The Only Plane in the Sky

by Garrett M Graff

  Rick King, assistant chief, Shanksville Volunteer Fire Company: I got into the station. I remember the dispatcher saying, “A plane down. Lambertsville Road, Lambertsville area.” I asked who was dispatched with us, and they said, “Your station, Friedens and Stoystown.” I knew County 911 thought it was a small plane, so I said, “County, I heard this plane crash. I’m convinced it was a commercial airliner.” I said, “I want additional departments.” I called for Central City, Somerset, Listie, Berlin, and I called for Somerset’s Hazmat Unit. They started to dispatch those.

  Sgt. Patrick Madigan, commander, Somerset Station, Pennsylvania State Police: We all packed up and headed to Shanksville.

  Rick King: Keith Custer was sitting beside me in the officer’s seat. Keith said, “I can’t swallow. My mouth is dry.” Mine was too. It sucked everything out of me. We’ve been in situations where we’ve been on terrible car accidents and things like that. This was different. I knew that somehow this was related to what was going on.

  Keith Custer, firefighter, Shanksville Volunteer Fire Company: It was total silence in that truck the whole way out there. I don’t think we said but five words to each other.

  Rick King: We had a cell phone in the engine at the time, and I got on the cell phone, being afraid for what was happening to our country, and I called my wife and I said, “Go get our kids out of school. I don’t know what’s happening.” I was thinking planes were now somehow going to be indiscriminately falling out of the sky. I said, “While you’re there, you might want to tell the school to close early.”

  Kevin Huzsek, paramedic, Somerset Area Ambulance Association: We got a short ways down from our station on Route 30, looked over to the horizon, and saw a big large cloud of black smoke. We advised our dispatch center to dispatch every ambulance that had two or more ambulances in their station in Somerset and Cambria County.

  * * *

  The first to reach the crash scene in Shanksville were local neighbors who witnessed the crash, workers from a nearby salvage yard, and two coal truck drivers. Not long after, volunteer firefighters began to arrive. Then, within hours, state and federal officials—and scores of reporters—would descend on the former mine site en masse, setting up a temporary town that would exist for months as investigators sifted and searched through the wreckage. The crash site of Flight 93 perplexed many of those responding, as the soft earth of the former mine swallowed up the wreckage and buried much of the plane in the ground.

  Douglas Miller, coal truck driver, James F. Barron Trucking: We turned in and then immediately made a right, which took us to the crash scene, within 30 yards. There was nobody else there at the time.

  Robert “Bobby” Blair, truck driver, James F. Barron Trucking: The trees were on fire.

  Douglas Miller: The heat—I assumed it was from the jet fuel—was so intense I had to remark to Bob, “Hey, we better back up,” because I thought it would blister the paint on my hood. You could feel the heat through the windows.

  Robert “Bobby” Blair: We had taken our fire extinguishers, and we knocked the fire out that was blowing across the field pretty quick. There was a large tire laying there right at the hole; it was still burning. We both tried to knock it out, but then as soon as you quit spraying, it started back up again.

  Eric Peterson, resident, Stonycreek Township: When I got up there, there was actually still pieces of mail and stuff like that falling from the sky.

  Douglas Miller: There wasn’t anything to tell you that it was a plane when you first looked—it looked like maybe a truck delivering mail or maybe something carrying a lot of paperwork might have wrecked. There was paperwork—letters and envelopes—scattered everywhere.

  Kevin Huzsek, paramedic, Somerset Area Ambulance Association: Shanksville Fire Department’s engine was actually arriving at the same time that we were. We went back first, their engine followed, and I believe a unit from Stoystown Fire Department was right behind them.

  Merle Flick, firefighter, Shanksville Volunteer Fire Company: It wasn’t too much to see.

  James Broderick, trooper, Pennsylvania State Police: I remember opening the car door and going to step out. I happened to look down and there was a piece of a human body—a bone or a joint. I knew no one could have survived that crash, seeing that small of a piece. I got back in the car. I knew that I had pulled too close. I backed up.

