For many people, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, were the defining moment of their generation, and certainly one of the most chilling events to unfold on live television. But for a few St. Albertans, the attacks hit much closer to home.
It was early that Tuesday morning when many of us woke to the terrible news that a hijacked airplane — American Airlines Flight 11, to be precise — had collided with the north tower of the World Trade Center in downtown New York City. In the hours that followed, millions watched as United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the south tower, followed by both towers collapsing. It felt to many like a scene out of a movie, but unfortunately it was all too horrifyingly real.
Those incidents were followed by the crash of American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon, just outside Washington, D.C. Meanwhile, United Airlines Flight 93, which had taken off from Newark, N.J., but had been turned around to head toward Washington, crashed in a field in Somerset County, Penn., after passengers decided to stand up to the hijackers. What their target was remains a mystery — some think it was the United States Capitol building, while others believe it was the White House.
St. Albert Fire Services chief Ray Richards said the impact of those crashes is still being felt a decade later and more than 3,200 kilometres away here in the Capital region.
"So many people impacted then and now, as you see some of the memorials after the 10 years," Richards said Friday prior to a small, private 9-11 memorial held at Fire Station No. 3 on Giroux Road. "Three hundred forty-three firefighters and paramedics were killed, but so many more were impacted — they're having breathing and cancer problems. The impact continues."
In the weeks and months that passed, many St. Albertans were so moved by what they saw that they volunteered their time to visit New York and help the city recover. And the effects those experiences have had on them has lasted, even a decade later.
Ties that bind
When Helen Guenette first heard of the attacks, her mind turned to her children, who were living in New York City, just blocks away from the World Trade Center.
"It was horrible, because I saw it on TV before they could even reach me. All my neighbours were coming over to my house; everyone was phoning to see if they were all right. When I did reach them — they lived in Midtown, which is a little way up from Wall Street — it was just helicopters flying everywhere. They said it was an absolute war zone. Then my daughter's husband saw the plane hit, because he works at Morgan Stanley, so he saw one of the towers hit from his office in Midtown," she said.
Thankfully, both her children were just fine. However, they did lose a close friend in the attacks, and though she was a continent away, she felt their pain.
"This young fellow had a two-month-old baby and a three-year-old little girl. It was horrible for that family. I always felt my kids lost someone who was important in their lives. They're godparents to those kids. So I always felt they had a personal loss," she said.
Guenette had been to New York many times to visit her kids, but her next trip was extra special. In mid-October 2001, she went to the city to deliver red, white and blue ribbons made by students at W.D. Cuts School in St. Albert, which were originally to be taken by then-premier Ralph Klein before his trip was cancelled.
Some of her stops with those ribbons included Mayor Rudy Giuliani's office and Engine 54, Ladder 4, Battalion 9 of the Fire Department of New York, a fire hall that lost many firefighters in the scramble to respond to the attacks.
"I took them to New York with me, and hand-delivered them to the fire hall that lost probably 100 of their people. … That was a touching experience because, from Canada, they didn't think that anybody cared," Guenette said.
Picking up the pieces
While Andy Kwak didn't sift through the rubble of the World Trade Center or haul any steel beams away from Ground Zero, he may have done just as much to help pick up the pieces.
Kwak was a pastor at the St. Albert branch of the Salvation Army when the attacks occurred, although he has since transferred to Abbotsford, B.C. Soon after the attacks, he spent two weeks volunteering in a canteen across the street from Ground Zero.
"Basically, at this canteen, we fed the workers, all those involved — police, fire — and it was open 24 hours a day. We served meals as well as providing things like socks and all kinds of toiletries. We even handed out cigarettes there," he said.
While there were trained workers around the site of the attacks to council responders and volunteers, Kwak found that most were more comfortable opening up to fellow workers like him in the canteen — which was fortunate, given Kwak's training in disaster relief counselling and experience in places in Kosovo and Chechnya.
"In the canteen, people would come and get something to eat, and that's when they would sit down and talk to you about going through the experience, rather than [talking to] these designated people who were wandering out there. It was a great opportunity to share with people what was happening," he said.
The time since
As the last decade has passed and the memories of 9-11 have faded — although not disappeared completely — the experience has had a lasting effect on Guenette.
"I remember being angry … I think the angriest thing was that it was done over the name of religion. I think that's what got me the angriest, because it was basically an al-Qaida thing, and people die and wars are fought over religion, and that's what made me the angriest," she said.
For Kwak, though, he felt his training and experience insulated him from getting too caught up in emotions.
"I'm on a national registry, and every couple of months, they send out a questionnaire — how are you doing, any physical signs, are you OK. They sort of keep track of how you're doing. It's 10 years later, and you still get this correspondence from New York asking how you're doing," he said. "For some people, it probably had some effect on them, but for myself, I'm trained in that field, so I didn't feel any side effects, aside from developing a bit of a cough from inhaling all the fumes.
Changes
But the attacks have left a greater legacy than just memories — they have changed the way organizations operate and the way things are done, and continue to do so today.
Current Edmonton-St. Albert MP Brent Rathgeber was just a few months into his first term as MLA for Edmonton-Calder when the attacks occurred, and he recalled how security at the Alberta Legislature ramped up very quickly.
"Previous to [the attacks], security was very, very limited; people could, for the most part, walk in and out of that building with very little investigation from the security guards," Rathgeber said. "In the weeks and months that ensued, MLAs and their staff were all given cards with their photo identification that we had to show when we entered the building, and visitors had to be signed in."
For the Salvation Army, Kwak said that 9-11 did change the way they respond to emergencies and disasters, but not where one might first think.
"You see much more in the way of canteens; I think, in Alberta, they've got three now, where they only had one at one time, and here in British Columbia, I think they have nine or 10 of them. I think the Salvation Army in Canada has probably stepped up their response more than before 9-11," he said.
Richards said the fateful day has changed the attitude firefighters carry into the heat of their duties.
"We've moved away from the sense that everything goes, that you risked your own life and limb just to get the job done," he said. "There's more of a sense of making sure people are properly equipped, properly trained, and there's nothing with taking another half-second to figure out if it's safe to go out in a building. No one would have believed those towers could have come down, with the massive steel and concrete they were built from. It just shows you've got to be prepared for anything."
