BATON ROUGE - Across the United States and the world, on Friday, people paid tribute to the thousands of lives that were lost during the September 11th attacks, 25 years to the day.

One East Baton Rouge investigator, Chuck Smith, was in New York in the aftermath of the attacks to assist, helping in the process of identifying bodies.

Like many Americans that day, Smith remembers going to work in the morning and learning about a plane hitting the World Trade Center, and then another.

Smith is part of a program called the Disaster Mortuary Operations Response Team. He’s been deployed to multiple major disasters during his time with the response teams, including the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing and Hurricane Katrina.

"Our federal team responds to natural disasters, terrorist events, anything where there are large numbers of fatalities that overwhelm the state or local resources, and clearly to me, this was going to be one of those situations,” Smith said

Within several hours of the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Smith got a call asking him to put together a team to come help.

"As soon as the airlines began flying, we went back into New York,” Smith said.

They got to New York and saw the aftermath of the attacks.

"Even thinking about it today, it's hard for me to believe that any of it happened. It's hard for me to believe that I was there,” Smith said.

Smith began working with the medical examiner's office. He worked with them for four and a half months, attempting to make identifications of bodies.

"If you've got fingerprints, you attempt fingerprints; if you've got dental, you attempt that. If it goes to DNA, you do that, and at the same time, while we're doing that, there's another team that's collecting that antemortem information from a family member. There still remains I think 1100 and some odd people who have never been identified,” Smith said.

Smith says that the responsibility can be emotionally taxing and draining because of all of the grief and shock that comes with it.

"I'll be the first to tell you, it is not something for everybody. I worked at the coroner's office here in Baton Rouge for years, so I dealt with families in grief. The interactions with families is a lot of times, a little bit energizing because it gives you something to work for. Help bring closure,” Smith said.

September 11, 2001, is a day that Americans will never forget. No one will ever forget the victims and heroes of that day, and will always remember the resolve that Americans showed that day, the following weeks, months and years to come together and help one another.