story3099.xml
Title
story3099.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2002-09-11
911DA Story: Story
I was working as a reporter for a traffic information company (the people that do traffic on the radio stations) and of course had the radio and television on all day.
What I remember most about that day is how it didn't at all seem real. Growing up watching disasters unfold on television and the movies, I geuss I had become conditioned to seeing hossible acts of violence and passing them of as entertainment.
It was literally as if my eyes were not letting my brain and heart truly understand what they were seeing. With the practiced cool of radio reporting, I covered the early rush hour that evolved as downtown businesses called it a day at a round 11 in the morning.
How far has radio news coverage fallen when they look to traffic reporters to cover major events, then simply switch over to live television feeds over the FM waves because they downsized their news departments ten years ago.
As a journalist, this was perhaps the biggest story of my lifetime. And the fact that I was only involved on the very edges of reporting on it, I felt even more distanced. Perhaps this is selfish thinking, but it is how I felt at the time.
In any event, I even travelled to the site of the disaster in downtown Manhattan a few months later with a friend, just to bear witness really, to see if I could finally comprehend the magnitude of what had happened. Again, it seemed unreal, like I was trying to peek onto a giant movie set or something.
We walked around the barricades, craned our necks to see the huge pit of twisted rubble, read the messages written in the dust caked on nearby buildings, hung out on benches and in small parks, watching New Yorkers try to go about their daily lives as the worst disaster of their history became a tourist attraction.
We ate sandwiches at a deli that was still trying to clear all the dust from the cracks and crevices in its window front. We went home the same day, feeling actually worse for having driven four hours to gawk.
But it still didn't seem real. In the year since, the reality of the whole thing has slowly creeped in, but has manifested itself in the way I relate to friends and family mostly.
Life is fragile, fleeting, and extinguished in an instant for the most obtuse and obscure reasons. This is what Sept. 11 has taught me.
What I remember most about that day is how it didn't at all seem real. Growing up watching disasters unfold on television and the movies, I geuss I had become conditioned to seeing hossible acts of violence and passing them of as entertainment.
It was literally as if my eyes were not letting my brain and heart truly understand what they were seeing. With the practiced cool of radio reporting, I covered the early rush hour that evolved as downtown businesses called it a day at a round 11 in the morning.
How far has radio news coverage fallen when they look to traffic reporters to cover major events, then simply switch over to live television feeds over the FM waves because they downsized their news departments ten years ago.
As a journalist, this was perhaps the biggest story of my lifetime. And the fact that I was only involved on the very edges of reporting on it, I felt even more distanced. Perhaps this is selfish thinking, but it is how I felt at the time.
In any event, I even travelled to the site of the disaster in downtown Manhattan a few months later with a friend, just to bear witness really, to see if I could finally comprehend the magnitude of what had happened. Again, it seemed unreal, like I was trying to peek onto a giant movie set or something.
We walked around the barricades, craned our necks to see the huge pit of twisted rubble, read the messages written in the dust caked on nearby buildings, hung out on benches and in small parks, watching New Yorkers try to go about their daily lives as the worst disaster of their history became a tourist attraction.
We ate sandwiches at a deli that was still trying to clear all the dust from the cracks and crevices in its window front. We went home the same day, feeling actually worse for having driven four hours to gawk.
But it still didn't seem real. In the year since, the reality of the whole thing has slowly creeped in, but has manifested itself in the way I relate to friends and family mostly.
Life is fragile, fleeting, and extinguished in an instant for the most obtuse and obscure reasons. This is what Sept. 11 has taught me.
Collection
Citation
“story3099.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 18, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/9519.