BRUNSWICK

Bath firefighter Mike Clarke, a member of the search-and-rescue team called to New York City just after the second World Trade Center building collapsed on Sept. 11, 2001, will be the featured speaker Saturday during a 9/11 memorial dedication.

Clarke and other members of a regional Federal Emergency Management Agency team had the gruesome task of recovering bodies and cleaning up rubble after two terrorist-hijacked jets crashed into the Twin Towers. Mindful of the historic significance of what they were seeing, Clarke and another firefighter picked up a piece of steel from one of the towers.

The Bath Fire Department was able to obtain the fragment — one of only 25 given out and the only piece north of Connecticut — and incorporate it into a monument conceptualized by Capt. Clarke’s son, Michael A. Clarke. Today, the 9/11 memorial is permanently mounted inside the Maine Fire Services Institute on the South- ern Maine Community College campus at Brunswick Landing.

Clarke’s speech will be part of a full dedication ceremony, to begin at 11 a.m. A procession of at least 20 fire departments from around the state, honors guards and public safety pipe and drum corps will be on hand.

The 9/11 memorial has found a permanent home at MFSI, which moved onto the SMCC campus in July. In an academic building hallway, it is there for both students and firefighters in training to see.

“It had been a traveling memorial, beginning in 2006, from Kittery to Bar Harbor,” Clarke said. “We just feel this is a great piece to be in a higher education environment.”

Bill Guindon, MFSI director, agreed.

“We look at it as an educational tool,” Guindon said. “We want every firefighter who comes here to train to see that, and will never forget the lessons of 9/11.”

Though no firefighters could have known what was coming on 9/11, Guindon said, fire departments across the country have learned new methodology since.

“Building construction, response and communications with collaborators,” he said. “We have one common goal to save life and property.”

There’s a larger lesson from 9/11 to be learned as well.

“You want to avoid complacency,” Guindon said. “We need to be vigilant. We need to prepare for the worst and hope for the best. When firefighters go out, they never know what they’re going to find.”

The Maine Fire Service Institute, a department within SMCC, replaces the former South Portland-based Maine Fire Training and Education. The MFSI provides training to nearly 12,000 firefighters within the state.

lgrard@timesrecord.com