we are now with a look back on the local impact of the 9/11 terrorist attacks that happened 24 years ago, after terrorists hijacked four planes, killing 2977 people when they crashed into the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New York City, the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Operations at airports and airspace around the United States paused for two days in Las Vegas.

It took an unprecedented effort to get the thousands of visitors stranded here home.

And it was a defining moment in the career of Clark County Director of Aviation Rosemary Facilities.

At the time, she was a deputy director and had the daunting task of reopening a major airport.

She shared those memories in a recent episode of Nevada Week in Person.

as you know, I was there at 911 and I was there when TSA was born, and it was hard for a lot of airports to bring that in because they had such command over a huge part of the operation.

But we know here in Las Vegas we wanted everyone to feel safe.

You know, we as a as a discretionary, and a leisure destination.

So I embrace them saying, okay, side by side, what do you need?

What you know, what are your rules and what are we going to do to make it feel for our passengers to come back because they know they're going to be safe?

Whereas other airports may have had kind of a power struggle with the introduction of the TSA.

That's exactly right.

What do you remember about the days after 911?

It's hard to remember because there was no sleep, but it was it was very difficult.

I really I actually didn't know everything that happened that day until the year anniversary, because we had to get through that day.

You know, airspace was never closed.

Commercial airports were never closed.

You know, I was the one that was there that was in charge.

And we kept on getting security approvals from FAA because that's who had the security regulations at the time.

Every few hours.

But what we did know here in Las Vegas is we had 90,000 hotel rooms that had a very healthy occupancy rate, and they wanted to get home.

So when we reopened, we knew what what was going to happen.

And they did.

They all came back.

We had to literally shut down our roadway system and had, you know, passengers snaked queues to be able to get them processed to go back home.

And that was something that that that was our responsibility and we had to do the best we could.

Gosh, I didn't think about that aspect.

All of the visitors that were staying here in Las Vegas at the time wanting to get home.

It it it was heart wrenching because the people from New York couldn't get through to their families by cell.

I remember at that time everything was just so, you know, overpowered.

So it got to the point where I would plead with the airlines of, okay, whoever has New York flights can can we get them out?

They needed to get home.

This was three days later.

That's a long time not being able to contact your family.

After serving more than 28 years as an airport leader in Clark County, Rosemary Facilities retires on September 12th.