The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland (5 page)

“Where are you?” Patricia finally asked.

“Nova Scotia,” Hannah mistakenly said. With all of the commotion, she had apparently misheard the pilot. “I have to go,” she continued. “There are other people waiting to use this phone.”

“Don’t worry, Ma,” Patricia repeated. “Kevin will be fine. He’ll come home.”

H
annah knew Patricia was right. Kevin had certainly made it through some close calls in the past. Just a few weeks earlier, he had been summoned to rescue a man who had tried to commit suicide by jumping into the Hudson River. Kevin was one of the first firefighters on the scene. Donning his scuba gear, he knew it was risky to jump from the pier into the dark water because he would have no way of knowing if there were any objects lurking just below the surface. He dove in anyway and crashed into an underwater piling, injuring his leg. Nevertheless, he carried on with the rescue and saved the man’s life. A month prior to that, he helped save an elderly woman from an apartment fire in Brooklyn. When the woman’s son came to the station house a month later to thank everyone, he offered the firefighters his life savings, $2,000, as a sign of his appreciation. Of course they refused, but it was Kevin’s idea to tell the man to take the money and buy smoke detectors for the homes of his loved ones. Hannah was so proud of that.

At times Kevin would get close enough to a blaze that it would melt his equipment. His captain would scold him about the risks he took, but Kevin didn’t know how to do the job any other way. During his career with the department he’d received four individual citations for valor and shared three unit citations with the other members of his firehouse.

His wife, Maryann, once asked him if, before running into a burning building or attempting a hazardous rescue, he ever stopped to think about the fact that he had a wife and two children waiting for him at home. “If we did that,” Kevin told her, “we’d all be standing outside saying, ‘You go ahead, I’ll wait here.’ You can’t think like that.”

Kevin’s family knew he was doing something he loved and had dreamed about since he was a boy. Just prior to September 11 a television crew was following the work of Kevin’s rescue unit and they asked him why he became a firefighter. “I guess it goes back many years to when I was a kid,” he said. “The apartment building I lived in, we had—over the years I was there—ended up having three different fires, so I was carried out as a child by…by a firefighter. So I have fond memories—you know, I have memories to go back to, you know, all of a sudden, you know, in the smoke, this big guy comes up, grabs me, and carries me down the stairs.”

Hannah knew Kevin wanted to be that sort of role model for kids as well. At his station house in downtown Brooklyn, all the kids in the neighborhood knew they could come by and ask for help if their bikes were broken. Flat tires, busted chains, squeaky brakes—Kevin was always glad to make repairs. His fellow firefighters even hung a sign on his locker: K
EVIN’S
B
IKE
S
HOP
.

Hannah thought about all of this and more as she waited on the plane. It was all she could do—think back on the past and pray for the future.

G
eorge Vitale was reading the textbook for his sociology of education class that night at Brooklyn College, when the captain for Continental Flight 23 made an announcement.

“There is a report of a terrorist strike,” the captain declared.

As the captain allowed the words to sink in, Vitale was unconcerned. He assumed it must have been something routine, like a bomb scare at Newark Airport, where they were scheduled to land. He started thinking about what he would do if the plane was diverted to JFK.

“It’s been confirmed,” the pilot continued, “that two planes have struck the World Trade Center and a third plane or a bomb has hit the Pentagon.”

Gasps echoed through the plane.

“They’ve shut down the airspace over the United States. We’ve been ordered by the U.S. government to get on the ground immediately. Our plane is okay. There is nothing wrong with our plane. We’re going to be landing at an airport in Gander, Newfoundland. I’m going to be busy, so I’ll talk to you when we land. We’ll be on the ground in fifteen minutes.”

Patty!

Vitale’s mind immediately went to his sister Patty, who worked at an insurance company inside the Trade Center’s South Tower. She’d lost her husband to pulmonary fibrosis a little more than a year ago and now she might be dead as well. He thought about his fourteen-year-old nephew, Patrick. Vitale was the boy’s guardian.

