nmah5555.xml

nmah5555.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2003-07-02

The Internet was my window while witnessing the attack against my country on 9/11. I am a native New Yorker living in Georgia, and at 8:55 AM was logged into the Empire State Building webcam at http://www.esbnyc.com. I love watching the controllable webcam since I can see many of my favorite sites that bring back good memories when I lived outside of NYC in Connecticut and Long Island.

Around 9:00 AM I was listening to WSB Radio here in Atlanta when I heard talk show host Neal Boortz mention that a small plane crashed into the WTC. Since I was already on the webcam, I turned the webcam to the south to see what was happening around the WTC. I knew that a rather large plane had hit the WTC since there was so much smoke and damage. I watched the horrible carnage while Neal Boortz continued to comment and then CNN cut in on the radio with a live broadcast. I listened for a few minutes in disbelief - then, sometime after 9:00 AM I zoomed the camera in on the WTC to get a closer look of the damage.

At that exact moment, when the webcam came back in focus, I witnessed a huge fireball - as if I was only 100 yds away - as the second plane hit the WTC.

It is an image that I will never ever forget for the rest of my life . . .

Yes - I am much more wary of foreigners in my country. I realize that we Americans need to stand up for ourselves, and protect ourselves -and that we have many foreign enemies. Our first instinct needs to be self-preservation.

That our enemies are everywhere, and we cannot take our Freedoms for granted. These Freedoms need to be defended, and protected at all costs. We also need to identify our enemies, and hold them close . . .

I still fly my America flag . . . and will do so until the day I die.