Columbia fire chief shares lessons from 9/11

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ

Columbia Fire Department Chief Andy Woody says the events that took place on Sept. 11, 2001, changed firefighting forever.

"I remember vividly I was actually a training officer in a previous fire department and I had just stepped inside with a class of recruits," Woody said. "I remember thinking then immediately, 'Do you know how many firefighters just died?'"

In all, 343 firefighters paid the ultimate sacrifice in the terror attacks.

"It was a 180 for the fire service, it was really a sad time," Woody said. "But like all of the other things that we take on as an industry, no different than COVID -- we learn as much as we can from it, study as much as we can from it, we train on it, we equip ourselves and train on it so that we're able to deal with it and at the end, emerge better. That's exactly what happened then and it continues to happen every single day now."

9/11 helped improve the way firefighters prepare, communicate and respond to emergency disasters by unifying an incident command system -- allowing multiple agencies to seamlessly communicate with a similar lingo.

It also helped shed light on hazmat response, building structure and firefighter health.

Woody says he and his fellow firefighters will never forget that day and the lessons from 9/11 will be passed on to the next generation.

"I'm a proud firefighter, we've done a good job honoring the legacy, not only of the 343 that day, but of all of our brothers and sisters that have made the sacrifices throughout the last 20 years," Woody said.