If the unthinkable did happen to Patty, he’d have to raise Patrick by himself. Vitale wondered if he was capable of raising a child, especially a teenager. He worried about living up to the promises he’d made to his sister.

Vitale was amazed at how many things could run through his mind simultaneously. If he was going to care for his nephew, he’d have to move to New Jersey. After all, he wouldn’t want to pull the boy out of his school or away from his friends. Not now. Not after having gone through so much. But if Vitale moved to New Jersey, he’d have to leave his job with the New York State Police. Maybe he could keep a mailing address in Brooklyn. Or maybe he could get a waiver from the rule of having to live in the state.

As he spiraled through worst-case scenarios, the plane landed in Gander. Vitale flagged down one of the flight attendants and asked her to take the captain his business card, which identified him as a New York State trooper. On the back of the card, Vitale wrote: “If I can be of any assistance, I’m in seat 16C.”

A few minutes later the flight attendant came back and told Vitale the captain would like to see him. The captain seemed as confused and mystified as everyone else. How could this have happened? What should they do? What were they up against? No one had answers.

Vitale was traveling with three telephones. His own cell phone and two government-issued “world phones,” which he was assured by his commanders would work anywhere on the planet.

The world phones, however, didn’t work in Gander. Vitale wondered if their failure had to do with the reliability of the phones or with the location of the town. Were they truly in the middle of nowhere?

Sitting inside the cockpit, he tried to get a dial tone on his regular cell phone. Every time he dialed a number in the United States, a local operator came on the line. For reasons he couldn’t understand, the operator told him the only calls he could make would be through her and only to toll-free numbers. Using the operator, he placed a call to the trooper station at the governor’s mansion in Albany. He asked the trooper who answered for a favor. Would he please call his family and see if they were all right and if any of them had heard from Patty? Vitale also asked if he would call the pilot’s wife in Houston and ask her to notify the families of the other crew members and let them know they were safe and on the ground in Newfoundland.

“No problem,” the trooper said.

Finally he asked the trooper to patch him through to the governor’s office in New York City. Vitale had worked for Pataki since he came into office and he liked him a great deal. Vitale first joined the New York State Police in 1981. From 1989 until 1993, he investigated organized crime cases and worked undercover infiltrating the Bonanno crime family. As a result of his work, dozens of mafiosi had gone to prison. Since then he’s been responsible for coordinating the governor’s security detail when the governor came to New York City.

Until 1996, the governor’s Manhattan offices were on the fifty-seventh floor of the World Trade Center’s South Tower. Vitale went to work there every day and still knew a lot of people in the building.

After a few minutes, Vitale was connected to the governor’s office on East Fortieth Street and Third Avenue, about three and a half miles from the towers.

“Is the governor all right?” Vitale asked. “Where is he?”

The governor was fine. He was downtown with the mayor.

“Are our people okay?” Vitale inquired.

As far as they could tell, no troopers were missing. Everything was still very chaotic, though. Vitale could tell by the tone of the other man’s voice that he was scared, which made Vitale more anxious. He began feeling guilty that he wasn’t in New York to help out.

A
s he prepared to make his final approach into Gander, Captain Reinhard Knoth told the passengers that problems in the United States were forcing them to land in Canada. He didn’t tell them what those problems were.

Twenty minutes later they were on the ground. It was around 1
P.M.
Newfoundland time, and Knoth marveled at all of the airplanes he saw lining the taxiways. For the first time in hours, he felt a sense of relief. He was on the ground. His plane and passengers were safe.

Hugo Boss chairman Werner Baldessarini wondered what type of problems in the United States could have forced them to land in Canada. More important, he wanted to know when they would be leaving. He had a lot riding on this year’s fashion show and he needed to be in New York.

