Speaker 1: This is Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and Tim
Speaker 1: Stenebeck on Bloomberg Radio. It's hard to believe it's been
Speaker 1: twenty two years since the US was attacked on September eleventh,
Speaker 1: two thousand and one. On that day, nearly three thousand
Speaker 1: people were killed in the attacks on the Twin Towers
Speaker 1: the Pentagon. In the attempted attack that resulted in the
Speaker 1: crash of United Flight ninety three in Somerset County, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 1: thousands were injured, and more than twenty years later, it's
Speaker 1: likely more people have died as a result of the
Speaker 1: pollutants in the period after the collapse of the Twin Towers.
Speaker 1: That's according to a New York Times article back in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty one. Joseph Pfeiffer was there that day. He
Speaker 1: was in downtown Manhattan on nine to eleven investigating with
Speaker 1: his firefighters the smell of gas when he witnessed the
Speaker 1: first plane crash into the World Trade Center. He was
Speaker 1: the first FDNY chief at the scene, and in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 1: after thirty seven years with the FDNY, was the last
Speaker 1: fire chief who'd been at ground zero to retire. Two
Speaker 1: years ago. On the twentieth anniversary of nine to eleven,
Speaker 1: he published a book, Ordinary Heroes, a memoir of nine
Speaker 1: to eleven. Joseph Pfeiffer joins us. Now he's also, I
Speaker 1: should note, unretired, having been appointed FDNY First Deputy Commissioner
Speaker 1: back in March. Chief, it's good to have you with us.
Speaker 2: Oh, it's good to be here with you today.
Speaker 1: You know, every year around this time, I wonder what
Speaker 1: people think about who were there that day, and you were,
Speaker 1: of course one of the first people who were there
Speaker 1: that day. What is this time of year mean to you.
Speaker 2: It's a time to remember. It's a time to remember
Speaker 2: the tragedy of that day, but it's also a time
Speaker 2: to remember how how firefighters ran into danger to save lives.
Speaker 2: And there's another thing that we need to remember is
Speaker 2: that the global community came together and we supported each
Speaker 2: other in one voice against terrorism.
Speaker 3: You were the first fire chief at the World Trade
Speaker 3: Center on that day, and remarkably you already had a
Speaker 3: documentary film crew with you filming another instance, as far
Speaker 3: as when you were dealing with a routine gas leak.
Speaker 3: What kind of goes through your mind whenever you think
Speaker 3: back to that moment, having already been down there before
Speaker 3: everything began.
Speaker 2: I remember it was a beautiful summer morning with bright sunshine,
Speaker 2: and we were standing in the street an ordinary emergency,
Speaker 2: and then all of a sudden, we heard a loud
Speaker 2: noise of planes coming overhead. And as you know, we
Speaker 2: never hear planes in Manhattan because of the tall buildings.
Speaker 2: And then I see this plane flying on a very
Speaker 2: low altitude, so low I could read on the fuselage American,
Speaker 2: and it raced past us at fast speed, and I
Speaker 2: saw the plane aim and crashed into the World Trade Center,
Speaker 2: And in that moment, I knew that this was no accident,
Speaker 2: that this was a direct attack, and that's the message
Speaker 2: I gave on the radio. And really in that moment,
Speaker 2: our entire world changed, and the next one hundred and
Speaker 2: two minutes would evolve with the dramatic memories of what
Speaker 2: took place.
Speaker 1: You must have replayed those moments in your head countless
Speaker 1: times at this point.
Speaker 2: I do. And one of the moments I remember is
Speaker 2: that as we pulled up to the World Trade Center,
Speaker 2: we saw smoke coming out of the top and flames
Speaker 2: coming out, and people started to gather by the windows,
Speaker 2: and we knew that at that time, there would be
Speaker 2: like twenty thousand people within the World Trade cent the complex,
Speaker 2: and every firefighter, every paramedic, every fire marshal, every police officer,
Speaker 2: every responder looked at the burning buildings and they knew
Speaker 2: they were going to the most dangerous fire of the
Speaker 2: lives and they made a personal choice to go in.
Speaker 2: And even though this is our job, this is what
Speaker 2: we do, it still was a personal choice to run
Speaker 2: into danger.
Speaker 3: And your brother Kevin was amongst those that went up.
