Next we travel to Somerset County county pennsylvania, to visit the flight 93 memorial, and take a tour of the Visitor Center. Which details the events of december of september 11th 2001. The memorial is the final resting place a 40 passengers and crew. This program is just under one hour. Full i am Adam Schaeffer and im a park ranger at flight 93 National Memorial we will be looking inside the Visitor Center which was dedicated in 2015. We are standing out at the end of the flight path overlook. We are standing on the shadow of the flight path flight 93 would have been on. The reason we are standing here is because this orientation for visitors is central to the design of the Visitor Center itself. The walls shield the visitors view of the landscape around us. And the enormity of the landscape. And only frame the flight path as you approach the entrance. As you are coming off the parking lot, you have to walk the flight path this plane was on just before it crashed. One of the first things visitors notice as they are walking the flight path is the timestamps that are embedded in the ground. This timestamp represents the first plane striking the north tower in new york city at 8 46 a. M. The second timestamp represents the second plane hitting the south tower. We have some geese flying overhead. The third timestamp will represent American Airlines flight. And if you continue down to our memorial, the names of the passengers and crew are listed. Just beyond the wooden gate, the last possible piece of granite that has been laid here before you is the timestamp for flight 93. In 2002, Congress Passes legislation and the president signs into law the flight 93 memorial act designating it as a unit of the National Park service. A federal Advisory Commission was appointed to oversee a Design Management plan for the site as well as the boundary for this memorial. That was the beginning of the memorial that has taken shape around us. We are still not finished with the memorial. There are still a few missing components to the memorial landscape we are continuing to add on to. The majority of the memorial came online this past year with the dedication of the Visitor Center, learning center, and the walking trails that extent from this complex down to the crash site down to the site of the Memorial Plaza. We are looking down over top of that wall from the flight path, the continuation of the flight path just before the impact site and the crash site we protect. The National Park service protects over 42 acres of ground south of this black wall you see. That is the Northern Boundary to the crash site and debris field of flight 93. The quartermile stretch from our Visitors Center out to the path flight mall well, that is the shortest walk. It is there because it protects the crash site and field that allows visitors the opportunity to get close to that landscape and to pay their respects or leave tributes to the passengers and crew of flight 93. These tall walls are the Visitor Center and sometimes confusing for visitors arriving because it does not stand out as a building. They do appear as walls. The design was based around answering the basic question of where did the plane crash . Because of the landscape here, it is very open sky, open sweeping landscape, very easy for visitors to become disoriented to where the flight crashed. The architect paul murdoch out of los angeles designed the Visitor Center around the orientation of the flight path and as you turn, you are looking down the flight path and you can progress down the pathway, as you pass through the first opening, the entrance to our Visitor Center will be on your lefthand side. What he is trying to draw the visitor out to is the flight path overlooked. When you pass to the second wall, well, the landscape reopens to your vision field of vision. We will go inside the Visitor Center but i want to stop here and show you the texture of the walls that appear throughout the memorial. You will find this looks like wooden beams which are indicative of some of the barns an older buildings found in pennsylvania. It is a tiein to the Hemlock Grove of trees which was impacted when flight 93 crashed here on september 11. Some of the angles you see here are catch the angles of the eastern hemlock, the branches and the leaf structure. That mimics some of the cuts you see in the sidewalks. As we approach you will see it throughout the glass as well as the ceiling tile. Lets take a walk inside and we will take a look at the exhibit space that just opened in september 2015. The first panel you come to on the side here is entitled an ordinary day. Each wall you come to has this glass panel that gives you an overview of what each wall will cover. Very important to give visitors, especially if they did not experience september 11, everybody thinks back to the bright blue sky. It was important to place people in the context of Somerset County and the area around shanksville, pennsylvania. Since this is more of an unfamiliar story, new york city is quite familiar to a number of people. And so, as you progress through the timeline of events, you will see it places you at the three attack sites of that day. There is some foreshadowing that takes place, but it places you in arlington at the pentagon and it places you at the believed attack site of flight 93 which is the United States capitol building. We will take you to those three places. There is a Business Card from one of the people working for a subsidiary of cantor fitzgerald, showing the business as usual aspect of that morning. A military cap from the pentagon. As well as the wall plate hanging over in office. The piece that stands out to me the most, the story i like to share with people because a lot of people do not realize this is on