Emergency workers who responded to last year's crash of Flight 3407 in Erie County said it was like nothing they had seen before.

“It was definitely above the scale of anything we thought would happen in our community,” said Michael Rogowski, Clarence Center volunteer fire chief.

“Our role was to bring some control to the situation. We really didn’t have any idea how serious it was yet,” said Dave Bissonette, Clarence disaster coordinator.

Rogowski was one of the first people to respond to the Flight 3407 crash.

“The tail of the plane is something you could always see through the smoke through the fire. It was a horrific scene,” Rogowski recounted.

Rogowski’s fire station is located just feet from the crash site.

“Knowing that 50 people perished in our backyard pretty much. The plane crashed 725 feet from our station. It hit home,” Rogowski said.

It also hit home for Dave Bissonette, who has been the disaster coordinator for the town of Clarence for 30 years. He said a tragedy of this nature is very rare.

“It’s been life-changing. I think all of us are a little different now. The little day-to-day petty things don’t matter now,” Bissonette explained.

Bissonette, along with some Clarence Center volunteer firefighters, now go across the country teaching others what they learned from this disaster.

“There are a lot of things that we have learned. Takeaways that we want to pass on to our fellow firefighters all over the country and that’s what I have been doing for the past year,” Bissonette said.

A year later, Rogowski and Bissonette are looking forward, but they say they will never forget the 50 lives lost on February 12.

Rogowski said, “You pass Long Street – there is not a day you don’t think about what happened down there.”