  Ralph Blanset, fire chief, Stoystown Volunteer Fire Company: Trooper Broderick and I were standing next to the crater, and one of my firemen came up and said, “Are you in charge here?,” which is protocol for fire companies. Rick King of the Shanksville Fire Department said, “I’m in charge.” Before he got that out of his mouth, Trooper Broderick says, “I’m in charge. This is a crime scene.” That settled everything real quick.

  James Broderick: I knew that we had to secure the scene, keep people out, because people were starting to pick things up.

  Rick King: People are coming to me and saying, “What do we do? What do you want us to do?” There wasn’t anything to do.

  Norbert Rosenbaum, firefighter, Stoystown Volunteer Fire Company: They said, “Go on to a search and rescue.” When I saw the parts and everything, I said, “I don’t think you’re going to be rescuing nobody. It’s too big a hole.” I did see a lot of stuff that I’d seen before; I was in Vietnam. There was just parts of human pieces. That’s all it was—pieces.

  James Broderick: I remember the smell. Once you smell diesel fuel mixed with the human body, you’ll never forget that smell.

  Lt. Robert Weaver, Pennsylvania State Police: That was the first thing that hit me—the smell.

  Michael Rosenbaum, firefighter, Stoystown Volunteer Fire Company: Something was smelling really sweet. I didn’t know what it was, and I thought it was a flower or something that was in the woods. It had a sweet smell to it. I had asked my dad several times and he wouldn’t tell me. Later that day, one of the other firemen told me what it was.

  Sgt. Denise Miller, Indian Lake Police Department: I thought, This is what hell must look like. The ground was smoking and smoldering.

  Keith Custer, firefighter, Shanksville Volunteer Fire Company: We did a little sweep around, and it was probably 10, 15 minutes before we realized there would be no survivors.

  Cynthia Daniels, EMT, Somerset Area Ambulance Association: Kevin [Huzsek] radioed the Somerset manager, Jill Miller, and Jill told him that we might as well go back to the ambulance hall and regroup. There was really nothing we could do. There was nothing—no one to take care of.

  Kevin Huzsek, paramedic, Somerset Area Ambulance Association: The conversation was very bleak.

  Tim Lensbouer, crane operator, Rollock Incorporated: We hollered all the way down through the woods and there was nothing there, just the pine trees burning. We searched and searched. We ran and ran. There was nothing other than paper. One of us found a book bag, a little kid’s book bag.

  Cpl. Louis Veitz, collision reconstruction specialist, Pennsylvania State Police: We actually found money that was still intact. I can remember finding pocketbooks with family pictures in it, clothing, someone’s shoe.

  Sgt. Craig Bowman, Crime Investigation Unit, Pennsylvania State Police: An open Bible was laying there. Considering the condition of all the other debris, it was relatively unscathed.

  T. Michael Lauffer, trooper, Pennsylvania State Police: I actually found a flight book from one of the flight attendants laying down there, down in the hemlocks. That’s when I knew it was a United flight, because it had “United Airlines” printed on it. “Bradshaw” was the name in it.

  James Broderick: I remember it was Flight Attendant Sandra Bradshaw. It had a picture of her and her family. I had taken that with me, because we started to take things back and place them on the back of a fire truck. Things were starting to blow away or burn. We wanted to protect everything that we could that could be possible evidence or things that could possibly be returned to the family members.

  Clyde Ware, assistant chief, Stoystown Volunteer
Fire Company: You kept looking and hoping for the impossible that day.

  Lt. Robert Weaver: We were talking and I said, “I can’t believe this is a commercial plane.” Within minutes, [FBI agent] Wells [Morrison] got a phone call and confirmed it was Flight 93. He said, “Yes, it’s confirmed—this is Flight 93.”

  Keith Custer, firefighter, Shanksville Volunteer Fire Company: Then we put it all together: “Hey, this is the fourth plane.”

  Paula Pluta, resident, Stonycreek Township: I started thinking, What in the world do they want with Shanksville, Pennsylvania? There’s nothing here!

  Sgt. Denise Miller, Indian Lake Police Department: When I first got out there to the site, I was actually a little nervous. I wondered what the importance of the field was and what possibly the government had hidden under the ground there that they wanted. I couldn’t figure out why the plane had come down here.

