David Mihalic, Superintendent, Yosemite National Park
Interviewed by Louis Hutchins, Senior Curator / Historian
February 4, 2002 - Telephone Interview

LOUIS HUTCHINS: Now I'm curious about … how you first heard about the events and reaction.

DAVID MIHALIC: Well, being in the Pacific Time zone I was in bed. And my wife hollered at me, David, come quick. … I remember the first action that I took is I called our dispatch and communications center. And I ordered all of them to put out over the radio system…that all flags should be lowered to half-mast. Then I went to the office…And … one of the first things I remember [hearing about the plane crash in Pennsylvania] … the rumor was Catoctin Mountain National Park, Camp David, and so it was like the thought that, my gosh, these guys, whoever they were, there could be something going on in San Francisco. … And we immediately - what we started doing is reviewing our own plans and we set up an incident command system …

And so one of the first things we did is [send] some people out to Hetch Hetchy, which is the dam and the water supply for the city of San Francisco. And we still have people on that today because it's considered a pretty high priority target. … We [also] made a determination that we weren't going to close the park.… But we fairly quickly tried to increase the presence of rangers. And then we set up for visitor public information. And this is when …people [were] coming in asking why is the flag at half-staff and being told and having every kind of reaction you can imagine… We observed one woman who collapsed, just horror stricken, you know, and screaming. …

The next thing we were trying to take care of is the staff people and making sure we had the right people or supplementing people. You know, adding more people on the visitor center desk or having people in the public information office try to…get information out to the front desks of the hotels and for the concessionaire and things like that. And then - the third thing is the people who were setting up our own incident command center and incident command team…[We asked] is the park at risk in some way? What things in maintenance do we need to look at? What things about our computer network do we need to look at? And what about the utility systems and what about electrical grids and - and things of that nature? So that's how we initially went in to it.

…[As I said] we made an affirmative decision to not close the Park. …Ordinarily [the entrance stations] close at 7 or 8 o'clock or 9 o'clock at night, and we determined that we would go to a 24-hour entrance station staffing. And what we did is we put fee collectors and also commissioned rangers on the entrance stations and all nightlong. And I think we did that through the following weekend…[We] were going to have people on the entrance stations to make sure the public knew Yosemite was open…[We also] wanted to see who was actually coming into the park. …

LOUIS HUTCHINS: … Did you find a drop in people coming in?

DAVID MIHALIC: … there were people who cancelled the rest of their [visit] … but it certainly wasn't mass. … What I did find interesting though is about midnight I went out to one of the entrance stations that is closest to the valley … They said that two cars on two separate instances … stopped and were surprised to see someone at the gate. And so they talked to them and that in both instances … they had driven in from somewhere on the spur of the moment and had decided that - in the words of one of them anyway, you know, if the world was going crazy they thought Yosemite was the best place to be. And they made spur of the moment decisions to come to Yosemite, which I found astounding. … I think it brought solace.

LOUIS HUTCHINS: …about the memorial service that you had, … Were you actually at the park when that memorial service was held and the banner was created?

DAVID MIHALIC: Here's how all of that happened. Thursday night my wife and I were watching television and it was probably 10 o'clock at night Pacific Time. The President said that [the next day] should be a day of remembrance …and that there should be a moment of silence…And so I called [Acting Chief Ranger] Don Coelho at home and…I said, "There's this thing coming up tomorrow…[What] if we get one of the fire trucks and make a display [in front of the visitor center]?" He said, "Let me get on it." …

So at 8 o'clock in the morning I wandered down to the fire hall…[We've] got several structural engines and several big giant wild land fire engines and they're out washing two of them. And they were already washing them. We have a huge search and rescue capability here because we do, you know, a lot of big wall rescues and other stuff. So we've got our own helicopter. We actually thought - I guess they actually thought about bringing the helicopter and landing it here, but we decided that maybe we shouldn't do that... We ended up with one of our other structural fire engines, with one of our big wild land fire engines, with a rescue vehicle, which is a four-wheel Excursion, Expedition-sized vehicle full of rescue equipment pulling a trailer with a bunch of emergency lights and generators - and it was out there…We had a security vehicle from the concessionaire. We had a bicycle from the bicycle patrol guys. We had a ranger patrol car. We had an ambulance from the local clinic hospital…and so we had these kind of arrayed, you know, around this open area and then we had our horse patrol - we had a couple of horse patrol rangers. Got two horses and one with an American flag and I think one with a departmental DOI - departmental flag. Then the sign shop comes up with these banners - these big white banners - …and they did this kind of semi-script font that said, "In Remembrance."

But the local school, you know, wanted to participate…the third and fourth grade kids had been practicing America the Beautiful. And so they came over, and as this moment of silence came by the park, an emergency tone [was] broadcast on all [radio] channels…The park's shuttle bus fleet of about 10 or 12 busses, they all pulled over…so people on the busses were participating in this, and there were several hundred people around the [visitor's] area by that time. And this was all by…word of mouth.

In kind of the circle the one ranger with the American flag brought her horse out in the middle and we did this emergency tone and then all the emergency vehicles turned on their red lights. There weren't - there weren't any sirens or anything like that, they just turned on their red lights, everybody stood there…I said, there are no words to express how we feel at this moment so we'll just have a moment of silence. And we just had a moment of silence. For the staff it was very much a unique National Park thing. For the visitors…there was this expression of here is a part of America, [we're] in a place like Yosemite…and we're tying these two parts of America together. Almost in a symbolic sense of binding us all together…

September 11, 2001 Oral History Documentation Project
Northeast Region, National Park Service

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