Commentary: Two Very Different Disasters, One Possible Lesson

The towering plume of smoke rose above the West Side, the ripple of water just beyond, a cruel behemoth, thick and dense against the most cobalt of skies; as all eyes across the urban landscape titled skyward, a shot so familiar to us from disaster films; The tracking shot, eyes wet with fear and confusion. Already in whispers in that urban landscape that what was happening would echo long after that ash had settled. That it would become a dark legend that you’d casually utter “I was there, watching it all helpless to do a thing. As it swallowed the world up.”

Those words etch out an unspeakable tragedy, but the one I’m describing happened more than two decades ago on Sept. 11, 2001, in a city on the opposite coast from the devastating wildfires that began on Jan. 7, 2025. The words in so many ways, apply to both; The helplessness, the acrid air, the histories vaporized in what seemed like an instant.

I know. Because I was there for both.

This is a different tale of two cities. The City of Angels and the City that Never Sleeps. Rivals behaving like exes who secretly still love each other, trading citizens over the centuries the way a boy trades baseball cards. Two cities so different in landscape and culture united by calamities more than two decades apart, both faced with a wide swath of destruction that displaced and destabilized, forging the most of human of questions; where do we go from here?

The fires that ripped through the Palisades and Altadena, turning areas the size of Rhode Island into haunting, Pompeii-like grotesque sculptures of ash, or the inferno that dissolved the steel bones of the two largest twin structures on the planet as if they were strands of linguini boiling in a pot, almost seem malevolent in nature. Angry leviathans, seeking to annihilate with a god-like vengeance. But the reality is, that couldn’t be further from the truth.

At the risk of sounding cavalier, fire is like the shark in Jaws, it just goes where the food supply is. Fire eats until the food is gone. It doesn’t care who you are or how much money you make. You give fire enough wind and wood and jet fuel it will keep feeding until the supply runs dry.  Maybe that’s exactly what makes it so terrifying. It’s apathetic and insatiable.

Fire was the last thing on our minds on the morning of Tuesday,  Sept. 11, 2001. Summer was still cradling us in its sun-warmed arms and New York as a collective was in a sparkling mood. I was an actor/fitness trainer (because my liver said no to being a bartender) living in the East Village, tiptoeing towards a filmmaking career. I stepped outside to ride my single speed uptown to a client, and as it was in Los Angeles, the day the wildfires broke out, the sky was the Cerulean blue of renaissance paintings. A contrasting canvas for what was to come.

When a large mass of people witnesses something of that scale so unnervingly out of place, like hard to swallow CGI from a blockbuster, their body language becomes weird and awkward. As I looked towards Third Avenue to begin my ride uptown, hundreds of people were craning twistedly towards downtown. I turned to see that now infamous, colossal plume of smoke rising from that jagged, gaping hole. “A small plane had hit the WTC..” was repeated like a mantra. Until it wasn’t.

The narrative of that day is familiar to us all, so gothic in nature, it’s become legend. But I will share in shards, the puzzle pieces of memories that I recall. The inferno climbing stories high. The skyline altered in an instant. The smell. Acidic. Chilling because we knew the dire recipe of what we were smelling. The wan eyes of soot coated people zombie walking uptown. The stunned silence of a friend who could not speak for days having watched frozen at the base of the tower as people leapt.  Riding down to the site on my birthday a few weeks later to reflect, looking up at shipping container-sized chunks of buildings holding on precariously. The palpitations of panic in those following weeks triggered by the sound of military jets, that another disaster would unfold.

It would be unjust to compare the lives lost because that is simply incomparable, and disrespectful, but the parallels between that day 24 years ago and what Los Angeles experienced are unmistakable. What is universally shared beyond the scent of ash in the air, is the scale of the devastation. Those memories and any kind of certainty of future incinerated in an instant. A landscape rendered unrecognizable.  And the smoke shaped question mark of “where do we go from here?” “How do we face a future so daunting and unsure?”

The dust settled in NYC, literally, the months passed, and as a minor exodus began, a breathless world looked to New York as a barometer of what a post 9/11 future might look like. At the same time a curious thing began to unfold. Those that remained transformed their fear and apprehension into a Gothamic pride and a will to not just eke out a life, but soar.

That defiant ideal manifested itself in the immediate plans to rebuild lower Manhattan, raise a tower that honored the twins on the land that they once stood, and as a culture steeped in a long history of filmmaking, spawn a film festival that was just as brash and punk rock and unforgettable as the city itself: The Tribeca Film Festival.

Jane Rosenthal and Robert DeNiro’s vision intended to elevate our creative spirit, alleviating fears and bring global film production and celebration back to NYC. It was a salve on a city and a local industry reeling. 

I had a film in competition in the festival the following year, and it changed my life and gave me a career. I will never forget the palpable feeling of freshly minted hope lifeboating that volatile landscape. Two decades later that wildly successful, prestigious festival has launched so many careers and marked a turning point for a New York as the ultimate phoenix, its talons thrust brazenly above the ashes.

A moment that has been seared forever in my memory and sums it all up for me: as I walked with my then girlfriend (an actress on The Sopranos who was comically stealing my festival thunder by being entirely more famous than me) on Vesey street towards my film’s premiere in lower Manhattan, we noticed, scaffolding surrounding a vast area. So strange to see such a large empty space that was almost unsettlingly pristine. And then it dawned on us. This was the footprint of the towers. No longer daunting mountains of eviscerated concrete, glass and steel. Time had sneakily moved on and forgot to tell us. The healing had begun.

More than 20 years later, I’m a seven years in the making avocado eating Angeleno, and a self-taught member of the DGA director of cinematic commercials I’m proud of. With several narrative projects taking shape, I am sure as the sun that the festival was the embryo of the life that I now lead. And the dawn of a revitalized Manhattan.

As it did in 2001 in New York, my love for my newly adopted city of Angels has swelled in this crisis.  It is impossible to live through these fires, having been evacuated from my home in Laurel Canyon yet blessedly avoid the infinite loss that so many have suffered to not note the parallels between then and now. As I type this up in the hills, the Santa Ana’s moan, and my heartbeat elevates just as it did when the military jets flew overhead for weeks after that day of days. My desire is the same; that this sensation metamorphizes into the same feelings of hope and defiance.

It’s undeniable that Los Angeles is the home to the finest filmmaking personnel on the planet.  An apexedly skilled population already punch drunk and battered by Covid, union strikes and the reduction in filmmaking tax incentives. The cynics say the wildfires are the death knell of the film business.

But what if.. what if it just wasn’t? What if it were in fact, the opposite? What if the spirit of New York and the origin story of The Tribeca film festival taught us something about the power of filmmaking to pivot a destiny. That bringing productions to Los Angeles is the plasma this City of Angels so desperately and deservedly needs. What if this is the rallying cry that the industry is searching for. A symbol for the city that honors the heroics of the firefighters and first responders that risked their lives. That catalyzes us across the miles, inspiring all Angelenos to rebuild and reinvent as best as they can. I self-servingly vote yes, but I guess time will tell that story.

I’m reminded of something my grandfather George said to me when I was a boy. The same grandfather who bought me my first easel. Who I proudly resemble. Who encouraged me to grip tight on my dreams like they were oxygen in space. Paraphrasing my favorite Hemingway quote.” Everyone gets broken, and when time has passed and they heal, they are stronger at the broken places.”

Todd Heyman is an independent film director living in Los Angeles. https://toddheymandirector.com