Around 6:45 a.m. on September 11, 2001, we were sleeping in our hotel room at Mandalay Bay “The Hotel”
My cell phone rang & alarmed me. It was my cousin calling from Louisiana telling us to turn the TV on.
We were in Vegas for an auto dealer meeting. We stayed in our hotel room for most of the day watching the news reports.
The airports immediately shut down. We had a view of the airport from our room. No planes coming in, no going out. Vegas was on high alert. Vegas became a ghost town. We ran out of things to do after 3 days waiting on a flight. We had been to Vegas many times in the past. The lines were long waiting at the airport with everyone trying to get home to their loved ones. It was extremely hot. They were passing out bottled water. Being my husband is a car dealer, we ended up doing a dealer transfer and driving home to Louisiana, 27 hours. We had young children we needed to get back to. This will definitely be a trip to Vegas I will never forget.
I actually had a trip planned to NYC the following week for my birthday on September 18th,?that was obviously postponed two weeks after September. This was also a trip to NYC I will never forget. It felt like everything had happened that day, the smell, the damage, the sound of the machines digging for the deceased. It felt as if we were at a funeral the entire time. Families were still arriving for the first time, crying. We were all crying.
What a impact on everyone around!!