story6001.xml

story6001.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-12

I was actually up in the air on a Delta flight from Atlanta when the terrorist attacks occurred. Our pilot waited to tell us until after our plane landed in Dallas ,Texas in order to announce to us that ?all air traffic was grounded because of terrorist attacks invloving airplanes against our nation?s capitol and the World Trade Center.? It was a very surreal moment. No one said a word. Everyone was in shock...half believing it was a some sick joke or something. I, being 24, was in total disbelief . An attack on our home soil? Our safety was something I never doubted up until that moment... something that I had always taken for granted without a thought.
We all exited the plane in silence and walked into the Dallas airport...a scene of commotion and confusion. Almost everyone had a cell phone up to their ear. T.V?s blared with live coverage of the crash scenes. People were crying and hugging one another. Luggage was everywhere. All those flights that were meant to go on to other destinations were stranded, so the amount of luggage there was overwhelming. There was nowhere for the workers to put it all except on the floor everywhere. People were literally stepping over luggage that was randomly thrown all together on the floor throughout the airport. No one had the full story yet and the fact that I was all alone stranded in a strange city when our country was under attack was scary. What was going to be next the next target? A man behind me at one point said that there was another flight still up in the air that was believed to be hijacked. How frightening that we?d just been on a flight up in the air and it could have been any one of our flights involved. The fact that all of the victims and I had very similar lives that day...getting up early, getting ready for a morning flight, packing, heading to the airport, boarding a plane and taking off?made me put myself in their shoes and vividly feel what it must have been like to then learn that your plane has been hijacked. I started crying thinking about the terror the people on the hijacked planes must have felt and how they died for no reason except pure evil and irrational hate.
I was stranded in Dallas for about two and a half days until I finally decided to take a 18 hour Greyhound bus ride to my original destination...Tucson, Arizona.
What a horrible day for our nation. Let this forever make us value our liberty and freedom that our country fought and still fights for us to have.