story1180.xml

story1180.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-19

Around 9am I was sitting at my desk and I heard someone say that a plane had hit on of the WTC. I told a co-worker of mine and she kinda "pshawed" it like it was a small plane. I had a really bad feeling and said, "Bet it's terrorists. How do you accidentally hit the WTC???" And that was the end of the conversation. I had training at 9:30am and went in like normal, nothing else had been mentioned. At 10am our VP came in to tell us that the WTC's had been hit, along with the Pentagon, the State Building, and they were evacuating the Chrysler Building (mind you this was in the early stages and noone knew what the hell was going on!!!). I immediately thought that this was an automatic declaration of war and started having a panic attack, worrying about all the victims, their families, my family, and friends, and just the world in general. Some of my co-workers who were National Guard got phone calls that they had to leave. How naive was I to think that this could never happen? How naive were we all? We left work early that day and as I was driving home whenever I stopped at a stop light I would look over at the next driver and feel a sense of helplessness from them just as they could probably feel from me. I still had not seen a TV and had no real sense of what was going on, I was listening to the radio completely astonished. When I finally made it home I saw what had happened and could not believe it. Although I knew noone in NY, DC or PA I felt an unbelievable pain in my chest all I could think was that my heart was breaking for these people. Everyday for weeks I cried, my heart still breaks over and over again for the victims, the families and our nation. Even sitting here 11 months later writing this I feel very overwhelmed.........