After the first plane hit the World Trade Center’s North Tower in New York City on Sept. 11, 2001, former New York City Fire Department Chief Joe Pfeifer — the first fire commander on scene — ordered his brother, a lieutenant at a nearby station, to lead his engine company into the building to evacuate the people trapped inside.
“That was the last time I saw my brother Kevin,” Pfeifer said Tuesday during a John F. Kennedy Jr. Forum at the Harvard University Institute of Politics panel on the lessons and legacy of 9/11.
“Every first responder, whether fire, paramedic or police officer, looked at the burning building and knew they were going to the most dangerous fire of their lives,” Pfeifer said. “And while this is our job, they made a personal decision to go in.”
When Pfeifer heard the South Tower collapse, he made a split-second call to evacuate all units from the North Tower before it, too, fell. “It was probably the first time in history a fire chief pulled firefighters out when there were thousands of people in the building,” he said. It was a tough decision, he said, but “I had to take care of my firefighters.”
Pfeifer left his battalion after 9/11 to serve as the chief of planning and strategy for the FDNY Bureau of Operations and founded the Center for Terrorism and Disaster Preparedness in 2004. He retired in 2018 and is now a senior fellow at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. His book, Ordinary Heroes, is a memoir of 9/11.
Immediately following the attack, Pfeifer said he found solace with his fellow firefighters at the firehouse on Duane Street in Tribeca, about eight blocks from where the twin towers once stood. That station became known as Miracle House because not one of the firefighters who worked and lived there died on 9/11. “We knew each other’s feelings, so it was like going home to family, and I think that’s one of the reasons why we didn’t have a high level of PTSD,” he said.
He’s hopeful that technological advancements and better collaboration among federal, state and local emergency response and prevention agencies over the past 25 years can prevent another attack of 9/11 magnitude from happening.
The nature of the threat has changed, Pfeifer said. He’s most concerned now about extreme weather events leaving people without water, food and shelter, providing an opportunity for terrorists to move in. Leaders need to be planning how they’ll respond to climate disasters with humanitarian aid, he said.
He also holds out hope for a return to the “sense of global unity” people felt during the days and months after the attack.“People came literally from around the world and across the United States,” he said. “They were the workers, the electricians, the steel workers, and some of them weren't documented, but it didn't matter. We needed help, and what I saw in New York was this sense of unity that we cared more about each other than any politics.”
When One World Trade Center, the 104-story tower adjacent to the World Trade Center Memorial, opened in 2014, the New York Port Authority asked Pfeifer to write something on the 441-foot steel spire at the top. He climbed a ladder, took out a marker and wrote, "Always remember the heroes who did ordinary things at an extraordinary time so others may live.”
“I think that's what we do today,” Pfeifer said. “And each one of us is called to be that ordinary hero, and together we can make a difference.”
