Sedona Fire District firefighters and Sedona Police Department officers joined in a solemn ceremony Saturday, Sept. 11, to lower the U.S. flag to half-staff at Station No. 1 in West Sedona during a memorial service for the victims of the terrorist attack on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.

The district’s dispatch electronically rang a bell nine times over the airwaves for each year since the attack.

All of the district’s on-duty firefighters joined in a moment of silence and remembrance for the tragic events nine years ago. On that morning, terrorists hijacked four passenger jets and flew them into the North and South towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, the Pentagon in Arlington, Va.

Aboard the fourth, the passengers struggled with hijackers and the plane crashed in an open field in Shanksville, Pa. The attack claimed the lives of nearly 3,000 people aboard the planes in on the ground in the buildings.