20 years later: remembering 9/11

It’s been 20 years but, if you are over the age of 30, you likely remember where you stood when you heard that commercial airliners had crashed into the World Trade Center’s twin towers in New York City, that a third plane had crashed into the Pentagon, and a fourth had gone down in a field in Pennsylvania.

It is certainly a time I can recall with marked clarity. A senior in high school, I was on a class trip just 20 miles from where that plane crashed in Shanksville, PA. Like so many others, I remember the terror, fear and confusion surrounding those days. Of waiting and watching from afar for what would be just 18 survivors pulled from the rubble at Ground Zero.

A year later, on a trip to New York City, I visited Ground Zero. I stood at the fence and peered down into the pits where the towers once stood, saw the dust still on the streets and cried as I read the tattered remnants of the thousands of missing persons posters still clinging to nearby buildings. Some years later I was hired by Fugro and learned of the role our company played in the days, weeks, and months following the attack.

Answering the Call

On the morning of 14 September, Fugro (then EarthData International) received a call from state officials in New York. They needed airborne Geo-data over Ground Zero to support the first responders, who were hampered by dust, smoke and 1.8 million tons of wreckage. Fires were burning in the rubble and nearby buildings were damaged, but no one knew how badly. Geo-data would help ensure more efficient and safer search-and-rescue efforts.

The Remote Sensing and Mapping Group, based in Frederick, Maryland, took immediate action, devising a plan to fly topographic lidar missions over the site for creation of highly accurate 3D maps for use in measuring the wreckage and identifying shifts in the surrounding buildings. High-resolution digital orthoimagery and thermal imagery collection would complement the lidar Geo-data, enabling rescue workers to monitor the movement and temperatures of the fires burning below the debris.

Within 24 hours of the call, our aviation crew outfitted a Navajo Chieftain aircraft and headed to Ground Zero. Concurrently, a team of Geo-data analysts relocated to Albany, New York, complete with computer hardware to receive and process the project Geo-data onsite. Although the airspace around Ground Zero was closed, the federal government granted special permission to our flight crew and the first data collection mission was flown on 15 September.

Our onsite analysts immediately processed the Geo-data in Albany and delivered it to New York officials. The New York State Police then escorted the images to the Emergency Mapping and Data Analysis Center at New York City’s Pier 92. After the initial Geo-data collections were complete, our team established a routine that involved thermal Geo-data collection in the morning, with lidar and orthoimagery collected midday. A total of 43 missions were flown between 15 September and 22 October.

In the months following, we flew ten additional missions for NYSOFT, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), aimed at assessing safety conditions for the reopening of homes, schools and businesses in and around Ground Zero.

For the team assigned to complete this vital project, recounting 9/11 is a much different story than most of us would tell. Theirs is a story of duty, diligence and the drive to help their fellow Americans. Following the 20th anniversary of the terrorist attacks, several of the team share their experience and the profound impact it had on their lives in the video below.

Did you know?

• The flight crew and several data analysts stayed onsite in NY for 6 weeks

• The twin turbine plane collected imagery from an elevation of 3000 ft for thermal and 5000 ft for imagery and lidar

• One month later, thermal Geo-data indicated temperatures still as high as 175 °F in the rubble

About the author

Lauren Hunter is Marketing Project Manager