Twenty years later, Rich Pyres still remembers the beeping sound his pager made on his day off on Sept. 11, 2001. As a special agent for the FBI, pages were a routine part of his job. But, this page was different.
“We used the code 911 for an emergency, and I knew I had to call the office back right away,” Pyres explained. He had been called in to investigate cases involving gangs, drugs, bank robberies, and even terrorism in the past, but this case was far and away different from them all.
Immediately, Pyres turned on the news to see the first plane that hit the World Trade Center in New York City. From the time he received the call, Pyres worked night and day alongside the rest of the bureau, investigating every possible lead that came in. Information as small as where the hijackers stopped for dinner was thoroughly investigated.
“The case went on for months,” Pyres recalled, adding that “for the first couple weeks that followed, my wife Jen and I would see each other only in passing as I worked crazy shifts.” In all the chaos, the most sobering moment was when he and a few of his colleagues went to visit the site in the middle of the night.
“Even days later, we could see that the buildings were still burning,” Pyres vividly remembered. He described the sight of the flames and blown-out windows as resembling a volcano. It was unlike anything he had ever seen before.
For four months after the attack, Pyres continued to work on the case and follow leads as they came in. Even as time passed, the effects of the attacks were felt by every American.
As someone who flew multiple times a week, attorney Chris Jones noticed these effects in every area of his life.
“I was scheduled to fly out that day when, all of a sudden, I heard the news, and my flight was canceled soon after,” Jones said. For the next week, Jones did not fly or go into work. Time stood still as he waited to see when work would resume and he would be scheduled to fly out again.
“Even after I started flying again, it was never really the same,” Jones remarked.
For a while after, airports individually addressed how to heighten security until the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) was put in place. Jones remembered that the time after affected the airlines in his hometown, Kansas City, dramatically as well.
“The big airlines made it through, of course. But, the smaller airlines like Midwest Express could never quite recover,” Jones recalled.
While the airline was small, those working were soon out of a job, and this was not just seen in Kansas City. Small airlines around the country either merged with larger airlines or closed their doors. As he started to fly again, Jones felt that it was never quite the same. He could no longer show up for his flight with just enough time to walk onboard without thinking twice.
There was a heavy presence that lasted in the hearts of Americans around the country, and it still exists after twenty years.
Photo by Partha Narasimhan on Unsplash