McCarran closure strands hundreds

Stacy J. Willis

Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2001 | 11:15 a.m.

A week ago Conny and Benny Nelson were standing atop the World Trade Center gazing out at the New York skyline.

This morning, on Benny's 52nd birthday, they were standing at McCarran International Airport feeling, Conny said, "lucky, sad and confused."

The tourists were among hundreds stranded at the airport after the terrorist attacks on the United States that demolished the World Trade Center towers and hit Washington, D.C., buildings, this morning.

The airport, like all airports in the U.S., was closed indefinitely for security measures.

"This is unreal. We were just there. That could have been us," Conny said of the attack on the World Trade Center. The Nelsons had checked out of the Sahara hotel this morning and were planning to begin their journey back to their home in Denmark today.

"I don't know what we're going to do. We'll just wait here," Benny said. "This is very scary."

But it wasn't just departing Las Vegas tourists who were stranded at the airport today. Hundreds of travelers were deposited here when their airplanes made emergency landings in Las Vegas.

"They just came on the speaker on the plane and said, 'We have to make an emergency landing, because the World Trade Center was attacked by terrorists,' " Helen Trahan of Oakland, Calif., said, while standing in a 100-foot line for a rental car. "It was amazing, but people stayed pretty calm."

Although she was headed to visit her sister in Minneapolis, the events caused her to decide to return home in a rental car -- if she could get one.

Hand-written signs were posted at several rental car desks saying, "No Cars" and employees at Hertz said many people had simply kept their rental cars rather than return them once they realized their planes would not be taking off. Hertz's 4,000-car fleet was depleted.

Trahan met two other travelers on her flight from Oakland and eventually decided that she would carpool with them to Los Angeles, then "figure out how to get to Oakland from there."

"This is crazy, but I've got to do something, just keep going," she said.

People stood in lines 10-deep to use the complimentary hotel reservation telephones; others called their friends via cell phone to ask them to make hotel reservations via the Internet. Others piled their luggage against the wall and sat down on the floor, camped out indefinitely.

Many stranded travelers were crowded around the televisions inside an airport cafe watching coverage of the attack. The mood was somber; jaws were dropped and some people shook their heads in disgust.

"They are invading here -- the U.S. -- that's big. It's very disconcerting," Joycleyn Calvin White, who also was en route from Oakland to San Antonio when her plane made its emergency landing in Las Vegas.

Metro Police officers turned away would-be airplane passengers at the terminal security gates. Matt Heller, a student at the University of Arizona in Tucson, pleaded with security to let him retrieve his carry-on baggage from the terminal gate, where he left it to find a restroom before the gates were closed. They would not allow him to return to the terminal gate.

"I have no idea what I'm going to do," Heller said.

Heller's scheduled flight from JFK International Airport in New York to Phoenix made an emergency landing in Las Vegas.

"I was there in New York, next to the World Trade Center, less than 24 hours ago. I can't believe this," Heller said. "I guess we shouldn't be surprised."