proud
By Adam Breen
Pinnacle staff writer
In 2001, Nathan Vasquez was a 17-year-old San Benito High School student and football player who planned to join the Marines after graduation. His mom wouldn’t sign the required papers as she wanted him to give college a try first.
When the attacks of Sept. 11 occurred, it only strengthened Vasquez’s resolve to pursue a military career. But first he gave college a shot, as he had promised his mom, Linda, that he would. After taking a few classes at Cabrillo College, he realized college wasn’t for him and, now 18, he signed up for the military, knowing full well he would be called to combat in as the United States began its war on terror.
Watching coverage of the 9/11 attacks, Vasquez said this week that his immediate reaction “can’t be written.”
“I felt awestruck,” he recalled. “I’d seen the United States as a superpower and I didn’t think people were capable of doing that in our country.”
While the attacks on New York and Washington didn’t compel him to join the military – which he had already resolved to do – “they did force me to achieve more than I had.”
“I wanted to go already; I wanted to do something to raise myself up,” Vasquez said. “I wanted to put myself on a higher pedestal and become part of a team – something bigger than myself. With the Marine Corps, it was all the way or no way at all.”
He enlisted as an infantryman, for which his mom “was happy, mad and sad all at the same time,” Vasquez said. “She was joyful that I had made the commitment and struck by what I wanted to do. My dad was proud and my brother and sister were awestruck but they were behind me.”
Vasquez’s mom helped him drop to the weight required to enlist.
“She helped me and gave me her thumbs up,” he said. “I was 18-and-a-half when I enlisted, so it was my sole decision, but she supported me.”
After boot camp, infantry school and security guard school, Vasquez was deployed to Bahrain in the Saudi Arabian Gulf.
He went to Kuwait “four or five times” and was stationed near the Horn of Africa.
When his rotation was done, Vasquez returned to Camp Pendleton with the First Battalion Fourth Marines for four months before returning to duty when President George Bush called certain battalions back to Iraq. Vasquez spent the next seven-and-a-half months on a combat tour with a weapons company, rotated back to the U.S., and returned to Iraq yet again, this time in Al Anbar and southern Fallujah.
His Marine Corps duty ended in 2009, at which time Vasquez returned to Hollister to seek work and coach football at his alma mater. He said it was hard for a former combat infantryman to find work, but he eventually was hired by Security Industry Specialists, where he works today.
Now 28 with a 3-month-old daughter, his girlfriend Yolanda, and her 5-year-old son Zachary, Vasquez is settling back in to the civilian life.
Reflecting on the events of Sept. 11 a decade ago, Vasquez’s most enduring memory is “that as a nation we united.”
“I see it every day,” he said. “I fly an American flag to show the pride and joy of being an American citizen. For all the people who passed and the people who gave their lives to help others and the first responders, there’s a flag for each of them.”
Peace activist: ‘It’s a very different landscape’
By Kollin Kosmicki
Pinnacle editor
About seven months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the People for Peace group started meeting on the corner of Fourth and San Benito streets. Natasha Wist was among the organizers and activists involved in the protest group.
About a year after they started meeting each Friday afternoon, the U.S. invaded Iraq – which Wist called a country “that was in no way responsible for the 9/11 attacks.”
“All this has come out now and certainly changed a lot of people’s attitudes toward using preemptive force to solve global problems of peace and war,” said Wist, of Hollister. “It’s a very different landscape we see now. More and more people are saying now what we were saying then, to bring our military down to a reasonable size and bring our war dollars home and start taking care of Main Street instead of Wall Street.”
For Wist, People for Peace was ahead of the curve. After more than nine years of silent protests – where members dressed in black – she stopped attending the weekly tradition.
Still, Wist has strong feelings against the nation’s overseas conflicts. She also thinks there is a lesson from the recent uprisings in the Middle East.
“People on Main Street in the Middle East are taking things into their own hands,” Wist said. “They don’t need us to go bomb and kill their civilians to bring a measure of democracy to their own countries.”
Wist noted that she and others are continuing their activism. She mentioned a book club that meets twice a month. Members are reading John Nichols’ book, “The “S” Word: A Short History of an American Tradition…Socialism.”
“We’re trying to educate ourselves, our friends and our community members politically and culturally so we can make wise decisions instead of unwise decisions,” she said.
Jones took to streets in support of troops
Hollister’s Marvin Jones doesn’t think the “People for Peace” group opposing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are unpatriotic. They just have different opinions.
Shortly after the anti-war group started its silent protests on the downtown corner at Fourth and San Benito streets, Jones in 2003 launched his own effort right across the street, as he and others on his side expressed support for the troops with their own signs.
