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Physician who oversaw Sept. 11 Pentagon rescue operation to speak at SUNY Upstate Medical University April 26

Thom A. Mayer, M.D., who served as duty command physician of the rescue operation at the Pentagon Sept. 11, will present “Report from Ground Zero: The Pentagon on 09/11/01″ and “The Inhalation Anthrax Wars” Friday, April 26 at 9 a.m. at the Sheraton Syracuse University Hotel and Conference Center, 801 University Ave. The presentation is free and open to the public.

As deputy command physician at the Pentagon, Mayer coordinated all medical arrangements at the site during the terrorist attack. Authorities say 189 people were killed when an American Airlines Flight 77, piloted by suspected terrorists, slammed into the Pentagon the morning of Sept. 11.

Of his experience at the Pentagon on Sept. 11, Mayer told a gathering of the American College of Emergency Physicians last fall: “We saw things we did not want to see. We heard things we didn’t want to hear. We smelled things we didn’t want to smell. We thought thoughts we did not want to think.”

Mayer also was one of the first physician to see victims of inhalation anthrax. As chair of the department of emergency medicine and Inova Regional Trauma Center at Inova Fairfax Hospital in Falls Church, Va., Mayer and his emergency room staff treated Washington, D.C., postal workers who were infected with anthrax after handling tainted mail.

Mayer’s visit to SUNY Upstate Medical University is sponsored by the Department of Emergency Medicine.