NEW YORK — A fire station is more than just a building with ladders and hoses and shiny red trucks. In many ways, it’s a home, a place to safeguard memories and soothe life’s wounded souls.

If you want to understand why the agony of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 , still ripples through the lives of so many in the tristate area — and perhaps why that memory has faded elsewhere — you need to come to the redbrick firehouse in this tight-knit community of 30,000 residents amid the sprawling concrete of Maspeth, Queens.

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