Where were you…?
When 911 happened Tess and I had moved into our current flat 4.5 months earlier. When we first moved in there was lots to do to fix the place up, so we never got around to figuring out how the TV antenna worked. There was little incentive – we only got two basic and generally boring English channels vs. our previous flat where we got free cable and ten channels! We managed to get the DVD connected, and watched the Sopranos and Nicky Gumble, but never anything directly from the outside world. 911 changed that.
Tess was 6.5 months pregnant with Sebastian at the time. It had been a long day so Tess fell asleep early. I had been home from work a few hours when I got a call from US HR. They wanted to know if I’d heard from my boss, or knew his itinerary. At the time he was on a CX flight from Hong Kong to Toronto, with a stopover in Anchorage. "No," I replied, "best to call his secretary and here’s her number. Why?"
"Something’s happened in New York. I’m not going to stop to explain, just turn on your TV. Bye, Charles," and they hung up.
Of course our TV wasn’t plugged into the building’s fuzzy antenna, and there was no signal from just turning on the TV itself. Lots of static, but that would just wake Tess. I turned to the Internet, instead, starting with CNN.
"Whoa," I thought, "this is weird." CNN was under a denial of service attack – meaning it was being bombarded by hackers and the site crashing. That’s actually not what was happening… it was being bombarded by people trying to get updates. I went to The Drudge Report and MSN… only then did I figure out what was going on. Occasionally CNN.com came through. I distinctly remember the entire site being shut down and CNN posting only one… single… page. Between the three sites and online chats with Tess’ mother, Maureen, I received updates on what was happening. Eventually at about 4 AM HK time (4 PM in New York – the Twin Towers had long collapsed) I went to bed. I lay there for the longest time thinking, "it’s a different world now."
Meanwhile my boss had no idea what was going on… after taking off from the refueling in Anchorage the first plane hit in New York. Not long after that moment his CX flight re-routed to Vancouver, "for technical reasons" said the pilot. As the plane approached YVR my boss watched through his window. "Hmmm," he thought to himself, "there are a lot of 747s at this airport." (Essentially most, if not all, trans-pacific flights inbound to North America at the time – or not far from – were instructed to land in Vancouver.) As my boss’ plane landed he realised a lot of these 747’s were sitting on the tarmac. He looked at the gates to see if they were empty… he saw lots of planes at gates, except they all sat about 3 meters back from the gates. (Afterwards it was explained that the planes were all moved back from the gates as a way to insure they were secure.) That’s when my boss figured out something wasn’t quite right and phoned Gary, one of the company’s Asia Pacific VPs on the East Coast. Gary was working from home that day and ten minutes earlier had watched the second tower fall. Gary relayed the events to our mutual, and shocked, boss who spent the next six hours on the tarmac waiting to de-plane — only to be greeted by Canadian military and mounties dressed as commandoes. He then spent 48 hours in a Vancouver hotel room before turning around and flying back to Hong Kong.
Odd that this week Tess and I decided to take a stab at CSI New York. We learn in the opening episode that the lead character – Mac Taylor played by Gary Sinise – lost his wife in 911. The episode opens with Mac in a church and Mac finds himself at Ground Zero as the episode ends. Seems that Mac struggles with letting go and no doubt, I know I would. But perhaps on this 911 anniversary, as the new buildings break ground and take shape at Ground Zero, I wish people like Mac peace, in hope that they find a way to re-build, too.
