Thomas Von Essen CBE (born 1945 in Brooklyn, New York) was appointed the 30th FDNY Commissioner of the City of New York by Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani on April 15, 1996, and served in that position until the end of the Giuliani Administration on December 31, 2001, nearly four months after the September 11, 2001 attacks.
[citation needed] Von Essen was the Commissioner for the New York City Fire Department when the September 11th, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center took place.
Von Essen escaped the collapse of the Twin Towers, and continued to serve as FDNY Commissioner until Mayor Rudy Giuliani's term ended in December 2001, by which time Von Essen wanted to preserve the accounts of the FDNY's members “before they became reshaped by a collective memory.” According to Jim Dwyer of the New York Times, the FDNY oral histories were “originally gathered on the order of Thomas Von Essen, the city fire commissioner on Sept. 11, who said he wanted to preserve those accounts before they became reshaped by a collective memory.” The oral histories constitute about 12,000 pages of testimony by 503 FDNY firefighters, emergency medical technicians and paramedics collected from early October, 2001 to late January, 2002.
Thomas Von Essen was succeeded by Nicholas Scoppetta as FDNY Commissioner under new NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
[2] He and his wife, Rita, have four children; the youngest is actor and singer, and Tony nominee Max von Essen.