That Day

On September 11, 2001 I was in Rio de Janerio.  I'd left New York City on an overnight flight on Sunday evening to Brazil, traveling with a colleague on a business trip.  It was a trip we made once a year to review the environmental, health and safety performance of our South American operations. Tuesday morning found us in an aircraft engine maintenance shop in Rio when someone approached us and said a plane had flown into one of the World Trade Center towers.  From the description we assumed it was a private plane that somehow had flown off course.  A few minutes later another person told us the second tower had been hit and we knew it was not an accident.

We left the shop and were being driven to our next appointment in Petropolis, in the mountains about an hour from Rio.  This was in the days when I was not traveling with a phone with international calling capabilities but the person who worked for me in Brazil had one.  With his help I got ahold of Mrs THC who told me the towers had "fallen over", the highways into Connecticut, where we lived at the time, had been cleared so that ambulances could take the injured to hospitals in that state (sadly it turned out there were no injured), all airplanes in the U.S. were grounded and no one knew what was going to happen next.

Arriving at our destination, another GE plant, we continued on with our work.  There was nothing else we could do at that point.  We were due to fly out of Sao Paolo on Thursday night and carried through with our planned itinerary until then.  Everyone in Brazil was solicitous and sympathetic.  All we wanted to do was get back home but there was no way to do so.  It was frustrating to be stuck in another country when our country was under attack.  Even though our presence back in the U.S. would not make a difference as a practical matter, emotionally it created a lot of turmoil for us.  Our flight on Thursday night was cancelled and we waited at our hotel all day Friday for word as to whether that night's flight would go ahead.  Late that afternoon we got word that JFK was reopening, the flight would leave, and we went to the airport.

My thought had been the flight would be crowded given that the Thursday flight had been cancelled and the overnight flights to New York were always full but when we got on the plane it was only about 1/5 full.  I realized the only people on it were Americans wanting to return home and the usual crowd of tourists and South American business people were absent. The overnight flight was very quiet.  It was about 6am on Saturday morning when we began our approach to JFK in complete silence.  My colleague, who had a window seat, noticed a military jet had appeared off our wing and remarked that it must be there to accompany us in as protection.  I looked at the other wing, saw another jet, and told her they were actually there to shot us down if something went wrong.

It was only after we landed, entered the deserted Customs Hall, and spoke to the Customs agents that we realized we were the first international flight to land at JFK after it reopened.  It was the friendliest reception I've ever had coming into America from travel abroad.  The agent I dealt with said "welcome home, it's good to have you back".  It felt good to be home.

A limo picked us up to take us to Connecticut.  As we drove across the Whitestone Bridge I looked to my left and could see the Manhattan skyline.  The familiar profile of the World Trade Center towers was gone and there was still a noticeable debris cloud hanging above the island four days after the attack.