FIREFIGHTERS are raising funds for American rescue workers after seeing hundreds of their colleagues in New York perish at the World Trade Centre.

Station officer Ronnie Booth, based at Beaconsfield Fire Station, said they sent an e-mail to the New York Fire Department as soon as the news of the massacre broke on Tuesday.

He said they desperately wanted to be out in New York helping the firefighters sift through the debris trying to find signs of life in the wreckage.

He said: "We just wanted to try to do something to help with the rescue effort in New York. We were all shocked by the images of firefighters trying to save people and obviously those who have lost their lives."

The station will be holding a big breakfast day where residents can help to support the cause by paying £5 to have their breakfast cooked by firefighters.

Mr Booth said: "We feel for the families of the firefighters who have died and for everyone involved. Firefighters are from a global community.

"They are the ones who run into a building when everyone else is running out. They must be physically and mentally exhausted but they will keep going and going until they are made to stop and even then they will feel like they should have done more."

Witnesses, who were in the burning Twin Towers when the hijacked planes crashed, said firefighters were shouting for people to get out even though the rescuers knew they themselves would not be able to escape.

The fundraising event will take place at the station, in Skelton Close, Holtspur, Beaconsfield, between 9.30am and 1.30pm on September 28.