By Lori Ehde
Tuesday dawned sunny and peaceful in Rock County, but news of the East Coast terrorist attacks quickly hit home for many local residents.
In what is being called the most deadly attack against the United States, hijackers crashed two commercial planes into the World Trade Center Tuesday morning. Within the same hour, another dived into the Pentagon and a fourth crashed outside of Pittsburgh.
Hills-Beaver Creek graduates Chris Fagerness and Matt Ebert are roommates in Washington, D.C., and contacted their parents in Hills after the terrorist attacks.
Their apartment is less than a mile from the Pentagon, and they spent a good share of their morning trying to get home - mostly on foot.
They spent much of the rest of the day watching television and viewing the destruction from the observation deck of their building.
They figured the terrorists had flown the hijacked plane directly over their apartment building before crashing it into the Pentagon.
"Even from my bedroom window I can see smoke pouring out of a gaping hole in the building," said Fagerness, son of Steve and Joan Fagerness. He is an assistant athletic trainer for a Washington, D.C., school that evacuated.
Ebert is a paralegal in the Justice Department. To get to work, he gets off the subway at the Pentagon. "It's freaky, because I was just in the Pentagon about an hour before the plane crashed into it."
Ebert, son of Gregg and Cyndi Ebert, described the scene as something he'd seen in the movie, "Independence Day."
"Cars were honking, people were scrambling to get out of the area and sirens were going," he said.
"It's tense, but it's remarkable how organized the chaos is. If this had happened in another country it'd be far worse, but here you can tell people are working together. All things considered, people are responding well to it."
Luverne graduate ordered to evacuate Senate building
Luverne High School grad Eric Steinhoff had been interning in Sen. Tom Daschle's office for only a week Tuesday when he was ordered to evacuate the Senate Office Building.
"When the planes hit the towers, that was bad, but it was still in New York. But then the Pentagon was hit, and they said, 'That's it. Everybody's clearing out,'" said Steinhoff, son of Dave and Joann Steinhoff, Luverne.
"We're a mile from the Pentagon, but our building is right across from the Capitol. Even before the Pentagon was attacked, a lot of people in our office were worried, because we knew if it was going to happen, this is where it's going to be."
He said it took him a long time to get home because traffic was gridlocked. He said it was equally as difficult to let his parents know he was OK because phone lines jammed.
"This is a tragic event, but it's pretty amazing being here," Steinhoff said. "I'm used to watching this stuff on TV, but now I'm here."
He said the city had been declared under a state of emergency, and as he spoke on the phone from his apartment, he could hear police sirens and see helicopters and military aircraft circling in the sky.
"I'm glad to be out of there," Steinhoff said of the evacuation from his office. "It's pretty traumatic. We left in such a hurry. You feel so vulnerable, too, because there's nothing you can do about it. It's American planes taken over and crashed."
Accounting for family
Luverne's Bill and Esther Beimers were among millions of Americans watching the horrific events unfold on television.
Their son, Tom, works and lives in Washington, D.C., and their other son, David, and his family were flying home to St. Paul from Maine that morning.
Fortunately, Tom called them soon after the news broke on major networks.
Tom, a 1987 LHS grad, was on his way to work Tuesday morning when he heard the news about the Trade Center terrorism.
"He was about to get on a bus to his downtown law office on Pennsylvania Avenue when he decided to take a cab instead," Bill said.
"They were stopped at a stoplight and he said there was a terrific explosion on the mall, and both he and the cab driver decided not to get closer. They turned the cab around and now Tom is at home."
Bill said Tom was close enough to see and feel the explosion, but he didn't see what caused it.
"He said there was low flying military aircraft in the area, but he didn't know if there was a crash or a bomb," Bill said.
Later that evening, Bill and Esther finally heard from David and Sarah, who were supposed to have departed from the Portland airport Wednesday.
They were traveling with their 4-year-old twin boys and infant daughter. Their flight remained canceled as of Wednesday.