Anita McBride Miller, resident, Stonycreek Township, Pennsylvania: Out of nowhere, this absolutely unbearable, horrific noise was going on outside. It was deafening. It shook the windows and rattled the rafters.
Douglas Miller, coal truck driver, James F. Barron Trucking: I happened to look up in the sky and there was this giant aircraft, coming straight down.
Tim Lensbouer, crane operator, Rollock Incorporated: I can’t describe what it sounded like, almost like a missile type—and it came over us real fast and then it hit the ground. All of a sudden, all the lights went out. It went black and the whole building shook.
Douglas Miller: I remember getting on the CB [radio] and asking my buddy, “Did I see that?” He said, “Yeah.” He said, “It didn’t look good.”
John Werth, air traffic controller, Cleveland Air Route Traffic Control Center: We never lost them from the radar until they took the steep descent into the crash. We observed the target all the way to the southeast of Pittsburgh, until 10:03 a.m.
Stacey Taylor Parham, air traffic control specialist, Cleveland Air Route Traffic Control Center: I vectored another nearby plane toward the incident site and asked if he would look for smoke.
Terry Yeazell, pilot, Falcon 20 corporate jet, airborne over Pennsylvania: Stacey asked if there was any activity off the right side of the airplane, like smoke or something like that. There were a lot of small white clouds around. After looking for a while, I saw a puff of black smoke, a black cloud floating. As we got closer, we could see basically a forest fire burning next to a tree line in a field of grass.
Yates Gladwell, pilot, Falcon 20 corporate jet, airborne over Pennsylvania: It was a big black hole and it was smoking.
Ben Sliney, national operations manager, FAA Command Center, Herndon, Virginia: The other plane reported the smoke plume. That drew a close to the day in reality, but we didn’t know that yet—in our minds, the attacks were not over, and we continued to track the remaining eight or 10 or maybe even a dozen planes, monitor their progress, report on what they were doing. Until they were resolved, until their radios came back on, they landed, they did whatever they had to do.
Maj. Gen. Larry Arnold, commander of the 1st Air Force, NORAD, Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida: We did not know that was the last plane. The war was still on as far as we are concerned.
* * *
Lisa Jefferson, Verizon Airfone supervisor: I kept calling out Todd Beamer’s name, hoping and praying either him or anyone would pick up that phone. Someone touched my shoulder and said, “Lisa, that was their plane”—the plane had just crashed in Pennsylvania—“you can release the line now.” I kept calling and calling. I held that phone an additional 15 minutes, praying someone would pick up.
Lyzbeth Glick, wife of United Flight 93 passenger Jeremy Glick: My dad stayed on the line for over two hours, hoping beyond hope.
Deena Burnett, wife of United Flight 93 passenger Tom Burnett: I kept waiting. I held on to the telephone for almost three hours, waiting for him to call back to tell me he had landed the plane and everything was fine and he would be home later. I started thinking about what I could cook for dinner. I was thinking about sending the kids to school and who could come pick them up, because I didn’t want to miss his phone call. So I just sat there.
“There was no place for us to run”
* * *
Fear at the Pentagon
The first hour of rescue efforts at the Pentagon proved to be a frustrating stop-and-start, as fire responders noticed that the outer rings of the building—which bore the brunt of the plane’s impact—were in danger of collapsing, and officials feared reports that more hijacked aircraft were inbound.
James Schwartz, assistant chief for operations, Arlington County Fire Department: There was this sense of the battlefield—of war, if you will. We were very clear that there may be more waves of the attack coming. At one point early on, [FBI Special Agent] Chris Combs said to me, “There are still eight more aircraft that are unaccounted for.” We were waiting. Is there going to be another airplane, like there was in New York, at the Pentagon? This is an attack the likes of which we’ve never seen before.
Chris Combs, special agent, FBI, Pentagon: The FBI command center was relaying to me all of the other stories that were out there about other attacks happening. There were stories that the White House had been hit, that the State Department had been hit. One thing I remember hearing was “Hey, Cleveland has been hit as well.” I remember thinking, What’s in Cleveland? Why are they hitting Cleveland?
