9/11 and the SoCal airwaves
Though many saw the tragedy unfolding on TV, many in LA were either just waking up or were already commuting to work. Radio became their primary source of what was unfurling in New York.
Tom Haule offers this perspective 25 years later:
9-11 2001 was your typical Tuesday morning. Linda Nunez and I went on the air at 5 AM with what seemed a fairly representative group of stories for the middle of the week. We had the usual traffic reports every 6 minutes and Business News and Sports and a full commercial load which at that time was about 18 minutes. The first 40 minutes went completely normal with the usual off-mic banter between announcers and editors and producers. Then around 5:45 things began to turn nasty.
Tom Haule, Linda Nuñez
We first got sketchy word that an airplane had crashed into one of the two World Trade Center Towers and the damage and casualties were not known at the time. We broke in with the news at the first opportunity which probably meant when the Sports guy was done with his :45 report. Information was limited in the early minutes and my first thought was that it was some sort of terrible accident involving a private plane, perhaps a pilot with a medical emergency losing control of the plane or something like that. It took a few minutes for CNN to get a live shot of the scene and by that time it was the top of the hour and we went to CBS News which covered what was known as fully as possible.
I was watching the video feed and a thought occurred to me that this might not have been an accident. As I was mentioning that to Linda, I had my back to the TV and was looking at her and her face went blank as she said, “Oh my God! It’s another one!” She was looking over my shoulder to the TV when the second plane hit. That was when we pulled all commercials and non-essential programming to focus on what we were seeing on the TVs in the studio. (This was a time when the on-air anchors could make such calls in an emergency without clearing it with upper management who were not on site.)
In the early stages we had to rely on the video feeds and whatever updated were crossing the wire. We were on the News Boss computer system so the updates were coming in with more regularity
Then the third plane hit the Pentagon. By this time we were in full emergency mode. Linda was able to access the Internet on her News Boss computer and she immediately began a thorough scan of news papers and other online news sources for whatever she could find about what was happening. I was narrating what I could see from the television and recapping events for people who were tuning in as the crisis developed. When Linda found something new or a new development, she would raise her hand to get my attention and I would pass it off to her. There was no asking permission, checking with anyone for advice. Everything was done in the moment. Sports was cancelled because morning sports content generally is what happened last night. I think the sports guy was told to concentrate on what all was being cancelled looking forward. Wall Street was closed down so our business reports were scrapped and Frank (Mottek) was repurposed to business related coverage of the crisis.
Eventually we were notified that the network would be doing wall-to-wall coverage with opt-in points at 0:00, 20:00, and 40:00. We decided to use the coverage in a half-and-half way. We would join the network and the op-in point for about 10 minutes and then break in with local aspects or updates based on the live video feeds. When the towers started falling, I remember breaking in to describe what I was seeing and then we would keep it until the next op-in point.
Writers and producers focused their efforts on updating fact sheets and talking points, setting up live interviews via telephone with various authorities and directing new content into the studio. We settled into a gruesome routine to try to bring the latest information to the listener as soon as possible.
By ten o’clock our shift was over and we were pretty well spent. I felt confident passing it off to the mid-day crew with some semblance of a format to follow. I also badly needed to get home to my family and decompress.
In the 25 years since the attack, I have often reflected on its impact on me and my country. I lost the last semblance of innocence. Up until that day I never fully understood the true nature of pure evil. I’ve come to understand how some humans can actually turn a faith based on love, human respect, and support into a cause for destruction and death on a wholesale level. I’ve come to wonder if those attacks might be a strong reason that so many Americans are afraid of so many things today. I had moved to LA from my home town of Chicago and often remarked that in Chicago Blacks and Whites did not get along well. But take one of each and put them in Los Angeles and you really see what differences mean. Whites and Blacks and Hispanics and Asians. And then there are all the subgroups. Mexicans don’t like Cubans who don’t like Nicaraguans who don’t like Salvadorans and on and on. Armenians don’t like Turks. Chinese AND Vietnamese are not friendly and haven’t been for several centuries. But that is what America is…that is the melting pot that has brought strength and endurance to this country for more than 200 years.
In metallurgy it is often the combination of different elements that produce strength. Take Iron, Carbon, Manganese, Silicon, and Phosphorus and mix it all together and you’ve got steel. That’s the same material that built the World Trade Center Towers and the new World Trade Center that replaced them. Our differences are not something to be feared. They are something to celebrate because they give us a strength and flexibility that no other country has been able to match.
A footnote: Most of the the then local CBS-owned stations including KRTH ("K-EARTH 101"), KCBS-FM ("Arrow 93"), and KROQ would quickly simulcast the KNX coverage, though KLSX ("97.1 FM Talk") offered Howard Stern who provided his own widely-heard narrative of the tragedy as it unfurled.
Sister station KFWB also provided award-winning coverage, with a particular focus on how the events in New York were impacting Southern California. Besides Downtown LA being evacuated, all sporting events and the Latin Grammy Awards were canceled that evening.
Mark Wallengren was on KOST without his partner, Kim Amadon that morning. "I took the morning off as it was my daughter's first day of kindergarten," said Amadon. "I was watching it live on TV and shocked as we all were." But Wallengren would soon give way to all of the then-Clear Channel stations, including KLAC, KXTA ("XTRA Sports 1150"), KHHT ("Hot 92-3"), KYSR ("Star 98.7") and KBIG, shifting to a simulcast of Bill Handel on KFI.
Clips of the KFI coverage from 2001 is available on YouTube, as well as an archive of KFI's continuous coverage. It was just before 6 AM when news anchor Ken Gallacher reported the North Tower was on fire after a plane crash and there were reports of a second plane crash into the South Tower.
"We don't think in terms of attacks on us. This one is the alarm clock going full blast, at 110 decibels, screaming in your ear. Wake up, this is a whole new world," said Handel, before he was interrupted by Gallacher who said another plane had crashed into the Pentagon. Handel then said "it appears some group or another has declared full-scale war on the United States."
Ken Gallacher
Within an hour, Handel blurted out "one of the World Trade Center buildings has collapsed! The entire building collapsed! There is nothing left of it, the whole thing just came down, the whole building is now down!" He continued to describe what was seeing on TV, while also interviews from New York eyewitnesses, including an acquaintance of John Kobylt who was several miles from the Towers. Karel called in to tell Handel that Downtown LA buildings were being deserted as a precaution.
A personal note: I'm paraphrasing what I wrote for LARadio.com on September 12, 2001. We received an email from the President of our university, asking both faculty and staff to come to campus and be there for our students. We actually did hold classes that day, though after awhile "business as usual" seemed inappropriate.
On my commute home, from the East San Gabriel Valley to the Westside, I drove through Downtown, which was the personification of a ghost town. Even though I was heading home during the afternoon rush hour, I could count on one, maybe two hands the number of cars also on the freeway. I was listening to KIIS-FM with the host (I can't recall the name, sorry) talking live on the air with his colleague at New York's Z-100 (WHTZ). The hosts were comforting each other and their listeners.
I was glad to make it home. I recall someone said that after 9/11, we had to get use to a "new normal." Then again, a "new normal" really isn't.
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