Nerves Are Rattled by the Roar of Jets Over Southland

In the long night after the East Coast terrorist attack, many Southern California residents were alarmed by the sound of low-flying aircraft over their homes. Federal transportation officials said Wednesday that what the public heard, in the absence of regular commercial flights, were emergency and military aircraft on patrols and mercy missions.

The nationwide shutdown of commercial air traffic had created the erroneous impression that there would be no planes in the skies.

“It woke me up right away,” said Stacy Harp, 42, of Tustin, who said she heard the rumble of jets at roughly 2 a.m. “It made my stomach hurt immediately. I didn’t know what was going to happen. There weren’t supposed to be any planes flying.”

Across Southern California, many woke in a panic at the sound of airplanes overhead, less than a day after hijacked planes were flown into the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon outside Washington.

An unspecified number of military supply flights took off from March Air Reserve Base in Riverside, said Col. Jim Robilotta, a Hawthorne-based Air Force liaison to the Federal Aviation Administration. Navy FA-18 Hornets from Lemoore Naval Air Station in the San Joaquin Valley were on patrol above Los Angeles and San Francisco late Tuesday. Military officials declined to discuss the exact purpose of the flights.

The Navy also acknowledged that the U.S. Pacific Fleet was prepared to meet any challenges raised by the attack and that additional ships had joined those already at sea.

Navy vessels leave port as much for their own protection as to protect sea lanes and the coast, one naval expert said.