It’s impossible to forget the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the plane crashes at the World Trade Center, in New York; the Pentagon, and into a field outside of Shanksville, Pennsylvania — the scuttling of a hijacking that was likely headed for the Capitol.
While the attacks themselves are unforgettable, so much of life in America, and the D.C. area has changed since then it’s easy to lose track of it all.
At WTOP this week, we’ve tried to highlight some of those changes — both systemic ones, and changes in the lives of people affected directly by the attacks.
It’s a long list, but we did our best.
The people
Racquel Kelley was feeling under the weather that morning; she almost didn’t go in to work at the Pentagon. But she made it in, and saw the planes crash in New York.
After that, her memory goes in and out. Some of what she does remember after a plane plunged into the Pentagon is pretty rough stuff, but she told WTOP’s Mike Murillo about the events of that day from the inside, as well as her road to recovery.
The fire departments in the D.C. area had a long, difficult day that day, and John Aaronspoke with four firefighters — one of whom is now D.C.’s fire chief — about the horrific things they experienced, and how they still deal with it.
One of them gets triggered whenever he sees a building being torn down; another simply says, “That was that, and I’m going to move on.”
WTOP National Security Correspondent J.J. Green and reporter Neal Augenstein both remember the attacks in different ways.
Green, who was at Voice of America at the time, remembers seeing the smoke rising from the Pentagon on what had been a beautiful Tuesday morning.
He spoke recently with current and former national security agents about what they remember and how they reacted — including one agent who responded by doing “something that we teach team members not to do.”
Augenstein, meanwhile, was headed to Reagan National Airport to report on the reaction there to the crashes at the World Trade Center. Only while he was on the way did he find out he would be covering the crash into the Pentagon.
This was before smartphones or social media, and the cellphones weren’t working well either. Then he found out another plane was headed toward the area.
You can read about his experience, and what a vice president of the Poynter Institute has to say about how journalism has — and hasn’t — changed in 20 years.
Many Americans were affected in long-lasting ways, even if they survived. The attacks left Samaria Braman with a badly injured husband and three daughters who hoped to go to college one day.
Melissa Howell spoke with Braman about the nonprofit that allowed their children to go to college and “took such a weight off our shoulders.”
Mental health
The attacks took an emotional toll on everyone, whether they were at the sites of destruction or not.
But one psychiatrist told Kristi King that aftermath of Sept. 11 — along with other traumatic events such as the Beltway snipers and the pandemic — remind people that we all need help sometimes.
Are we prepared?
On the morning of Sept. 11, much of the D.C. area was evacuated — but actually getting out of the area was a nightmare: Many people ended up simply crossing the bridges out of town on foot.
Kristi King talked to emergency preparedness authorities about what went wrong, and what they’ve done since to make large-scale evacuations easier.
A matter of history
The attacks were long enough ago that two girls who were in the day care at the Pentagon that morning are in the military now. It’s a historical event now — taught to children who weren’t even alive at the time, in many cases by teachers who were children themselves 20 years ago.
That poses challenges in the classroom, and a professor who has studied how Sept. 11 has been taught explains what teachers wish they could have to teach it more effectively.
On the Hill
Remember how Democrats and Republicans came together, put aside partisan differences and got to the bottom of the attacks? Well, WTOP Capitol Hill Correspondent Mitchell Miller remembers that setting up the 9/11 Commission wasn’t as smooth a process as you might remember.
If you’re wondering why the battles over the nascent Jan. 6 commission are so contentious — well, they didn’t come out of nowhere.
‘We are as American as anyone else’
The attacks were a dark time for all Americans, and for Muslims in the United States, there were more problems to come in the aftermath. (Plenty of knuckleheads went after Sikhs as well, and still do.)
One activist explained what the worst time for American Muslims started — it’s not when you probably think — and explains why he sees signs of hope that treatment of his community will get better.
More information
The attacks and their fallout have generated two decades’ worth of stories, and we couldn’t get to all of them ourselves.
Rick Massimo came to WTOP, and to Washington, in 2013 after having lived in Providence, R.I., since he was a child. He's the author of "A Walking Tour of the Georgetown Set" and "I Got a Song: A History of the Newport Folk Festival."