BEAUMONT, Texas — Across the country, several cities held moments of silence and other remembrance ceremonies to mark the shockwaves that morning 23 years ago when time seemed to stand still.
Planes hitting the Twin Towers in New York, in a Pennsylvania field and at the Pentagon.
Right down the road at the Department of Justice building was Jefferson County Assistant District Attorney Brit Featherston. He recounted his memories of that fateful day.
Featherston tells 12News he was on the subway escalator in Washington D.C. when a stranger told him the Twin Towers had been struck.
"A blind person turned to me and he had headphones on, and he said somebody just drove a plane into a building in New York City," Featherston said.
Once he got to work at the U.S. Attorneys Office, Featherston noticed everyone was glued to the television.
"Everybody was quiet, watching and then the second plane hit," Featherston said.
It was then that he and his coworkers understood the magnitude of the situation.
"FBI and the Department of Justice realized that this was not just an accident, this was an intentional act of terrorism," said Featherston. "The reaction came fairly fast. We made our way over to the FBI building. And it was then that we were told other government buildings were being evacuated."
Once on the roof of the FBI building, Featherston saw smoke.
"Billowing from the area of the Pentagon," he said.
Featherston recounted desperately trying to call his wife, because they lived just blocks away from the Pentagon.
"Stopped on the west side of the Pentagon, looking for a grocery store with our 2-year-old. When the plane hit. She thought a bomb had just gone off, cause she saw the explosion, it shook the minivan that she was driving, she saw the debris coming down," he said.
Once home on the 13th floor of their apartment the power was out, but the skies burned bright.
"We could look down on the roof of the Pentagon, and watch it burn. It actually burned for several days," said Featherston. "And you know the next several days, the streets were a ghost town. But you had military vehicles all over the streets of Washington D.C.
Since that fateful day, Featherston said security measures in America have drastically changed.
"Really changed the course of law enforcement. It changed the course of the future of protecting the United States when that event happened."
Every year on 9/11, Featherston says he remembers the brave first responders who jumped into action to save lives and invites everyone in Southeast Texas to learn about the history of 9/11.