“There was a guy in a delivery van who was buried in all the rubble,” recalled Los Angeles City Firefighter Bubba Willis. “I remember him being a flower delivery guy. He even had an ID card that would get him into one of the (World Trade Center) buildings.
“Twenty-five years later that sticks in my head.”
Whether it was the discovery of that man, his dead body still intact inside his van, or thinking he was unable to deliver flowers for someone’s birthday or wedding anniversary — dwells in Willis’ memory well beyond those few weeks he spent at “Ground Zero” in New York City as part of an urban search and rescue team sent from Los Angeles.
Or perhaps Willis, 60, now retired and a resident of Santa Clarita, was thinking that young man was like 2,752 others who died on Sept. 11, 2001 while going about their daily routine in bustling, downtown New York City without a hint of the oncoming devastation.
Lives, taken in an instant, as two airline passenger planes hijacked by the Islamic terrorist organization al-Qaeda crashed into each of the World Trade Center towers, causing the magnificent steel-and-glass structures to catch fire and collapse in the deadliest terrorist attack on United States soil. Later, another hijacked plane plowed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C. and a fourth presumably going to the White House or the Capitol was diverted by passengers into a field in Pennsylvania.
“We always go with the hope of finding survivors,” said Willis, a veteran of other disasters, such as Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans, who spent about two weeks with his team in NYC starting Sept. 12, 2001. “This time, we couldn’t find any. But we brought closure to families. We found more than 10 bodies that were intact.”
The finding of remains was significant for loved ones looking to bury their dead. Today, about 1,100 people — or 40% who died in New York City that day — have not had their remains identified by authorities, according to news reports. Many remain entombed at the site, now a memorial to the victims.
Their stories, their memories
The stories from these L.A. search and rescue squads cover two sides of the same coin. There is unthinkable tragedy. And there’s also bolts of hope, even flashes of goodwill. All etched into their minds as forever memories.
For Capt. Thomas Kitahata, also an L.A. City firefighter who was part of the same search and rescue team as Willis 25 years ago, the recovery of the bodies of some of the 343 New York City firefighters who perished after running up into the flaming buildings in an effort to save lives stands out in his mind today.
“If we did find a fallen firefighter we were very respectful,” began Kitahata.
His team would call in members of the FDNY to do the final dig out and recovery — a move of respect. “So they were able to uncover their brothers.” he said. Sometimes they’d call in members of his or her fire station or company.
“They said a prayer. They did a salute. And then they’d take him out,” he remembered. “It was very solemn because we are all brothers and sisters in the fire service. We took it to heart.”
First impressions
Both Willis and Kitahata flew on a military C-140 transport plane across the country and landed in a military base in New Jersey. The skies were empty due to complete shutdowns of all passenger flights.
“The eeriest thing for me is that we were the only plane in the sky. We flew at night and when there was light, we looked out the window and saw we had fighter jets as escorts,” said Kitahata.
Kitahata, who was 38 during the mission, has had experience at other disasters. This one was different. The magnitude was far greater, he said. “And this was a disaster at the hand of man. This is the thing that hit home for me.”
Both remember their first glance into the dust-filled, hazy landscape known as The Pile, were the tallest skyscrapers came down in a giant pile of debris.
Willis noticed the muted colors of death and destruction.
“It was surreal. It didn’t look real,” he said.
“The closer you started getting to ‘Ground Zero,’ the more the colors got monochrome. There was just a gray color of gray dust. And first off, we could see a big smoke plume as we were coming in,” Willis added.
For an area once filled with 100 floors in each building of offices, recognizing objects was nearly impossible.
“I remember seeing no desks. No office furniture. One thing sticks out in my mind — a projector case and also internal pieces of hard drives. The rest was just dust and broken rubble,” Willis said.
Americans united
Despite the grim task of finding buried bodies, sometimes body parts, that would be taken to a forensic team from the New York City Medical Examiner’s Office for identification, the work was rewarding, Kitahata said.
Some of that was knowing how they were answering the calls for help finding loved ones’ remains. These were in the form of hand-written posters plastered on fences around The Pile’s perimeter.
“There were hundreds of pictures with phone numbers saying: ‘If you’ve seen this person’ or ‘This person worked in this building.’ We saw the lines of photos on the way in. They were hoping they’d get some information on their loved ones,” Kitahata remembered.
Facing such a mammoth task, the team was pumped up on adrenaline, he said. Using cadaver dogs and special search cameras, the team would pay particular attention to holes in The Pile, called voids, he said.
At just 5 feet, 6 inches, weighing 150 pounds, Kitahata became the guy who would crawl into the voids. “They’d tie a rope to me and I’d crawl in and try to find the bodies,” he said. “One of the scariest places was going into a subway tunnel and crawling through water. You could smell the diesel fuel.”
New Yorkers and FDNY personnel were appreciative of the L.A. team’s efforts.
“The civilians brought us food. They had signs saying ‘Thank You.’ All those things were uplifting in such a bad time,” he said.
Coming home
The firefighting and rescue teams at 9/11 in New York learned from each other, Willis said.
In practical terms, Willis said the teams brought home the beginnings of better mapping, due to nascent use of GIS, Geographic Information Systems, in 2001.
Mapping systems are now used to find the hot spots of a fire, or to locate exposed structures that may be more prone to catching fire.
His experience helped translate into better alerts that residents of Los Angeles can sign up for that will ping your phone in case of an emergency, such as a wildfire. “That technology made us better.” Willis said.
Many firefighters continue to have respiratory challenges due to the breathing the dust from 9/11. He gets an annual medical screening and so far he is cancer free, despite speaking with a hoarse voice at times. He also has a lump on his thyroid that is benign and has not changed.
He still does volunteer work for the search and rescue squads. He teaches firefighters about the kind of teamwork he used during the 9/11 task force. He also has helped support the newer teams’ families, who are left behind for several weeks.
When he retired from the fire department, he made a challenge coin with the words: “One Team, One Mission” and gave them out to all his fellow firefighters, even those he met from other states.
“My WTC team is one family. It is like a brotherhood and sisterhood that will always be there,” he said. His 2001 team lost four members to cancer, he said.
Kitahata will always remember the people in New York and their loyalty to their country.
“It was incredible how proud they were to be Americans. How proud for us to be there. We were representing L.A., but really, we were representing the United States,” he said.
He is a captain in First Station 69 in the Pacific Palisades. During the Palisades fire January 2025, he worked 30 straight 24-hour days battling that deadly fire.
His experience at the 9/11 site in New York was the biggest emergency scene he ever worked in. But that big incident, or a small incident, are all important, especially to the person calling the fire department for assistance, he said. “Our little deal is their big deal,” he noted.
Willis continues his work prepping search and rescue squads and helping out their volunteer activities whenever he can.
He wants people to know about the efforts from L.A. Fire and other first responders from California and other states to help people suffering large disasters. And not only on 25-year anniversaries.
“We need to remember how this was, and what people did, and how people wanted to help. Twenty-five years later, it is all about ‘never forget,’” he said.