I was on my way to my dad’s house. We had been at the Titans/Dolphins game that Sunday, and he left his cell phone in my car, so I was running it by his house on my way to work. I first heard the news on the radio. It had just happened, so there were no details, just that a plane had crashed into one of the towers. When I got to my folks house, I asked him and my step-mom if they had heard the news. They hadn’t, so we turned on the TV in their downstairs living room. There was a traffic helicopter that was shooting live video of the black smoke barreling out of side of the North Tower. At this point no one knew exactly what happened, so there was a lot of speculation about what kind of plane it was. We all just stood there watching this scene unfold for about five minutes, and then my dad said “I hope it wasn’t terrorists.”
It wasn’t ten seconds later that we saw a huge fireball erupt from the South Tower.
The hair on the back of my neck still stands up when I think about that moment. It’s hard to describe the feeling of watching it, other than to call it shock. It was a strange mixture of fear, sadness, depression, anger, and bewilderment.
We didn’t really say much as we watched the continuing coverage. At that point, the reporters and anchors didn’t have to wonder what had happened anymore, and the question started to turn to who did it. After about 20 minutes, I figured that I ought to get headed to work. About halfway through my the drive, there were reports of a fire at the Pentagon. Shortly after I got to work, they started reporting that another plane had crashed in Pennsylvania. I remember thinking “when will this end?”
I don’t know why I bothered going to work, because neither I nor any of the people I worked with did anything all day. If we were at our desks, we were trying to find updates on the news sites, but most of the time was spent watching the TV coverage in the lobby. I remember seeing the top of the North Tower leaning, and thinking that the top might fall off it. I never imagined that a few minutes later we would watch the South Tower collapse.
Five years ago today I wrote this post about my first and only visit to the World Trade Center. Thank God that I had relatives that wanted to “see the city” and I got to make up for my old school snobbery that had kept me from visiting the World Trade Center on my previous trips to NYC. The thought of never having been able to take in that view is depressing.
