September 11th - 10 Years Later

[redred]

been seeing a lot of this image in the papers



what a horrible choice to have to make having to chose the way you will die,very brave imo

[Loser]

Would of done it too, if it was a choice between that and burning

[Jezter]

[Teh One Who Knocks]

The true measure of a hero is when a man lays down his life with the knowledge that those he saves... will never know.

[Joebob034]

wave those colors

[MrsM]

I've been watching the memorial services - still makes me cry when I hear some of the stories

[Godfather]

We will never forget.

That day, and every anniversary, reminds me of how close and important our brothers and sisters to the south are. It hurt like hell up here too, and it's hard to imagine that happening in ones own city. My prayers are always for the two dozen Canadians lost on 9/11 as well as so many Americans.

Been watching TV all day, and the stories of heroism and loss are impossible to turn away from. God Bless America.

[lost in melb.]

I remember the evening vividly. I had a date with a strange girl in my course, who turned out to be pretty boring. Went home and turned on the TV, was watching the first plane news nonchalantly and matter-the-factly, then the second hit and all of a sudden it was news on every channel. It was the early hours, called up this girl thinking she'd be the only person awake and she was too stoned to care. ( I never really spoke to her again) Then I stayed up the rest of the night glued to the TV.

R.I.P NY and America.

[Noilly Pratt]

I remember being awoken by my new bride's cousin - we were married 4 months earlier...she was famous for calling for very stupid reasons. She said to us "put the TV on NOW...any channel, I can't speak." The first plane had hit the first tower.

And, then the unthinkable...I saw as it happened, the 2nd plane hit live. It just absorbed it. It was like my brain couldn't absorb what I was seeing for a while.

That day I was scheduled to do some computer installs at a building in Vancouver called...The World Trade Center. I decided against it, and worked in a building a few blocks away, irrationally thinking that it could be a target. Instead worked at an office in Gastown...the Film Commission.

Before I got there, I drove across the Oak St. Bridge and above the bridge is the flight path to Vancouver International. Now, usually when you go over the bridge a plane will land overhead of you, maybe 5000 feet above you if it's a Cessna or something...just 1 on a busy day. Today, from the time it took me to go across the bridge, 6 planes, seemingly all 747's, did the landing approach above me and one damned near touched the top of the bridge and except for a last minute correction, would have. I thought I was dead when I saw that above me, but nothing happened, and nothing was reported. I didn't know of the order to down all the planes at that time and how all the American planes were diverted to Canada.

When I got to the office there was this hysterical woman crying and I was told that her son was supposed to be visiting the NY Trade Center that morning. She said all the telephone lines weren't getting through, and she was frantically trying to contact him. She had his e-mail address but that our servers were slow.

I ran through the office, asking everyone to log off so that she could get her message out, and set up 1 PC set to the CNN website so that all could watch in the conference room, and not bog down the bandwidth. I paged every office I supported (I had about 5 offices I supported at that time) and had secretaries set up the same things in each conference room just to ensure we didn't have a server crash...which I was told later in the head office in Victoria, they did because everyone and his dog was trying to get CNN or news. Last server crash was when the OJ verdict was coming down and everyone insisted on streaming the live feed to their individual office, so I was ready.

I was working with structural engineers at the time, and they said "the 2nd tower should have collapsed almost instantly...it's a miracle it withstood the impact all that time. It was meant to absorb the impact of a small aircraft, not a jet. And they also said "I hope none of them go up, instead of down hoping for a roof rescue...that can't happen."

On a more personal note, when I began my support career, I was a telephone tech support guy for a product called Maximizer. One of my frequent callers was a guy named Manny from "Nooo Yawk". He was located in one of the towers, and would say "I'm sittin' on top of the world lookin' down on creation, livin' the life, man!" and selling real estate. Half his conversations were how lucky he felt to be at head office at WTC. I said I'd hate to be that far up because I'd lived on the 16th floor of an apartment building and was told that the ladders didn't go that high...

I often wonder, since the incident happened about 10 years after I did that job, if Manny made it or was even there...I'll never know because I don't remember the floor or the firm he worked for.

[Godfather]

That's interesting Noilly. I've already mentioned my experience, but I know my Uncle who is a music teacher at a high school had just taken a band trip to NYC just a few months earlier, and they had stood at the top of the WTC's . When he arrived for class that day and was told 'Mr. G, the Twin Towers are gone', he simply didn't believe it until he found a television. How could you without seeing it....

As for your old friend, Noilly, Lance posted a list of the names of the dead on the first page. I looked for Manny but there was none. There were however a couple Emmanuels there if it is of interest to you.

Emmanuel Akwasi Afuakwah
Stephen Emanual Poulos

[Southern Belle]

Thanks for your stories. It was just a day that hurt all of us.

[Teh One Who Knocks]

[Teh One Who Knocks]

[Muddy]

That was nice...

[MrsM]

Any comments on the 9/11 memorial in NY? I thought it looked great