PEORIA, Ill. – 25 years ago, on September 11th, the skies emptied.
Peoria International Airport’s Gene Olsen wasn’t here yet, but witnessed the events of 9/11 at the airport in Evansville, Indiana.
Olsen tells WMBD’s “Greg and Dan” that he was Director of Operations there, second in command.
“I’d just shown up for work and someone said that an airplane had hit one of the Twin Towers. And, my first thought was…oh great, it’s some General Aviation airplane, and somebody’s made a mistake,” Olsen says.
Terrorists had crashed two planes into New York City’s Twin Towers. A third crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, D.C, and a fourth went down in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
Olsen says as he watched the second plane hit on TV, he knew it was terrorism.
Following the attacks of 9/11, airports nationwide were shut down for days.
Olsen says the airlines got back into the sky pretty quickly, but General Aviation took longer.
“That’s everything that’s not military or airlines. So, corporate flying. Law enforcement could still fly, but everybody else had to stay on the ground for another week or so,” Olsen says.
Olsen says on 9/11, the Evansville airport prepared to take planes that were grounded that day, but they only got two that were already scheduled to land there.
Airport security measures started changing quickly after 9/11, but it took time to get TSA up and running.
Olsen says initially, National Guard troops were stationed at airports across the nation for security.
