Remembering 9/11: Picking up the Pieces and Shaping the Future

PART 2 of 2

Editor’s Note — This is Part 2 on the events that took place on September 11, 2001, through the personal account of Chief John Peruggia, retired Chief of FDNY EMS. If you haven’t yet, please read Part 1 — Remembering 9/11 Through the Lens of FDNY’s Chief of EMS.

Planes hit. 

Buildings collapse. 

Lives are lost. 

Loved ones are lost. 

Grief. Fear. Anger. Mourning. 

Tragedies shape everything that comes after them, separating time into two distinct frames: Before, and After. 

The dust settles, and those left behind in its wake are left to pick up the pieces. 

Through the loss, through the darkness, come sparks of innovation. 

COMMUNICATION CHALLENGES

The lack of communication played a pivotal role over the course of the day. 

Chief John Peruggia’s radio and cell phone both failed at critical junctures. It was difficult coordinating a response when he couldn’t communicate with critical team members. When forces came in from New Jersey to help, there was no way to bridge communication so that New Jersey responders could coordinate with New York’s Bravest. 

And all day, Peruggia carried the weight of his friend Richie’s death, with no word to tell him otherwise. 

Tim Hakamaki, one of the industry’s leading experts on communication technologies for time sensitive emergencies shared, “All of the communications and all of the technologies were built on top of that building.” Tim was on the ground with Battalion-4 the Friday before 9/11, working to implement a new ePCR system. “All communications went down because it was all sitting on top of the tower. That was where the communication towers were for all of FDNY.”

FROM TRAGEDY TO INNOVATION

And in the years since then, innovative solutions have been developed in response. 9/11 was the origin point for many of the technologies that are current staples in emergency response. 

According to Hakamaki: “9/11 changed things. For example, the redundancies in technologies. A lot of good things come out of bad things. There's a lot of preparation that goes into, if this happens again, how are we going to handle it better? That's how the industry evolves. FirstNet is just one example.”

THE HISTORY OF FIRSTNET

The September 11 attacks revealed fundamental problems with the communications systems used by our nation’s first responders. The radio systems that law enforcement, fire services, EMS, and emergency management relied on could not easily operate across agencies, and, during the crisis, land and mobile phone lines were overwhelmed by a high volume of calls.

The communications challenges first responders faced on September 11 were captured in the 9/11 Commission Report. The 2004 report identified gaps in emergency communications and recommended a nationwide network for public safety communications.
 In the years after the report’s release, public safety organizations and associations came together to encourage Congress to pass legislation establishing a reliable, dedicated, and nationwide high-speed network for first responders.


The First Responder Network Authority, or FirstNet Authority, was created as part of the Middle Class Tax Relief and Job Creation Act (PUBLIC LAW 112–96), which was signed into law on Feb. 22, 2012. The law allocated 20 megahertz of spectrum and $7 billion to establish a broadband network dedicated to the nation's first responders and gave the FirstNet Authority the mandate to ensure the building, deployment, and operation of the network. Congress also required that the network extend coverage in rural areas through buildout milestones. The inaugural meeting of the FirstNet Authority Board took place on Sept. 25, 2012.



Out of 9/11 came a period of shift, change, and growth as the industry came to grips with the tragedy, and how to move forward. Hakamaki pointed out that, prior to 2001, the industry had remained fairly consistent for almost 40 years. Since 2001, major shifts and strides have changed the way that EMS operates. “If you look at the evolution of an industry, EMS really didn’t change from 1965 until 2001. And then from 2001 to 2021, the last 20 years have seen significant, significant changes.” 

9/11 occurred right around the same time technology was taking off with the invention of the internet. Cell phones. Internet connectivity. Access to data—and lots of it—was suddenly a possibility. 

“Logistics, business intelligence, pieces that are giving people responding to the right place at the right time with the right equipment and the right people, it's being driven by computer algorithms,” shared Hakamaki. “There are pretty significant changes in the industry that are going to get carried forward.”

Technologies like FirstNet now give first responders priority cell coverage by deploying, operating, maintaining, and improving the first high-speed, nationwide wireless broadband network dedicated to public safety. 