  Wells Morrison, supervisory special agent, FBI: What became the priority now was to preserve the crash site and attempt to obtain anything of evidentiary value.

  Not long after Flight 93 crashed, the first media arrived at the scene and began to confirm for the world that another attack had occurred, ending in a field near Shanksville.

  Laurence Kesterson, staff photographer, Philadelphia Inquirer: All we had was “There’s a plane that crashed in western Pennsylvania. Go!” My boss said, “Just go. Just get on the turnpike and go west. We’ll call as we know more.”

  Peter M. “Mike” Drewecki, photographer, WPXI-TV, Pittsburgh: We were trying to pinpoint exactly where Shanksville was because I had never heard of it before.

  David Mattingly, national correspondent, CNN: This was in the days before everyone had a GPS in their car, so I still had to get there the old-fashioned way: I had to stop and buy a map.

  Cpl. Jeffrey Braid, Aviation Patrol Unit, Pennsylvania State Police: It was eerily quiet on the radios for the airplanes. The whole ride out to Shanksville, there was really no communication between airplanes and ground.

  Tony James, investigator, FAA: I drove to the FAA’s Hangar 6 in Washington, which is located at Ronald Reagan Airport, and I put my stuff on the airplane. It was myself, two NTSB [National Transportation Safety Board] people, and the two pilots. We were the only airplane in the air. We were talking to air traffic control and they said, “You’re cleared direct. Go as fast and as high as you want to go.”

  Cpl. Jeffrey Braid: We were five miles out, and we still didn’t see anything, so we started contacting the ground units and said, “Are these the right coordinates?” We still didn’t see any smoke or debris. We got almost right on top of it, and then we started seeing the cars and stuff.

  Tony James: We get up here and we could see the woods burning and we made a couple of low fly-bys, which got a lot of people’s attention.

  Braden Shober, firefighter, Shanksville Volunteer Fire Company: Keith Custer pointed up in the sky and said, “That’s not supposed to be there.” We looked and there was a large plane flying toward us. At this point we all know that there aren’t supposed to be any planes in the sky because the FAA’s put everybody on the ground. It was a little eerie. You started looking around. Where are we going to hide?

  Keith Custer: What do you do to get away from a plane that’s coming at you? Do you try to outrun it? It’s coming at you so fast.

  Capt. Frank Monaco, Pennsylvania State Police: There was a giant jet liner right over our heads. It was like a Twilight Zone episode—everybody was frozen in their tracks. Nobody was moving. Nobody was talking. Everybody was stunned. “Is it another one?”

  Keith Custer: When it went by us, everybody kind of did a “Wow.”

  Peter M. “Mike” Drewecki, photographer, WPXI-TV, Pittsburgh: There was a gathering of workers standing in front of Highland Tank Company. Some were smoking cigarettes; some were standing around, scratching their heads. They knew why we were there, and they just pointed their thumbs over their shoulders and said, “Whatever it is you’re looking for, it’s up that way.”

  Jon Meyer, reporter, WNEP-TV (Scranton, Pennsylvania): The next thing I knew, I was right where the crater was. It was an overwhelming experience. The only way I knew it was a plane was the size—it was a big crater.

  Peter M. “Mike” Drewecki: I was met by a photographer from the Greensburg [Pennsylvania] Tribune-Review by the name of Sean Stipp. It’s strange—you’re not looking at each other, but you’re looking at the things you have to shoot. I remember saying, “Sean, this is the beginning of World War III.”

  David Mattingly, national correspondent, CNN: The first live report I did was over the telephone. I was explaining where I was—this bucolic setting, this pasture on the right, this cornfield on the left, these rolling hills around me, this blue sky above me. It seemed a highly, highly improbable location to be doing a story about what appeared to be some terrorist attack.

  As word spread of the fourth crash, the families of victims aboard Flight 93 learned that their greatest fears had been realized.

  Alice Ann Hoagland, mother of United Flight 93 passenger Mark Bingham: We heard the news that Flight 93 had crashed in Pennsylvania. They had the footage on television so fast, and it showed rescue workers already on the site with a big, gaping, smoldering hole. That’s the way I found out Mark had been killed.

