It’s been 25 years, but the lessons of that day linger
It’s almost unimaginable that 25 years have passed since that day.
To be honest, in the early hours of that day, it was a little uncertain that there would be another 25 years for any of us.
I was a 23-year-old reporter that day, working for a small community paper in a Pittsburgh suburb.
It started like any other day — drinking coffee while getting ready with CNN playing in the background, just loud enough that I would know what the headlines were before going to work. It got quiet for a bit, which hardly ever happens, and I looked up and saw the first tower on fire. I thought it was a clip from an upcoming movie at first. Then I saw the word “LIVE” in the right hand corner and my brain couldn’t process that quickly enough before the second plane hit.
I think that was the first time I ever physically felt my heart drop.
But, to be fair, as horrifying as it was and as terrified as I felt, it was still just this “thing happening in New York.” It wasn’t here. It wasn’t my story, and I had work to do for my newspaper that day, so I headed to my beat to get that day’s police log with talk radio keeping me updated.
My editor called me on the cellphone I’d only had about three months at that point. At the time, the report was that there was a plane over Western Pennsylvania and the military was about to shoot it down. Now, it was my story. I had to go to my coverage area and get the reactions of my community.
Every sidewalk was filled with people staring up into the sky, looking for planes that were now seen as bombs floating through the air, just wondering when something would crash into us. Then the call came that the plane crashed in Somerset and suddenly every fire truck in the area started screaming toward the crash site to help.
By the time I got to the municipal building to ask for some reactions, the fire truck had returned. It had been mere minutes. I asked the chief why they were back and, defeated, the chief looked at me and simply said, “There is nothing there. There is nothing left.”
It rocked me. The idea an entire plane could crash and there could be “nothing left” was astonishing. There were rumors it had been shot down. As I drove through town, people were still lining the streets. Where was the next “bomb” going to crash?
I got to the newsroom — the 2001 version of a newsroom in which there was only internet on four computers, there was no cable television and only half of us had cellphones — and someone had brought in an old transistor radio to keep us updated. The reports were that several planes continued to fly nearby and were “unaccounted for” and the military was searching for them. There wasn’t a moment of that day that felt safe.
Every hour or so, we’d gather around a computer with the internet and search for as much information as we could find. Information just traveled differently then. Misinformation traveled with the same speed it does today, but it often took much longer to get the correct details.
When the world is that chaotic, no matter how well we’re trained, there are some things journalists can’t make simple or understandable for our readers — or ourselves.
Some Pittsburgh papers put out afternoon editions for the first time because letting that day’s morning edition stand as the paper for record for Sept. 11, 2001, would have seemed inappropriate.
By the time we went home, we knew there were no more planes unaccounted for, but none of us felt like it was over. Almost every television station stopped airing any regular programming and instead streamed live coverage of recovery efforts at ground zero 24 hours a day. Even MTV, back when it still played music videos, stopped playing Matchbox 20 and Jennifer Lopez for a few days and focused on the nation’s heartache.
Most people who lived through it know there is a before Sept. 11 way of life and after Sept. 11 way of life. The days and weeks following the attacks saw this country rally, saw our citizens lean on each other, take care of each other and support each other like never before. And we were tested, time and again, for months. Anthrax scares, fears about potential gas attacks, getting warnings about chemical attacks, learning how to plastic wrap our windows to protect us against such things and so on.
We tried to get back to normal. When planes were allowed to fly again, that took some getting used to — it took a while to stop seeing them as potential weapons. It took a long, long time before we didn’t have at least one story related to the attacks in every newspaper.
Then, it was the first anniversary, and it seemed impossible a year had passed. We were scared the anniversary would prompt another attack. Then another year passed, with a little less fanfare, then it was the fifth anniversary, and so on.
Newsrooms adjusted, caught up with better technology and will always be better informed moving forward. With the invention of the smartphone, every American has fast-moving information at their fingertips to keep them informed all the time.
Life just kept moving forward. We stopped protecting each other as fiercely as we did Sept. 12. We stopped being on each other’s side somewhere along the way, we stopped being as supportive. We lost that feeling that we were all in this together.
It’s been 25 years and we’ve gained and lost a lot since then. But that feeling, that warm, hopeful feeling we had when we believed we were a family standing strong together — we can be that way again. We just have to choose it.
Kristie Linden is a former part-time editor at the Butler Eagle and the current program manager for the Jeannette Initiative. On Sept. 11, 2001, Linden was working at The Norwin Star in Irwin, Westmoreland County.
