25 years since 9/11, what have we learned?

We have all heard the battle cry of 9/11 survivors to “Never Forget” what happened on that clear September day at the World Trade Center.

As we mark the 25th anniversary of the deadliest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, perhaps a better adage is this: What have we learned since 9/11?

The 9/11 Commission Report, published in 2004, took a thorough, bipartisan look at the federal, state and New York City responses to the attacks at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the hijacking of United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania. But some first responders who lived through 9/11 are asking if we would be ready for a similar disaster today, despite the many changes to response and security protocols put in place afterward.

One prominent member of the 9/11 community, Long Islander Tom Von Essen, who served as FDNY commissioner on Sept. 11 and as regional administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency during the early days of the COVID-19 response, is calling for an impartial panel to be convened to review the readiness question, especially on the local level. “You can’t fix what you don’t admit to,” Von Essen says.

First responders should take the opportunity of the 25th anniversary of 9/11 to publicly examine if their protocols, equipment and training meet current needs and new threats, Von Essen says.

NEW TECHNOLOGY, RISKS

Terrorists don’t stand still in their thinking and methods. Neither should law enforcement and first responders. A coordinated drone or cyber attack is much more likely today in the wake of the new technology and methods seen coming out of the Ukrainian-Russian war. Biological weapons also pose a bigger risk than they did 25 years ago.

One thing hasn’t changed: New York remains a prime target, given its place in the world and national economies and its role as a center for media, finance, culture and technology. While the NYPD and FDNY are constantly training for and assessing threats as well as their readiness, it makes sense to pause on this anniversary and have the top minds from law enforcement, the first responder community and the private sector come together to examine what else needs to be done and to report their findings to the rest of us. We don’t ever want to forget what happened on 9/11, but we also don’t want it to happen again.

As the 9/11 Commission documented, there were ample opportunities for the city and state to have improved on the response to the attack, including command and control at the site, where in the opinion of some leaders too many first responders were sent up into the Twin Towers and basic radio communications between chiefs and firefighters were often faulty.

Another way to honor those we lost and to remember is to incorporate formal lessons about the attack, including the international political forces at work before and after 9/11, into local school curriculums. Students today have no firsthand recollection of 9/11 and the darkness that gripped the city and much of the nation in the weeks afterward.

Rep. Andrew Garbarino (R-Bayport), who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, has repeatedly introduced legislation to require states to incorporate 9/11 lessons in elementary and secondary school curriculums. As a resolution expressing the “sense of the House,” the measure has no binding effect on schools, which are governed by local and state authorities. Only 14 states currently require any 9/11 lessons. New York State is not one of them. Just as we have seen deniers of the Holocaust proliferate, 9/11’s important lessons could be lost if we don’t act to educate our young about what happened in lower Manhattan and at the Pentagon. And the lessons shouldn’t just include the horrible evil, suffering and loss we experienced. There were also countless stories of bravery and heroism that occurred on 9/11, starting with the 343 FDNY members who went into the Towers that day and perished as they tried to save others.

THOUSANDS OF VOLUNTEERS

The response and resiliency we saw throughout the city and region in the months afterward also is worth teaching. On Sept. 12, thousands of civilian laborers and skilled tradespeople showed up at Ground Zero with their tools in hand to join the FDNY and NYPD to search for survivors. No one called them. They just showed up to try and help as did thousands of volunteers who worked around the clock to feed the first responders. And, in the weeks and years that followed, Giuliani and Bloomberg administration leaders did an admirable job to clean up and then, in coordination with the NYC real estate community and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, rebuild the site and bring it back to life while carefully honoring the memory of those who died.

At the time of the attack, some speculated that downtown would never be the same. No one would want to work or live there ever again. Downtown is not the same now. It is more alive than ever.

The 9/11 terrorists struck at the heart of our city in hopes of extinguishing the light of freedom and liberty that we hold dear. They failed. After 9/11, the city’s leaders and citizens came together to honor those lost and to rebuild. In these divisive times, that is a lesson worth remembering.

This guest essay reflects the views of Joe Calderone, a New York University journalism instructor and former Newsday and New York Newsday reporter who covered 9/11 for the Daily News. He is the author of “Don’t Look Back,” a novel based on 9/11 and the 343 FDNY members killed that day.