Thomas O’Connor, special agent, FBI, Pentagon: We were standing with a guy from the Metropolitan Washington Area Airports Authority, who had a radio, and he said, “Hey, you’ve got a plane that’s off radar.” He said, “It’s a good distance out.” I was like, “Okay.” But he said, “They’re calculating back”—at the speed it was going or should be going, and the direction—“how long it would take to get to Washington, D.C.” It was more of an urgent matter than I had first thought it was.
Chris Combs: It was on track to D.C., and it was 20 minutes’ flight time out. They said we had 20 minutes.
James Schwartz, assistant chief for operations, Arlington County Fire Department: I made a decision to evacuate the incident scene at the Pentagon.
John Jester, chief, Defense Protective Service, Pentagon: We were outside and heard the fire trucks blowing their horns. They said it was for recall, to come down off the building because of a report of a second plane inbound. They pulled the firemen off the building for a while.
Chris Combs: We looked around and decided the safest places were under the overpasses on the highways. We sent everyone there.
Capt. Charles Gibbs, Arlington County Fire Department: I refer to it as “Everybody out of the pool.” On the heliport side, we went back to the other side of Washington Boulevard, which in reality probably wasn’t far enough, but that’s where we went.
James Schwartz: We picked up all the victims, we got everybody as much as we could off of the incident scene. We stood there getting radio transmissions from the Washington Field Office of the FBI counting down.
Chris Combs: It was pretty eerie—the Pentagon is absolutely in flames, and there are thousands of first responders and people from the Pentagon huddled underneath all of these overpasses, waiting.
Thomas O’Connor: The hard part of being under the bridge was that you knew the firefighters weren’t in there fighting the fire—and every minute they weren’t fighting the fire, it was getting further out of hand. They were really frustrated.
Capt. Charles Gibbs: That was probably 10, 15 minutes, just sitting there.
Thomas O’Connor: They were actually counting down the time.
James Schwartz: We were standing there looking out at the sky, looking to see if an airplane is going to pierce the clouds.
Chris Combs: We got to about five minutes past the deadline. People were getting a little antsy. Members of the command team were asking me, “Hey what’s going on? Where’s this plane?”
James Schwartz: We were waiting for a word from somebody.
Chris Combs: It was about 10 minutes after that they said it was a confirmed crash at Camp David, and we were good to go.I
James Schwartz: At that time I ordered everybody back to the incident scene.
Capt. Robert Gray, Technical Rescue, Station 4, Arlington County Fire Department: We walked up to the front of the building, and it was unbelievable. My thought was, This feels so evil, that somebody has done this, and they did it with a loaded plane. It was overwhelming. We basically started on the first floor and worked our way in. It was obvious on the first floor once we got all the way to where the plane had hit that there weren’t any survivors.
* * *
I. This report—of a crash near Camp David—was the garbled initial news of the crash of Flight 93, whose Pennsylvania crash location was initially misplaced as being close to the presidential retreat in Thurmont, Maryland, along the Pennsylvania border.
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br /> “Oh my god, it’s Father Mike”
* * *
The First Casualty
One of the most memorable figures at the Trade Center was Father Mychal Judge, one of the FDNY’s six chaplains, a gregarious, gay, recovering alcoholic Irishman, known throughout the city for ministering to firefighters, the homeless, and AIDS victims. He’d been an FDNY chaplain since 1992 and had responded to numerous emergencies, including the 1996 crash of TWA Flight 800, which exploded over Suffolk County, New York. On 9/11, he was one of the first to arrive at the World Trade Center and is believed to be the only priest who entered the Twin Towers that day.
Mychal Judge, chaplain, FDNY: It’s fantastic how I can sometimes begin a day and go through a day, but not realize that everything that happens—every single thing that happens—is somehow within the divine plan.
Friar Michael Duffy: Priests and firemen both enter people’s lives at a point of crisis. They have similar outlooks on life—it’s the need to help, to rescue. So you have Mike Judge wanting to do that in a spiritual way, and the firemen wanting to do it in a physical way. It was a natural match.
