9/11 Initial Responders Glance Again

The events of Sept. 11, 2001, created an indelible mark on New York City and the relaxation of the United States, which mourned 2,977 victims of terrorism that working day. Some of East Hampton’s initial responders paused this 7 days to reflect on the impression the terrorist attacks had on them individually.

Sag Harbor Village Law enforcement Chief Austin J. McGuire and East Hampton Town Law enforcement Chief Michael Sarlo, equally town officers in 2001, and East Hampton Village Police Main Mike Tracey, then a village sergeant, ended up section of the city and village crisis services units sent to the city to assist the New York Law enforcement Division in the days following the assaults. 

Michael Heller, a volunteer with the East Hampton Hearth Section who was the state coordinator for the Worldwide Fire Photographers Association in 2001, documented the initiatives of the urban lookup and rescue groups of the Condition Workplace of Fire Prevention and Handle.

“You can not genuinely explain that couple of days in a single word or a number of words. It was a gradual improve in sadness. At very first you will not feel what you might be viewing. Then when you see the carnage, the enormity of the devastation, that was just one process. When you observed the horror of those people families, persons keeping the spouse and children pics, the tragedy just kept rising every single day. Combine that with the absolute staggering functionality and control of the hearth section and police department — they have been organized further than anything at all I might at any time observed — the town was amazing, the citizens that ended up all around the position featuring aid to the personnel and volunteers, it was absolutely incredible. When issues ended up quieter, we arrived residence. It strike you, the unhappiness. You still really don’t system it due to the fact you can not.”

— East Hampton Village Law enforcement Main Michael Tracey

“We were there within just 24 several hours right after the towers fell, and we were there for pretty a prolonged time. Our to start with spherical was 36 hours. . . . The enormity of it was really hard to choose in due to the fact you actually considered you had been on a sci-fi motion picture set. We experienced a huge van and we had been bringing foods to people today. We escorted an ambulance with a deceased firefighter to the morgue. At some level there was yet another collapse, or there was about to be a collapse. You see all these firemen and cops functioning at you and it can be not a superior feeling. You know it’s time to get started managing. It was a working day that improved history, a working day that transformed almost everything.”

— Sag Harbor Police Main Austin J. McGuire

“At the time, I owned a stock pictures agency representing photographers around the environment. . . . I bought a call that early morning. I was not awake nonetheless. My telephone rang and it was Getty Pictures. They claimed, ‘Do you have anyone down there?’ I reported, ‘Do I have an individual down wherever?’ I was in this article in East Hampton. I got there close to 10, 11 o’clock that evening and still left the subsequent afternoon. The only way I can explain it is you have a specific look at of the entire world, a selected fact that defines your perspective of the entire world, and I obtained there and it did not fit into any of that. What am I searching at? You know what you’re looking at, but it was so massive, so enormous, that you couldn’t really wrap your head all over it. I don’t know that it at any time truly established in. . . . There was more than the senses can get in and understand.”

— Michael Heller, photographer and East Hampton Fire Section volunteer