A former Annandale ambulance deployed on 9-11 repurposed as a mobile museum
When Dylan Hackworth and his wife, Tamaria Cooper, launched a mobile museum in West Virginia last January dedicated to the state’s firefighting history, they had no idea the truck they were using was historically significant.
They later learned it had been an ambulance from the Annandale Volunteer Fire Department that had been deployed at the Pentagon on 9-11.
Hackworth and Cooper created the Hackworth Fire Collection to preserve uniforms, badges, run sheets, fire trucks, equipment, other artifacts, and over 30,000 photos from West Virginia fire departments. They’ve been using the former ambulance to bring pieces from their collection to car shows, parades, and festivals across the state.
The couple obtained the truck from the Glasgow Volunteer Fire Department in Kanawha County, W. Va., where they both volunteer as EMTs.
On Sept. 12, they got a call from a Facebook follower who said they thought the truck looked like an ambulance with a similar paint job from Annandale that appeared in a photo taken on Sept. 11, 2021, after the terrorist attack at the Pentagon. The photo had popped up during an online commemoration of the 25th anniversary of 9-11.
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“We did a lot of legwork to figure out if that was right,” Hackworth said. Inside the truck, they found residue from stickers from the Annandale Volunteer Fire Department and the AVFD number 408 on the dashboard.
Hackworth called Capt. Joseph Breslin of the AVFD, who confirmed that the ambulance, a 1999 Freightliner FL 70, was sold through a broker in 2012. The Glasgow Fire Department bought it to haul boats and equipment for swift water rescues all over the state.
Dylan and Tamaria established a mini-museum for firefighting memorabilia in their home on their own dime because West Virginia doesn’t have a state firefighting museum. “Everybody has a story to tell; those stories should be preserved,” Dylan said.
Since Jan. 14, 2026, they put about 10,000 miles on the former ambulance, traveling to 68 fire departments and events, he said. But now that diesel fuel is up to $7 a gallon, it’s become too expensive to take the truck all over the state.
The worst disaster documented in the Hackworth Fire Collection is the Woolworth Fire in a Charleston department store in 1949 that claimed the lives of seven firefighters. Another tragedy occurred in Kanawha County in 2018 when a fire truck crashed into a rock wall, killing two firefighters.
Hackworth says it’s an honor “to have a truck that responded to the Pentagon on America’s worst day ever, during the largest attack on America.”
It would have been nice to have kept the original Annandale VFD markings on that ambulance, as folks could immediately relate to that instead of the current graphics on that ambulance.
Much agreed! Historic items even if restored ,are restored as much to the original state as possible.Especially for a museum. This kind of restoration takes away from its historical value as none of the original information is located on it . Needs and should be restored to include the original markings if it is going to be a museum piece . I can imagine is disappointing to see it changed in the way it is as of now .
The current owners are not the ones who changed the way it looked I can assure you of that. Stickers and all lettering was removed before it was bought in 2012 by the department who used it for several years.
Unfortunately when the truck was bought by the fire department all the stickers had already been removed and the department was never told or made aware of any history on the truck. The chief and the Glasgow Volunteer Fire Department who had it before Hackworth Fire Collection did not learn of this history himself until just recently. No one around here would have ever known of this very historical truck and its background had a follower not reached out. Had this been known prior to being designed the way it is now, it is very likely it would have been taken back to its original look.
Clearly understandable . Ashame it wasn’t realized before the original identification was removed. But I fully understand it had passed thru several hands .Well, still holds its history even though.