As some of you may know, I'm an Air Traffic Controller. I figured this might be worth sharing here as some of you may appreciate a different perspective of that day. This is a first hand account of 9/11 from former National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) President John Carr:
OUR NATION'S DARKEST DAY; OUR PROFESSIONS FINEST HOUR
I had finally found a cup of coffee, grabbed my briefcase, and settled into a comfortable spot in the lobby of the Doubletree Hotel in downtown New Orleans just after 7:30 a.m. on Sept. 11, 2001. I was waiting for Ray Gibbons, Fac Rep of C90, so we could do a teleconference.
CNN droned in the background, and I focused on my notes. As Ray crossed the lobby the announcer cut to New York where there had been some sort of explosion or crash at the World Trade Center. I looked up just in time to see the network TV chopper shot. Through the bubbled window, the announcer shouted to be heard over the background rotor noise.
But the picture. Oh God, the picture. Smoke was roiling out of a tower that looked like it had been whacked with a samurai sword. The anchor said a small plane had hit the World Trade Center. You could plainly see the damage was nearly 10 stories high and almost as wide as the tower itself. My mind raced to make sense of what I saw. My cell rang.
“John? Mike Blake.” Mike was the NE RVP at the time and was on the boards at ZBW that day.
“Are you watching TV?” Mike asked. Odd question, I thought, but I told him that I was. “Well, that’s American 11.”
I said, “Mike, what channel are you watching? Something just hit the World Trade Center!” And then the hammer dropped.
“John, that’s American 11 that hit the World Trade Center. We were working him, they hijacked him and he turned around, flew directly south and drove straight into the building.” I said something un- printable that started with, “You’ve got to be...” and then there was a pause.
“And John?”
I was furiously writing notes at this point - Ray reading upside down and me pointing at the notes and the TV. Ray was giving me his one-eyebrow-up death stare when Mike said, “John, there’s another one on the way to New York. We lost a second one just like the first, and it’s headed for New York.”
Then Mike said that the sector working the aircraft had heard the hijackers’ voices, and they had mentioned having “some planes.”
“Planes, John. Plural. Planes. We’re pulling the tapes now to check it out.” I told Mike to keep me posted and hung up. Moments later, we sat staring at the scene unfolding as the second tower exploded in a 50-story fireball.
It was 9 a.m. in New Orleans, and time for the second day of our union’s very first five-region Combined Meeting to begin. I contacted my wife, upstairs and pregnant with our first child, to make sure she was secure. I quickly made contact with Ruth Marlin, NATCA’s EVP, and the rest of the NEB. We started making emergency contingency plans. The Eastern Region was present and their hometowns were under attack.
Information now poured in like staccato machine gun bursts. Fifteen missing airliners. A confirmed hijacked Delta jumbo jet being forced down in Cleveland. East Coast heavy departures streaming towards tall towers in Chicago, Denver and the West Coast. The Pentagon hit. A jumbo jet missing in Tennessee. A 757 flying inverted, then crashing in Pennsylvania.
I asked the hotel to put CNN on the giant overhead screen, and we announced to the regional attendees that the meeting was cancelled. We would use the meeting space to update everyone on information from the FAA as it became available.
New York Center closed. Nationwide ground stop. Land all planes. Jane Garvey, then the FAA administrator, had departed the night before on a commercial flight, leaving Bill Peacock, head of Air Traffic, to meet with our reps on the second day of our meeting.
We tracked Bill down as he was packing. He was swamped with calls and data. “The airspace is shut down,” he said to Ruth and me. “The agency is sending the jet down to take me back to D.C. Do you want to go with me?”
I had a brief discussion with Ruth; I had Jill with me, and our next NEB meeting had already been booked for the following week in Cleveland, my hometown. Pat Forrey was also at the meeting and could travel with me. I had a rental car, a commodity becoming more precious by the minute. I also felt responsible for the NATCA members left stranded in New Orleans. I felt I owed it to them to not only try to get them home but also keep them on excused absence while they traveled.
It made sense for Ruth to travel back to D.C., with Peacock. Bill said, “Get your stuff. With the exception of the president, med-evacs and fighter jets, we’ll be the only ones flying.”
When the order went out to land everything at the nearest airport, 700 aircraft were landed in the first four minutes, 2,800 in the first hour, and over 4,500 within the first three hours. Over a million passengers landed without incident.
The landing of those aircraft stands as the single greatest feat in all of ATC history. You might as well have pulled a bunny out of your scope. I never called the office to check up on them; I never once worried that they were anything but safe and doing whatever needed to be done. I never checked in with the facreps or any of the facilities to see how the shutdown was progressing; there was no need. It was going perfectly because it had to.
Many in the aviation community, myself included, stand convinced that the grounding of the system that day prevented further attacks. In the rush to disembark passengers, all evidence of box cutters and Mace was likely carried off the airplanes with the would-be terrorists. I suspect that attacks were set to continue like rigid clockwork throughout the day; I think the terrorists assumed that the capitalist West would never shut down the money pipe and put all the airplanes on the ground.
