{"id":344449,"date":"2026-09-11T23:10:08","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T23:10:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/344449\/"},"modified":"2026-09-11T23:10:08","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T23:10:08","slug":"north-fond-du-lac-police-chief-served-on-usns-comfort-in-nyc-after-9-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/344449\/","title":{"rendered":"North Fond du Lac police chief served on USNS Comfort in NYC after 9\/11"},"content":{"rendered":"

NORTH FOND DU LAC (WLUK) – Those who are old enough to remember, know exactly where they were on 9\/11<\/a>. One Fond du Lac County man found himself in the middle of the rescue and recovery effort.<\/p>\n

North Fond du Lac Police Chief Peter Vergos knows exactly where he was on 9\/11. The then 20-something, Navy corpsman with field medic designation, was working at Bethesda Naval Hospital, about 15 miles from the Pentagon.<\/p>\n

“The unit I worked on is a pre and post surgical ward, so a lot of Vietnam veterans a lot of World War II veterans and there was even some World War I veterans that were still alive at that time,” said Vergos. “I started doing my checks on patients and as I’m going around they have TVs in their room and we could kind of see what was occurring. Initially we thought it was an accident and they already started gearing up the medical response teams, but then the second one hit the tower and we’re like oh boy, you know something something’s occurring.”<\/p>\n

WLUK<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Vergos was almost immediately activated to the World Trade Center, arriving in New York Harbor on the USNS Comfort.<\/p>\n

The Comfort, a 1,000 bed hospital ship equipped with operating rooms and intensive care unit beds, was sent to help care for the wounded.<\/p>\n

Vergos said with very few surviors following the Towers collapse, the Comfort ended up helping those working at Ground Zero rest and recover.<\/p>\n

He said, “We had visited the World Trade Center before. We had taken pictures of ourselves in front of the Twin Towers and then you get there and the landscape is different. The mood was pretty somber. There was a lot of excitement gearing up to you know we’re gonna get a chance to help and we’re gonna get a chance to do more and then when you arrive you kind of learn how the the effort has changed into something very very different and very very sad.”<\/p>\n

After about a week in New York, Vergos went back to Maryland where he then cared for victims of the Pentagon attack.<\/p>\n

“Some of the burn casualties were absolutely horrific and those people suffered a lot so you see that and you It is a it’s a hard thing to to see happen to somebody,” added Vergos.<\/p>\n

Twenty-five years later the memories of September 11th are still vivid in his mind.<\/p>\n

“Definitely was a lot younger back then I didn’t have the same life experience. Definitely didn’t think that I’d ever be a part of something like that or ever witness something like that. The biggest event I had had up to that point Was probably the Challenger explosion, like 1986, you know and this was this far surpassed that this was much more catastrophic a much more indiscriminate act of violence,” he said.<\/p>\n

And something he will never forget.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NORTH FOND DU LAC (WLUK) – Those who are old enough to remember, know exactly where they were…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":344450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[9,56,63,65,64],"class_list":["post-344449","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-new-york","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=344449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/344449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/344450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=344449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=344449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=344449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}