9/11/01 - Never Forget

[majorhavoc]

Following on NT2C's announcement that these forums will be closed tomorrow in rememberance of the 25th anniverary of that tragic event and the lives that were lost, I'd like to share a few observations that have stuck with me.  I invite others to likewise share in the days that follow when UFOZS reopens.

1) 9/11 taught me in the most vividly shocking way that I had been living an obscenely sheltered life.   And in a very real sense, living a lie: naively trusting that truly bad things couldn't never happen in America.  How wrong I was not recognizing that as long as there's evil in this world - pure, unadulterated evil - the unimaginable isn't just possible, but unfortunately inevitable.  

2) 9/11 and the evil it revealed, along with Hurricane Katrina and its reminder of the destructive power of nature, were the two formative events in my life that launched my pursuit of prepping.  I do not consider a minute I've spent, or a single dollar I've invested in my prepping journey to be wasted.  I hope with all my heart that I'll never have to use any of it, but 9/11 and Katrina taught me that's a hopeful luxury we cannot afford to cling to.

3) I've had countless opportunities to revisit the images and videos I viewed in those first hours and days.  Whenever I encounter them now, I turn away, refuse to click, move the opposite way, or navigate to a different site.  Once in a lifetime was more than enough for me to see people willingly jump to their deaths to escape the burning towers, or watch airliners atomizing into fiery oblivion as they impacted the sides of those buildings.  Those images are seared into my memory and I have absolutely zero need or desire to ever see them again.

4) For one, maybe two years following 9/11, we were all a lot kinder to each other.  Yielding in traffic when we didn't have to, holding doors open for people following 10 steps behind, hugging perfect strangers, helping out neighbors, getting choked up at the mere sight of a parent consoling a despondent child.  I think that it was because we all shared that overwelming sense of being wounded, of being violated, that we looked to each other in a new light and reflected on what was really important in life.  I wish we somehow could have kept on doing that.

[12_Gauge_Chimp]

I was 16 when 9/11 happened.

I was sitting in my first period Small Engine Repair class and goofing off with my fellow morons. Our teacher, Mr. Foreman, came in and got class started. We got maybe 15 minutes into that days lesson when the school resource officer, a guy we'd nicknamed Rent-A-Cop Bob, came rushing into the classroom.

Now this was a guy who usually had a pretty stoic and calm demeanor, but the look on his face as he came into the room was anything but. He told Mr. Foreman to turn on the TV because the Pentagon had been bombed.

So the TV goes on and we tune in just in time to see the second plane hit the WTC. The silence in that classroom was deafening. What had been a rowdy class full of teenage idiots moments before was now scarily quiet.

We sat in silence as we watched the horror unfold before us. After a few minutes and not taking his eyes off the screen, Mr. Foreman told my classmates and I "Get a good look at this, boys. This is your generations Pearl Harbor."

No one said a thing after that. We just sat in silence, watching our world change forever in real time.

Class let out about an hour later and we were herded to the auditorium for an assembly program (the purpose of which I've forgotten in the last 25 years.). I remember thinking "Our world is changing and the morons running this place are putting on a show for us ? Are they out of their minds?"

Looking back, I can sort of see why they did so. In a way, they wanted to spare us from the coverage and distract us for a little bit. We'd see the news coverage pretty much 24/7 for the next few weeks and the kind of constant bombardment of negativity wasn't good for anyone.

But in the wake of 9/11 came a sense of unity never seen before. Everywhere I looked, I saw the US flag being flown. I saw kindness, brotherhood and an overwhelming sense of patriotism and of resilience.

We'd been knocked down, but we didn't stay down. No, we picked ourselves up, dusted ourselves off, wiped the blood from our noses and went "Alright, you bastards, now you're going to pay."

I often wonder just what happened to that America and I wish we could all remember what it was like to get along regardless of race, gender, religion or politics. When we weren't at each other's throats over the stupidest of things and arguing about meaningless BS.

I don't want to turn this post into a rant about how we lost our way as people in the last 25 years, so I'll end it with this.

Though many of my fellow Americans seemingly have, I haven't forgotten the events of 9/11. I owe it to the people who lost their lives, the people who lost loved ones and friends, the first responders who were at the WTC when the towers fell and the people who spent countless hours searching for survivors in the days and weeks after.

I owe it to them to never forget that day. I will remember it until the day I leave this world.

[NT2C]

I try not to speak much about 9/11.  I am, at my heart, a New Yorker.  It is my birthplace.  It is where I lived and worked as an EMT for, as I recently discovered, over 18 years, not the 14 I originally calculated (got my starting year wrong).  It is where I married and raised a family.  Seven of the lives lost that day were people I knew.  Friends, workmates, former partners.  They are not forgotten.  They are not thought of just around this time of year.  They are people who I still catch myself wanting to call, send an email, share something that I discovered or found funny.  They are, still very much alive, inside of me.

