ATLANTA — As the U.S. remembers finding out about the Sept. 11 terror attacks 25 years ago, veteran WSB-TV anchor John Pruitt is remembering telling you about them.
He says he remembers how vulnerable people felt following the attacks.
“It was fear. It was a slap in the face of reality. We’d always felt we were relatively safe here in the contiguous 48, and it was a false sense of security that was shattered on the morning of 9/11,” Pruitt said.
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Later, Pruitt joined then-Gov. Roy Barnes to see recovery efforts at Ground Zero.
At the same moment, a group of victims’ relatives were arriving to see it for the first time, too.
“Mothers and fathers, daughters and sons, children, walked in to look at this horrific scene where their loved ones had died in murder,” Pruitt said. “It was searing. It seared on my consciousness because those faces and the grief that they felt summed up for me what 9/11 was all about.”
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He recalled Gov. Roy Barnes telling him that in the hours after the attacks, people were rushing to the banks for cash.
Barnes ordered $5 million in cash to flood the banks.
In the end, the Atlanta Federal Reserve sent armored trucks of cash to keep the banks functioning.
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