True Patriot Love - Could Canada Handle Another 9⧸11-Level Crisis？ ft. Anthony Furey

00:00:00.000 September 11th, a day we'll never forget, and I have Anthony Furey with me.

00:00:09.580 Anthony, where were you September 11th, 25 years ago?

00:00:14.700 Yeah, so I'm in my early 40s.

00:00:16.100 I was in high school back then in 2001, and I remember being in class in high school,

00:00:23.080 and we got news that this event had happened.

00:00:26.640 School would have started around the time that the planes were hitting the towers,

00:00:29.640 in in the morning as people were heading to work or getting into the office and then we went to a

00:00:34.360 sort of central space in the school like not a classroom but kind of like the lobby area where

00:00:39.480 there's a tv on and and we watched it and and just it's like my generation's version of of asking you

00:00:45.880 know my parents age where were you when you learned about jfk and they can picture which living room

00:00:50.360 or which cafeteria they were in when the tv was turned on and they saw the address and so forth

00:00:55.880 uh from from the nation from the news anchor announcing it so we we watched it there and i

00:00:59.960 remember you know some people crying and people who had relatives maybe in the area being very

00:01:04.760 scared and so forth and and of course you know the the months that happened and and the general mood

00:01:10.120 i find it i find it very interesting paul that the 25th anniversary means that there are people

00:01:17.000 who are there are adults who are 22 23 24 who are out there working their jobs they've graduated

00:01:23.160 university some are starting to have kids buy homes and and they were not alive at all during

00:01:28.360 this period and i wonder how they think about it what it means because it's shaped our adult life

00:01:32.440 so much what about you where where were you and and what did it mean for you then wow so i i was

00:01:37.960 actually uh working on a large project and i was actually uh we had stayed up all night working it

00:01:45.560 was a construction project we had stayed up all night working on the project it was up around

00:01:49.640 london and uh got home in the early hours of the morning from work slept i was actually in a hotel

00:01:57.400 and i got up in the morning and i went to the lobby to get water and i had a t-shirt on jeans

00:02:02.840 and basically just shoes no socks and i went to and i actually the the clerk and about five other

00:02:10.520 people were standing around a tv in the lobby watching uh plane one had just hit the tower

00:02:17.880 because i think it's 8 46 we did that today you know we actually had a moment of silence

00:02:23.240 uh at that time and you know i looked and i it was uh it was interesting because i went back

00:02:29.720 and i i was the first one up out of my team and i started making phone calls to my team

00:02:35.160 um saying you know you got to look at the tv and they're getting out of bed and then all of a sudden

00:02:39.720 and then we started to scramble so what happened was we were like we kind of made a decision we

00:02:44.680 all needed to head back home and we all lived in different parts of the province at the time so

00:02:51.080 we all were in cars and we were moving and we were on the phone talking to each other because we

00:02:55.240 weren't sure what was happening you know new york being so close to ontario and so we decided we

00:03:00.920 were going to head home to our home bases because we're in different cities and we headed home and

00:03:07.080 you know i always remember i remember you know talking as we were in the car and things going on

00:03:12.280 but yeah it was quite a day and you know the thing i really remember which um it's funny how

00:03:17.960 you know the memories come back i remember the day but i also remember a year later

00:03:24.680 and you know your you wrote a book pulse attack that we did a show on i remember the power outage

00:03:32.040 in august uh in august it was in 2003 so you know many months later i don't know the exact

00:03:41.960 time but many months later i remember the the uh the power outage and we we basically uh i ended

00:03:51.240 up being back in etobicoke and i was out of power for two days and throughout the province there

00:03:57.240 were people who were you know out of power for hours people out of power for days um you know

00:04:03.080 but again i was on the same project different place um and the power went out throughout

00:04:11.640 you know most of ontario and quite frankly we were all scrambling and you want to talk about

00:04:16.360 that for a minute because you know i remember how scared i was because i thought there was

00:04:20.440 an attack we all had thought that there was an attack happening when the power went out

00:04:25.000 yeah and i i remember not being that scared because you know i was in high school during

00:04:33.720 9-11 a couple years later i was still you know quite young i didn't have many responsibilities

00:04:37.540 i was carefree don't think i would have been working like at canadian tire or something but

00:04:41.540 not doing too much and and remember more finding it a novelty because i wasn't yet you know even

00:04:47.760 though i knew the magnitude of 9-11 i don't think i was thinking as seriously uh about that didn't

00:04:53.340 have the same responsibilities and then to your point years later i go on to write a book about

00:04:58.860 what happens with electrical grid vulnerabilities and now you're so right paul whenever the lights