A number of technologies have changed the shape of emergency response and even healthcare. Hakamaki quickly named a few: “The cell phone. High speed internet. Access to data, which can help provide outcomes and information about what works, and what doesn’t. Standardization in EMS through NEMSIS data sets. HIPAA, patient privacy, and security all became regulated, instead of simply something that clinicians were conscious about. Even ECG transmission from the field has become a much more integral part of practice, helping save lives by moving information to the right people more quickly. And then, of course, ePCR software, which has changed the way organizations store patient data.”

COMMUNICATING ACROSS ORGANIZATIONS

Over the past twenty years, much has changed in the worlds of EMS and emergency management. We’ve faced many unique challenges—not the least of which being a global pandemic. 

Times have shifted. Technology is constantly evolving. 9/11 has left its mark on emergency management and on EMS. In many ways, it paved the path to where we find ourselves now. 

Many things have gotten better since then—several of them, thanks to Chief Peruggia’s planning and influence. After experiencing the difficulty of not being able to communicate with New Jersey medics who came to help, Peruggia pushed for an interoperable system that would allow the two agencies to talk to each other and work together when needed. He was determined to have a system in place for next time. 

“And there was a next time of a different size, scale, and scope,” he said, “where the years of planning and talking came to fruition: when Captain Sully landed his plane on the Hudson River. I was able to talk directly to my Jersey counterparts and coordinate where they were seeing evacuees, and where we were. And it was a New York incident, even though the Jersey guys want to say it was a Jersey incident. But when the NYPD Police Chief asked me, ‘We need to know about victims in New Jersey, can you help us? Within minutes I had exact numbers, I had names of people from the plane. Because we had a system that had been developed to facilitate that communication. They were like, ‘Guys, this is great!’ We wanted to make sure that we could do things properly.” 

Hakamaki’s belief in the importance of communication now drives him in his position as the Senior Vice President of Product at Pulsara, where he works to develop a communication platform that can bridge communication across an entire region, helping teams from different disciplines talk to each other. 

TODAY'S STRUGGLES 

And still, some of the same challenges that EMS faced twenty years ago are still prevalent today. EMS and emergency responders still face a wide variety of dangers on the job. Compensation is still an issue. Says Hakamaki, “The cost is high. Reimbursement is low. The industry itself, there's a lot of paramedics that are taking care of all of these people in this pandemic. They have no insurance themselves. Just think of that. The people saving other people's lives don't have insurance to take care of themselves because it's just not provided across the board.” 

Moving into the future, we still have much to work on. 

As technology grows and expands, so does the number of solutions that EMS, hospitals, and emergency managers use to meet the various needs of their situations. It’s imperative that communication and data systems are interoperable with one another, so that everyone can develop a shared consciousness of what’s going on. 

Looking back on the past twenty years, we’ve seen an astounding amount of change in EMS and emergency response. We’ve come a long way in twenty years. In some ways, September 11th feels like a lifetime ago. But in others, it is still present in everything we do, still shaping the way that we as an industry respond. 

And for some, like Peruggia, the events of that day are still too close to home. He retired from the New York City Fire Department as the Assistant Chief of the Bureau of EMS in 2014, after guiding the department through events like the citywide blackout of 2003. Twenty years later, it’s difficult to relive the events of that day. Ceremonies are too surreal a reminder of the experience. 

On the one-year anniversary of 9/11 in 2002, Chief Peruggia was in charge of the incident action plan for the ceremony, as there was still work going on at the site, and millions of people were in attendance. 

"We had resources all over, just in case of an attack, so I was just walking around during the whole ceremony," he said. "When they rang the bell to commemorate a moment of silence for the collapse of the second tower, I was on West Street, standing in the same spot that I was a year earlier." The eerie experience was overwhelming. "It was freaky," he said. "I thought, I don't want to be anywhere near that." Shortly thereafter, Peruggia headed back to headquarters. Every year since then, up until his retirement, he's chosen to observe 9/11 alongside the EMS Training Academy. 

9/11 will always be there, present in many small ways, in what we do. It remains the tragedy, the loss, and the catalyst for many of the changes that have shaped the past twenty years of EMS and emergency response. We move on, and we move forward.

Each stride ensures that we will never forget. 

On Sunday, September 12th, 2021, Chief Peruggia appeared on the 60 Minutes special "FDNY: 9/11," broadcast on CBS. The recorded program can be viewed in full here.