Locals share their 9/11 experiences 18 years later
Most of us are in no danger of forgetting the events of 9/11 or the victims, heroes, and survivors of those attacks.
Yet there are smaller, quieter stories that can resonate, as well.
Robbinsville’s Julie Hancock and Andrews’ Michael Neal both experienced the attacks in different ways.
One was caught in the aftermath; the other was nearly caught in the rubble.
Ground Zero
Hancock arrived at Ground Zero just weeks after the 9/11 attacks. On her first day of work in forensic recovery for Phillips and Jordan, Inc., she toured the site of the Twin Towers and was struck by the overwhelming amount of ash, even blocks from Ground Zero.
“I’ll never forget the smell,” said Hancock. “It was a combination of the ash and the rest of the debris and, of course, the human remains.” Hancock saw a firetruck “squished to about two feet high” and “windows blown out blocks away from the site.”
Hancock processed and catalogued the debris from Ground Zero at an office off-site, which allowed her to bring her one-year-old daughter to work with her.
“Shelby even had her own little ID badge,” said Hancock.
While Hancock did not work at Ground Zero itself, she made several trips to the Fresh Kills landfill every day, where huge shaker machines processed Ground Zero debris by the dump truck-load.
“The people working the shaker machines were the cops and firefighters and FBI – who were first responders on 9/11 – so it was pretty intense,” Hancock said. “They were sorting, sorting, sorting through all the debris, searching for anything to identify people, whether it was a watch or a document or actual remains.”
For the year she worked in forensic recovery, Hancock and her daughter lived in an apartment directly across from a fire station where wreaths commemorated fire-fighters lost on 9/11.
“It made you tear up every day to see that,” Hancock said. “Every day your heart broke a little bit.”
Defenses down
On the morning of 9/11, retired Army Master Sergeant Michael Neal of Andrews arrived at the Pentagon’s Joint Multimedia Center, where he served as Division Chief.
The Vietnam combat vet went to breakfast with a colleague, but was back at his desk when the first plane hit the first tower.
“We monitored all the TV networks all the time and recorded them, so we were very aware of what was going on in New York,” said Neal. “It really struck home when that second plane hit. You could tell that it purposely ran into that building.
“That’s when all hell broke loose.”
Neal was in the center courtyard of the Pentagon, watching a passenger jet fly overhead, when he thought, “If this is a coordinated attack, we’d make a prime target.”
Back inside the Pentagon, Neal was approached by one of his employees, who asked, “Did you feel that?”
Of course, “that” was American Airlines Flight 77 crashing into the Pentagon.
The Pentagon is the biggest office building in the world and with 6.5 million square feet of usable space, the building’s size kept the plane’s impact from being immediately obvious to all 20,000 people in the building.
“I went outside,” said Neal,” and there was black smoke bellowing from the western side of the building.”
“That’s when I thought, ‘Holy ****.’ No one told us to evacuate, but I’d been through combat. Flags started going up. I said, ‘Let’s get everybody out of here.’”
Neal made sure that “every last person I could find” cleared the building.
“There was smoke everywhere, sirens, first responders,” Neal said. “I didn’t experience the panic that a lot of people did, but I just kept thinking, it’s the Pentagon. I can’t believe they hit the Pentagon.”
The Pentagon is not only the headquarters of all five branches of the U.S. military, but also the location of the National Military Command Center, the nerve center of all U.S military forces, world-wide.
“People were just walking around dazed,” Neal said. “And then this one guy started screaming that another plane was incoming.”
Due to confusion between air-traffic controllers, a second plane was thought to be en route to D.C. First responders already inside the building received a minute-by-minute countdown to the expected impact.
“Then two fighter jets arrived, orbiting around the Pentagon,” Neal said. “That’s when it dawned on me that, yes, it was definitely a coordinated attack.” Neal returned to work at the Pentagon the next day, along with all but two people in his division. He witnessed Arlington firefighters and soldiers from Fort Myers unfurl a huge American flag next to the impact zone.
“That inspired me, right there,” Neal touted.
Neal lost one friend on 9/11, an engineer and Navy contractor who was working near the point of impact. He worked another seven years at the Pentagon, but “it never went back to normal.”
Neal, who retired in 2008, only has one regret: “Not being a part of the planning process for getting Osama Bin Laden.”
“That would have provided some closure.”