| Wednesday, September 11, 2002 |
Like Every American...
[One reason I started this blog when I did was a burning urge as 9.11 approached to share with my fellow human beings.] Like every American, I remember where I was, what I was doing, even what I was thinking at this exact time last year. At the moment, I am listening to the NPR (anniversary) coverage of events. I reflect... I was seated at my desk much the same as I am today. Reading email, grieving over the loss of grandmother and grappling with a hurtful email I'd received. Arriving earlier than most of the employees around me, I was alone. As 9:00 am approached, someone else arrived. "Did you hear? A plane hit the World Trade Center." My thoughts, as echoed by many others, was that the pilot of a small private plane had lost control. Others began to trickle in..."No! It was an airliner--a commercial plane, 747." Then nervously, "Can anyone get to a news website? Is the Internet down?" Then the news from another radio listener arrived, a sound of panic creeping into voices. "Another plane hit the trade center!" "Does anyone have a radio?!" I, too, tried the news website. They were overloaded and hard to access. I turned to a secondary source, my friends at the Straight Dope message board. Threads about the tragedy were simultaneously posting as the realization that this was not an accident, not random, began to grab me and my coworkers. Someone finally got static-laiden coverage on a radio. And we began to listen. Our company television--used mainly for video tape trainings--was wheeled into a large conference room and people struggled to get coverage. Later, we would find that the lunchroom had better reception. As my 10:00 meeting neared -- amid panic -- rumors had begun about evacuations in the nearby District of Columbia. I went into the meeting, aware that one tower was hit. Uncertain whether the Pentagon hit was rumor or real. In the meeting I struggled to concentrate. There were just three of us. While my mind couldn't fathom why we had to proceed while something so catastrophic was occuring in our nation, I went in because I was meeting with two VPs. One of the VPs, upon closing the door, said, "We'd better note this in the diary so we'll know why web traffic dropped." It seems so callous now, but I guess like many others he had no concept of what exactly this meant. I cannot help it. I am still bitter and guilty over that meeting. How could we go in to discuss something so trivial as business in the light of what was happening? As we finally emerged (it must've been just before 10:30), people sat around workstations and conference rooms where radios or one of the company TVs booming out the events in real time. "The Pentagon was hit," someone told me. "What is happening?" Then someone said a building was collapsing. As I struggled to watch or listen (can't recall now), we heard the reporter's voice shriek: "Tower One is collapsing--Tower One is collapsing." Around 11:00 am, a company meeting was called. Human Resources announced that per company policy, when the government evacuates or closes offices due to natural disaster (though this was far from natural), we also would be closing. They asked people to help fellow employees who may have used public transportation and couldn't get home (since most businesses here were doing the same at that moment). People who live in or near the District made arrangements and accepted offers and phone numbers for places to stay. A co-worker who lives blocks from the White House made arrangements to stay with a friend while trying to reach his family in NYC--his brother a NYPD officer. Emails between my husband and I--him in Arlington not far from the Pentagon about his building being evacuated. He would later describe plumbs of smoke rising from the direction of the Pentagon. Questions about his cousins who work in Manhattan (we later did learn that Paul and Alan and their families in NY were safe). Messages being sent to our mothers and my father-in-law confirming our safety--here in Virginia we could barely get phone lines in or out, and that fast, busy-signal as we tried to reach Ohio and our Ohio relatives made the separate lines of the Internet an important connection. Even so, the entire World Wide Web was slowing under the tremendous pressure for news and communications. People on the message boards inside and outside the affected areas offered their phone lines to call or notify friends and family for those who could only reach the message board through internet connections while their phone connections were inaccessible. Having a strange presence of mind as I prepared to leave my now closed office and meet my husband (who had been evacuated and gone to the home of his boss to watch news), I filled bottles with water and bought snacks from the vending machines not knowing how long I might sit in DC traffic while trying to reach him. Amazingly, it took me little more than twice as long as usual--about an hour and a half--to reach Arlington. On the journey, a strange atmosphere all around us on the highway. People stopping-and-going on Route 66 listening to reports, waiting, looking at each other through car windows...occasionally pulling aside as every manner of emergency vehicle including unmarked and civilian cars with officers merely holding badges out of their windows worked through the gridlock. Later, having reunited with my husband, we passed synagogues (on the 4-1/2 hour drive home -- usually a 30-minute trip) where MPs were holding M16s. Even as we strove to take a route away from our normal one, which passes the Pentagon, we could feel a military presence. We talked nervously and listened intently to the news reports. We talked of an immediate urge to do something, to donate blood, something. My husband, who has a phobia of needles, said he was thinking we should go, that he wanted to donate. But as traffic crawled, we learned there was no need to rush to donate blood--lines were so long, people were being turned away. With millions of other Americans, our television was turned on to the news the minute we entered the apartment--and stayed on. We hugged our cats and sat in awe and terror as the events unraveled. As stoic newsmen broke down...as they told us to hug our family, to call our loved ones, to not put off saying "I love you" until tomorrow for no one knew what tomorrow would bring. And, like millions of others, we stayed up later--until we were too exhausted to watch anymore--we were afraid of what might occur while we sleep, scared of what the morning news might bring. [ ] |
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