Just thinking about the upcoming 9/11 anniversary. This year the days are the same as in 2001. On that Monday it was a very rainy gloomy day, by that night it had stopped raining and something occured which I really never heard before. There where alot of dogs in the neighborhood that I was living in at the time and rarely would you here one of them howl and when I did it was for a short period of time, but on the eve of 9/11, there was a chorus of what seemed like every dog in the surrounding area howling for such a long time. At the time I said to my mother how strange I thought that was. My mother used to say that whenever a dog howled it meant something bad was going to happen. Well, I couldn't of imagined what diaster would await the following day, September 11, 2001.
It was about the time of the first world trade center building collaspe that I became aware of the horror of that day. I wasn't feeling well and hadn't turned on the tv til mid morning. My first knowledge of what was going on was seeing Brian Williams of NBC news reporting that the first tower had just collapsed. I was in absolute shock as I heard and saw the news, it seemed unreal what I was witnessing. I immediately told my mother, she was also in disbelief. We stayed glued to the tv and watched all those terrible events unfold. Story after story was more shocking. Shortly after I became aware of what was going on the second tower fell on live tv, I couldn't beleive what was happening.
I as did most of us saw history unfold on live tv on that tragic day. The images of that day will stay burned into my memory: the two planes flying into the towers, people jumping out of the towers windows, President Bush's reaction and following speech, the eyewitnesses to all of this looking up at the towers in stunned disbelief, the towers collapsing, people frantically running away covered in debris as the buildings fell, the streets of lower Manhattan looking like a war zone, people walking across bridges to escape the city, the Pentagon on fire, a smoldering gaping hole in a field in Shanksville, the congress gathering in front of the capitol singing God Bless America, President Bush addressing a nation in shock. It was like watching a disaster movie, but this was real.
That day all air travel in the country would be suspended. Fighter jets would patrol the sky. Tanks would patrol the streets of lower Manhattan. The world in which we knew had changed and would never be the same.
In the immediate aftermath of 9/11 the streets where overflowing with American flags, it seemed as though eveyone became a patriot. We had the sympathy of the world. We where a united nation wounded by these evil acts of terror and determined to bring to justice whoever was responsible.
The attacks that day would result in nearly 3,ooo deaths, numerous injuries and billions of dollars in property damage.
In the past eleven years after the 9/11 attacks so much has happened related to that day: wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, a new goverment agency was established, laws governing how we travel to how we bank have changed, our public and sometimes private behavior is being monitered, many who where exposed to debris of the twin towers have suffered serious health problems, we would become more suspicious of one another. We all have been affected in some way by what happened that day in September.
My prayers are with all the families of the victims of the 9/11 attacks. Thankfully we haven't suffered another attack, and hopefully we won't.
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