Ken Archer: Guiding the Pharmaceutical Stockpile
Public Health Advisor, CDC, National Center for Environmental Health
Emergency and Environmental Health Services
National Pharmaceutical Stockpile (NPS) Program
At 4:15 p.m. on September 11, 2001, Ken Archer, 39, was on a jet to New York City, traveling on the only non-military aircraft in U.S. airspace. His mission? To help guide a 50-ton “push package” of life-saving pharmaceuticals, antidotes and other medical supplies and equipment from a top-secret National Pharmaceutical Stockpile (NPS) warehouse to New York City within 12 hours or less.
“On the way to New York City, it was an extremely sobering moment when our plane flew over Washington, D.C.,” Archer recalls. “I looked out the window and saw F-16 fighter jets escorting us. That’s when it hit me that this was a true emergency.”
As a member of the NPS Technical Advisory Response Unit, Archer was among the first CDC logistics experts, pharmacists and emergency responders deployed to New York City. He worked closely with the New York City Emergency Management Agency, which had lost its entire operations center in the World Trade Center attacks.
“The devastation from the air, and on the ground, was mind-boggling,” says Archer. “I immediately went to the city’s makeshift emergency operations center and worked for close to 50 hours without sleeping. Initially, my job was to help facilitate communications between CDC headquarters and our staff at the warehouse. I had to get ground clearance for trucks transporting the push package, so that they could pass through numerous roadblocks in New York City. Every tunnel and bridge had been shut down.”
Thanks to the fast work of Archer and his team, along with the support of local and state public health and emergency officials, the 12-hour push package was actually delivered within seven hours of approved deployment - a record feat.
“Over the next three weeks, our role shifted,” says Archer. “We began assisting first responders, ordering thousands of masks for them to wear. Wherever we went, hundreds of New Yorkers would greet us, cheering and clapping. We’d see strangers, arm-in-arm, hugging in the streets. There were makeshift memorials everywhere. It was very emotional.”
Archer had barely returned from New York when he was deployed to help distribute antibiotics to anthrax hot spots including West Palm Beach, Fla., Washington, D.C. and New York City. A husband and father of two young daughters, Archer is proud to be a part of CDC’s emergency response efforts.
“CDC controls assets that can save millions of lives,” he says. “This is, by far, the most important work I’ve ever done in my life.”