At work in Arlington, VA, about 2 miles from the Pentagon. Close enough to look out the 7th floor window and see an ugly black column of smoke coming from the roof of the thing.
Most vivid memories: Worry about Kirstin, who was working at a Department of Energy installation at the time; Friends on instant messenger who could get calls through for those of us who couldn't get a dial tone; Driving home with everyone else in DC having the same idea.
Like a lot of people, I was in the car and heard NPR break the story of the first collision. I remember wondering how a pilot could get so screwed up as to fly into a metropolitan skyline. Once I go to work, I was all over the web. I remember looking at the pictures as if it was a bad office fire. Then down to the breakroom to see it on TV - and then the second plane hit.
I know no one in NY, and I'm nowhere near the danger zones - I spent the first half hour or so just glued to the coverage (internet/TV/whatever). It was an informational feeding frenzy until I was down in the breakroom and I saw a coworker of mine named Y. I don't know Y hardly at all, but she's one of those people who seem to radiate genuinely good humor all the time. She was in the breakroom and had been watching the TV for some time when I came in. I'm all "wow, isn't this something?" and hoping for a better TV angle - and then I see Y. She's sitting on an exercise bench, eyes on the screen, and is quite obviously on the edge of going to pieces.
And that's when I finally get it. Up until that moment, it was my usual current events fix. It took seeing a gentle soul like Y’s horrified reaction for me to realize that this wasn’t some abstraction - these was hundreds of people dying right in front of me.
I just shut up after that.
I remember the early hysteria: My coworker D, coming up to me and saying that there were bombs at the State Department and that someone had parked their car in the Lincoln Tunnel and slashed the tires. T telling me gravely that the authorities were estimating a death toll over ten thousand.
We were told we could go home, and we did. Did the same thing I suspect most of us did – watched the coverage until we couldn’t take it anymore.
I was at work and happened to go to CNN.com about 1 minute after the first plane hit. I remember thinking "who the hell can accidently hit a building in New York?" Then the stupidity of my comment hit me.
It really hit me the hardest when I was listening to CBS news radio and Bryant Gumble (say what you will about him) was doing a news report and suddenly just lost it while in mid sentence about the NYC attack saying:
"Oh my God, there's smoke coming from the Pentagon. Oh my God. The Pentagon's been hit. Oh my God." The Pentagon has always had that association of impregnability and being indestructable to me, it was after all, The Pentagon. It was simply reduced to being a building for me that day.
I already blogged about where I was. What I didn't say was how I worked late that day, with the television on the entire time. Or that my mom called that day and left a message on my answering machine asking if I was okay and that she loved me. Or that I felt sick from the thought of all of those people dying, and I couldn't eat.
I find it hard to believe that people think that this was done on purpose. No government could be that evil.
A day late, but whatever. I was at work at the DoE up in Germantown, MD -- 30 miles North of DC. My co-worker said a plane hit the WTC. Stupidly, I asked if it bounced off. I assumed it was some stupid little plane that had flown off-course. The Post had nothing yet and CNN was already lagging. We all refreshed like mad and saw the second hit news coming online. Everyone on my floor at the DoE ended up in a medium-sized conference room watching the news. I heard someone say in the room something about the Pentagon. Then we heard it on the news and finally saw the footage. I hung out for a few more minutes and then told my manager I didn't want to be at a big government building anymore and drove home. I didn't head back towards DC. Instead, I took the back-roads the long way around. I figured the Beltway was not the place to be as all of DC was emptying out. Nearly home, I passed near the AOL/MCI campuses only to be caught in the traffic of evacuating employees. Our friend who was a UUNet engineer said there was a bomb threat at MCI. He had to work from home to try to compensate for the Internet problems caused by most of lower Manhattan's network being destroyed. I just stayed glued to CNN until Mike got home. Now the aftermath, that was some f'ed up stuff right there. We were very near Dulles airport at that point. For a good couple weeks afterwards there were weird goings-on around the airport. Like the helicopters flying low all over our area at 4am. The lack of planes except for the occassional fighter jet was also pretty weird and somewhat terrifying. Oh yeah, and since its all about me -- I was also planning our wedding at this point. The stress-induced eye-twitch I had went from the occasssional wedding-news induced twitch to an almost solid twitch practically up the wedding day.
