Lt. Gov. Mark Schweiker was heading to the Philadelphia area on Sept. 11, 2001 when he got word of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Washington.
Schweiker then immediately turned around and began heading to the state Capitol in Harrisburg. He then received word about United Airlines Flight 93.
“We were informed by the FBI that they were tracking United flight 93 which had originated in New Jersey, crossed over in Pennsylvania, and turned around unexpectedly over Ohio. At that point, the FBI had an obligation to inform the state’s Governor and Lt. Governor that since they were in Pennsylvania airspace, that we needed to be thinking about monitoring, and if there were an ugly, violent end and a crash, that we had to be prepared for the consequences,” Schweiker told Channel 11′s Rick Earle during a recent interview outside the state Capitol in Harrisburg.
When they soon learned that the plane had crashed in a remote area in Somerset County near Shanksville, they began mobilizing resources.
“So, whatever they needed was provided. Plenty of resource deployment defined how we operated that day in Western Pennsylvania ” said Schweiker.
Days after the crash, Schweiker visited the scene.
“I think the most vivid memory is the carnage and what little was left of that large airliner, probably no bigger than the engine hood of a sedan, a car; and the impression that it was so final. I mean they hit, that plane went in at 560 miles per hour. So, very little was left, whether it was personal belongings, to the fuselage, to the plane itself is what struck me. And then I have to say while we observed the evil that manifest that day, these American-hating terrorists commandeering four planes that were to travel the country from the east to the west coast, that the good of humankind was apparent as well. Whether the hardworking first responders, many of them volunteer firefighters, who never left the site, to those who provided food…