A morning like no other: Three local people reflect on the events of Sept. 11, 2001

Editor’s note: This is the first in a planned series commemorating 9/11.

What started as any other Tuesday 20 years ago quickly shifted in the morning hours to a day that would shape nearly every facet of people’s lives. Local community members reflected on what it was like navigating the September morning, as the 9/11 attacks transpired in New York City and elsewhere.

David Bailey was executive manager for the Port of Moses Lake on Sept. 11, 2001, managing the Grant County International Airport and the port district in a sort of dual role. Bailey said he remembered that morning vividly, as he was sitting on a plane ready to fly to Seattle for training when news of the first plane hitting the World Trade Centers came in.

“We started to taxi out to the approach end of the main runway, and the pilot just held,” Bailey said. “I thought, ‘We have no traffic, so what are we holding for?’ Thinking in my thoughts the whole time of what I’m doing that day.”

The pilot came over to announce the takeoff would be delayed due to air congestion around Seattle, something Bailey said he knew wouldn’t have been an issue so early in the morning. (It would have been around 5:46 a.m. Pacific Time, as the first plane hit the North Tower in New York City at 8:46 a.m. Eastern Time.) He said he knew something else was going on. As he walked back into the terminal building, he saw footage of the attack on the television screen.

Bailey said he immediately went to his office, keeping an eye on the television screen as the day’s events transpired. The Federal Aviation Administration asked that all aircraft in the air at the time land at the nearest airport. Being a centrally located runway with clear weather, Bailey said he expected a slew of flights coming in to unload, but only had a few commercial flights that Tuesday.

Bailey said people getting off in Moses Lake were mostly headed for Seattle, and airlines and airport staff worked to get alternative transportation for travelers to make their way to their destination.

“I think we were all sort of in shock of what was going on and not really understanding the full circumstances and the impact it would have on air travel,” Bailey said. “The first impact to the Towers, we thought it was just an aircraft with mechanical problems that fell into the tower, but when the second plane hit, we knew it was a deliberate act.”

Air travel was suspended that day, with direction coming down from the FAA for the port to put up barriers in front of the terminal and place limits on how close vehicles could park to the terminal building. Concrete road barriers were brought in to block off the building and access roads.

Triscia Hochstatter, principal at Moses Lake High School, was getting ready for classes as a teacher at home just like any other school day when she saw the news of the attacks on television.

“We still came to school, but everyone was in shock,” Hochstatter said. “Everyone was just so quiet, everyone was just so somber.”

She said televisions in the faculty room had news on pretty much all day, and some teachers elected to have a television on in their classrooms. Hochstatter said she decided not to show the news in her classroom, and kept pushing forward until she and her students had time to address and cope with what they were seeing.

She compared it to another disaster.

Hochstatter said she was on a trip with her math team in Blaine, Washington, when the shooting occurred at Frontier Middle School on Feb. 2, 1996. While out to dinner with her students, she said they received news about what happened, where everything was “frantic.”

“Parents were trying to get ahold of kids, some of the kids had siblings at Frontier,” Hochstatter said. “It was kind of the same situation and I had to pull them into the hotel and sit down and talk and let them know you need to call your parents to talk to them and let them hear you.”

She said the best thing she could do when facing an unforeseen tragedy was to keep going, keep minds occupied, until everyone had time to address it. She said she didn’t care about the math competition, and wanted to keep her students’ minds going until they were able to be home with their families.

Hochstatter said it wasn’t but a few days after the events on that September morning a math problem came up in a calculus textbook referencing the World Trade Center, causing everyone in the classroom to pause. She said you hear about these major historic events happening, but “now we’re living one of them.”

She said her students mostly had disbelief such an event could occur.

Ephrata Police Department Chief Kurt Adkinson said it’s that word, disbelief, that rings in his head when rethinking through that Tuesday morning.

Adkinson was working for the Washington State Patrol as an academy instructor at the time, making the drive from Olympia to the WSP facility in Shelton. Having not seen the news before leaving home that morning, Adkinson said as he heard the news come over the radio, he was sure it was some sort of sick hoax of parody he wasn’t keyed in on.

“I got to the academy and checked in and the command staff had television sets on and were crowded around watching that,” Adkinson said. “I quickly put two and two together.”

From absolute disbelief to accepting it was all real, like most Americans, Adkinson said his first thoughts went to the souls in the tower buildings and crashes elsewhere in the country. He then thought of the countless law enforcement personnel and firefighters he was sure were putting their lives at risk that morning.

He said the mantra with these professions is to run in the direction of whatever everyone else is running from. He said the attacks were the same analogy times 1000.

“They’re running toward something they knew would have a large likelihood they’d lose their lives,” Adkinson said. “We’re not doing that with the idea that we’ll lose our life, but many of them had to have known that’s what the outcome was going to be.”

No one at the time had any sort of plan for what to do if a commercial airline flew into one of the tallest buildings in the United States. He said those men and women were running in with the same disbelief everyone watching the events at home had.

It was shortly after this time that Adkinson said he joined the security detail for former Gov. Gary Locke from 2001-03. While the goal was always the highest level of security, what security looked like after that September morning changed completely.

Adkinson said people don’t even think about a lot of the changes that came as a result of the events on 9/11.

“It’s so ingrained into our daily lives; we don’t even think about it,” Adkinson said. “I think that’s the true impact of an event, is that it’s so life changing we don’t even think about the changes anymore.”