9/11 aka Sept.11 ... five years later

[La Rocque]

As today is the anniversary of an event that in many ways changed the world we live in, please share Your thoughts of 5 years ago as these attacks were happening and have they impacted Your life in anyway?

Here's mine:
My Mom had asked me to drive Her and Her Sister to a late breakfast.
As we were exchanging pleasantries my Aunt said," Did You see that a plane crashed into a building in NY"? Dropped Them off and when I got back to my place, thinking about what my Aunt had said, turned on the TV to see if there was any news about what had happened. Holy molly it was on every channel. Both towers were burning when I came on the scene. This is first thing that popped into my mind, I'll never get to checked out the view from the top of the WTC. I'd been to NYC many times and wanted to see that view but it was always, do it the next time. It took about 2 seconds for that thought to vanish. It was oblivious this was no accident. Watched as the towers fell, stared at the TV for hours, the most vivid memory from that day was one of many videos of the second plane crashing into the tower, how the building absorbed(?) that plane for an instant and then all hell broke loose. For some reason now in the US it is not permitted to show any videos of the planes crashing into the towers?
Has it impacted my life?
Other than a US Government that's lost its focus and long check in lines at the airport, can't say it has?

 

[Taliesin]

I think it's hilarious how George Bush said that they'll build a new, greater WTC, as a symbol of freedom and peace and all.. and how 5 years later, all we see is a big hole where the new WTC should be.
I just love the irony in that

 

[marduk1507]

I remember having a day off that day and watching TV with my father in the morning. I dont know why, we actually never do that, but we turned it on, and were switching channels until we got to CNN. The screen showed one tower in smoke and flames. We looked at each other in complete silence. Then I was translating to my dad that the reporters think it was some kind of accident, that a small plane crashed into it, nobody actually knew anything then. There were rumours of some planes being off their course, probably kidnapped. It was around 9am I think. And then I saw the other plane approaching, and I was like wtf? Then it crashed into the other tower, interrupting a reporter in the middle of his sentence. Then maybe 2 minutes of complete silence, both on CNN and in our living room.

 

[Taliesin]

It was afternoon here though
I was in my room after a shitty day at school and my dad comes running in and says "They're flying planes into the WTC!!" and I just thought "Oh god, he's drunk!" but you see, my dad's never drunk and never has been, most he drinks is a glass of wine or two
The rest is history..

 

[marduk1507]

Oh shit, you are right - thats what confused me, because I couldnt remember ever watching TV with my dad in the morning, hehe! Man, what a fuck up, so it was afternoon after all!

 

[hyena]

I watched the event unfold while sitting in a bar with master rahvin and his then-girlfriend. We ended up discussing going into politics. It was a pretty intense day.

 

[Kovenant84]

I was probably closest to it of everyone here, just about 70 blocks north of it when it happened. When we left the city, the whole southern skyline was smoke. I'll post on it later... it's a tad too early in the day for this.

~kov.

 

[KitKat]

I was in school, in Matane, a small little town, 700km away from my parent's place, where I used to live before moving to Matane. I was studying there, and drinking, and having fun !
So, on that morning I was drinking my coffee at school, like every other morning, and somebody arrives, running and screaming "There are attacks in NYC.. " So I went in the residents hall, in their living room, where there was a televison and I watched, frightened and not saying a single word. I cried, I was afraid, since NYC isn't really far from Montreal, where my mom worked. She left town in the afternoon, because she worked as a Customs Broker and they were no more shipping on that day so she left, and for security too I guess !
I went on the internet, and I saw she had left me an email, saying she was ok and afraid too..
So classes were cancelled that day,...

I think that the most important thing today is to remember all the innoncent people that died on these attacks. Their family, firefighters, policemen, whoever died... and to not forget that a lot of people are dying everyday, and not only in terrorism attacks..... Bush may have planned this (I don't know if it is true or false...)... but let's not remember him but innocent people and their families...
I saw the twin towers when I went on a trip to NYC in 1995 with my english class. I have a picture, I'll try to find it and I'll scan it and post it !
Cheers!

