The ‘next 9/11’ may not look like 9/11, former FDNY fire chief says

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.

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.

That station became known as Miracle House because not one of the firefighters who worked and lived there died on 9/11.

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.