Macungie Police Chief Traveled to NYC to Help After the Twin Towers Attacks

Just as millions of other Americans, Macungie Police Chief Ed Harry  turned on the television the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, just in time to see a plane hit the second of the Twin Towers.

His wife had alerted Harry – who was then the chief of the Hazleton police force – just as he was preparing for a meeting with the mayor.

Again just as millions of Americans, Harry stared in disbelief.

Then he separated himself from the millions who watched to become one of the few who responded.

The New York City Police Department sent out a request to nearby police departments, one of which Hazleton was considered.

To be prepared for any eventuality, the New York Police Department asked for help from police in several neighboring states. Harry responded with his SWAT team and equipment and a trailer full of supplies donated by local businesses and headed for Ground Zero. They were told to be prepared to stay at least a week.

“At that point nobody really knew what was going on. They didn’t know if there would be more or other kinds of attacks,” he explained.

The crew from Hazleton arrived at the Meadowlands staging ground around 8 p.m. to wait among a sea of idle ambulances.

The next morning they were moved with other police departments to a staging ground in Liberty Park, just across the river from the still-smoking Twin Towers.

There, Harry had a front row seat to his most vivid memory: the smoking hole in the New York City skyline.

“That and the smell,” he said. “It wasn’t like any other fire. Infrared satellite images showed underground fires burned below Ground Zero for at least a week.”

And as the military flew F16s overhead and ferryboats flew up and down the Hudson River trying to force dust off their decks, what was hoped to be a rescue effort turned into a recovery of the thousands of victims.

The reports of the number of victims were staggering.

“We’re just not used to those kinds of numbers,” Harry said, “Entire precincts and fire companies were wiped out.”

The Sept. 11 attacks, and terrorism in general, changed the thinking of law enforcement dramatically. Incident management has had a huge impact on the way first responders tackle an emergency.

Preparedness, however, has been the biggest thing to change over the past 10 years, he said.

In addition to the airport security changes that have occurred, Harry, who is also a pilot, said the changes in controlled air space also have been quite dramatic. The government takes no chances with patrolling restricted air space. There are no “friendly warnings” anymore, he said.