MOULTRIE, Ga. — On Sept. 11, 2001, an Islamic extremist group named al-Qaeda hijacked four planes and crashed them into multiple targets in the United States. Two were flown into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.

The September 11th attacks are considered one of the most shocking and eye-opening moments in American history. Some 2,977 people were killed — 2,753 of them in the attack at the World Trade Center. The numbers include 343 firefighters and paramedics and 60 police officers according to data from cnn.com.

Seventeen years later some folks are still picking up the pieces, some are looking for closure and others have made peace with the incident, but people will never forget where they were when they first heard the news of the attacks.

“That morning, I was running a class,” Moultrie Fire Chief Lamar Plymel said. “Then someone came in and said that a plane crashed in a building up in New York and at that point we thought it was just a plane malfunction, so we continued with our class. Then the same guy came back up and says that another plane crashed into another building, so that’s when we ended class early and watched in disbelief on what was going on in New York.”

One positive thing that can be taken away from the attacks is the unity the country displayed. People from all walks of life worked together to make things right.

“This day changed everything, the way we take bomb threats, the way we train and most importantly the way we look at terrorism,” said Plymel. “September 11th, 2001 showed us that America isn’t untouchable, we can get hit, but it also showed that we can dust ourselves off and get up again.”