My brother was working at the WTC both times (1993 and 2001) that it was attacked. He was in one of the main towers in 1993, and in Building 7 (which burned to the ground) the second time. He made it out of there fortunately, was one of those people running in the street when a tower collapsed and that white cloud of stuff enveloped everyone. Saw and heard some bad things. He eventually made it home to New Jersey (bridges were closed, trains shut down) late that night, covered in that white dust, looking like a ghost. Cell phones were not much of a thing back then, his family had no word from him for a long time, as you can imagine phone lines were jammed.
Who would guess working at an office building in Manhattan would be more dangerous than his time in the Navy (where he commanded a P-3 Orion carrying nuclear depth charges and tracking Soviet subs in the Pacific) ?
I was late to work on 9/11 and was driving when I heard on the radio that a plane had hit one of the towers. This wasn't THAT unusual, a B-17 bomber flew into the World Trade Center by accident in the 1930's. When the other one hit - that was chilling, because it meant something deliberate was going on. We had streaming CNN on our computers at work and watched the rest of the situation unfold. Both towers were still standing when I got there, I think everybody assumed the fires were going to be put out, because it wasn't like the entire building was on fire or anything. When the first one fell, it was shocking.
I remember some years before, when an expert predicted international terrorism was going to come to the US soon, like it existed in Ireland/UK, the Middle East etc but nobody really took it seriously. (Internal terrorism already existed and always had, like the all-too-common burning of Black churches - knew a security guy who had worked for the feds in anti-domestic-terrorism.)
Who would guess working at an office building in Manhattan would be more dangerous than his time in the Navy (where he commanded a P-3 Orion carrying nuclear depth charges and tracking Soviet subs in the Pacific) ?
I was late to work on 9/11 and was driving when I heard on the radio that a plane had hit one of the towers. This wasn't THAT unusual, a B-17 bomber flew into the World Trade Center by accident in the 1930's. When the other one hit - that was chilling, because it meant something deliberate was going on. We had streaming CNN on our computers at work and watched the rest of the situation unfold. Both towers were still standing when I got there, I think everybody assumed the fires were going to be put out, because it wasn't like the entire building was on fire or anything. When the first one fell, it was shocking.
I remember some years before, when an expert predicted international terrorism was going to come to the US soon, like it existed in Ireland/UK, the Middle East etc but nobody really took it seriously. (Internal terrorism already existed and always had, like the all-too-common burning of Black churches - knew a security guy who had worked for the feds in anti-domestic-terrorism.)
Comment