the evening of september 11, every year there is a congressional barbecue the president hosts. This year was on september 11, 2001. The members of congress were invited to the white house where they were going to enjoy a couple hundred pounds of tenderloin. After the events began to unfold that morning, and they realized they were evacuating washington, d. C. , and the barbecue was canceled. A lot of the food that was prepared for the barbecue was sent to the rescue workers and provide support at the pentagon. The invitation came to us from a staffer and his son planning to attend the barbecue that evening. When you first come inside the Visitor Center, you will notice there are these tall black walls and the pattern is very similar to the walls on the exterior of the Visitor Center. When flight 93 crashes here, the thousands of gallons of jet fuel that incinerate on impact scorched 80100 hemlock trees. This black against the wall is symbolic of the charring of those trees. It is time you are taken back to the story constantly as you are moving through the site. It is tying you back to the story constantly as you are moving to the site. Usually questions that come up from visitors, either the coloration or the angles and it allows us to tie it back to the story. This wall takes you right into the events of september 11 and what is happening in new york city initially. In the center of this exhibit space, we have rolling footage and it cuts between different networks. It shows the global aspects of that morning. We have a breaking news story to tell you about. 00 11 55 it happened just a few moments ago. We have very Little Information available. You are looking at a disturbing live shot. That is the world trade. 00 12 09 unconfirmed reports that a plane has crashed into one of the towers. Another plane just hit. Another plane has just hit. Right into the middle of it. 00 12 22 my god, right into the middle of the building. Another plane just flew into the second tower. 00 12 36 adam the other thing, in the background, you have an image that shows the statue of liberty from new jersey. They shot is taken a number of days after september 11 but it shows you the smoke still hovering over the city in lower manhattan. The artifacts that were selected were done so very specifically to represent the three sites. And place people at those sites. From new york city, you have those are on loan you have some cutlery. Those are on loan from us from the september 11 museum. You have pieces of limestone part of their pentagon. You have a miniature statue of freedom, which as people were the architect of the capitol at the time showed up that morning a little before 9 00, i believe, and his story he is tuning into this news footage. He is also preparing that morning for a meeting to raise funds for u. S. Capitol Visitor Center. That is what his morning begins like. As things unfold, they learn about the pentagon being attacked and there is a rogue plane inbound for washington, d c he later learns the immediate threat has passed because this plane has crashed and pennsyvania somewhere. He later comes here in 2012 and this specific statue of freedom, this desk model of freedom, was on his desk that morning. He leaves the statue of freedom at one of the corners found at Memorial Plaza. He left an official letter and in a letter, we have a copy of that, this model of the statue of freedom that stands atop the dome of the u. S. Capitol building is left with deep respect, at the final resting place of the heroes of flight 93. Those who sacrificed their lives here saved mine and those of many thousands of others at the u. S. Capitol building as well as an Historic Building of our democracy known around the world. We have come to shanksville, pennsyvania, two to pay our respects and express our deep gratitude to those who will never be forgotten. We cover the buildup to september 11 with a timeline that takes you through the establishment of al qaeda. There is little piece about bin laden. We placed it on a rail so you have to get close to this wall in order to be able to read more about this. We did this specifically knowing that some people would not care and would choose not to step up to the rail and know more about this. We did this out of sensitivity for the many family members that often visit the site. After visitors come from this wall, they will turn around and they are faced with a map of the United States and this is depicting the nearly 4500 aircraft that are in the air that morning, potential threat to the United States that morning. What was important about this wall, showing the chaos of trying to sort out correct reports coming out from erroneous ones. The other important thing about this wall, though, is it gives you the diagram of flight 93. It was a boeing 757 and if we get closer, you can see, this is where the passengers and crews were ticketed on the morning of september 11. The diagram at the end shows you exactly where the passengers were seated, the terrorists, where they took position on the plane and where the crew members would have been seated. The artifacts we used to represent, we have a boarding pass from the oldest passenger on flight 93. One passenger was headed home to japan that morning. One of the things a lot of visitors recognized immediately, how under seated flight 93 was. One of the major changes that has occurred since september 11 is there has been a number of aircraft mergers, there are fewer flights for example United Airlines typically flew this flight three times a day from newark to San Francisco. This plane would have been capable of carrying 182 passengers. That morning, they are ticketed with 33 passengers and seven crew. That is minus the four terrorists ticketed in the first class section of