Rough night on the road for Muskrats
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Wednesday, September 7, 2011
A WEEKLY NEWSPAPER SERVING MARINE CITY, ALGONAC AND SURROUNDING AREAS
America under attack ▲ A decade later
Local pilots traveled the skies during the 9/11 attacks Lt. Col. Rolf Mammen
Lt. Col. Doug Champagne
“Nineteen hijackers came into my office and murdered eight colleagues of mine. The 19 hijackers then turned my office into a missile to harm another 3,000 Americans.”
“We need to make sure as Americans, we never, ever, ever, ever forget. They tried to steal our freedom, they haven’t done so though.”
- Lt. Col. Rolf Mammen BY COURTNEY FLYNN ASSOCIATE EDITOR
As the country watched the World
Are you OK? Mammen, who joined the ANG in 1994 after being active in the military years before that, was traveling the same route back to New York as he had dozens of times before. However, as the aircraft was approaching the Canadian coast the routine trip began to take a turn no one was expecting. A message, which
Trade Center crumble to the ground on Sept. 11 in disbelief, two Air National Guard pilots stationed at Selfridge Air National Guard Base were flying in the
Mammen described as something like a text message, came through the control system asking, “Are you OK?” Mammen remembers thinking it was odd, especially as everything was OK at that time in the flight crew’s minds. Another came shortly after informing the pilots that a plane had crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in Manhattan.
“My reaction was someone in a little Cessna got lost over Manhattan,” Mammen said. While people across the country turned on their televisions to watch the catastrophic commotion unfold, and see another unexpected plane crash into the south tower of the WTC at 9:03 a.m., Mammen, his co-workers and passengers still had no idea of the tragedies happening below them.
- Lt. Col. Doug Champagne skies. ANG Lt. Col. Rolf Mammen was piloting a United Airlines international flight to New York from London while ANG Lt. Col. Doug Champagne was He said when the crew received the second message about the second tower being hit they still thought it was just an accident. “Hijacking was not on our realm of possibilities at that point,” he said. Once Mammen and his crew became aware that hijacking could become a possibility on their flight especially as two of the aircrafts used in the attacks were United
heading back to the Harrison Township base with a faint understanding of what was unraveling. Their stories:
Airline planes - precautionary measures began to go through their minds. “Now we’re thinking, let’s plan for the worst,” Mammen said. One of the first steps he said they took was to isolate the passengers. This meant shutting off the radar that showed travelers where they were geographically located in their travels and not allowing passengers to leave their seats. The
Northern border protection increases since 9/11 ASSOCIATE EDITOR
Prior to 9/11 the Department of Homeland Security did not exist. But in its aftermath this civilian-based federal agency has gained a strong presence at Selfridge Air National Guard Base with an umbrella of agencies that once never existed and enhancing the size of others. “Right after 9/11 we had to quickly decide how we were going to operate,” U.S. Customs and Border Protection United States Border Patrol Chief Patrol
INSIDE
Agent Randy Gallegos said. Gallegos said the U.S. Border Patrol was fully mobilized within 36 hours of the attacks; but the Department of Homeland Security, established on Nov. 25, 2002, did not become fully developed until about two years later. At the time of the attacks Gallegos occupied a federal post in Washington, D.C. He was moved to Selfridge in October 2004. About a year prior to his arrival Immigration and Naturalization Services, which included Border Patrol, and U.S. Customs, were combined to
The northern borders, such as the local water ways, are patroled more h e a v i l y now.
form the U.S. Customs and Border Protection, or CBP, agency. Members of the U. S. Department of Agriculture also became part of the newly-formed agency. As new the agency was forming and growing, with new additions such as the CBP Office of Air and Marine, Gallegos
said a new strategy was also devised in 2004. This focus was based See BORDER on page 4
Lessons learned through 9/11 still taught by New York’s finest BY JERI PACKER
Deaths . . . . . . . . . . .3 Opinion . . . . . . . . . .6 Police News . . . . . . .4 Sports . . . . . . . . . . .12 Target . . . . . . . . . . .15
VOICE STAFF WRITER
Vol. XXVIII, Issue 36 Contact us: 586-716-8100 1-800-561-2248 www.voicenews.com
Submitted Photo
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See PILOTS on page 8 Photo provided by U.S. Border Patrol
Civilian cooperation needed to strengthen protection BY COURTNEY FLYNN
cockpit was also locked down as not even flight attendants could approach the flight deck. Mammen said he sat in the third pilot seat, which is located by the door, with the emergency ax in his hand. As the plane continued to travel through international air with the crew on lock-down, Mammen said they were soon notified
Left to right: Det. Thomas Forte, Sopranos Actor Tony Sirico and Wallace, after the 9/11 disaster.
“All the plans went right out the window.” That’s what Edward Wallace, director of forensics training, said about the first hours, days and weeks of what is now called 9/11. The retired New York police detective works as the director of forensic training at the New York City Office of the Chief Medical Examiner. “Before this, no one ever dreamt that something like this could ever happen,” he said. St. Clair County Drain Commissioner Bob Wiley took a trip to New York to hear firsthand Wallace’s experience at ground zero at a seminar about death investigation last year.
New York had one of the finest teams of first responders and an abundance of resources available when the towers fell, but none of it meant anything with what they faced that day. “They learned as they went,” Wiley said. He and the rest of his class sat frozen in their seats when the sessions ended. The story of a make-shift morgue and body parts collection narrated by someone who really knew, said Wiley, really drove it home. “The training opened my eyes to the war we are in,” he said. “What if our bridge collapsed? What do you do with 3,000 bodies after a massive structure comes down? I still can’t imagine being See NEW YORK on page 2
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