in remembrance
Sep. 11th, 2002 11:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
crankylexThis is part of an email I sent to a friend on the west coast a few days after 9/11. Tonight, I was reading through correspondence that was written at that time, and this one stuck out in my mind, mainly because I remember it like it was yesterday.
"...As for the rest, I'm okay. Tired, strung out, and more than a little paranoid, but okay.
I live a couple of miles away from what was the world trade center, on the other side of the river. It's still a no-fly zone; the only aircraft that we hear are the fighter jets (constantly on patrol).
Tuesday was something that was surreal -- it was beyond anything I had ever even imagined possible. No amount of well-done hollywood movies could ever prepare you for what happened. When the wtc was bombed back in '93, that was chaos, but it STILL didn't prepare anyone for what happened this week.
I was driving to work when it happened (I work in jersey, a few miles to the west of my home). When the first plane hit, everyone thought it was a tragic accident, and everyone was watching live coverage of the first impact when they saw, live on television, the second tower get hit. I heard it all on the radio, first in the car and then in my office.
It was blind panic, first the thought of the people in the towers and then the horror of realizing that commercial aircraft had hit them, with people aboard...and then we heard about the pentagon.
I immediately started counting off the people that I knew that worked in the financial district, started making phone calls, but the lines were jammed and the phones were useless. Then the buildings started to collapse.
My boss called from the road, said for all of us to leave, get our kids, etc. I took off, made sure my mother was all right, made sure her oxygen tanks were good to go, and then did some food shopping and gas-buying, knowing full well that people were going to panic.
Since I live in the metro NYC area, all our tv stations are in NYC, and a lot in the area that was hit, so we lost almost all commucations, cell phones were useless, land lines were down, tv stations were out, radio stations with reduced broadcast. But the cable was still okay. I was able to get CNN, and I stayed in the house, glued to the tv for the next twelve hours.
I'm an former EMT and most of my friends in this area are either EMTs, paramedics, or firefighters, so I knew a lot of them were there, and I was terrified that some of them got caught in the rubble when the buildings went. The American Express building, which they were using as a staging area, started to collapse with everyone inside, but thankfully just the facade went and no one got seriously hurt.
I'm very lucky; all of my loved ones made it out with just bumps and bruises. There are a lot of people where I live that aren't coming home ever again.
It's been really tense here, what with the roads just opened up in the last day or so. The roadblocks and the fighter planes have the unfortunate side effect of terrifying us some more, but I understand why they have to be here.
We're all a little strung out, but it's getting better, people are starting to stop looking up like hell is going to rain down upon us. Of course, now we have to face facts that thousands of people died on Tuesday in NYC alone.
I just can't believe it's been less than a week."
"...As for the rest, I'm okay. Tired, strung out, and more than a little paranoid, but okay.
I live a couple of miles away from what was the world trade center, on the other side of the river. It's still a no-fly zone; the only aircraft that we hear are the fighter jets (constantly on patrol).
Tuesday was something that was surreal -- it was beyond anything I had ever even imagined possible. No amount of well-done hollywood movies could ever prepare you for what happened. When the wtc was bombed back in '93, that was chaos, but it STILL didn't prepare anyone for what happened this week.
I was driving to work when it happened (I work in jersey, a few miles to the west of my home). When the first plane hit, everyone thought it was a tragic accident, and everyone was watching live coverage of the first impact when they saw, live on television, the second tower get hit. I heard it all on the radio, first in the car and then in my office.
It was blind panic, first the thought of the people in the towers and then the horror of realizing that commercial aircraft had hit them, with people aboard...and then we heard about the pentagon.
I immediately started counting off the people that I knew that worked in the financial district, started making phone calls, but the lines were jammed and the phones were useless. Then the buildings started to collapse.
My boss called from the road, said for all of us to leave, get our kids, etc. I took off, made sure my mother was all right, made sure her oxygen tanks were good to go, and then did some food shopping and gas-buying, knowing full well that people were going to panic.
Since I live in the metro NYC area, all our tv stations are in NYC, and a lot in the area that was hit, so we lost almost all commucations, cell phones were useless, land lines were down, tv stations were out, radio stations with reduced broadcast. But the cable was still okay. I was able to get CNN, and I stayed in the house, glued to the tv for the next twelve hours.
I'm an former EMT and most of my friends in this area are either EMTs, paramedics, or firefighters, so I knew a lot of them were there, and I was terrified that some of them got caught in the rubble when the buildings went. The American Express building, which they were using as a staging area, started to collapse with everyone inside, but thankfully just the facade went and no one got seriously hurt.
I'm very lucky; all of my loved ones made it out with just bumps and bruises. There are a lot of people where I live that aren't coming home ever again.
It's been really tense here, what with the roads just opened up in the last day or so. The roadblocks and the fighter planes have the unfortunate side effect of terrifying us some more, but I understand why they have to be here.
We're all a little strung out, but it's getting better, people are starting to stop looking up like hell is going to rain down upon us. Of course, now we have to face facts that thousands of people died on Tuesday in NYC alone.
I just can't believe it's been less than a week."
Thank you
Date: 2002-09-12 08:16 am (UTC)