CINCINNATI — When the twin towers fell on Sept. 11, 2001, Gary Miller was in Cincinnati preparing for a disaster drill. Within 24 hours, he was on his way to Lower Manhattan.
Miller was the director of disaster services for the Red Cross in Cincinnati, and his expertise was needed in the first months of recovery.
"Two of us from Cincinnati jumped into a car and drove to New York, and when I arrived at New York, the police department met us at the Washington Bridge," Miller said.
Standing at ground zero for the first time, Miller said the scale of the devastation was immediate.
WATCH: Within 24 hours of the 9/11 attacks, Cincinnati's Red Cross director was in New York City
"It was scary, to say nothing, but other than that, we were thinking, and on the way up I was going through some planning and contacting the other Red Cross chapters," Miller said.
In his years of emergency response, Miller had responded to countless hurricanes and other natural disasters and was part of the early recovery at the Beverly Hills Supper Club fire. But this was different, as volunteers raced in from across the country.
"We were ready to do even more, so we got together; we set up a hospital, field hospital of working with the hospitals and putting them together and by that time, in the morning, we had thousands of people coming and one of my assistants, for instance, was flying in or trying to fly in from Hawaii," Miller said.
During his two months at ground zero, Miller's team helped serve more than 100,000 meals per day. He also worked at Pier 94, the Family Assistance Center, trying to bring comfort and closure to victims' families.
"This nurse came from down south. She just volunteered; she was not a Red Cross person, she was a nurse," Miller said.
Miller's basement and office are a testament to what he spent his life doing — awards and accolades among a collection of emergency vehicles.
He said his path into emergency response began long before 9/11.
"I started out; I had no medical training for my family or anything. My father was a barber. My mother worked in a grocery store, a pharmacy store, but I started with the Boy Scouts and started going from there about learning how to take care of yourself in a big emergency," Miller said.
For Miller, the lessons learned at ground zero and every disaster before and after it carry forward.
"There's many people who help with what we do and how we do it, but we try, and what we do with any of the emergency services is that anything we learn, we learn better," Miller said.
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