It was a direct response to the People for Peace – or as he calls them, People in Black – in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.
“That was the origin, if you will, the origin of the folks in black going out and protesting war,” said Jones, a retired scientist. “I have no problem with that. I don’t have any problem at all.”
He said the pro-troops group responded in particular to the messages on the anti-war side.
“We are no better,” he said, reciting a People for Peace sign. “I think we are. And I think the people in black are better, too.”
He went on: “They’re not unpatriotic. We have different opinions. That’s fine.”
Jones underscored that he hopes the nation continues its aggressive fight against terrorism.
“With all that we have put in, I certainly hope we don’t give it back,” he said.
Attacks prompted ‘many layers’ of security at airport
Mike Chambless received the memo “months ago” regarding concerns about potential Al Qaida plans to use small airplanes in terrorist acts – the same alert released by federal authorities this week in light of the Sept. 11 anniversary.
Chambless has become all too familiar with airport security regulations since taking over as Hollister’s airport manager in early 2008. On the other hand, though, he can’t share much if any information about the topic because of sensitivity with security.
Chambless took the post in February 2008, his first job running an airport. Before that, Chambless had spent his career as a parks employee in San Jose and Salinas.
“It’s something to worry about, but the reality is, it’s a small chance,” Chambless said, regarding potential terrorist plots at small airports like the one in Hollister.
He noted that most people using the local airport are there daily.
“They’re hyper-vigilant,” he said, “and they’re not shy about challenging people that don’t belong. Obviously, airports have security measures in place. We all have security plans in place, but I can’t go into a lot of details.”
Chambless said he worked closely with the Transportation Security Administration to develop a security plan for the Hollister airport. On the downside, he said, the TSA does not provide funding to the small airport.
“Those funds get swallowed up by the Part 139 airports, the big ones, where there’s passenger traffic,” he said, adding that Homeland Security funds have gone to local emergency responders.
Authorities are focusing on the theory about smaller airplanes because they could be easier targets for security breaches. While the alert from the FBI and Department of Homeland Security pointed to concerns about private airplanes in particular, Hollister has a wide variety of other aircraft users such as police, military, Calfire and air ambulances, Chambless said.
Although Chambless declined to talk about security procedures, he said there have been “many layers of security added” since Sept. 11, 2001.
“This place is hugely different,” he said. “It’s got fences. Before people could drive out on runways at night and go hot rodding.”
Muslim leader denounces 9/11 attacks
Hamdy Abbass of Hollister is among two area residents who represent the small Muslim community – about 50 families – of active, practicing Muslim residents from south San Jose to Hollister.
He said in the past 10 years they haven’t heard any formal or informal reports of hate crimes, threats or discrimination from a false association of the Muslim religion with the attacks.
The only thing that comes close is a flurry of comments posted to local web sites in response to the SVIC’s efforts to build a community center and mosque in San Martin, Abbass said.
Overall, local Muslims received more support than negativity from the community at large, with plenty of phone calls offering help immediately after the attacks, said Abbass, 58.
Even before the terrorist attacks, the SVIC has always tried to reach out to the local community, to promote a dialogue of understanding among different cultures.
The group has worked with Gavilan College on academic efforts, as Abbass has given lectures on Islamic history for classes at the school.
Plus, the SVIC has hosted a number of local “open house” meetings in south Santa Clara County, inviting the public to join and share their knowledge and understanding.
The SVIC plans to continue conducting such meetings as they proceed with their plans for the Cordoba center in San Martin.
In the bigger picture, the SVIC and the Muslim community as a whole has always denounced the 2001 terrorist attacks, Abbass said.
“A great misconception about 9/11, is that (some) people think Islam is at war,” said Abbass, who is originally from Egypt. “Islam had nothing to do with 9/11.”
Students were drawn to the fire service
San Benito High School’s career center specialist Sonja Romero remembers the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks on the campus. For a week after, the school made sure there were flags in each classroom. There was a widespread sentiment that “pulled people together.”
She also recalls how the event added motivation for students at the high school to do their patriotic duty, but it wasn’t the military where an increased number of soon-to-be graduates were drawn.
“Originally, what I saw a huge increase in was fire, after 9/11, with fire departments,” she said. “I saw a big interest in becoming a firefighter.”
She said the surge in students seeking careers in the fire service lasted two years after Sept. 11.
She said she remembers that students had related “to what happened in New York, just seeing all the firefighters what they went through.”
See three more profiles
For the rest of our Sept. 11 coverage entitled “Ten years, ten people,” see the Sept. 6 edition of the Free Lance, including stories on a military mom, a local woman whose brother lost his life in the United 93 crash in Pennsylvania and the response of Hollister firefigthers.