Speaker 3: And it was interesting that the documentary crew that you
Speaker 3: were with actually had a moment where the two of
Speaker 3: you were talking and he went up there. When you
Speaker 3: think back to that moment, how do you feel.
Speaker 2: I think back to the moment when he came up
Speaker 2: to me without saying a word, and we looked at
Speaker 2: each other, wondering if we're both going to be okay,
Speaker 2: And then I ordered him to go up to evacuate
Speaker 2: and to rescue those that were trapped, and it was
Speaker 2: the same order I gave many fire offices. And I
Speaker 2: think back to that moment, which was a special moment
Speaker 2: that we saw each other. And then I saw him
Speaker 2: take his unit Engine thirty three and turn to climb
Speaker 2: the narrow stairs of the World Trade Center.
Speaker 3: So whenever you talk about in your memoir called ordinary heroes,
Speaker 3: is that the ordinary hero that you're talking.
Speaker 2: About that is And as my brother went up, another
Speaker 2: firefighters went up. People were coming down, and the firefighters
Speaker 2: said to people, don't stop, keep going. You can make
Speaker 2: it out of here. Some simple words, and those words
Speaker 2: we know from people who survived. Those words made a
Speaker 2: difference because they made it out.
Speaker 1: When I think about nine to eleven, I remember where
Speaker 1: I was, along with many other the people who are
Speaker 1: around my age and older, they remember where they were,
Speaker 1: They remember what they were experiencing. It was sort of
Speaker 1: like a you know, talking to my parents that moment
Speaker 1: that John F. Kennedy was killed, or talking to my
Speaker 1: grandparents that moment that Pearl Harbor was attacked. Since nine eleven,
Speaker 1: tens of millions of Americans have been born people who
Speaker 1: only heard about nine to eleven as stories. They didn't
Speaker 1: live through it, They didn't experience it. How do you
Speaker 1: keep the memory of these ordinary heroes, keep the legacy
Speaker 1: of them in a world where it's increasingly becoming a
Speaker 1: distant memory.
Speaker 2: The memory of nine to eleven is part of history
Speaker 2: and certainly are young people, many of them were even born,
Speaker 2: and they can read about it, but they also can
Speaker 2: see documentaries, and I think that's a different experience that
Speaker 2: they actually looking at a documentary experience it again. And
Speaker 2: the question for us, I think, is what do we
Speaker 2: want them to learn from it. Is this just an
Speaker 2: event that they look at it on a program or
Speaker 2: is there more meaning to it? And I believe that
Speaker 2: we want our young people to understand what took place
Speaker 2: that day, and we do it with our probationary firefighters.
Speaker 2: We bring them to the nine to eleven Museum and
Speaker 2: for them to walk around and see the burnt out
Speaker 2: fire trucks. We want them to experience what took place.
Speaker 2: But I think as they look at this event as
Speaker 2: part of history and they see our firefighters and first
Speaker 2: responders running in, they see them as superheroes running into danger.
Speaker 2: And you know, it can never be a superhero. It's
Speaker 2: just too difficult to do those things. And what I
Speaker 2: tell them is that on that day, our heroes did
Speaker 2: ordinary things but at an extraordinary time. And I think
Speaker 2: when they think of nine to eleven as that as
Speaker 2: ordinary heroes, they can start to imagine themselves as being
Speaker 2: one of those heroes, and we need that today more
Speaker 2: than anything else. We need our new generation, our young generation,
Speaker 2: to tack some of the problems that we're experiencing. Not
Speaker 2: only do we have to deal with acts of violence
Speaker 2: and terrorism and homeland security issues, but we have issues
Speaker 2: of climate change or what I'm referring to now as
Speaker 2: as climate security. How do we deal with the heat,
Speaker 2: the wildfires that we saw in Mali, the storms, And
Speaker 2: I think that's what our new generation, our young generation,
Speaker 2: should see themselves as part of the part of the
Speaker 2: solution to those problems.
Speaker 3: Earlier this year, you actually came out of retirement to
Speaker 3: take on a new job as the nation's largest fire
Speaker 3: department here and you were named first Deputy Commissioners that's
Speaker 3: the second highest civilian rank in the department, managing those
Speaker 3: day to day operations. So very impressive. What motivated you
Speaker 3: to do this after you did retire from the FDN
Speaker 3: Y in twenty eighteen.
