story10361.xml

story10361.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-01-23

On September 11, 2001, I awoke to an early alarm at 5:50 AM Pacific Time in Glendale, California. As a television producer, I had to get up early for a commercial shoot that day, and, as usual, I had set my alarm the night before to the Los Angeles all-news AM station, KFWB. The first words I remember hearing were "...top 15 floors of the World Trade Center..." which jolted me out of bed, and into the living room to turn on the TV. I tuned in ABC TV, to a long tight shot of the north side of WTC 1. The impact point was clearly visible, and at that time, the newscaster was mentioning a commuter plane may have struck the tower. In a flurry of thoughts, I remember thinking the sky was too clear for that to be an accident, and that the hole was too large for a commuter plane. My girlfriend was awake by this point, and I told her about what had happened. Horrified, she couldn't watch any more, so she left the room. Then, it happened -- still watching ABC news, their video feed locked on a tight shot of both towers (so tight, that a little sliver of sky was visible on both sides), I was listening to Peter Jennings when everything went into slow motion: I registered a flash of a plane on the right of the frame. I instantly thought it was a plane in the distance taking off from Newark airport across the Hudson, since the distortion of the long lense compressed the image of the towers. About a second later, the fireball erupted on the left side of the frame. I remember Jennings stop his commentary, and hearing in the background, the ABC news room staff in New York yell and scream. Right then, what I suspected in the back of my mind became reality for me. It was clearly a terrorist attack. For the next hour, I was glued to the TV, like the entire world. I never lost my grasp of the fact that what I was witnessing was real, but my grip was shaken when the first tower fell. Once again, a tight shot of about 10 burning floors in WTC 2, an eruption of flame and dark gray soot, and a rush of clear thought: There was an explosion...the corner is falling... the tower is falling. Clear as day what was happening, but it almost didn't register. I almost couldn't comprehend what I was watching. When the second tower fell, I thought, at first, it was a replay of the first tower. Only when the camera zoomed out and revealed both towers down did I realize the truth. I made it to my shoot. I gathered the crew of 40 together and made a speech -- I don't remember the details, other than if anyone wanted to go home, they could. No one left, and we went about shooting -- amidst it all. Ironically, surrounded by millions of dollars worth of the best video equipment in the world for our commercial, the only TV we could get was a black and while 7" monitor with an improvised antenna, which was on between takes. As we finished shooting, I walked outside to a beautiful Southern California sunset, not a plane in the sky, and knew I, like so many of us, I will always remember this moment: where I was on that black Tuesday in September.