 

[Kovenant84]

It was my senior year of high school. The year had just started, and we were having some mini-assembly for the seniors about some 'keep-religion-in-mind-this-year' thing (I went to a Catholic High School), with the bitch of an advisor I had the previous year. When we got out, we started hearing rumors being passed around by other students. Our classes wound up getting initially on hold, then fully cancelled, as we all tuned in to a radio in my senior advisor's room. From the other end of the school we could see smoke rising above the church across the street, but it was terifying enough only being able to hear what was going on second hand. No cell phone calls could be made, because the circuits were so jammed with people trying to call loved ones in the towers, or vice versa.

I finally managed to get through to my parents around 11 am. Both were already home, work having let out, but it was good to let them know I was ok. My dad, at the time, worked in the giant green glass Citibank building in LIC (plin may have seen it before). He told me about how people were in such shock that when they evacuated the building, people just milled around outside looking across the river at the destruction. He started yelling at people to go home, because they were standing outside the tallest building outside of Manhattan, between Boston and Baltimore on the eastern seaboard. The thing sticks out like a sore thumb.

Luckily enough (and surprising given how many people from my school lived in the city) no one from my school lost a parent that day. There were close calls, like my friend Pat, who's dad had left 20 minutes before to serve court papers across town, but no losses. When we finally did get to leave, the disaster itself had ended, but the smoke persisted for days afterwards. I live 18 miles outside of NYC, and I could see it from my house that night.

~kov.

 

[Dark_Silence]

After school (it was my high school sophomore year-well the Belgian equivalent), i went back home and I was watching a soccer game (Champions' League). I think it was 6 in the afternoon. So while I was watching the game, a friend of me called on my cellphone, and said "have you seen what happened in the USA? its everywhere on TV). I was like "uh no, i am watching soccer", and then changed channel and saw the first tower with smoke and a big hole inside it. "Holy shit, is this for real? what happened?" Then i called my mom to come and see. She was kooking in the kitchen in the room next to the tv room.
Then the next day at school, everyone was speaking of it, and it was in every newspaper.

 

[KitKat]

I don't know if you had that feeling too but, while I was watching news on tv that day, I felt like it was some special effects of an american movie or something, like Independance Day and this stuff... hehe It was surreal !

 

[Taliesin]

Not to downplay the catastrophe or anything, but it's kind of annoying how everyone thinks of 9/11 as this huge catastrophe that brought terror and suffering to the US and makes every other catastrophe looke pale and insignificant.
I mean, during the trade embargo on Iraq, estimates say that 500.000 children died, because their doctors didnt have the equipment or medicines they needed, a direct consequence of the embargo. Former US Minister of foreign affairs Madeleine Albright called that "tragic but necessary on a wider scale" or something. But now 3000 deaths are supposed to shock and depress me?
9/11 is also reserved for the WTC and NY it seems. Does anyone remember the 800 deaths at the Pentagon?
It's like "You're not american! You dont count!" or "You dont have a huge collapsing tower we can show on the tv during the report? You dont count!"
Hail the rich and the spectacular deaths, because if you die poor or without a big boom, you'll be quickly forgotten

 

[plintus]

I saw everything on TV when I came home from Uni - I flew home on August 28th that year (fucking Uni's regulations, I had to change my flight from a mid-September date), and some of my friends were still in the US. Well it took them extra few days to get home - with all the security changes and stuff, they spent days in the airport.

They are going to build a higher skyscraper there, and the project is approved, AFAIR.

 

[KitKat]

Every death counts, and I precised on my post that not only 9/11 victims should be remembered, because there are worst things happening every day anyway...