00:05:03.840 go off at home and you know sometimes you can have a really short power outage for just 20 seconds at

00:05:08.680 your house is the local substation reboots or what have you now i'm always like right away i kind of

00:05:14.420 pause i go are we getting ready for the big hurt which can be a cascading uh collapse of the

00:05:20.560 electrical grid that happens much longer than happened with that northeast 2003 blackout because

00:05:25.780 my book pulse attack uh looks at what happens when an electric grid goes down either uh through

00:05:33.120 these cascading effects or through an attack um from an electromagnetic pulse attack which is

00:05:39.860 something that a lot of uh rogue actors non-state actors do try and do uh or at least put together

00:05:45.520 the technology for. And it can also happen from a solar flare. So in 1859, there was a massive

00:05:51.000 solar flare that hit the earth called the Carrington event that took out a lot of the

00:05:55.120 electrical components all across the world. There just wasn't much electrical electronics in 1859.

00:06:01.320 So things blew up and people got hurt and their arms caught fire from touching

00:06:04.540 telegraph devices and so on. But there wasn't much, much happening. And because we live in an

00:06:09.800 electronic civilization right now, meaning everything we do in life and in most countries

00:06:14.500 the world some areas not so much everything is based on electronics our food distribution network

00:06:20.020 how we manage to feed people in urban environments our water how we managed to make that happen the

00:06:25.060 fact we can live in buildings more than two or three stories high yeah if you get rid of

00:06:29.700 electricity uh for longer than two weeks things really start to fall apart and you lose the diesel

00:06:36.340 fuel generation ability because you also have to transport you run out of diesel for a few days

00:06:40.340 days you got to transport it you can't do that if the grid is down everything starts to collapse

00:06:44.300 and you have civilizational collapse the reason why we have the population we have in these cities

00:06:49.100 is because of all those tools back before electricity we could not sustain a larger

00:06:55.060 population like with agriculture right when we didn't invent greater agriculture we had a much

00:06:59.780 smaller population too so it's it's quite scary and it's it's quite real these are black swan

00:07:05.000 events and that they they generally don't happen and probably won't happen but they can happen

00:07:10.040 and they need to be talked about.

00:07:11.800 So part of my book was talking about it more

00:07:14.460 and looking at what different utilities were doing

00:07:16.500 and various experts.

00:07:17.500 I spoke to people at the CIA.

00:07:19.100 I spoke to people, you know,

00:07:20.520 I got our CMP documents talking about it.

00:07:23.580 Since then, the governments have done little changes

00:07:26.300 to try and make the grid more resilient.

00:07:29.020 And there is progress being made,

00:07:30.720 but it's quite a concerning possibility.

00:07:34.280 So things like that could be an ex-Black Swan event

00:07:37.380 in the way 9-11 was a Black Swan event.

00:07:39.120 Yeah. Well, you know, that's so scary. I remember, you know, and it's interesting because I'm a little older than you. And I remember, quite frankly, sitting. It was a conference that we were at, and I had all the general managers, so about 15 general managers that worked with me at that time, all from across the province.

00:08:00.200 and it happened um and how scared they were and this was uh post 9-11 because they'd seen 9-11

00:08:08.760 all of a sudden they saw this blackout and then you know we waited an hour we waited two hours

00:08:14.660 and then everyone was like oh no and remember you for those of you you know again cell towers down

00:08:20.720 gas stations down so what happened was the team started to split and go again go back to the

00:08:27.080 cities across the province our communication was down so we were right we were you know there for

00:08:33.060 those of you you know living on your phone and on my phone with me right now but I know a lot of

00:08:36.640 people live on imagine your phone's down right right you don't have any means of communication

00:08:42.080 you have no ability to get gas and you have whatever's in your tank to get home right and

00:08:47.120 you don't know where your family is and you just seen 9-11 you know shortly before you know you'd

00:08:53.480 seen that event so that was in your mind because you'd seen it and you know people were like well

00:08:58.540 maybe you know the niagara the niagara uh grid has gone down you know there was all this kind

00:09:04.540 of speculation going on as you were meeting people and the only the only um information you

00:09:11.060 were getting was from people you were running into but they were in panic too right because

00:09:15.940 they were all trying to make it they were their works were down their their offices were closing

00:09:20.000 they were all trying to get out they were trying to figure out how to get home

00:09:23.180 and again gas became you know gas became the critical issue you know energy to get yourself

00:09:28.880 back to your house right to meet your family again so you're trying to figure out how to

00:09:33.740 meet your family where they were how you could kind of come together again and that was the big

