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.
Reader interactions
4 Replies to “Where were you…?”
Amen to your wishes, Charles. In answer to your title ~ Blake, Mandy and I were at home and watching the TV in horror as first one and then two Towers fell. God have mercy on us all.
M xox
Hi Charles, yes, I remember where I was and how it all felt and I recall the realization that the world had indeed changed, but as I watched on, in horror and disbelief, I remember the added realization that the world had already changed in order for this to happen, for someone to come upwith this type of plan and carry it through and as I nursed my new little 3 month old son, I feared for what his future would hold and how different it would be from my childhood. on another note, Gerry was actually flying that morning too and he was just outside YZF city limits and they were denying EVERYONE landing rights(even on the lakes), so he had to land way out on great slave lake and taxi in…on floats of coarse!(otherwise he’d have to just weigh anchor out there somewhereand wait it out) After a few hours landing rights were given and I remember YZF airport loading up with aircraft from overseas also. Aircraft we didn’t usually see landing there.
I hope for people in ‘Macs’ position that they can rebuild too. what a task to deal with and overcome.
blessings to you and Tess in HKG.
i live in a NYC commuter community. daughter had forgotten her lunch. i had it in hand to take to her when hubby called and siad, put on the tv. i watched the second tower fall in real time and stood there in shock trying to absorb it as the announcer said there was another westbound plane that was unaccounted for. do i drop off lunch or do i bring my daughter home? i stood in the school office trying to decide as other parents were yanking kids out of class. i opted for normalcy and then cried on the whole drive home.
i was almost eight months pregnant with sagan. i got up, made myself breakfast, and sat down in front of the computer to get my morning ttc fix. the posts were weird. there was this huge, mega-long thread sitting there waiting to be read with a subject something like “what’s happening in ny? i can’t get any news.” then the posts got so surreal i was sure it was some kind of bad joke. then i turned on the tv and stood in the living room in complete shock for a while. after the shock was over i remember thinking that this was not the sort of world i wanted to bring a baby into, but i no longer had that choice.
as i reflect five years later, and read about how water is no longer allowed on airplanes in this country but 14″ aluminum knitting needles are, i realize that the terrorists have won. the goal of a terrorist is to get a group of people so scared that they change their behaviour. not letting the terrorists win means getting on with our lives. we are letting them win at the very same time our president claims that overthrowing a bad guy in power in one country will make everything all better. now i feel that, while this is not the world i wanted to bring children into, our world needs our children to hopefully set things right.