 

[plintus]

Not to downplay the catastrophe or anything, but it's kind of annoying how everyone thinks of 9/11 as this huge catastrophe that brought terror and suffering to the US and makes every other catastrophe looke pale and insignificant.
I mean, during the trade embargo on Iraq, estimates say that 500.000 children died, because their doctors didnt have the equipment or medicines they needed, a direct consequence of the embargo. Former US Minister of foreign affairs Madeleine Albright called that "tragic but necessary on a wider scale" or something. But now 3000 deaths are supposed to shock and depress me?
9/11 is also reserved for the WTC and NY it seems. Does anyone remember the 800 deaths at the Pentagon?
It's like "You're not american! You dont count!" or "You dont have a huge collapsing tower we can show on the tv during the report? You dont count!"
Hail the rich and the spectacular deaths, because if you die poor or without a big boom, you'll be quickly forgotten

So go volunteer for peace corps, cuz your ramblings online don't make any difference at all. Yeah - you live in a warzone, so - it's no big deal (mind the surroundings, a la guerre com a la guerre, whatever it's said), but here - you go to work and a fucking plane crashes into your building. You won't get me into a skyscraper, nuh-huh.

Fucking virtual 500.000 dead babies don't make me lose sleep overnight, but scenes of people jumping out of burning WTC towers - a guaranteed nightmare.

 

[KitKat]

So go volunteer for peace corps, cuz your ramblings online don't make any difference at all. Yeah - you live in a warzone, so - it's no big deal (mind the surroundings, a la guerre com a la guerre, whatever it's said), but here - you go to work and a fucking plane crashes into your building. You won't get me into a skyscraper, nuh-huh.

Fucking virtual 500.000 dead babies don't make me lose sleep overnight, but scenes of people jumping out of burning WTC towers - a guaranteed nightmare.

Oh my God, I can't forget these images... I saw in the Paris Match magazine a picture in fucking high resolution and you see all the people in the windows and standing on the side of it, ready to jump. And you see that human body, falling with this giant tower, that'll collapse a few minutes after...

 

[Kovenant84]

Not to downplay the catastrophe or anything, but it's kind of annoying how everyone thinks of 9/11 as this huge catastrophe that brought terror and suffering to the US and makes every other catastrophe looke pale and insignificant.
I mean, during the trade embargo on Iraq, estimates say that 500.000 children died, because their doctors didnt have the equipment or medicines they needed, a direct consequence of the embargo. Former US Minister of foreign affairs Madeleine Albright called that "tragic but necessary on a wider scale" or something. But now 3000 deaths are supposed to shock and depress me?
9/11 is also reserved for the WTC and NY it seems. Does anyone remember the 800 deaths at the Pentagon?
It's like "You're not american! You dont count!" or "You dont have a huge collapsing tower we can show on the tv during the report? You dont count!"
Hail the rich and the spectacular deaths, because if you die poor or without a big boom, you'll be quickly forgotten

Ok, while the tone here slightly miffs me, you have a point. But I have an idea of why this seems to evoke the horror from people so much more than the countless deaths in other catastrophes.

In most other catastrophes, including the Pentagon, the landscape itself doesn't change - people die, but those people weren't in that place long enough to become an intrisic part of it so far as they become a symbol of that place. The reason the fall of the towers is so significant and so moving to so many is the fact that in a matter of moments, the lanscape of NYC was changed forever. I don't say that this isn't a callous way to look at things, and to be affected by things, but I think people grasp symbols way easier than they grasp mere numbers.

And yes, the Freedom tower (or whatever it's named) is set to go, and they've already started doing work on the foundation. Once the construction really gets under way I'd say a year and a half to three years before it's done.

~kov.

 

[Taliesin]

It wasnt a personnal accusation, just a general observation. I just find it weird that a death that doesnt give anyone nightmares or that's not on a magazine in highres is apparently not interesting enough to be remembered. It's not just US medias, it's the same here. 9/11 is only ever about the WTC

 

[KitKat]

Of course it is !
It had so much impact, it's all about the significance as others said previously... the image that'll stay in humanity's mind forever !

 

[plintus]

It wasnt a personnal accusation, just a general observation. I just find it weird that a death that doesnt give anyone nightmares or that's not on a magazine in highres is apparently not interesting enough to be remembered. It's not just US medias, it's the same here. 9/11 is only ever about the WTC

It all depends.

And how the fuck death can be interesting?