jim wrote:

I was home working (self-employed) and my furnace was having its
annual cleaning. The guy got a phone call from his son, who lives in
NYC, so he came upstairs and we turned on the TV. We saw the second
plane hit, live. It was unbelievable.

I was on a comercial jet. We were ordered to land. No idea what was
happening.

One of the most fascinating conversations took place when the head man at
the FAA said: "This **** stops right now. ATC-Zero.* Nationwide."

The most amazing thing followed 9-11 when the government committees,
agencies, and know-it-alls tried to come up with codified procedures to
follow should something similar happen in the future. You won't believe what
they decided. They concluded that no procedure that they could envision
would be as effective as those the ad hoc decisions, made on the fly by
people intimately involved with the day to day operations. The result? No
conclusion, no procedures, no chain of command, no recommendations. Just do
your best.

Amazing that something so profound could originate from a government
commission.

On the other hand, I can think of another. I learned to day that the agency
in charge of the Pentagon disaster relief was - wait for it now - the
Arlington Virginia fire department! That's right. There were some big
footprint agencies around: the FBI and the DOD to name two, but they
deferred to this municipal fire department. For eleven days, until all the
fires were out.

Maybe emergencies bring out the best in people.

---
ATC-Zero = all planes on the ground. At that time, there were about 4,300
commercial airliners aloft.