LAS VEGAS (KTNV) — On Sept. 11, 2001, John Steinbeck was a Clark County Fire Department captain, who with his team would soon be headed to New York City to help in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks.
Walt Stowe had retired from the FBI, where he'd served as the assistant special agent in charge of the Las Vegas office, and taken a job with a slot machine manufacturer.
And Dori Koren was about to start college, the attacks cementing his desire to go into law enforcement to prevent future attacks.
All three recalled the somber day recently, as they contemplated the changes that came about after the Twin Towers fell.
"What a gut punch it was for everybody. I remember watching it on TV and really being in disbelief," said Steinbeck, who later rose to become chief of the Clark County Fire Department, and go on to be elected to the Nevada state Senate.
"We saw when the plane hit the second tower there on television, and then knowing how many firefighters and other emergency personnel were in those buildings when they collapsed, and just your heart sunk."
Steinbeck was soon to make his very first trip to New York City, searching through rubble for the remains of people killed in the attack, including hundreds of his fellow firefighters.
"The pile was, it was really surreal," Steinbeck said. "I mean, being up on that, you climb up on that pile, and you're just on a at least five-story pile of rubble. ... That was very tough to search through, and then the amount of devastation to the surrounding buildings, it looked like a war zone, it really did."
But Steinbeck says he also remembers the kindness of New Yorkers, who turned out in droves to thank the firefighters who'd come from around the country to help.
"And it was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen," he said. "So I'd had these two feelings, of devastation, and then just the unbelievable love and grace and glory that these people were exhibiting at that point in time, and so it was a real, something I'll never forget."
For his part, Stowe was preparing to move back to Las Vegas from Chicago, his last FBI posting before retirement. He said a part of him wished he was still carrying his gold FBI shield.
"On the one hand, I felt like I should be answering the bell. On the other hand, I knew it was going to be a nightmare," Stowe said. "And for the next, easily, year, because I stayed in touch with some of my colleagues, it was a nightmare. They were working literally around the clock."
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Koren said for him, the lesson of Sept. 11 was to work so as to prevent a similar attack from ever happening again.
"It's important to remember, so we don't repeat history, so we learn from the mistakes that were made when it comes to what existed then for counterterrorism operations, and to remember what has now worked over the past 25 years to prevent events like that from happening," he said.
While Koren said he knew he wanted to work in the counterterrorism space, he didn't know that he'd find his path to do so in local law enforcement, where he'd take posts overseeing homeland security and the area command that covers the Las Vegas Strip.
Steinbeck says one of the biggest changes that took place after Sept. 11 was the coordination of radio communications between police and fire departments, which couldn't talk to each other on the same frequencies before.
As a result, there was confusion about procedures when the attacks occurred.
He said now firefighters and police officers regularly train together, so responses to emergencies such as the 1 October shooting go more smoothly. Cops and firefighters know each other before they meet at crime scenes, and know how to better work together he said.
"Even the birth of emergency management that fuels so much of what we did came out of 9/11," Steinbeck said. "There were programs before that, civil defense and things like that, but really, emergency management — that coordinating agency for all public safety and to go out to the private sector as well and bring all your agencies together — that was born out of 9/11."
And even communication within agencies is better, Stowe said. Before Sept. 11, agents working on foreign surveillance cases didn't speak with agents on criminal details, even within the same FBI office, under a policy mandated by the Justice Department, he said.
"In my mind, in terms of the criticism that the FBI took about not connecting the dots, that was a factor, and I'm sure that has changed subsequently. It just didn't make sense then, and it would definitely not make sense now," he said.
Koren says coordination is one of the most prominent changes that have come since 9/11, with the creation of Joint Terrorism Task Forces involving state and local agencies, as well as things such as the fusion center, which brings together federal agencies and local first responders, in the same physical space.
"The idea behind that was to fix the information silos that I just mentioned earlier, right?" he said during an interview with Channel 13. "So get all of the people that need to work on this problem all in the same room, all of their computers and systems and data, and get them to share information better."
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Part of that approach has even seen Metro officers travel overseas to the site of terrorist attacks, to learn from what happened and share information with first responders in other countries.
Koren acknowledges that Las Vegas is a terrorist target, but says the public should feel confident, knowing a coordinated group of law enforcers is on the job.
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"We don't want people to live in fear. We don't want them to let terrorist organizations win," Koren said. "I would tell you they [the public] would feel confident, and the reason is they would realize the threat is real. They would see that we are truly working hard to keep the community safe."
And the technological landscape has changed since 9/11, too. Now police agencies have drones that can respond quickly to emergencies, facial recognition technology, gunshot detection sensors and automated license plate readers.
"We don't have a lack of imagination anymore. We can see the big picture. We prepare for anything now and everything," Koren said.
But those first responders also know, as they prepare for the worst, that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.
"So the thing to always remember is, while you're planning and preparing and training, so is the bad guy, right?" Steinbeck said. "They're planning and training and preparing, too."
