Joseph Pfeifer
Former Assistant Chief of the New York City Fire Department:
9/11: One Day in America
Joseph Pfeifer retired from the New York City Fire Department in 2018 as an assistant chief and the founding director of FDNY’s Center for Terrorism and Disaster Preparedness. During his career, he commanded some of the largest emergencies in New York City’s history, including the World Trade Center attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, Hurricane Sandy in 2012, the Metro-North train derailment in 2013, and the Ebola crisis in 2014.
He is currently the director for Crisis Leadership at Columbia University and a senior fellow at both the Harvard Kennedy School and the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. He is the author of “Ordinary Heroes: A Memoir of 9/11,” to be published by Portfolio/Penguin Random House in Sept. 2021.
