story4571.xml

story4571.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-11

I was getting ready for work, watching the local news on Channel 2 (KWGN) when it was announced that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. I assumed that it was a small private plane, maybe a jealous ex-boyfriend going after someone who worked in the building or something like that. The images on television only showed the smoking hole in the side of the building, so it was hard to gauge what type of plane had crashed or the magnitude of the damage. As information slowly began to trickle in, it became apparent that it was actually a large passenger jet that had crashed. I still assumed that this was probably some horrible, isolated freak accident and thought back to the B-25 bomber that crashed into the Empire State Building in 1948.
Then as I continued to watch, the second plane crashed into the South tower and I immediately knew that this was no accident. I vividly recall an anchorman on one of the national news networks speculating that some "FAA beacon" was malfunctioning and diverting the planes into the towers. This was quickly dismissed by a pilot being interviewed, who pointed out that pilots use their eyes in addition to their instruments and surely would have seen and avoided the towers long before they would have struck them.
In spite of the horrific events I was watching unfold on TV, I still planned on (reluctantly) going into work that day. Then reports came in that a plane had also struck the Pentagon and it became obvious that our country was under attack. I called work and told them there was no way I could come in and be effective. I spent the rest of the day watching all of the news networks in both shock and fascination, astonished at the magnitude of what was happening, wondering who had done this, if there were more attacks to come and what the final outcome of these events would be.
The whole thing was just so surrealistic, like something I would expect to come across in a work of fiction.