Global Courant 2023-05-14 04:00:17
An impressive and moving chain of solidarity was launched to provide shelter, food, care and containment to these unexpected guests, still unaware of what had happened.
Behind the great tragedies there are usually small stories that do not always come to light. Anonymous heroes, beings who were just in the right place and at the right time, and who suddenly became the unexpected protagonists of events that would mark their lives forever.
Something like that happened to the inhabitants of Gander that morning of September 11, 2001. A remote town in northeastern Canada, on the island of Newfoundland, 1,500 kilometers from Ottawa, on the fateful day of the attack on the Twin Towers in New York. he saw their calm and routines disturbed before they could realize what had really happened.
Its airport, used to receiving an average of seven daily flights, was overwhelmed with the 38, coming from different parts of the world, that had to land on its runway when US airspace was closed by decision of the authorities for fear of more attacks.
In just four hours, the population went from the 9,000 souls at that time to more than 14,800, with the passengers who disembarked on its soil, still unaware of the reasons behind this unsuspected detour. Immediately, the entire town mobilized.
An impressive and moving chain of solidarity was launched to provide shelter, food, care and containment to these unexpected guests, still unaware of what had happened. The 500 available hotel beds became thousands, improvising places in the school, the town hall, churches, offices, or making their own houses available to accommodate travelers.
Men and women volunteered to cook, take care of the pets that came down from the planes and lend land lines to take and bring news: cell phones were a rare commodity back then. The travelers must have stayed in Gander for more than two days.
They were enough to weave bonds that lasted over time, and neither one nor the other is forgotten. On the Buenos Aires billboard, a musical, “Come from away”, pays homage to that feat.