the plane. Four of them are not planning to arrive in San Francisco. The 33 passengers planning to make it to San Francisco that morning are expecting to arrive a little after 11 00 local time. We will go around the corner to the next exhibit wall. The next wall shows flight 93, it is airborne at this point after being delayed 20 minutes. Flight 93 takes off at 8 42 a. M. And it will begin its gradual climb out of newark airspace if you have ever left from newark, you realize the airport is right across the skyline from the World Trade Center. This is four minutes before Americans Airlines flight 11 will hit the north tower. Flight 93 gets airborne. It will begin its trip to San Francisco. This gray on the map represents the routine flight across the state of pennsylvania. They are barely over ohio when the four terrorists are going to take control of flight 93. They will incapacitate the first officer and the captain. They are going to begin to turn flight 93 around for heading toward washington, d. C. At 9 28 a. M. , the approximate time the terrorists take over flight 93, the four hijackers seated in first class will get up from their positions and they are going to rush the cockpit. There are some details about this that we just do not know exactly how they took over the plane. We do know from what was recovered that they were carrying knives or box cutters. They did threaten the passengers and crew with a bomb, which is later learned to be a faux bomb. After they seized the control of the cockpit, there is a little bit of a dip in the altitude which gives us the indication when the plane is taken over. The plane is going to dip a couple of hundred feet, which is fairly significant. It would have been noticed by air traffic control. Because of being on autopilot, the plane will come up to its assigned cruising altitude around 35,000 feet. The plane is going to manually be flown there is a steep bank and it will continue to climb to about 40,000 feet in altitude. The terrorists will use the heading of 120, which will take them back to washington, d. C. , and that draws the pretty straight line. The idea was from the tactics they were planning to when they were within range of reagan airport the diagram you see now depicts the change from the time of the hijacking. You can see by the yellow blocks indicated on the diagram, the passengers and crew have gotten up from their seats and they have moved to the back of the aircraft and these represent seats where phone calls would have been placed from on board the flight. We know there were 37 attempted phone calls. We do not know what that represents all of the phone calls because there were cell phone calls made. Most of the calls after the time of the hijacking were placed from airfones. These are satellite based phones the passengers would have used their credit cards to swipe and it leaves an excellent record for us to know these calls were attempted. We know who they called or who they attempted to call and we are able to go back to transcripts or, in some cases, we have the actual recordings of some of the calls left on answering machines. These blocks represent the area of the aircraft where these calls are being placed from and you can see from the timeline, just to the right, how passengers and crew from their phone calls and from what we have been able to gather from different phone calls, a plan is being formulated to do something about their situation. They are learning very quickly about the takeover that has occurred on other aircraft. The World Trade Center, as well as the pentagon, have been struck by aircraft. What they are being told by the terrorist on their flight, they are going back to the airport to have demands met, which was common strategy being applied in reverse. The faa developed what is known as common strategy for people in the Airline Industry in hijack situations and it was really how you should respond. Some of the passive responses in years past is what a lot of the crew members would have been taking with them on board the plane that morning and how to respond to the hijacking initially. Because of these phone calls and the knowledge of what they are dealing with, it allows them to develop a completely new strategy while they are in the air that morning. That strategy is that they are going to attempt to retake control of the aircraft. We learn the passengers and crew took a vote from the back of the plane to do something and they would not sit idly by and wait for Something Else to happen. That is best illustrated in the center of this exhibit space where you are viewing the information that has come back from the flight data recorder. This is the first box that is recovered out of the ground here at the crash site of flight 93, 2 days after the crash. They implement the plan of fighting back and trying to regain control. The terrorists are going to manipulate the controls to make it difficult for the passengers and crew to gain access to the cockpit. That is provided by the National Transportation safety board. At the top, you will see the cockpit voice recorder, the narrative across the top. You can see in real time what is unfolding on the cockpit voice recorder. The front of the plane, there are four microphones that capture the voices in and around the cockpit space. That is paired up with how this plane is flying in the final moments. As we approach 10 03 a. M. , you will see the planes come up at a 90 degree angle. The plane will rise up and as it does that, it will hold that for about a second and then it is going to rock over onto its backside and the plane will come down in crash. 10 03 11 in the fields just beyond the Visitor Center. As we leave this wall and we turn to the next well, it was very important to try to give visitor