If you think like a terrorist, a day of rolling thunder from sea to shining sea seems possible when you begin your morning by murdering almost 3,000 innocent people.
The rest of the day was a blur as news came in and went out. Sadly, late that morning, I received word that Doug McKay, a controller at Boston Center, had lost his wife on American 11. She had left the house early that morning and boarded her flight for the West Coast. Doug got up later and drove into work, only to be met at the gate by his co-workers who already knew the horror facing their co-worker and his two young children.
As a union, together we donated enough sick leave to see him to his rightful retirement a year and a half later. I carried a handwritten scrap of paper with the sick leave hours Doug needed in my wallet for almost two years working that issue.
Brad Troy headed up our Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) response, and we were in immediate contact on the morning of the 11th. The FAA was cooperative, and we dispatched teams to D.C., New York, Boston and Cleveland.
We had a chance to fan out to the other local area facilities as well. I had always been impressed by our CISM program, and when our debriefers finally got to their respective locations they made themselves available to anyone who wanted to meet.
I was very proud of our response to the crisis in terms of helping our members work through their natural responses to the tragedy. The FAA helped us to rush to the aid and com- fort of our brethren on the front end. This cooperation kept FAA employees productive and, more importantly, healthy on the back end. I give the FAA a lot of credit for that.
In New Orleans, it took a day or two but slowly small gaggles of rental cars banded together and headed out towards facilities in N.Y., Charlotte, Seattle, and anywhere a family member could meet us as the convoy drove by. By car, bus and rail, the reps found a way to get out of town and get back to their families and facilities.
In the days and weeks that followed 9/11, Joel Brown, Martin Cole, Mike Hull, Dennis McGee, Don Ossinger, Wade Stanfield, Jerry Whitaker, Ruth Marlin and Dale Wright manned the Emergency Operations Center at the FAA, rotating through 24-hour shifts much of the time. They saw and heard things most couldn’t fathom.
Missing crop dusters full of anthrax. Cargo ships in the Baltimore Harbor with suspected WMD on the top containers aimed up the Potomac at the Capitol. Student pilots from foreign countries enrolling for more flying lessons. The FAA needed the Emergency Ops to make immediate and bind- ing decisions. This was FBI/CIA/NSA-type stuff that the NEB would need to stand behind forevermore. These professionals were so damn good it’s scary now to remember. They pitched a no-hitter for us, for the system, and for their country.
These folks were pulling 24-hour shifts and sticking around afterwards to help because the work was top secret and critically important. I remember that Mike Hull called me at 10 p.m. one evening sounding like he was 90 years old.
“Johnny, they just rolled the bomb squad for a device they found outside the front door here at FAA. While I’m evac’d I’m gonna grab a smoke and something to eat. We’re going to get XYZ signed so they can resume sightseeing flights over the Grand Canyon first thing tomorrow. Hey, they found that missing glider. Do you want me to get you a sandwich?” It was like talking to James Bond. “Yeah, Mike, get me a shoe phone.”
All NATCA members – every single bargaining unit – create a unique institution, a guardian of this country’s liberty tasked with public safety. On that September morning, those challenges were answered by the deeds of the strong – deeds that will remain recorded in history books long after the mousy squeaks of yesterday’s critics fade into oblivion.
When someone asks you why you belong to a union, tell them this great nation is only 12 percent union, yet on that infamous day 20 percent of her dead were union members. While thousands fled for their lives, hundreds of union men and women ran towards those burning towers, up those jet-fueled stairs, helping others to safety as they marched themselves headlong into their own graves.
The beast did not destroy our nation like it did so many innocents that brilliant, beautiful and sinister day. The treachery of zealots did not extinguish the flame of liberty. On the contrary, it fanned it. The imbeciles who blindly followed Osama “I Met Seal Team Six And All I Got Was This Giant Hole In My Head” Bin Laden did not steal the essence that is true freedom in a democracy. No, my friends, they stole nothing; children still laugh and play in the streets and playgrounds.
Since that morning 10 years ago, America’s military has taken the fight to the enemies’ dingy little corner of the world, chasing gutless cowards across the globe. Over 6,000 of our country’s bravest fighting men and women have made the ultimate sacrifice, paying with their lives for our freedom to live as we choose. As the saying goes, freedom really isn’t free after all.
Our forefathers faced an enemy who approached their shores with overwhelming force and superior firepower, and they could have withered. Instead, they stated their intent: “Live Free or Die.” And so, they did: both, in great numbers.
On Sept. 11, 2001, a new generation of Americans were branded with that iron, baptized by burning fires in New York, D.C. and Pennsylvania. And so we did, and so we have, and so we will.
A Partial Final Tally:
Estimated number of children who lost a parent in the attacks: 3051
Number of children of NYC firefighters who lost a parent: 1200
Number of families who got no remains: 1,717
Number of days WTC continued to burn after attack: 99
Percentage of Americans who knew someone hurt or killed: 20
Number of body parts found: 19,858
Bodies found intact: 289
Source: New York Magazine
