Eleven years ago today, Lt. Todd Kelly was lobster fishing in the Keys. He climbed back in the boat to find others gathered around a radio, listening to reports that the twin towers had fallen.
Since that day, security has tightened across the nation, including in Gainesville, said Kelly, spokesman for the Alachua County Sheriff’s Office.
The biggest effects can be seen during Gators football games, said University Police Capt. Jeff Holcomb, who was working at the UPD dispatch center when he watched the first tower go down.
Since the attacks, police presence at Gators games has increased, he said. They keep an especially close eye now on any event where thousands of people attend.
The Gainesville Fire Rescue has increased security at football games as well, said Chief Gene Prince, who spent 9/11 calling to see if the fire department could help and watching the events on TV.
The department set up detectors in the stadium to monitor chemicals and environments, Prince said, and there is a decontamination plan in case of a chemical emergency.
In fact, a federal mandate was instituted after 9/11 that required more training to familiarize officers and fire rescuers with the National Incident Management System, Prince said.
“Those are things we continue to work on,” Prince said.
Communication among various responding agencies improved as well, Prince said.
There is now a federal radio mandate that requires law enforcement and fire rescue from neighboring counties to have a shared radio channel that they can all access in the case of a widespread emergency.
While this change has been nationwide, Prince and Kelly both said Alachua County has made a tremendous amount of progress with communication.
“If we were to have a large-scale emergency situation, all the responding agencies can now communicate and ensure that we can work together,” Kelly said. “There’s kind of a seamless transition in the communication aspect.”
Kelly also said officers are generally more aware of their surroundings.
Officers get to know who the mailmen and delivery people are at early hours of the morning, he said, so flags start coming up more often if an officer sees anything out of the ordinary.
The attacks shook police and fire officials as much as students and Gainesville residents, Kelly said. Eleven years later, it rallies them to work to make their city safer.
“We have the same range of emotions that everyone else did,” Kelly said. “It definitely magnified our sense of purpose.”
