The number 911 took on a new meaning last week. Is it coincidence that 911 - a call for help - is also the date September 11, a day that will go down in history making events, along side the assassination of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King; the explosion of the Space Shuttle Challenger; or the bombing of the Federal building at Oklahoma City? All of these historical events are etched in the minds forever by those that experienced them.

Tragedies such as the one we experienced last week are the type that test the fortitude of a nation and its people. And, as history has shown us, America has always risen to the occasion. I have no doubt that we will overcome this challenge as well.

As I watched the horrific events, glued to the TV like everyone else, I couldn't help compare it to catastrophes of the past and wondered how people dealt with such events in the days before instant communications and rapid transportation.

It was 139 years ago that Troy experienced a catastrophe on a similar massive scale. Imagine most of downtown Troy wiped out in less than six hours.

Already in the depths of the Civil War, on the afternoon shortly after Noon of May 10, 1862, sparks from a locomotive sitting on the wooden bridge of the Rensselaer & Saratoga Railroad (now the site of the Green Island Bridge) ignited the wooden structure creating a fire that would destroy most of downtown.

Before it was over more than 500 (upwards of 800 by some counts) buildings including homes, mansions, churches, public buildings, colleges, banks, and Union Station, covering 75 acres of downtown Troy were gone.

In less than a work day, the center of the city was a pile of ash. Remarkably, only five people including a child were killed, unlike the thousands feared dead at the World Trade Center.

A month after the fire, one Trojan wrote to his cousin, "I never saw so desolate a spot as was the burnt district the day after the conflagration, nor have I ever seen such white faces, such looks of anguish, almost of despair as met my gaze often during the afternoon of that sad day." He goes on to write, "The huge volumes of flame meanwhile sweeping on, leaping from house to house & street to street swallowing up all before their fiery influence and marking their course with destruction and desolation. But I cannot attempt a description - it was an awful scene - one always to be vividly and fully remembered."

Reports are that a smoldering cinder from a steam locomotive sitting on the wooden bridge started the fire and forceful winds swept the resulting fire into the city.

The fire raged mostly to the southwest burning whatever was in its path from River, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, up to the western side of Eighth Streets. Federal Street was the fire's northern border and moved south all the way past State and almost to Congress Streets, although a few buildings outside these boundaries (up to 9th Street) were also consumed. The brave volunteer firemen of the downtown Arba Read, Jason C. Osgood, Washington Volunteers, Hugh Rankin and Empire State companies prevented the fire from consuming the more northern downtown sections of the city.

Of the few published photos of the event reveal, all that was left were charred ruins, parts of buildings standing and most hardly recognizable, and a desolate look similar to post war Germany after WW II.

However, in spite of this disaster, Trojans came together, and by July, only two months after the fire, 181 new buildings were erected or restored. By November, six months after the fire that burned down most of downtown Troy, all building lots except for two were occupied by new or restored buildings.

While the great Troy fire of 1862 was larger in scale physically than the World Trade disaster, it doesn't compare to the toll in human life, which afterall is more important. Buildings can be replaced. Loved ones cannot. But as Trojans proved 139 years ago, you can overcome disaster, move forward, pick up the pieces, and get on with life. Troy's great industrial history followed the 1862 fire.

You do overcome catastrophe, but you never forget. That is what history is all about.