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Twenty-five years after the attacks, the World Trade Center Health Program counted 145,275 currently enrolled members as of June 30, 2026. California accounts for 1,130 of them, and Bay Area search and rescue teams were among the crews sent to Ground Zero in 2001.
Twenty-five years after the September 11, 2001 attacks, the federal program that treats people sickened at the World Trade Center site still counts more than a thousand California members.
The World Trade Center Health Program was established by the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act of 2010 and reauthorized in 2015 through 2090. Its quarterly program summary published August 1, 2026, covering data through June 30, 2026, lists 145,275 currently enrolled members. California accounts for 1,130 of them: 662 responders and 468 survivors. Nine states report more, led by New York at 95,283.
Enrollment has not stopped. The program recorded 2,180 new enrollees in the first quarter of 2026 and 2,096 in the second. Enrollment over the life of the program, which counts everyone ever enrolled including members who later died or left, reached about 154,700 this year. The program does not track cause of death, so its deceased member counts include all causes and are not a count of deaths attributed to the attacks.
The Bay Area's part in the response is in the deployment record. The Menlo Park Fire Protection District sponsors California Task Force 3, a FEMA urban search and rescue team whose published deployment list includes the World Trade Center in 2001. The task force has more than 210 members drawn from 16 participating agencies, among them San Francisco Fire.
San Francisco Fire Chief Dean Crispen was part of a group of San Francisco firefighters who went to Ground Zero. In an interview with KQED published September 11, 2026, he said his team spent almost a week on the pile, clearing debris by hand and searching for fallen firefighters and victims, and that several of the people who went with him could not attend a San Francisco memorial that day because of lung issues and other health problems.
KQED also reported the region's observances that day: a veteran-led ceremony in the Presidio honoring the 343 New York City firefighters and eight EMS providers who died, a military flyover planned by Rep. Sam Liccardo's office at Los Gatos High School for alumni Mark Bingham and Todd Beamer, who died aboard United Airlines Flight 93, and volunteer meal packing at San Francisco State University and the Santa Clara Fairgrounds for the San Francisco-Marin Food Bank and Second Harvest of Silicon Valley. New York City officials also released previously sealed records documenting air quality concerns after the attacks.
Twenty-five years on, the health program's numbers are the part of the record that keeps moving. Each quarter adds enrollees, and each quarter is one more accounting of what the response cost the people who did the work.