nmah449.xml

nmah449.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-27

I slept in that day as I did not need to be to work early that morning. I live on the west coast so when I woke up @ 9am it was already 12 noon on the east coast.

I woke up in the usual way by hitting the snooze button on my alarm clock. But it came back on 7 minutes later with the radio playing. The station I listen to is usually playing music. But this morning, evewn through my grogginess I could sense this day was going to be different. As if in the back of my head I heard the words, "Terrorist attack in New York.." and "..building collapsed that was struck by plane...". I just sat straight up wondering if I had heard right.

So I went straight to my computer and logged into the web. I tried to pull up the major news agencies but was continually blocked. At that point I knew something was tragically wrong. It was at that point that I looked at my clock and saw that the time was now 9:11am. I finally found a smaller news site that I was able to sign onto and get more information. How horriffic the scenes that I saw. Of course at that time they only had video of the second plane hitting the Word Trade Center. I sat there just watching over and over what I was seeing. I could not believe it.

I work at the San Francisco Airport. So I called to find out if we were still open since all traffic had been shut down. I was told we were still open. SO I went to work.

The drive was unusually quiet. No traffic, clear blues skies, and not even the planes that I would usually see landing at the airport were there. When I pulled into work the road was empty. When I walked into work the lobby was utterly quiet with no customers. The only sound was of the telephone ringing... continually. All we did that day was to answer the phones and to help the customers as best we could get home. But in between calls, some of us had access to the internet, we watched and read as more details became available from New York, Washington DC, and PA. We all felt deeply saddened but even more so knowing that two of those planes were coming home to us in San Francisco.

I took a break in the afternoon and went to the roof of our building like I sometimes do. As I looked over the airport there was not a single plane moving. I will never forget that view.

I will never forget that day.

God bless Amaerica!!!