Twenty-five years later, it is still hard to find the right words for Sept. 11, 2001.
For those of us old enough to remember that day, we remember exactly where we were. We recall watching the news and trying to understand what was happening. We remember the images. We remember the fear and confusion. And we remember realizing our country, and our lives, had changed forever.
Nearly 3,000 people went to work, boarded an airplane, started their morning, and never came home.
They were mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, husbands, wives, friends, and co-workers. They were people simply going about their lives on what started as a normal Tuesday morning.
We remember every one of them.
We remember the firefighters, police officers, paramedics, and first responders who ran toward the buildings while everyone else was trying to get out.
We remember those who spent days, weeks, and months digging through the rubble at Ground Zero, searching for survivors and eventually bringing people home to their families. Many would pay a terrible price for this service in the years that followed.
We remember those at the Pentagon who helped co-workers and strangers escape.
And we remember the passengers and crew of Flight 93 who learned what was happening and made the decision to fight back. Their courage almost certainly saved many more lives that day.
Before anything else, Sept. 11 is about those people.
Nothing we talk about in business continuity, disaster recovery, crisis management, or resilience should ever take away from that.
Sept. 11 also profoundly affected the work to which so many of us in the DRJ community have dedicated our careers.
It showed, in the most difficult way imaginable, just how important preparedness really is.
At the time, business continuity and disaster recovery often focused heavily on technology. Where was the backup data center? How quickly could systems be restored? Did we have our data backed up?
Those things mattered then, and they certainly matter today.
But Sept. 11 forced organizations to think much bigger.
What happens when your building is gone?
What happens when hundreds or thousands of employees cannot get to work? How do you account for your people? How do you communicate with them? What happens when transportation shuts down, phone systems are overwhelmed, and the people normally responsible for making decisions are unavailable?
How do you continue operating when the crisis isn't just affecting your company, but an entire city or an entire country?
Most importantly, how do you take care of your people?
Those are questions our profession has spent the last 25 years trying to answer better.
Our industry has changed tremendously since 2001. Today we talk about operational resilience, cyber resilience, ransomware, cloud recovery, supply chain risk, artificial intelligence, and dozens of other challenges which were barely part of the conversation back then.
But underneath it all, our responsibility hasn't changed.
We prepare for things we hope never happen.
We ask the uncomfortable questions.
We run the exercise. We build the plan. We identify the dependency everyone forgot about. We test the backup. We figure out how to communicate when normal communication isn't available. We ask what happens if the building, system, supplier, or person we depend on isn't there tomorrow.
Sometimes that work probably feels routine.
Sept. 11 reminds us it isn't.
There are people behind every plan we write and every system we protect. Employees count on their organizations to have thought about what happens when something goes terribly wrong. Families are counting on those employees coming home.
That makes this work important.
I remember something else about the days after Sept. 11.
We came together.
It didn't matter where you lived, what company you worked for, or what your background was. People wanted to help.
People donated blood. They volunteered. They gave money and supplies. First responders traveled across the country to help people they had never met. Businesses offered whatever resources they could. Communities supported families who had lost everything.
Flags were everywhere.
For a period of time, we weren't focused on what separated us. We were Americans, and something terrible had happened to our country and to our neighbors.
There was a huge void left in us.
Nothing could replace what had been lost. Nothing ever will.
But we faced it together.
Twenty-five years later, I think that is worth remembering too.
I've spent most of my life around the business continuity and disaster recovery profession, and one thing I have learned is that resilience isn't really about plans, technology, or terminology.
It is about people.
It is about being ready to help when someone needs you. It is about thinking ahead. It is about making sure an organization can keep going but also making sure the people inside that organization are protected and supported.
Sept. 11 showed us the very worst of what can happen.
It also showed us extraordinary courage, sacrifice, compassion, and unity.
Today, we remember those who went to work and never came home.
We remember all those aboard the planes.
We remember the firefighters, police officers, first responders, military personnel, and ordinary people who became heroes that day.
We remember those who spent months working in the rubble.
We remember the families who have carried that loss for 25 years.
And we remember what happened when a wounded country came together.
For those of us in the resilience community, we honor that memory by continuing to take this work seriously, prepare, and look out for the people who depend on us.
We remember. We honor. And we never forget.
