As we watched the second plane hit the building,
I was TDY up to New York State Office of Emergency Management.
And I worked there for about a day, and then they sent me down
to manage and coordinate activities at Ground Zero.
And it was surrealistic.
I think that's what allowed many of us to survive.
The emotional impact of it to this day is the fact that it was,
you know, a post apocalyptic scene.
And, you know, we were just moving through.
And I know that certainly helped me be able to as out and do my job every day.
I would be engaged with, you know, leadership
from the police department, the fire department.
We started to look at the future.
You know, I was on the original standing committee
or the executive committee for ICS and what became SIMS in the city.
And I was representing the state in the RAND study
relative to PPE and things like that.
But every day it was just managing those those
activities at the pile to ensure we had an integrated synchronized effort
between all the agencies, whether that was bringing in subject
matter experts to look at it, clearing ways for people
to do video and pictures and things that needed to be done.
Working with the health and safety groups, doing all of those things.
In fact, it's interesting because I formed lifelong friendships
with people who later followed me or preceded me here at FEMA,
who came from either the city or the government.
And we remained friends, close friends to this day.
One of the things that I was able to accomplish was to get the insurance
college as a center
where folks could come in and just decompress.
We had everything that the Red Cross ran it and we had everything in there
from a therapeutic massage to 12 step programs
to virtually every religious denomination and organization there.
So people had a place to go and eat and decompress, and that was a sucess.
And then we did one down at the Marriott down below the
the site as well.
So we had these areas above and below were strictly for people working.
On the pile at the at the at the
the site to be able to go down and to
just decompress, get help if they needed it.
Yeah, I'll tell you what stood out.
It's two things is A:
The humanity of the people that were involved in the moment.
I don't care who they were, where they were from.
I mean, I even had cab drivers that were smiling and waving ask, "Can I help you?"
And then the other side of that is the resiliency of this city and of this state.
It is absolutely remarkable.
So I think that those two things are
superimposed on each other, left an indelible
mark on me, certainly.
But to watch every day, the people out here
all the way up and down the West Side Highway, offering
food, offering drinks, just being there for the people down below.
Because they didn't know what else to do, but I needed to do something.
It was remarkable.
I think that the fact that
we're coming up on 20 years is just a good time to remember
specifically the people that, you know, as you go to the front of the building here
and look down on memorialized in that area out there,
you know, that's anybody that knows somebody
that was in the towers has a very different opinion on this.
Anybody, that was friends with any of the folks that
gave that last full measure in terms
of what we do all in public safety.
Now, that's not something that we're ever bound to forget.
So to me, it's just a good point to remember that
as an individual and hopefully as a country.