I
know this post may seem a few days late for some, but in all honesty
with all the remembrances on the TV and the web over the weekend, I
was too overwhelmed with emotion to write this. You may think that
makes me corny or old-fashioned but my patriotism runs deep and I
believe how I've spent my life will, to an extent, back that up. What
I want to write about is my remembrances of what transpired on
9/11/2001 in the Federal Aviation Administration's Operations Office
/ Maintenance Control Center at Detroit Metro Airport.
As
many jobs in many fields of endeavor, the work in that office was not
defined by one job only but by many. In this office we shared a
common wall with the Radar Room where controllers directed aircraft
in the immediate 50 mile vicinity of the airport. We were 'Operations
Officers' to the Air Traffic controllers in that room as well as the
Control Tower adjacent and above us. To other FAA facilities in
Michigan and Wisconsin we were used as a Maintenance Control Center.
That is enough of a description for this purpose.
On
that day which will forever be a snapshot those of us who lived
through it will take out and 'look at' from time to time, these are
the sequence of events as I remember it. Ten years of time as well as
advancing age may 'cloud' certain of these memories but this is my
best recollection.
All
was going well on that day. No real problems had cropped up, when
early in the shift one of the Air Traffic supervisors opened up the
sliding door that separated us from the radar room and told us that a
plane had hit one of the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New
York City. We immediately turned on our “Current Events Monitor”.
This bit of electronic equipment, were it to have been in a home
would have been called a 'Television' but in our office it was a
“Current Events Monitor”. That may seem funny or out of place in
a workcenter but, due to experience with a fatal accident between 2
aircraft in the fog at Detroit Metro not that many years before this
incident, we found out that we could learn far more in the early
hours of an accident by watching the local news stations than we
could learn through official channels. Offices like ours rarely have
any windows and when life threatening events occur all of us become
so busy we have no time to send someone anywhere else to learn
anything locally. So we had a “Current Events Monitor”.
Anyway,
shortly after we turned on the “Current Events Monitor” we saw,
as did millions of other people, the 2nd airliner crash into the
other World Trade Center tower. We all knew immediately that it was
terrorism. We reported to our superiors at both Detroit Metro as well
as Willow Run Airport in Ypsilanti, MI of what had happened. As one
was doing this another was transmitting on our own transceivers a
code to all of our technicians to return to their workcenter as
quickly as possible. We never used open language as our frequencies
were monitored by local news outlets. And I got to flip a switch that
had only been used in testing it's function. This switch disabled all
electronic access card readers on all our exterior doors so that even
those with keycards could not open our doors. As our technicians came
to the doors they would call up to us and, with our video cameras we
could tell if they were alone or someone was trying to gain access
illegally with them. Remember, Detroit Metro Airport is one of the
busiest airports in the United States and all at the time that we
knew was that multiple facilities were being attacked and we were a
prime target. I won't say that we didn't think of our families
because I know I did. But I knew that, whatever happened, they were
almost certainly safer where they were than where I was.
In
the next 45 minutes to 1 hour and a half, we watched on one of our
equipment monitors that tracked all air traffic in the United States
(now just about anyone can watch this on the internet but then only
those with expensive equipment and dedicated access to this
information could see it) as The FAA and it's controllers got all air
traffic in the US on the ground. This may seem little to most but, I
assure you that it was a task I don't believe many of us inside the
FAA would have seemed possible in the short time span that it took:
simply amazing guys!
It
is also well to note that, at that time there was a division of the
FAA called FAA Security but they were very small and not even on the
airport directly. Beyond the airports own police, there were no
security personnel of any kind in the FAA facility at our FAA tower
and base bldg. It was a hectic time so my time passage may be off but
it was somewhere between 45 minutes and 1 hour and 15 minutes that
the FBI showed up with automatic weapons and started patrolling our
facility's hallways and doors. The FBI offices were in downtown
Detroit and Detroit Metro Airport is actually in Romulus, MI some
distance from Detroit. They must have really 'pushed' to get there so
quickly. The sight of those FBI agents with automatic weapons;
patrolling the hallways was surreal. I'm not unacquainted with those
type of weapons as I, along with a very large portion of the FAA
personnel were former military and have seen and handled those type
of weapons in our lives. But to see them in our facility was akin to
seeing spark plugs in a baby bed; it didn't 'fit'. In fact it was
many months later before the FBI left. It took some time for the FAA
to let the contract for private (armed) security to take over. (By
the way, they are still armed!).
Way
before noon, nothing showed on our radar displays. The entire US
airspace had been turned over to NORAD (North American Aerospace
Defense) in Colorado. That continued for many, many days and there
was simply very little for our friends in the Air Traffic Division to
do as as well as our technical personnel in the Airways Facilities
Division there at Detroit.
Were
we scared? To this day I don't know how to answer that. I mentioned
before that the great majority of FAA personnel (at that time) were
former military and I think maybe that entered into it. We knew (I
knew) that we could be 'hit' in a multitude of ways as that day
progressed but maybe, like the rest of the country, we were in shock
as well. Again, I'm sounding corny I suppose but for me, at least
part of it was devotion to duty. I have told many people that, if
possible, I would like my tombstone to read (way far in the future if
the Lord permit) that the two highest callings for man are: service
for God and service for country. I believed that then; I believe that
now; and I'll always believe that. Actually service for God and
country are blessings bestowed........ not burdens borne.
As
I was talking to LaDonna a few days ago that I was going to write
this post about my remembrances she asked me if I could remember what time I
got home that night. I really couldn't....still can't. Nothing exists
in my memory of arriving home. She told me I didn't get home until
7:30 or later that night. I'm sure I hugged her but I
guess......shock then.....maybe still?
I'm
closing now.....I think my 'heart' still hurts.....too many memories.
God
Bless all who read this,
Dave
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