  Deena Burnett, wife of United Flight 93 passenger Tom Burnett: I realized I had been running around the house all morning in my pajamas. I needed to get dressed. I went upstairs. I had the telephone with me. I put it on the ledge by the shower so that in the event I didn’t hear it, I could see it ring. I never took my eyes off the telephone while I was showering. I got dressed and went downstairs. The policeman was standing at the bottom of the stairs, and I could tell by the look on his face that something was wrong. He said, “I think I have bad news for you.” I remember turning toward the television and seeing that there had been another plane crash. I ran over to the TV and I asked, “Is that Tom’s plane?” He said, “Yes, it’s Flight 93.” I felt my knees buckle.

  Lyzbeth Glick, wife of United Flight 93 passenger Jeremy Glick: They told me that Jeremy’s plane had gone down. The police were at my house, and somebody said there had been some survivors on the plane. I thought, Okay, if there are survivors, he’s going to be one of them because he’s a survivor. My minister came over and we sat there and prayed. I knew since there was no call, it wasn’t good news. United probably called three hours after the plane went down. I said, “You don’t even need to tell me, I know.”

  “That very slow, quiet panic”

  * * *

  At School in Arlington, Virginia

  Since the attacks happened in the morning, teachers all around the East Coast were faced with a decision they had not been trained to make: how to talk to their students about the tragedies happening in New York and Washington, D.C. One of the schools that faced this dilemma most profoundly was in the Pentagon’s hometown, just a few miles from the crash site. H-B Woodlawn School officials tried to calm their 600 students—many of whom had family members working at the Pentagon, the Capitol, the White House, or other government offices—as panicked parents began to arrive to take them home.

  Ray Anderson, principal, H-B Woodlawn School, Arlington: At about nine o’clock, kids started coming into the office who had gotten off the bus. They were wearing Walkmans and listening to the radio, and they’re talking about terrible things happening in New York City.

  Frank Haltiwanger, assistant principal, H-B Woodlawn School: Sometime during the first period, the second tower was hit.

  Ray Anderson: We had to adjust to this unbelievable thing. You had no frame of reference for it and quickly realized that this was going to be a real problem for students being in school. I got on the PA and I told everyone, told the teachers to turn off all the TVs. People didn’t need to sit around all morning and watch these horrible events.

  Theresa Flynn, librarian, H-B Woodlawn School: My phone rang, and it was my mother—she had heard an explosion
at the Pentagon and ran out her front door. She said, “We’re in trouble. You need to get home.”

  Frank Haltiwanger: When the Pentagon was hit, that changed everything—because we had a number of kids who have parents who work there.

  Ray Anderson: The phone system quickly became inoperative, and cell phones became inoperative. Everybody was trying to use the phones at the same time.

  Theresa Flynn: People stopped teaching. They didn’t know what to do. About a third of our staff and students had family members who were at the Pentagon, who were working downtown. The news was not helpful. They started saying: “Car bomb at the State Department.” “There’s another plane in the air.” “We don’t know how many planes are in the air.” “They’re all heading toward D.C.” Everybody was panicking, but it was that very slow, quiet panic.

  Frank Haltiwanger: We were able to maintain reasonable order downstairs by keeping the kids in the classrooms. There were two or three students who either had parents at the Pentagon or parents who were in the air to New York who became hysterical and were running down the hall. I had some come into my office. I found another teacher who was a good counselor and had that teacher sit with them.

  Ray Anderson: Parents started showing up at school, wanting their children.

  Frank Haltiwanger: I’d say 50 or 70 parents came. Most of them came, checked on their child, and left.

  Ray Anderson: I got on the PA, now it’s probably about 10:15—10:30 at the latest—and said, without being any more specific, “We may need to do our tornado drill today.” I reminded people the tornado drill is not the fire drill—where we all go outside and get away from the building—the tornado drill is when we all go down to the basement and first-floor hallways.

  Mary McBride, assistant principal, H-B Woodlawn School: Mercifully, those parents working at the Pentagon were all right. That was the most important piece of almost the whole day for us—because that didn’t happen for one of our principals.