LAFD and visiting FDNY veteran recount Ground Zero response, stress long-term health toll on responders

LAFD Chief Jamie Moore told the council that Los Angeles personnel, including about 70 members of California Task Force 1, deployed to New York after the Sept. 11 attacks and that those experiences reshaped local disaster response practices.

"September 11 reinforced the importance of specialized training, urban search and rescue, interoperable communications, intelligence sharing, unified command," Chief Moore said, summarizing lessons that inform the LAFD's current preparedness.

Michael Barbarino, a retired FDNY firefighter who worked at Ground Zero, gave a personal account of searching the pile and emphasized the long-term human cost for responders and families. "To this day, 1,100 have not been identified," Barbarino said, and he told the council that hundreds of responders subsequently died from what he described as 9/11 illnesses.

Councilmembers and the chief asked the public and officials to keep families and ill responders in mind and to ensure ongoing support for responder health programs and memorial activities.