story20734.xml

story20734.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2006-09-11

I had come down the stairs after taking a shower and was dressed in my ticketing agents uniform. At the time I was working for Midway Airlines in Raleigh, NC. They had gone bankrupt a month before. I was also 5 months pregnant. I turned on the TV and watched as the first tower was smoking and then as the 2nd plane hit the 2nd building. I was in shock and horrified. I didn't want to beleive we were under attack. I got into the car around 9:30 and somewhere along the way the pentagon got hit. Now I was scared, if they got to the pentagon-our national defense-nothing was sacred. My only calming point was that the airport was probably the safest place to go. As I got to the airport and road the bus to the terminal, they grounded all flights and my co-worker and I looked at each other, she voiced what I was thinking. What do we do??? I shook my head and said, "I don't know, this is unheard of."
At the terminal, most of the passengers were at the curb taking any bus they could to get out of there. We walked across the terminal and into the gate area. The tarmac looked like the expressway after an accident. One plane on top of each other. We went up to the gates and found the supervisor. "Can't beleive I forgot my ID. I can't go anywhere." she complained "and I know what red means......we don't fly" We asked what we could do and she said see if AA needs help.
There was a plane that American was unloading (a 757 in fact) that was going from tampa to LaGuardia and had to stop here. One of the passengers said "its your damn fault that they had to stop here. " to the AA agent.

The terminal was quiet, the TV's were off because of it,except for the ones on each end. We gave people were they could get a room and helped get them to the shuttle buses. After we were in our breakroom watching as the towers fell and all the coverage. The terminal was secure there was no passengers there. They locked up the security gate and kept the ramp agents on to check the planes for bombs. It was eerie that day to see how it affected the airports and disrupt life.

5 years later I remember it like it was yesterday. The feeling that flows through you, the sadness and fear. The sights and sounds. After,I heard other peoples stories, co-workers and other airline employees. Some where very sad and others I was stunned at. I can't imagine not being there and experiencing it the way I did and the thing I remember most before then is about a week or less before then. It was a beautiful night, sitting on a luggage cart looking at the cloudless sky. There was a serenity there like a calm before the storm. We talked about how the passengers have been so miserable and what they expected from us. It was far from our thoughts about something like this in the year 2001