Malachy McCourt, actor: There’s a very old postcard of a giant Jesus looking in the window of the Empire State Building in those long, long robes. That was Mike Judge in New York. He was everywhere over the city.
Friar Michael Duffy: On 9/11, one of our friars, Brian Carroll, was walking down Sixth Avenue and actually saw the airplane go overhead at a low altitude. Then he saw smoke coming from the Trade Towers. He ran into Mychal Judge’s room and said, “Mychal, I think they’re going to need you. I think the World Trade Tower is on fire.” He jumped up, took off his habit, got his FDNY uniform on, and—I have to say this, in case you think he’s perfect—he did take time to comb and spray his hair. He ran down the stairs and got in his car with some firemen and went to the World Trade Towers. One of the first people he met was the mayor, Mayor Giuliani.
Rudy Giuliani, mayor, New York City: Father Judge was walking in the other direction. I was walking south, he was walking north. “Father Judge,” I said, “please pray for us.” He put a smile on his face and said, “I always do.” I said, “Thanks.” We didn’t quite have a chance to do the whole joke—I used to say to him, “Pray for me.” He would say, “I will.” I’d say, “It’s more effective if you pray ’cause you’re in a lot better shape than I am with God.” He would say, “Yeah, but it’s better if you do it ’cause it’s more unusual, and it will be more of a surprise to God.”
For the better part of an hour, Father Judge was a constant, reassuring presence to emergency workers—praying aloud in the North Tower lobby and dashing outside at one point to administer last rites to a firefighter, Danny Suhr, hit and killed by a person falling from the burning tower.
Gregory Fried, executive chief surgeon, NYPD: I saw Mychal Judge, the fire chaplain, and I said, “Father, be careful.” He said, “God bless,” because he always said “God bless.” Then he headed right and I went left.
Bill Spade, firefighter, Rescue 5, FDNY: I’d known him from other incidents, other things and weddings and all. I’d say, “Hey Father, how you doing, you remember me?” He’d say, “Sure I remember you, you got that 20 I lent you?” He was there in the building, in the North Tower. He had his rosary at his side, in his right hand, and he was saying the rosary. He was white. Everything that he was seeing was really bothering him.
Christian Waugh, firefighter, Ladder 5, FDNY: You could see it in his face. He usually joked around. He was always saying hello to somebody. This time he was stone-faced.
Chief Joseph Pfeifer, Battalion 1, FDNY: He was in the lobby with us and I could tell he was praying.
Lt. Bill Cosgrove, NYPD: That’s when the whole building shook. The lights went out. There was this giant vacuum sound. We thought it was our building [South Tower] that was collapsing. It wasn’t. The pressure was sucking the windows out of Tower One. It was totally dark.
Wesley Wong, assistant special agent in charge, FBI: I took a couple of steps, and I tripped over what I thought is a piece of debris. I could barely make out the outline of a fireman’s bunker coat. I say to some other firemen, “Hey, I think one of your guys is down.” Two other firemen go to look in the darkness.
Lt. Bill Cosgrove: One of the firefighters put the light on him—and I remember him saying, “Oh my god, it’s Father Mike.”
Wesley Wong: We picked up Father Judge and we headed out.
Lt. Bill Cosgrove: I took an arm. Someone else took an arm. Two other guys took his ankles.
Wesley Wong: We brought Father Judge back in the orange chair that you see in the famous picture of him. That orange chair was sitting by its lonesome in the mezzanine level. Some of the firemen started working on him, trying to help his breathing. He was in real bad shape at that point.
John Maguire, finance associate, Goldman Sachs: I saw the firemen carrying a man I later discovered was Father Mychal Judge in a chair. I offered them a hand. It took five men because the ground was shifting on top of the debris, which made it difficult to walk.
Shannon Stapleton, photographer, Reuters: I noticed some rescue workers carrying this man in a chair. I knew it was a pretty intense image. They weren’t too happy.
Lt. Bill Cosgrove: I remember looking up because one of the firemen was yelling at a photographer. He was telling him in no uncertain terms, “Get out of the way.”
Christian Waugh: At the time, I thought photographing Father Judge that way was in very bad taste. I went after Shannon Stapleton, the photographer. I started screaming at him. I knew that thing was gonna be out on the internet in a half hour.
