story9321.xml

story9321.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2003-05-19

I was late for work, and got a call from my younger sister, asking if we were watching tv, and to turn it on if we weren't. The first tower had just been hit. We watched in shock and awe as a second plane crashed into the second tower, live on international TV. We were told immediately that it was terrorists. Our news people mentioned the Arab world over and over. We saw the external wreckage at the Pentagon, but very little was shown of that -- or even talked about. Then there were the other planes... they said there was one in Pennsylvania, and then it went down. There was another plane that they were reporting had been hijacked, but just stopped talking about it - either it was misreported earlier, or they decided to drop it. We watched the replay of the crash over and over and over and then better footage taken by amateurs showed up... and that was played over and over and over. The original estimates of the dead and injured reached as high as 20,000... while people were still streaming out of the coulds of white smoke and dust and debris that surrounded the World Trade Center Complex.

I called in to work to ask if they had heard, and was told to get there immediately. No one at the office seemed to be bothered by the attack at that point... they just wanted to get on with their day. So, I drove to Austin and sat at my desk all day, checking CNN online every now and again for updates.