911 Remembrance Ceremony
EXCHANGE CLUB OF THE SAN RAMON VALLEY ANNOUNCES 24th
ANNUAL 9-11 REMEMBRANCE CEREMONY
Chief Harold Schapelhouman to Keynote 24th Remembrance Ceremony
Danville, CA – The Exchange Club of San Ramon Valley invites the public to its 24th Annual 9/11 Remembrance Ceremony on Wednesday, September 11, 2025, from 5:30 – 6:30 PM at the All-Wars Memorial at Oak Hill Park, 3005 Stone Valley Road in Danville, CA. The ceremony honors the bravery and sacrifice of the fire, police, and military personnel who responded to the 9-11 attacks.
This year’s keynote speaker is Harold Schapelhouman, an American hero. Chief Schapelhouman is the retired Fire Chief of Menlo Park, who helped rescue survivors at Ground Zero and also responded to major national tragedies including Hurricane Katrina, the Oklahoma City bombing, the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster, and numerous fires and floods, including the Kerrville, Texas Flood that occurred earlier this month. More information is available in the attached biography.
Tim White, President of the Exchange Club of the San Ramon Valley, and Karen Stepper, Past President, will emcee the event.
Scouts and American Heritage Girls will present 50 American flags in tribute. Also featured will be the Honor Guard and the Monte Vista High School Choir. A wreath ceremony to honor Gold Star Families will take place to remember those who paid the ultimate price for our freedom.
ENGEO will provide ice cream treats at the end of the ceremony. PG&E will once again sponsor our essay competition, open to all students in the San Ramon Valley. Winners will receive the following cash prizes.
“9-11 was a tough day…it seems like a bunch of people
forgot what this was about.”
— Chief Harold Schapelhouman
Grades 9 – 12: 1st – $1,000, 2nd – $600, 3rd – $400
Grades 6 – 8: 1st – $600, 2nd – $400, 3rd – $200
Grades: K – 5: 1st – $300, 2nd – $200, 3rd – $100
Chief Harold Schapelhouman
Since retiring from the Menlo Park Fire Protection District in June 2021, Chief Harold Schapelhouman has remained active in the emergency services community serving as an advisor, mentor, advocate, speaker, volunteer and subject matter expert on a variety of issues that are both important to first responders and of interest.
At the request of the Deputy Administrator of NASA, Pam Melroy, Chief H. Schapelhouman assisted NASA Ames in Mountain View with their Joint NASA/FAA Next- Gen Project and Air Space Management Program in support of first responders and focused on Wildland Fire Response, specific to the use of manned aviation and coming unmanned aerial systems (drone platforms) for aerial observation and firefighting.
In addition, he was involved with Nor-Cal Firefighters in support of Ukrainian Firefighters. A foundation that was created to collect used but serviceable fire equipment from Northern California Fire Agencies that was sent to the Ukraine.
Chief H. Schapelhouman currently serves as a technical advisory to Komodo Fire Systems, an eco- friendly plant-based fire-retardant company, Ladris Inc; an evacuation and fire modeling software company and most recently, Fire Dome, an Israeli based start-up.
He also currently serves as the Menlo Park Fire Districts Historian and as a Board Member involved with the California Urban Search and Rescue Task Force 3 (CA-TF3) non-profit foundation that was created to support our search, rescue and recovery dog teams and other important equipment acquisition initiatives, not on the Federal equipment cache list, like Star-link. To help, go to – https://sites.google.com/a/catf3.org/home/foundation-donations/general-donation
In addition, he has assisted in the support of proposed statewide policies and potential legislation related changes to medical discrimination for emergency workers and advocacy for National legislation related to improving the integration, support, funding, adoption and acceleration of Unmanned Aerial Systems for the Fire Service. He is also currently following the FEMA Review Council examining the organizations past performance and future.
Prior to retirement, Chief H. Schapelhouman spent 40 years with the Menlo Park Fire Protection District starting as a firefighter and finishing as the Fire Chief. The Fire District serves 100,000 residents and businesses located in the communities of Atherton, East Palo Alto, Menlo Park and unincorporated San Mateo County. The Fire District is located along the San Francisco Bay and in what is known as Silicon Valley.
As the Fire Chief, he reported to five elected Board Members who governed the District, and together we were responsible for managing a 30 square mile area served by seven fire stations, twelve first response units staffed daily by 33 front line personnel with a full staff of 155 employees that included safety, prevention, support and administrative personnel.
Chief H. Schapelhouman managed an annual budget of $60M with a reserve of $65M, broken into various categories with no debt or outstanding obligations. Under his leadership, the District achieved an AA+ Bond rating, the highest available and clean audits each of the 14 years I was the Fire Chief.
One of his greatest accomplishments was the purchase of nine strategically located properties, two used for an administrative headquarters, warehouse for special operations and six properties located next to existing fire stations allowing us to rebuild three larger, modern, drive through stations and have additional space to rebuild and build three more.
I worked closely with each of our jurisdictions Town, Cities, and County Manager as well as our Police Chiefs, Sheriff and CHP Commander. We also closely coordinated with Public Safety Communications (Dispatch), Office of Emergency Management and Office of Emergency Medical Services regarding our field paramedics and emergency first response medical units.
The District provided special contract services to our largest employer, Facebook Headquarters and their multiple campuses as well as the SLAC National Laboratory, one of the ten Department of Energy (DOE) facilities in the Country.
The District also managed first response service contracts and agreements with the California Governors’ Office of Emergency Services (Cal-OES) and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Emergency Support Function 9 (ESF-9), Urban Search and Rescue (US&R) as California Task Force 3 (CA-TF3) an “all risk” Task Force specializing in catastrophic collapse, flood, fire and other environmental and man-made incidents needing immediate search, rescue and recovery.
The FEMA annual performance agreement was supported by a staff of four personnel and an annual budget of $1.1 million dollars. The Fire District provided a 28,000 square foot warehouse for office, equipment and vehicle storage as well as a multi-acre training site for the 220 Team members from 16 local Fire Agencies and 60 civilian professionals that supported Task Force 3.
Over the years, he has served as an instructor and subject matter expert in emergency response related to terrorism, structural collapse, technical rescue and recovery operations, drone operations and use, water rescue, Wildland firefighting, community preparedness, incident command and control and firefighter safety.
Over many decades, Chief H. Schapelhouman has responded to the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, 1992 Hurricane Iniki, 1994 Northridge Earthquake, 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing, 1996/97 Northern California Floods, 1999 Chi-Chi Earthquake in Taiwan, 2001 World Trade Center Collapse, 2003 Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster, 2005 Hurricane Katrina, 2010 San Bruno PG&E Gas Main Explosion, 2015 CZU Lightening Complex Fire and various other less notable national disasters and local emergencies, as well as National Special Security Events (NSSE).