00:09:38.860 challenge at the time it's so interesting to hear that for me because when i look back though paul

00:09:43.220 so i'm an only child um and i was living just with my dad and i probably didn't have i don't

00:09:49.820 had a girlfriend at that time so my responsibility level was small and i think and i was already at

00:09:54.700 home when this happened so it was a much smaller world but when when you had you know you have

00:09:59.260 families you have a larger operation going on you have business interests those events

00:10:03.020 have so much more magnitude yeah to you whereas my response to it was a much uh smaller world

00:10:08.860 oh yeah so the the business that i was running at the time was uh had thousands of people inside of

00:10:14.620 of it and those thousands of people were being and you know it had uh surveillance and it had

00:10:20.300 security in it that all had dropped so and we had backup generators and that that kicked in

00:10:24.920 but remember at that time so back your backup generator is only going to take you so long so

00:10:29.800 this is an event that's going more than 24 hours so you know your fuel to keep your generators

00:10:34.740 going you're refueling you're trying to calculate that but then you're trying to figure out how to

00:10:39.600 contact everyone because you have to go to landlines and you got to try to get to and

00:10:44.360 you got to try to get someone to coordinate that has enough decision like all your emergency

00:10:50.120 planning so it's interesting because you know we don't and it's funny how things have fallen off

00:10:55.080 again we still do emergency planning i do it in my businesses but we didn't we after 9-11 and after

00:11:01.800 the blackout we did a lot more emergency planning so we spent a lot more time on making sure

00:11:07.000 emergency protocols were in place you know when i got home so i was uh living by myself when i got

00:11:13.000 home quite frankly uh candles yeah you know i had one right right so when the one candle burned out

00:11:22.440 and my one flashlight burned out i was in the dark right until morning so that you know the

00:11:28.200 all the things that you think of that you need food right everything was closed so all the

00:11:33.720 groceries so all those things that you kind of take for granted were gone and i'm thinking okay

00:11:38.520 you know how long do i have you know you know before i need to start thinking about food how

00:11:44.760 long is this because you're going through that cycle now the good thing is um uh battery radios

00:11:53.480 so communication i did i did have so i could get finally i could get the news on and

00:11:58.360 i could start to hear what was happening so i'd understand but they didn't know they were trying

00:12:03.400 to figure it out it wasn't until like 12 or 18 hours later could they figure out that it was a

00:12:08.280 i think it was a tree that you mentioned that had fallen on in the northeast i don't think we

00:12:13.320 actually found that out until like weeks later when they did a full investigation but it was just

00:12:18.200 not good pruning at a transformer station in the trees and then it just happened the way that it

00:12:23.080 shorted the one wire it created a cascading effect that made it all the way to us yeah the way the

00:12:28.280 grid worked one thing you know and as you're telling these stories paul one thing that i

00:12:32.440 think is remarkable when we think about today people have far fewer practical skills today

00:12:38.680 than they did 20 years ago oh yeah um even then like you know i had a cell phone as a teenager

00:12:43.560 but i still had street smarts that i learned and that you know how we would meet up we would say

00:12:48.760 to someone okay next friday you know four days from now or eight days from now i'll meet you at

00:12:53.880 the northwest corner of young and gloar at 6 p.m yeah they say okay yeah and then eight days later

00:13:00.280 the person would be there and you would be there whereas now you know what we do we text

00:13:04.120 almost there okay where are you and then you'll be standing on the two wrong corners and you'll

00:13:07.880 be looking around and finally you have to hello oh there you are i see you know like it's so

00:13:11.960 different to your point about food looking after yourself candles like people are ordering uber

00:13:16.440 eats or what have you yeah let alone you know making their own food like how if the grid goes

00:13:22.360 down or or we're in a blackout scenario just for a few days i think it would be tougher now than it

00:13:27.560 was just 20 years ago well you know and it showed it was interesting because a couple of my uh

00:13:33.080 teams uh travels home was was quite challenging they broke down and so it was it was great because

00:13:40.520 good samaritans pulled over uh i bet if i came in the office today and asked all most of us here

00:13:46.360 today if they could siphon their own gas right with a tube on their own i don't know would they

00:13:52.520 without having a phone because remember they would have to know how to do it they couldn't

00:13:57.080 use a phone to google how to siphon their own gas could they do it right right because you don't have

00:14:02.120 the technology at hand because of the power edge so quite frankly they had to actually you know

00:14:07.640 siphon the gas um you know suck the gas out of their tank get the siphoning going to get the

00:14:14.680 a can filled up in those days we used to carry gas cans more it's more prevalent to have a gas

