It was a tragedy that tore America apart – but 17 years on from the 9/11 attacks, remarkable stories of how the world united against terror are still emerging.
In an act of incredible selflessness, residents in the rural Newfoundland town of Gander threw open their doors and played host to thousands of airline passengers left stranded when US airspace was shut down.
The area – which at the time had a population of just 10,000 and only 550 hotel rooms – suddenly faced an influx of terrified strangers with no luggage, nowhere to go and no idea where they were.
As the full horror of events in New York and Washington DC unfolded, air traffic controllers ordered 38 planes to land immediately at the remote Gander airport – a former North Atlantic hub which is now something of a 1960s relic.
The airport, originally built as a military facility, was the only option for many large planes that need a long runway to touch down despite rarely handling commercial jets.
In a stark contrast one air traffic controller recalled seeing an Air France Boeing 747 "bigger than the airport terminal”.
After passengers disembarked they faced heightened security checks amid fears that more terrorists could have been preparing attacks.
But then as thousands of passengers filed out of the airport with nowhere to go, something miraculous happened.
As the Red Cross and Salvation Army scrambled to organise beds in schools and church halls, families for miles around emptied their fridges and prepared food.
After radio announcements calling for local help, businesses and residents supplied everything from toothbrushes to spare underwear.
A communications company set up phone banks for the passengers to use while TV firms wired up schools and church halls so those stranded could follow the terrifying events in New York.
Classes were also cancelled at local schools to free up computers and showers with students volunteering to help people contact their worried families using email.
The town’s mayor Claude Elliott told the New York Times: "We’re used to helping people.
“I guess our biggest problem was trying to explain to people where they were."
Nearby towns also braced for the influx of passengers. In Twillingate, a small island off the Newfoundland coast, locals readied sandwiches and soup for hundreds then drove an hour and a half to deliver the food to those coming off the planes.
Even those with special dietary requirements were catered for – kosher food was sourced for an orthodox Jewish family while a group of Moldovan refugees who spoke no English and were part of a religious sect were looked after by church members.
But while the locals did not ask for anything in return for their astonishing generosity, the passengers repaid the hospitality by setting up scholarship funds and making donations of tens of thousands of dollars to the towns.
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One passenger wrote to a local newspaper saying: “The people of Lewisporte and the Salvation Army fed us three meals a day and provided countless blankets, toothbrushes and toiletries for the passengers on that flight.
“The elementary school next to the Salvation Army building canceled classes for its children to provide us with access to the much-needed shower stall and the computer classroom for us to e-mail home.
“When we finally received word of the plane’s clearance for leaving, we said goodbye with bittersweet memories of a group of people of unlimited generosity."
“This experience will stay with us during this time and continue to remind us that we have more friends than enemies in this world, and we are grateful for the proximity to our country of some of them.”
Another concluded: "We will never be able to think of Gander, Newfoundland, without remembering all the goodness and kindness that was showered upon us by our neighbours and friends from Canada.”
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