Just Another 9/11 Story

Eight years ago today, I stood in the control tower at Pittsburgh International when the phone rang. The supervisor answered it, spoke a few words, hung up and informed us that Cleveland Center controllers had lost touch with an aircraft within the horizontal confines of our airspace. That aircraft was headed directly for us.

At that point the World Trade Center and Pentagon were smoldering, and it was evident the country was under attack. We were ordered to evacuate. None of us had ever left a control position without relief before. We informed the few aircraft still flying and the bordering facilities that we were leaving, then we headed for the stairs.

The elevator is two flights below the tower but was stuck on the bottom floor, so all of us hiked down the stairs. When I reached the second level, where the handicapped employees worked, I noticed that Jeff, a wheelchair-bound co-worker was waiting for the elevator. Believing something was wrong with the elevator, a controller, Steve, and a staff member, Cliff, and I decided to carry Jeff in his chair down the last two flights of stairs. The moment we hoisted Jeff up, Steve, who has a history of back problems, groaned in obvious pain. I asked him if he was okay, and he responded yes. People were yelling to get out of the building and get clear, so we carried Jeff down the stairs and placed him in his van. Outside, we all sort of stood there looking skyward, wondering what was going to happen. My friend Kevin spotted the plane first, high overhead, heading southeast. It passed over and we were all ordered back into the building. In the meantime, Steve and another controller, Charlie, were escorted by a county vehicle to a temporary, mobile tower to re-establish contact with the aircraft trying to land at Pittsburgh.

When I got back inside, I headed for the elevator to get back to the tower and to Ground Two where I had been working. But before I could reach the hallway, I heard a desperate page for a radar controller, so I dashed into the radar room and was told to open Feeder Control. I got the frequencies up and running and started calling the aircraft that were displayed on the radar screen. A few answered, not all. The ones who did said they had been talking to Cleveland Center but had lost contact. At one point two targets merged about three hundred feet apart with a closure rate around 750 knots. Nobody was talking to either aircraft. Someone from the staff department walked into the radar room and informed us that the renegade flight, United 93, had crashed in Somerset.

Eventually all the controllers returned and I was sent back to the tower to reopen Ground Two. I was there only a short time when the unprecedented order came down to land all aircraft immediately. There were no complaints. A few aircraft landed, but less than we expected. A few hours later, with the skies cleared, most of us were sent home.

These and other memories of that day remain very clear to me. There seems a tendency, if not a wicked effort, to forget or at least minimize the events of 9/11/2001. The world is supposed to love us now, but I have a feeling it isn’t quite working out that way. It seems whatever driving forces were in place back then are every bit as prevelent 8 years later.

Many of the same people working that day at Pittsburgh are still working today, doing a fantastic job under always difficult conditions. Jeff is gone now. He was driving home from work one day when he suddenly cut into a gas station and brought his van to a stop. He slumped over and never woke up. He hurt nobody. For my part, I lost my medical clearance last year after being hit on the eye working a radar position. I miss the airplanes and my fellow controllers.

So today is a day to remember those who were lost and those who have been lost subsequently. And a day to remember the things we did, which at the time were the only things we could do.