John Maguire: We carried him to a street corner and laid his body on the sidewalk. I pushed on his chest with a thought of starting CPR. No response. We folded his hands and covered his face with a jacket.
Jose Rodriguez, officer, NYPD: We knelt down. I grabbed Father Judge’s hand. He was already dead. Lieutenant Cosgrove put his hand on Father Judge’s head and we said an Our Father.
Friar Michael Duffy: The firemen took his body. Because they respected and loved him so much, they didn’t want to leave it in the street. They quickly carried it into St. Peter’s Church. They went up the center aisle, and they put the body in front of the altar. They covered it with a sheet. On the sheet, they placed his stole and his fire badge.
Monsignor John Delendick, chaplain, FDNY: They told me Mychal Judge’s body was in St. Peter’s Church. I went up there—I had to walk around a bit to do that—and they had him lying in state, almost, in front of the altar. I prayed a little bit.
Friar Michael Duffy: Mychal Judge’s body was the first one released from Ground Zero. His death certificate has the number “1” on the top.
James Hanlon, former firefighter, FDNY: The first official casualty of the attack.
Craig Monahan, firefighter, Ladder 5, FDNY: I think he wouldn’t have had it any other way. It was as if he took the lead—all those angels, right through heaven’s gates. That’s what it seemed like to us. If any of those guys were confused on the way up, he was there to ease the transition from this life to the next.
“Nobody is coming to get us”
* * *
Around the Towers
Inside the North Tower the remaining rescuers and building occupants realized they, too, faced immediate peril as they learned that the South Tower had collapsed.
Capt. Jay Jonas, Ladder 6, FDNY: The emergency power came up and the lights came on. I looked at [fellow firefighter] Billy Burke and I said, “What was that?” I said, “Billy, you go check the south windows, and I’ll go check the north windows and we’ll meet back here.” I couldn’t see anything when I went to my window. All I could see was white dust pressed against the glass. We met back at the stairway and I expected Billy to tell me that something happened with our building. With a straight face, he looked at me and says, “The South Tower’s collapsed.”
John Abruzzo, staff accountant, Port Authority, North Tower,
69th floor: When we got to the 20th [floor], I remember hearing a rumble. We knew it didn’t sound good. We knew we had to get out of there and not stop for anything.
David Norman, officer, Emergency Service Unit, Truck 1, NYPD: Our colleague at the command post, Kenny Winkler, came over the radio and told us that the South Tower had collapsed. Now I know this sounds a little silly, but if you didn’t see that footage on TV, and you were locked in a room that doesn’t have any windows, when somebody tells you a 110-story building is gone, you want to say to them, “Are you sure?” We communicated some message like that to Kenny, like, “Are you sure?” I think I may have even said, “Calm down,” to him, “relay that message again.” He came back very boldly: “There’s nothing left of the building! You need to get out of there! Your building is in imminent danger of collapse!”
Capt. Jay Jonas: My mind was exploding. I knew from all my studies that a high-rise building had never collapsed before. Now the sister one to the one I was in had collapsed. You start doing the math.
Sharon Miller, officer, PAPD: I said to the chief, “Hey, Chief. This building is coming down next.” He goes, “We’re going up a couple more and then we’re getting outta here.”
Capt. Jay Jonas: I had this terrible feeling that, Man, we’re not going to make it out of here. We’re on the 27th floor. We’re in no-man’s-land. It’s going to be hard to get out of here. In addition to that, I had this feeling, Jeez, I wonder how many firemen died? That was the linchpin that said, All right. This is no longer a doable mission for us. It’s time to get out of here. I looked at my guys and said, “If that one can go, this one can go. It’s time for us to get out of here.” They were a little—not standoffish—but they were like, “You mean we’ve got to go downstairs now? We climbed all this way for nothing?” I says, “Come on. Let’s go. It’s time to get out of here.” I told them to keep their tools with them, because the first thought might be, “Well, let’s jettison everything and go.” I says, “No, you keep everything.” As it turns out, it was good that we did.
The Only Plane in the Sky Page 19
