First I heard was when Andy the IT/CAD manager came in and said a plane had hit the WTC in New York. Like many I assumed this was a light aircraft, as some incident like this had happened before with a small plane. Not all the machines in the office had internet then, and the web stopped working quite quickly, so we were getting verbal updates and I think eventually got to see it on a telly as the gravity of everything started hitting. I’m not sure if I saw the second plane incident in real time or not, it’s all a bit fuzzy. The shock/surprise when the towers actually came down, not anticipating that damage to a few floors could trigger complete structural failure.
Like many big disasters or terrorist incidents there was that initial exaggeration of the number of victims and perpetrator, talk of there being 20 or 30 or 60 planes unaccounted for in the skies over America, planes unaccounted for in Europe, people just waiting for the next attack wherever it would be, feeling like it wouldn’t end. Talk of 60,000 dead being constantly revised downwards, it sticking at 6000 for a long time then dropping to the eventual total.
For years I didn’t delete the email exchanges with my ex gf discussing it in real-time, kept as some kind of archive until I eventually left that job a few years back. Someone at her work had been holidaying in NY and had been in the cafe at the top of the tower the day before, they were freaked out about what had happened to the staff that served them. Stories like this brought home the humanity of it all.
I recall some weird claim that the passport of one of the perpetrators was found in the street debris after which just seemed preposterously unlikely, but was part of the immediate finger pointing at AQ, still these days not sure of the veracity of this claim. For a long time I had a suspicion/conspiratorial thought that perhaps some of those involved were being watched or were ‘known’ but not intercepted on the day, something the state would in all probability keep quiet about, and the passport story was just a way of pointing the finger in the right direction. No idea whether this report was ever stood up or discussed in more detail.
Nobody had hijacked planes for use as weapons before, incidents usually just meant that someone wanted to be taken to another country or led to hold outs on airport tarmac while demands were negotiated. I think there was one more ‘traditional’ hijacking not long after this, then that game seemed to be over, planes would be shot out of the sky now, not worth it.
Another plane crash in Queens a few days later and immediate assumption it was another attack, it wasn’t.
The desperate twisting of the narrative to blame Iraq, blowhards wanting to sweep right through the Middle East from Pakistan to the gulf to ‘sort this out’. That knowing someone would pay, and it would mostly be innocents caught up in America’s fury. And here we are, still bleeding.
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