Nazareth Police Chief Was 9/11 First Responder

The morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Nazareth Police Chief Thomas Trachta was at home on Staten Island. At that time, he was a Brooklyn South Narcotics sergeant.

Everything seemed business as usual -- his kids were in school and his wife was watching television in another room -- when suddenly his wife yelled for him.

Together, Trachta and his wife watched as the second plane flew into 2 World Trade Center.

Trachta immediately flew into action.

Thinking of his children first, he rushed to their school. Once they were home with his wife on Staten Island, he headed into the city.

He took the Verrazano Bridge, a span that normally gets 190,000 cars a day, but his was one of the only cars on it.

“It was eerie,” he says. “They closed the bridge, so I knew it was only first responders driving over. From the bridge, it looked like Manhattan was on fire.”

And just in case, "I took the upper level of the bridge in case it was a target," Trachta said. "I didn't want to be trapped on the lower level."

Trachta and his team were supposed to help direct people away from the burning towers near Battery Park when firemen pointed to a man in a building that was supposed to have been evacuated.

Thinking the man might be involved in the attack, Trachta and his team investigated.

“I’m an enforcement officer, and I think like one,” he says. “We questioned the man and followed up on it.”

As a result, just blocks from the still burning World Trade Center, Trachta busted a drug ring and recovered a quantity of ecstasy and other drugs with a street value of $250,000.

The irony is not lost, Trachta says. In the midst of the worst tragedy the city, and the country, had ever seen, he and his team were still thinking like cops.

“Of course 9/11 changed things,” he says, “But it doesn’t change who you are.”

In the days that followed, Trachta worked the “bucket brigade” and recovery detail in the wreckage of the towers.

Within a couple of weeks, he was back on the street.

“The reality is, we didn’t get a chance to grieve,” he says. “About three weeks later during an arrest, the individual said to me, ‘Too bad you weren’t in the towers that day.’ See what I mean; a tragedy can happen, but we still move on with our mission. And it should be every officer‘s mission to serve and protect, no matter what.”

After 21 years on the NYPD, Trachta retired in 2006. He became Nazareth’s chief in 2009. In his office on Main Street, he has pictures of himself working in the debris of the World Trade Center in 2001.

In his filing cabinet he has a handy photo album filled with pictures from that time. And on his computer, he has official NYPD shots from Sept. 11 arranged in a slideshow that ends with the message, “Never forget the days that changed ALL our lives!”