Speaker 2: It's coming back to the fire department that I love,
Speaker 2: that there's so much part of my life and saying, yeah,
Speaker 2: I got some more work to do. There's other things
Speaker 2: that I can do now. As I mentioned, it's not
Speaker 2: only responding to emergencies here, but how do we shape
Speaker 2: the department to deal with lithium battery fires and to
Speaker 2: deal with the climate change safety issues? So it's for me,
Speaker 2: it's exciting going to work every day.
Speaker 1: It's pretty remarkable that in the last twenty years, twenty
Speaker 1: two years and moving forward, we'll probably see more people
Speaker 1: die as a result of the toxin the pollutants at
Speaker 1: Ground zero then who were actually killed in the attacks,
Speaker 1: and continue we continue to see members of the FDN
Speaker 1: Y die each year as a result of this. How
Speaker 1: do we keep those heroes in our memory even though
Speaker 1: they're dealing with the health effects decades later.
Speaker 2: It's hard to believe that twenty two years later, we're
Speaker 2: approaching the number of our firefighters that died on nine
Speaker 2: to eleven. We lost three hundred and forty three of
Speaker 2: our members, and we're approaching that number. We're at three
Speaker 2: hundred and forty one that died from post nine to
Speaker 2: eleven diseases from the toxics that you've mentioned. And we
Speaker 2: keep those memories alive by in the FDNY by putting
Speaker 2: their names up on a on a wall, and and
Speaker 2: we're putting up for this year forty three names that
Speaker 2: have just died in the in the in the last year.
Speaker 2: So we have at a fire Department headquarters a plaque
Speaker 2: of with the names of all the firefighters that have
Speaker 2: died since the beginning of the FDNY and opposite including
Speaker 2: the nine to eleven nine to eleven firefighters, and opposite
Speaker 2: that are the firefighters and our members and our medical
Speaker 2: ems folks that died post nine to eleven.
Speaker 3: As we come to this twenty second anniversary, whenever you're
Speaker 3: speaking with family members of those who are going to
Speaker 3: have their names added, how are they feeling at this moment?
Speaker 2: There's there's a level of sadness, but at the same time,
Speaker 2: there's a sense that we're supporting each other and they're
Speaker 2: not alone. And I think coming together as department and
Speaker 2: other family members that have lost loved ones, we stand
Speaker 2: arm in arm, and we stand arm with the city
Speaker 2: of New York and the country and even the world,
Speaker 2: and in that sense, we can make it through it.
Speaker 1: Do you think there's more work to be done in
Speaker 1: taking care of those not just members of the FDN Y,
Speaker 1: but those who are living with the effects of nine
Speaker 1: to eleven. Is there more that Congress can do?
Speaker 2: There's definitely more that Congress can do. They continue to
Speaker 2: fund our medical programs and we're dependent on that in
Speaker 2: FDN Y for the people who have got sick that
Speaker 2: they've survived, actually eighty five percent of them survived longer
Speaker 2: than what was expected because of our medical programs, and
Speaker 2: those medical programs aren't cheap and seeing physicians and treatment.
Speaker 2: So Congress has a responsibility to care for for the victims,
Speaker 2: not just from that day, but the victims that we're
Speaker 2: seeing now. And so I would I would ask Congress
Speaker 2: for for our families and our our future families who
Speaker 2: are suffering from from from nine eleven cancer, to to
Speaker 2: continue to help those families.
Speaker 1: What motivates you to keep serving? As Jess mentioned, you
Speaker 1: unretired after nearly forty years with the FDNY, and I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people in your position would would say, hey,
Speaker 1: that was that was a great career. A lot of
Speaker 1: people probably said to you, that was a great career.
Speaker 2: I like the term unretired. It's actually fun being unretired,
Speaker 2: going back and looking at new challenges and looking at
Speaker 2: the complexities we have to deal with, and bringing together
Speaker 2: our experienced people and our young people coming in and
Speaker 2: saying okay, we can do this together. We can protect
Speaker 2: the city, we can deal with new challenges, new disasters,
Speaker 2: and we can do it together. Which is this secret
Speaker 2: And and it's not just with an f D, n Y.
Speaker 2: I work closely with n Y, p D and UH
Speaker 2: and Emergency Management and and the city should be proud.
Speaker 2: There's there's some good people serving New York City.