5 comments:
At work in Arlington, VA, about 2 miles from the Pentagon. Close enough to look out the 7th floor window and see an ugly black column of smoke coming from the roof of the thing.
Most vivid memories: Worry about Kirstin, who was working at a Department of Energy installation at the time; Friends on instant messenger who could get calls through for those of us who couldn't get a dial tone; Driving home with everyone else in DC having the same idea.
Thanks for that.
Like a lot of people, I was in the car and heard NPR break the story of the first collision. I remember wondering how a pilot could get so screwed up as to fly into a metropolitan skyline. Once I go to work, I was all over the web. I remember looking at the pictures as if it was a bad office fire. Then down to the breakroom to see it on TV - and then the second plane hit.
I know no one in NY, and I'm nowhere near the danger zones - I spent the first half hour or so just glued to the coverage (internet/TV/whatever). It was an informational feeding frenzy until I was down in the breakroom and I saw a coworker of mine named Y. I don't know Y hardly at all, but she's one of those people who seem to radiate genuinely good humor all the time. She was in the breakroom and had been watching the TV for some time when I came in. I'm all "wow, isn't this something?" and hoping for a better TV angle - and then I see Y. She's sitting on an exercise bench, eyes on the screen, and is quite obviously on the edge of going to pieces.
And that's when I finally get it. Up until that moment, it was my usual current events fix. It took seeing a gentle soul like Y’s horrified reaction for me to realize that this wasn’t some abstraction - these was hundreds of people dying right in front of me.
I just shut up after that.
I remember the early hysteria: My coworker D, coming up to me and saying that there were bombs at the State Department and that someone had parked their car in the Lincoln Tunnel and slashed the tires. T telling me gravely that the authorities were estimating a death toll over ten thousand.
We were told we could go home, and we did. Did the same thing I suspect most of us did – watched the coverage until we couldn’t take it anymore.
I was at work and happened to go to CNN.com about 1 minute after the first plane hit. I remember thinking "who the hell can accidently hit a building in New York?" Then the stupidity of my comment hit me.
It really hit me the hardest when I was listening to CBS news radio and Bryant Gumble (say what you will about him) was doing a news report and suddenly just lost it while in mid sentence about the NYC attack saying:
"Oh my God, there's smoke coming from the Pentagon. Oh my God. The Pentagon's been hit. Oh my God." The Pentagon has always had that association of impregnability and being indestructable to me, it was after all, The Pentagon. It was simply reduced to being a building for me that day.
I already blogged about where I was. What I didn't say was how I worked late that day, with the television on the entire time. Or that my mom called that day and left a message on my answering machine asking if I was okay and that she loved me. Or that I felt sick from the thought of all of those people dying, and I couldn't eat.
I find it hard to believe that people think that this was done on purpose. No government could be that evil.
A day late, but whatever.
I was at work at the DoE up in Germantown, MD -- 30 miles North of DC. My co-worker said a plane hit the WTC. Stupidly, I asked if it bounced off. I assumed it was some stupid little plane that had flown off-course. The Post had nothing yet and CNN was already lagging. We all refreshed like mad and saw the second hit news coming online.
Everyone on my floor at the DoE ended up in a medium-sized conference room watching the news. I heard someone say in the room something about the Pentagon. Then we heard it on the news and finally saw the footage.
I hung out for a few more minutes and then told my manager I didn't want to be at a big government building anymore and drove home.
I didn't head back towards DC. Instead, I took the back-roads the long way around. I figured the Beltway was not the place to be as all of DC was emptying out.
Nearly home, I passed near the AOL/MCI campuses only to be caught in the traffic of evacuating employees. Our friend who was a UUNet engineer said there was a bomb threat at MCI. He had to work from home to try to compensate for the Internet problems caused by most of lower Manhattan's network being destroyed.
I just stayed glued to CNN until Mike got home.
Now the aftermath, that was some f'ed up stuff right there.
We were very near Dulles airport at that point. For a good couple weeks afterwards there were weird goings-on around the airport. Like the helicopters flying low all over our area at 4am.
The lack of planes except for the occassional fighter jet was also pretty weird and somewhat terrifying.
Oh yeah, and since its all about me -- I was also planning our wedding at this point. The stress-induced eye-twitch I had went from the occasssional wedding-news induced twitch to an almost solid twitch practically up the wedding day.
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