Once on the ground, Baldessarini had his answer. Knoth explained the situation in New York and Washington. He also noted that they had just received word of a fourth plane having crashed in Pennsylvania. Thousands were feared dead. Baldessarini felt ashamed for worrying about his fashion show. Fashion Week now seemed so trivial. How quickly a person’s priorities could shift, he thought.

Frankfurt mayor Petra Roth worried about her own city. Naturally she was heartbroken over events in the United States, but if American cities were under attack, then European cities might be next.

L
adies and gentlemen, this is Captain Bass. We’ve been advised there has been a national emergency in the United States. All of the airspace has been closed and we will be landing our airplane in Gander, Newfoundland.”

American Airlines Flight 49, en route from Paris to Dallas, was one of the last planes to approach Gander. On board U.S. Army brigadier general Barbara Fast heard the pilot’s announcement and immediately reached for the plane’s sky phone. The director of intelligence for the United States military command, Fast oversaw the military’s information and spy gathering in ninety-one countries throughout Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.

Based in the German city of Stuttgart, Fast had been in Paris meeting with French officials and was on her way to the U.S. Army Intelligence Center at Fort Huachuca in Arizona when the pilot advised everyone that the plane would be landing in Gander. Replaying the pilot’s words in her mind, General Fast focused on the term “national emergency.” Clearly, something dire was happening in the United States.

Initially, some passengers worried that the plane had been hijacked and the pilot’s announcement was a ruse to explain their change in course. Fast knew better. She was sitting toward the front of the plane, in coach, and hadn’t seen any unusual movements or disturbances that would indicate a hijacking. Instead she suspected some form of a terrorist activity in the United States. She wondered if there had been an attempt on the president’s life or an attack on a specific target, like the White House or the Capitol.

Anticipating and trying to uncover the plans of known terrorist groups is a major responsibility for Fast and her command staff. She wanted to reach them, to learn what was happening. The sky phones, however, were not working, and it was almost forty-five minutes before they finally landed in Gander. Once on the ground, she tried using her cell phone, but to no avail. As is customary, Fast was traveling in civilian clothing, so no one on the plane knew who she was. Through the flight attendants, she contacted the pilot and revealed her identity and the importance of her being able to reach her staff. There was little the pilot could do.

Fast kept trying the sky phones until she was able to place a call back to Germany. Her aides briefed her on the attack. Planes had crashed into the towers, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania. More planes were assumed missing.

There was no doubt in the general’s mind as to who was responsible for this cowardly act: Osama bin Laden. The Saudi millionaire was one of the few people in the world who would have the resources and the organization to accomplish such a deed. His war against the United States had been escalating in recent years, and he was believed to be responsible for the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and the October 2000 attack on the USS
Cole
in the Yemeni port of Aden. Now, it appeared, he was bringing his jihad to American shores.

The first priority for Fast, who had been intelligence chief only since June, was to make sure everything was being done to guarantee the safety of U.S. military personnel in the various countries under her watch. She feared the attacks in New York and Washington could be only the first wave in a series of terrorist strikes against Americans around the world. Securing American military bases is easy enough, but she was concerned about housing complexes and other facilities off base where Americans might be gathered. As she expected, when she was finally able to call the command center, her staff was already coordinating efforts with local officials in each country.

The second priority was obviously to uncover any information available about the planning for these attacks so it could be passed along to Washington. Fast and her staff were limited in their discussions by the fact they were not on a secure phone line. Her cell phone, which eventually worked, was also unsecured. She needed to get off the plane and begin making plans for her return to Stuttgart as soon as possible.

Captain Beverley Bass, the American Airlines pilot, sympathized with Fast’s plight. The pilot tried relaying the urgency of the situation to airport officials in Gander, but the situation on the ground was so chaotic there was nothing they could do. No one was going to get off any of the planes until the RCMP could secure the airport and find a way to process all of the passengers to guarantee they wouldn’t mistakenly let a terrorist slip through their grasp.