9/11
11 09 2003Today is September 11th, though I don’t think I need to remind anyone, anywhere of the date today, as it’s a date that is marked…scarred rather into everyones mind courtesy of the attacks on the Twin Towers in New York. We all remember where we were at the time it happened, for me, I was in college in Carlow for my second day there, I had the afternoon off, so I headed back to the house and was sitting down on the bed listening to the radio. Garreth O Callaghan was on 2FM, and interrupted a song he was playing to say that he was watching CNN breaking news, and that a plane had just flown into the WTC. This was an immediate shock to me, but not as shocking as when, 17 minutes later, he saw the second plane hit the second tower, and relayed it live on the radio.
I immediately ran down-stairs to the telly and switched on RTE1 which was relaying live CNN coverage, and sat there in shock and horror watching the events of the day unfold for the next 12 hours. I took a break about 4pm to wander over to college to see what people there thought…and I just remember walking into the building to be greeted by complete silence, everyone was walking around in absolute shock.
The most harrowing part of the day for me was listening to Conor O Cleary, the Irish times NY correspondant who was talking live on the radio from his office over-looking the WTC complex, and in the process of his interview, he started to notice people jumping from the building to get away from the terror they were enduring inside. Just the thought of the horror and shock in his voice, combined with the imagages that we’ve all seen of these people falling hundreds of feet is sickening to this day.
Having now been to New York, and seen the size of every building in the city, knowing the twin towers were bigger than any other, having visited Groun Zero, and knowing that the two towers *should* be there, seeing the big gaping wound that is Ground Zero, knowing that nearly 3,000 people died at the site, it makes it much more personal than it did this time last year. I thankfully didn’t know anyone who suffered on that day, I don’t know very many people who did know people caught up in it, but I do know the pain and suffering endured by so many people…my thought’s are with them today.
Actually, thinking of this story reminded me of an excellent article that Dave Wilson wrote about how IT resources were affected on that terrible day, and I thoroughly reccomend you read about it here
[...] Probably my most abiding memory of 9/11 is one I’ve written about before, listening to Conor O Cleary, the Irish times NY correspondant who was talking live on the radio from his office over-looking the WTC complex, and in the process of his interview, he started to notice people jumping from the building to get away from the terror they were enduring inside. [...]