The Day the World Came to Town: 9/11 in Gander, Newfoundland

by Jim DeFede

There were 4,546 civilian aircraft over the United States at the time, from private Cessnas to jumbo jets, and they all scrambled to find a place to land. Closing airspace had its most disorienting effect, though, on approximately four hundred international flights headed toward the United States, the majority of which were coming across the Atlantic from Europe.

They placed their lives on hold for a group of strangers and asked for nothing in return. They affirmed the basic goodness of man at a time when it was easy to doubt such humanity still existed.

all American carriers—United, American, Delta, Continental—had to land at the nearest airport immediately. Foreign carriers had a choice: they could turn around and fly home or land in Canada, but they couldn’t come into the United States.

Without being called, off-duty controllers started arriving at the center within a half hour of the attacks.

When an Aeroflot flight between Havana and Moscow or East Berlin touched down in Gander and the passengers were allowed off the plane while it was being serviced, some of the passengers invariably would ask Canadian officials for asylum.

for the same reason it was considered a suitable landing site for the Space Shuttle—it has an unusually long main runway—Harold O’Reilly knew it would be the ideal place to handle a sky full of jumbo jets with nowhere to land.

“You will not be going to the United States today,” Puddister said. “You are instructed to land in St. John’s.”

His wife, Maryann, once asked him if, before running into a burning building or attempting a hazardous rescue, he ever stopped to think about the fact that he had a wife and two children waiting for him at home. “If we did that,” Kevin told her, “we’d all be standing outside saying, ‘You go ahead, I’ll wait here.’ You can’t think like that.”

Vitale was amazed at how many things could run through his mind simultaneously.

in the back of his mind he believed these planes were going to be grounded for more than just a short delay since it didn’t seem likely that airspace over the United States would open up again soon.

Amazingly, as soon as the drivers realized what was happening, they laid down their picket signs, setting their own interests aside, and volunteered en masse to work around the clock carrying the passengers wherever they needed to go.

What does a terrorist look like? She didn’t know how to answer that question.

Some people had their arms folded, like they were trying to hold themselves for comfort.

At that moment he had never been more proud to be an American.

the moment the first plane hit the first tower, the old rules on combating global terrorism had ceased to apply, but nobody was sure what the new rules would be.

These were the nicest people in the world, Roxanne thought.

given everything that was going wrong in the world, it was reassuring to see that right now, right here, in one small corner of the planet, something was going right.

flying home while the others were left behind would have been an act of betrayal of everything that had happened over the last seventy-two hours.

The Newfoundlanders had provided a caring haven for hundreds of people at a moment when they were scared and far from home. They were made to feel safe and secure when the world around them seemed anything but.

In the past, it had always been easy for the citizens of Gander to drown out events in other parts of the world because they always seemed so far removed. Gander, after all, was a safe place to live. A community that prided itself on unlocked doors and friendly neighbors. Now they’d seen how a tragedy more than a thousand miles away could touch their lives directly. Not only had the world come to town, but so, too, did the world’s problems.