Roseville Fire Chief Says 9/11 Impact Felt on Firefighting

When Tim O’Neill first heard about the terroristic attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001, he was a part-time Roseville fire fighter and a manager in the leasing division of Wells Fargo in Bloomington.

It was a few minutes past 8 a.m. when O’Neill arrived at work, then got a call from Roseville Fire Chief Richard Gasaway to turn on the news: A plane had hit the World Trade Center.

O’Neill headed to his company’s breakroom where employees were watching the drama and horror unfold on television.

“How did that (plane hitting the tower) happen?” O’Neill recalled wondering.  “We didn’t know anything about terrorism then.”

Soon, however, the other New York tower was struck and then came reports about an attack on the Pentagon and a plane that had crashed in Pennsylvania.

Suddenly, life in America was very different, said O’Neill, then deputy chief of operations for the Roseville Fire Department and a volunteer firefighter of ore than 10 years.

While there were no attacks in Minnesota, the life of fire fighting and operations for municipal fire departments would change dramatically, he said.

By serendipity, the city of Roseville was in need of a full-time assistant fire chief to help take on the growing demands of running the volunteer department Four months after 9/11, O’Neill applied and got that job.  Today, O’Neill is Roseville fire chief.

Since 9/11, fire departments like Roseville’s have had to step up planning, training and equipment to address potential threats and dangers, O’Neill said. That’s included being knowledgeable about chemical toxins and biological agents such as anthrax, he said.

“We didn’t know what the next attack might be,’ O”Neill explained. “We had to ramp up very quickly. We, as a fire service, had to be prepared for it and had to get educated very quickly.”

Another byproduct: The terroristic attacks brought the police and fire departments closer together for planning and coordinating services “as never before,” O’Neill said.

That’s meant, for example, assessing possible threats to buildings and infrastructure in the community,“ O’Neill said. Since 9/11, there are also procedures on how to deal with suspicious packages, for example, he said.

Emergency management had not been taken seriously before 9/11, O’Neill said. “Now, a lot of resources are put into that.”  That emergency preparedness has expanded to include planning for natural disasters and potential pandemics such as the “bird flu,” he said.

O’Neill said he believes that the events of 9/11  sparked a renewed interest in people across the country volunteering for fire departments.

“Unfortunately we had 343 firefighters (in New York City) die that day (9/11),” he said.

Meanwhile, O’Neill said he thinks the nation, as a whole, has healed and moved on from the events of 9/11.

“The good thing is to learn from what happened and what we can do to be diligent so it doesn’t happen again,” he said.