There is something about how we observe this day that I would change if I could, the lowering of our flag to half-mast in respect and remembrance.  Yes, we need to show respect and remember our dead, but we Americans did not lower all of our flags that day, or in the days afterward.  No, we raised new ones!  We raised them by the thousands!  We raised them in fierce defiance of the blow that we took, and as a solemn promise that every life lost would be avenged, tenfold.  We raised them high to show our strength, our unity.  We flew them night and day, with more pride than we had in decades.

On Memorial Day, we have a tradition of lowering our national flag to half-staff from sunrise, but only until noon.  This is to remember those who have fallen in the defense of that flag.  At noon, we again raise it, and this is for precisely the same reason all those flags were raised in the aftermath of those attacks.  To show our strength, and our unbroken unity as a people and a nation.

I propose that we do the same on 9/11.  I propose that we tell our legislators and representatives that we need to do this.  I would like to see this proposition shared tomorrow all across social media, and repeated every anniversary until it becomes a reality.

A national flag flown at half-staff shows that we have been hurt as a nation.  Raising it again shows our strength and unity of purpose.

[DarkAxel]

9/11 pretty much changed the direction of my adult life. I was 21 and in college when it happened. I ended up dropping out to enlist in the National Guard in 2002. Just about everything that has happened in my life since then hinges on that one decision.

I do miss life from before 9/11/01. Things seemed a lot simpler and safer to me then, even if it was an illusion. In the aftermath it seemed to me that the country as a whole was suffering from PTSD and the world went mad. 

[echo83]

I posted this three years ago, but I'll post it again, because I still feel the same:

I remember watching the whole thing on my TV in my freshman dorm room. 

Everyone in the dorm was glued to their TV. When the second plane hit, I remember hearing students in another dorm across the quad screaming while they were watching their TVs. That was the loudest part of the day. 

I called my girlfriend in D.C. Over the past weekend I had flown back to school after visiting her there. I heard the F-16s in the background before the call dropped. 

I spent the rest of the day trying to contact my family, while watching dust-covered New Yorkers walk through the streets. Someone on the news was interviewing a firefighter near the World Trade Center. It sounded like there were hundreds of car alarms going off, and I'd never heard that kind of tone before.

Fours years later, I was a reporter at the scene of a fire in a town in New Hampshire. The firefighters were working in shifts, and I noticed that the ones waiting to go into the building seemed to shuffle around every once in a while. I asked the Chief why they kept moving, and on cue, a loud tone began to go off from a device attached to a discarded pair of air tanks on the ground.

A firefighter walked over to the air tanks, picked up the beeping device and shook it. The beeping stopped. The Chief explained, "That's called a PASS device. When a firefighter stops moving, it goes off, so everyone knows where they can find him." 

That was one of the "alarms" I had heard on the news those years before. 

It had seemed like there were hundreds of them.  

When I had finished interviewing the Chief, I walked back to my car and cried.

[12_Gauge_Chimp]

I've watched a few documentaries on 9/11 and often wondered what the alarm sounds were.

I always figured it was alarms from the various buildings around the WTC after the windows were busted out by the debris.

I never knew it was the alarms on the packs of the firefighters that were there. 

[echo83]

I've watched a few documentaries on 9/11 and often wondered what the alarm sounds were.

I always figured it was alarms from the various buildings around the WTC after the windows were busted out by the debris.

I never knew it was the alarms on the packs of the firefighters that were there. 

There were other alarms, for sure. When I heard that particular PASS alarm though, I realized where I had heard it before, and that each one was attached to someone in the rubble. I'm not an emotional person by any stretch of the imagination, but it brought that day back pretty hard.

[12_Gauge_Chimp]

I've watched a few documentaries on 9/11 and often wondered what the alarm sounds were.

I always figured it was alarms from the various buildings around the WTC after the windows were busted out by the debris.

I never knew it was the alarms on the packs of the firefighters that were there. 

There were other alarms, for sure. When I heard that particular PASS alarm though, I realized where I had heard it before, and that each one was attached to someone in the rubble. I'm not an emotional person by any stretch of the imagination, but it brought that day back pretty hard.

I went to YouTube last night to refresh my memory on the PASS alarm tone and that was the exact alarm tone I heard when watching the 9/11 documentaries.

[eugenenine]

We learned to not trust those in charge. Wife worked downtown in the accounting and payroll department for a law firm so she was part of "staff". They heard on the news that tall buildings were being evacuated in cities all over the country and they looked out the windows and could see people leaving the buildings but their management would not give them the ok to leave. They found out later they held the staff so the lawyers could evac first.