story11740.xml

story11740.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2005-08-18

My husband and I were asleep in bed - I was 5 months pregnant with my twins at the time. My mum had been staying at our place and she listens to the radio all night. It was about 1 or 2am when she came into our room and said "there has been a terrible accident in New York - a plane has accidentally hit a building". We turned on our television just as another plane hit the other tower and we knew then it was not an accident. We watched in horror and absolute disbelief as the towers collapsed one after the other. The people reading the news were crying and it just seemed that everyone was in total shock. It was on every pay and free to air channel with the exception of the kids channels. When the newsreaders started to talk about terrorists all we could think was that there was going to be a war and it would be the end of the world. If they could do this terrible thing, then they could destroy the world. We did not sleep that night at all and it seemed even in our town so far away from New York that people were sad - everyone was solemn and I guess everyone was in shock. It was several hours into the day before we even remembered that my mum's sister and her husband were actually in New York on a study tour. Everyone in the family were madly trying to find out if they were OK and when someone was finally able to talk to them we found out that due to a change in their intinerary, they were in a Taxi on their way to the airport when it happened. Their schedule had been changed the previous day - they were originally supposed to be in the Twin Towers when it happened. They said they saw the fire and smoke from the taxi but did not know until they got to the airport what had happened.

The whole event was repeated so many times over the coming weeks on television, that our 18 month old son began to have nightmares about aeroplanes hitting buildings. We had not deliberately let him watch but you could not escape it. It did make us more aware of all the children in New York and how it must be affecting them.

We still regulary think about all of those people who lost their lives on 9/11 and the recent London Bombings bought it all back again. We might be 1000's of miles away from New York, but we are all human beings and the effects of this terrible thing will live with us forever.