It’s been a quarter of a century. But, I’ve yet to find anybody else who visited all three sites in the first forty eight hours after the September 11th attacks. These are my personal memories.
I was morning drive reporter for WWJ. In at 4:30 AM. Usually out of the station by 5. I was covering a primary election and a Macomb water main break.
I didn’t even connect the planes scrambling from Selfridge Air National Guard base, as I heard on WWJ that a plane had struck the World Trade Center.
But, I quickly realized this was history, and I volunteered to go. Flying was quickly out of the question, so it was time to drive.
But, the question became, where am I driving to? At that point, so much mis-information was coming out. There were false reports of car bombs in Washington. People were evacuating the White House and Capitol Building.
As a Pittsburgh native, I knew the site of the crash in Pennsylvania was right off the turnpike, on the way to Washington. That’s where we could get the fastest. So, that was our initial target.
After doing a few live reports from the road, I arrived at Shanksville Pennsylvania around 6 PM. The media were put on a hillside overlooking where the plane had crashed. But, there was little to see. The debris field was small and scattered and we were pretty far away.
An FBI agent was giving a briefing. He was kind enough to talk to me afterwards. I did a few live reports, and realized that I really needed to be at the Pentagon before dawn.
Driving back toward the Pennsylvania Turnpike, I saw a lot of people outside talking to neighbors, as the sun set over the rural countryside. They were trying to process what happened.
Another vivid memory from that day was the silence when I stopped at Turnpike rest stops in Ohio and Pennsylvania. Again, people processing. None of the normal roar of people chatting. It was just silent.
After getting a few hours sleep at a motel in Frederick, Maryland I arrived at the Pentagon in the 4 AM hour. Smoke was still rising out of the building.
I talked with a woman who was standing there. Her husband worked in the Pentagon and hadn’t come home. She was trying to get any information she could. I did look up her husband later when the casualty lists came out. He was among the dead.
After our morning broadcasts, it was time to head north. But, I wanted to get an impression of what things were like in Washington, DC first. So I did a quick drive through.
There were guards with automatic weapons outside every federal building…a visible deterrence. Agents surrounded the White House shoulder to shoulder. It felt like a nation at war.
Driving north through Delaware, I ran into emergency personnel who had assisted in New York and were heading home. I interviewed them and got their story.
I knew I would arrive in New York too late to get into the city, so I concentrated on finding a place in New Jersey where I could look across the river. It wasn’t hard to find. Smoke was pouring out of the site that people were now calling “ground zero”. I did some stories describing what I saw, and talking about what I saw in DC.
After spending the night at a relative's house in New Jersey, it was time to go in.
The first train from Metuchen, New Jersey left around 4:20 AM. I was on it.
I set up on a park bench near the police check point and interviewed people coming and going. I was live every half hour in the morning. I had some great stories from people who had spent the night searching through the rubble. But, I really needed to get into the area.
Police directed me to the media check point. My Detroit Police Press ID carried no weight in New York City. The officer at the check point gave me a number to call for clearance. It was continually busy.
While doing that, I saw TV crews getting onto the back of a flatbed truck. I just slipped in with them. The truck started moving, past the checkpoint, closer and closer to ground zero. I was in.
I got off the truck and saw a TV crew interviewing somebody. Out of instinct, I went to over to try to join the interview. A producer standing there whispered to me “This is for sixty minutes. Please keep your mike away and you can talk to him after.” So as I waited, the producer looked at me and said “Are you Jeff Gilbert?”
It turns out he was a friend of a former boss who now worked for CBS, and had spoken kindly of me. The guy saw the WWJ logo on my microphone and figured I’d be the person who was sent.
That was a miracle. He had pretty much lived in that area since the attack. He gave me a great lay of the land, where I could go and where I couldn’t.
It’s hard for people to understand how large the area of devastation was. Large chunks of concrete were everywhere. Many wrecked vehicles were stacked on top of each other to clear the roads. Dust was all around. It was somewhat dark because you were under the plume of smoke.
This went on for block after block.
I took mental notes, interviewed people who were willing to talk about their experiences. I saw a fireman sitting on a bench, staring in the distance.
“They say there’s a Hell. This is Hell. We’re living in Hell.”
Words that I will carry with me.
I took my material uptown to CBS, where they allowed me to use a studio for afternoon reports. The quality was much better.
After that, I walked the roughly mile or so to Penn Station to get a feel for life in the rest of Manhattan, looking at some of the coverage on the big screens in Times Square. It seemed a bit too normal.
The station decided they just wanted me to do live reports Friday morning and then head home. It was pouring down rain. So I elected to do them from New Jersey before driving back.
There were still some stories to do from the ride home. I ran into an emergency crew from Dexter, Michigan that had volunteered to help out and were heading home. I also ran into some counseling students from Andrews University in Berrien Springs. They were heading to New York to help in whatever way they could.
I’d hoped to make it home Friday night. But, my body pretty much “hit a wall” about 5 PM, and I decided it was safer to stop at a motel for the night and drive the final three hours the next morning.
That was the first time I was able to watch the live TV coverage, which was continuing. I started thinking of the stories that I still could have done if I’d stayed through the weekend. But, I missed my family, and was also anxious to get home. I still feel I may have left too early.
A year later, I retraced my steps. A coroner in Shanksville, PA helped me understand the crash of flight 93 a little better, and how little he had to work with after the plane hit the ground at full speed.
I talked to Congressman John Dingell, who didn’t want to leave the Capitol building, even when it appeared to be under attack.
The most vivid memory came at “Ground Zero” when I interviewed a man with a tattoo that said, “I survived WTC 1.”
He told me that when he died, he wanted the people who worked on his body to know about his experience.
I, for one, will never forget.
