9/11 (not for debate I hope)
41 years ago today, my wife and I were married. 30 years later, we had big plans (I no longer remember what those plans were) to celebrate our 30th. Our 41st we celebrated last week.
9/11 can no longer be a day of celebration for us. That morning in 2001, my wife got up early just because she was so excited about the day and was watching TV. About 6AM PST or so, she came up to our bedroom and awakened me to tell me that a plane crashed into a big building in NYC. I remembered that during World War II, a B25 Mitchell bomber wandered into the Empire State building in the fog and crashed. I was still sleepy so I went back to sleep . About a half an hour later she came up and told me another plane had crashed into the building next to it. At that point I knew it could not be a coincidence and I was wide awake.
When I got downstairs and looked at the TV I knew it was the World Trade Center and a knew it was an attack. Whatever plans we had went to hell in a hand basket at that time. 9/11 has never the same since, I think for any American.
Having been a professional firefighter for 35 years my first glance at those buildings told me they were going to collapse. I believe every firefighter that went into them that day also knew they were going to collapse. 343 firefighters died about an hour later. Most if not all of the 343 good men thought or at least they hoped that the 'four hour construction' of all high-rise buildings would allow them enough time to complete the evacuation and then get themselves out. The trouble was that the impact of the aircraft knocked the fire insulation off of the steel beams and columns and they weakened much sooner, plus many of them were simply cut by the impact.
That's my 9/11 story, what's yours?
9/11 can no longer be a day of celebration for us. That morning in 2001, my wife got up early just because she was so excited about the day and was watching TV. About 6AM PST or so, she came up to our bedroom and awakened me to tell me that a plane crashed into a big building in NYC. I remembered that during World War II, a B25 Mitchell bomber wandered into the Empire State building in the fog and crashed. I was still sleepy so I went back to sleep . About a half an hour later she came up and told me another plane had crashed into the building next to it. At that point I knew it could not be a coincidence and I was wide awake.
When I got downstairs and looked at the TV I knew it was the World Trade Center and a knew it was an attack. Whatever plans we had went to hell in a hand basket at that time. 9/11 has never the same since, I think for any American.
Having been a professional firefighter for 35 years my first glance at those buildings told me they were going to collapse. I believe every firefighter that went into them that day also knew they were going to collapse. 343 firefighters died about an hour later. Most if not all of the 343 good men thought or at least they hoped that the 'four hour construction' of all high-rise buildings would allow them enough time to complete the evacuation and then get themselves out. The trouble was that the impact of the aircraft knocked the fire insulation off of the steel beams and columns and they weakened much sooner, plus many of them were simply cut by the impact.
That's my 9/11 story, what's yours?