Where were you on that harrowing day of 9/11?
I was in my sophomore computer class, probably chatting with the people around me instead of doing my work. Then the teacher turned on the TV and announced that the World Trade Center had just been hit by a plane. I got a call from my mom. We sat on the phone in silence for a moment as we watched. Her and my step dad were supposed to be on a plane to New York that day.
The rest of class we sat and watched the news. It was on every channel. Everyone was confused as to how this plane hit the building. Was it an accident? I don't think the fact that it was a terroist attack really crossed many of our minds. And then the second building was hit.
We all ended up getting let out of school early to home to be with our families. It continued to be shown on every channel. Then the stories of the Pentagon being hit and the plane that crash landed in Pennsylvania joined the news reports. It was surreal. We were under attack.
Two and a half years later I was getting ready to graduate high school. I had a cruise planned with my mom, step dad and a good friend of mine. One of our stops before our cruise was New York. We only had about 10 hours there before we had to head to Puerta Vallarta to board our cruise. We took the red eye there so we spent the first few hours there sleeping off our exhaustion. Then we got up and went to explore the city. We went to the top of the Empire State Building to view one of the most beautiful city scapes I have ever seen. We went to the dock to view the Statue of Liberty. Unfortunately, we ended up missing the ferry out to it by about 15 minutes. Then we went to Ground Zero. Even just the walk to the site made you quiver. There wasn't much left of Ground Zero at that point besides a big hole in the ground and a big fence that went around it. On the fence were before and after pictures, stories and a list of names of those that were lost. It was overwhelming. You walk around the very grounds where so many people lost their lives. I felt sadness, compassion for their familes and anger towards the terroists that have forever left us with fear.
My mom and I stopped to get our pictures taken the fire station across the street from the World Trade Center. I couldn't help but feel the most deep amount of gratitude for those men.They told us how they attended friends and loved ones funerals every weekend for months. You could still see the somberness in their eyes. They truly are modern day heroes that will never be forgotten for their courage and admiration, those that are still with us nor those that were taken.
We stopped at what looked like a mangled sculpture that was right on Ground Zero. In front of the sculpture was a flame lite and a plaque. There was a lady security cop that was standing by the sculpture. She walked over to us and started to tell us about it. The reason it looked mangled is because it had once been in between the Twin Towers and was damaged by the debris in the collisions. The flame was an eternal flame that stayed lite for all the lives lost on that horrific day. She told us how she was working near the grounds on the day of the crash and remembers seeing people holding hands and jumping from the tops of the towers. She said it felt like it was a movie and there was not way it could be reality.
I had a hard time keeping my face dry while we were on the grounds. Even now, I look back at that moment and can't help but feel my eyes fill up with tears. The safety we felt in our country had been compromised. The day to day ease we went throughout our days with was forever changed. We were left with no choice but to fight back by sending loved ones to retaliate. Some are still there fighting the war today. We had lost the fight that day, but we will not lose the war. United we stand.
(In memory of those we lost on 9/11/2001)
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/08/us/sept-11-reckoning/escape.html?_r=1
Lucio Caputo, 78th floor, north tower
At a certain point, around a quarter to 9, there was this big explosion, and the tower was swinging to the left and to the right, and there was a lot of dust all over the place, and the sirens started ringing and the lights went off. I thought there was a big explosion next door, because it was so strong and so close.
So I went out of my office to look what was going on, and I could not see anything, because there was all this dust. There was, like, a very thick fog. But I heard some people crying or screaming, but I could not see them, and I thought that they were on the other side of the floor, where must have been an explosion. I didn’t know what kind of explosion. So I went back to my office, and then decided I should go downstairs. So I took some towels, I took a bottle of mineral water, I took my cellular phone, I took a flashlight and I went down. And on my way out there was a phone call, and it was a friend of mine who was a journalist, who saw the event on CNN and called me and say, “A plane hit the World Trade Center, get out as soon as possible. Run, run.”
So I ran the first 30 floors. There were not too many people, until I arrived at the 50th floor, and there were a lot of people, because there were all these people coming from all the different floors. At the same time there were people, coming down from the top floors, that were terribly hurt. There was one woman who was without any skin. It was like a boiled potato that loses all the skin. She was all raw meat.