00:14:19.800 can and you're drunk you'd always see the little red cans with the yellow exactly yellow hose pipe

00:14:24.520 on it nobody has those anymore right because well a lot of our cars didn't have great gas uh uh meat

00:14:30.200 gas uh right uh because the fuel gauges reports meters yeah the fuel gauge didn't report that

00:14:37.560 well so you basically you would break down sometimes so you had to actually find gas but

00:14:42.440 but yeah it's interesting how that all kind of played out but you know you look at it now and

00:14:47.160 you think to yourself wow you know are we any further ahead so if something did happen

00:14:54.760 you think we're any better and i i don't think we are i i think it's in some respects we're worse

00:15:00.600 off yeah yeah now is there grid kind of can i ask you something just you know uh do you think

00:15:07.000 our grid's better off you mentioned we'd made improvements to our grid or do you think we're

00:15:11.640 still i i think the grid has been improved in that when the the life cycle renewal of parts

00:15:18.520 comes up they replace them with with improved technology that's more resilient but i think

00:15:24.520 our our way of life is more fragile than it was before right if it if it did happen yeah yeah and

00:15:30.920 we have more people on the grid than we have ever had right so if an incident did happen you know

00:15:36.280 9-11 i'll just jump back for that for a minute just a horrific uh left so many impressions on

00:15:41.560 all of us who actually watched that day and you know again i i just got home and i spent you know

00:15:48.120 the glued to the tv for the next you know month right just watching you know these poor people

00:15:55.400 trying to figure a way out of this can you know terrible situation and the loss and everything

00:16:00.200 going on um you know plans you know you don't hear and i guess covid kind of made me worried

00:16:08.840 you know when it happened because quite frankly when you listen to people come in and do shows

00:16:13.240 on covid how ill prepared we were for an emergency like a pandemic you know i guess the question we

00:16:22.680 have to be asking our governments how well prepared are we if we have something on god forbid like

00:16:29.400 uh a 9-11 happen and you don't hear about it very much we we have offices and departments

00:16:37.800 that are supposed to be doing that but the the scary thing with covid is we actually had pandemic

00:16:43.080 preparedness documents and plans yeah i wrote about this back during the time and we just weren't

00:16:48.520 following them no we didn't we didn't follow them so i think we're planning a little bit uh for for

00:16:54.360 for all these things.

00:16:55.200 We do, you know, red team scenarios

00:16:57.120 and worst case scenario planning.

00:16:59.240 But the question is whether the plans are sufficient or not,

00:17:02.680 would we even follow them or would we panic?

00:17:04.860 Yeah, well, unfortunately, you know,

00:17:06.900 now you gotta give, you know,

00:17:10.100 when you listen to the stories now 25 years later

00:17:12.700 about 9-11, the people who stepped up

00:17:15.440 and the people who actually, you know, the mayor

00:17:18.580 and the people who actually came to the forefront

00:17:21.600 brought the city through that.

00:17:23.360 wow what what courage did they have a playbook i don't think they did right no they didn't in

00:17:29.040 those days and those days quite frankly you know i i tell the story about you know we used to go to

00:17:34.240 the airport before 9 11 and that's we had digital scans so we basically would go to the airport we

00:17:40.960 put our hand on a digital scan a gate would open and we go through we wouldn't see anyone right

00:17:46.240 because people weren't concerned and then after that security got you know you think of all the

00:17:51.520 things that happened and we we tightened up security surveillance you know monitoring all

00:17:56.800 those things you know did improve after um did they approve enough if something happened again

00:18:02.880 and i think where we're missing is is those protocols if something was to happen but how

00:18:08.240 i guess anthony the question that always remains how do you get a society to figure out the

00:18:13.040 protocols because you know last week was that big storm we had you know um in ontario we had a big

00:18:18.400 storm come through and we had the weather alerts you know the our phones were going off and it was

00:18:24.240 crazy and they're still struggling with getting weather alerts out in a accurate on an accurate

00:18:30.240 basis how how well equipped are we if something happens and that's what worries me yeah that

00:18:37.360 that's the question and we've seen some test cases where things have worked out and others

00:18:41.760 where like in the covet case they haven't yeah thanks anthony and uh you know for all those

00:18:48.000 i know you might be too young right you didn't live through you know you didn't see 9 11 but

00:18:53.680 you know please uh watch the memorials that are happening today and uh you know for the families

00:19:00.560 you know we we always you know pray for them and we feel sorry for what happened that day

True Patriot Love - September 12, 2026

Could Canada Handle Another 9⧸11-Level Crisis？ ft. Anthony Furey

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