Twin towers

This morning, the Coast Guard either did or did not fire on a small boat in the Potomac River in Washington D.C.   The first reports said they did.  Then the Pentagon issued a statement that it was just an exercise and no shots were fired. 

We are all still jumpy about the destruction of the World Trade Center twin towers in New York, 8 years ago today.

On September 11, 2001 I was upstairs in my townhome in Las Vegas, ready to go out for an early morning walk.   I decided to turn on CNBC to check the stock market before I left and saw on the screen one of the towers with a huge gash across several floors.   Mark Haines, the CNBC anchorman, said that something had just happened at the World Trade Center;  maybe a small plane had hit it. 

It was obvious from the video that whatever had happened it was a lot larger than a small plane.  For a few minutes the CNBC reporters and anchors continued on with stock market news, then it became apparent that something serious had ocurred.  I clicked over to CNN and for the next three days watched in stunned horror. 

A few events I saw during those three days still stick in my mind: 

The sight of the second plane flying into the second tower, shown live on TV.   And knowing that people were dying as I watched.

Rudy Guiliani, the NY major, surrounded by billowing dust with a handkerchief over his mouth walking rapidly away from the towers, telling people to leave the area. 

My sense of disbelief as the first tower crumbled to the earth and my panic-y realization that the second tower would crash down very soon and people were already and would be dying as I watched. 

More fear when it was reported that the Pentagon in Washington D.C. had been hit by a plane. 

How many more?  How many more?

The second tower fell.

Then came a report of a plane crashing in Pennsylvania.

How many more?  What about Chicago?  Los Angeles?  Were they being attacked, too?

There was crazy confusion in the military and government and the news media. 

I never took that walk.  Like millions of other people, I spent days watching the images on TV.  Gradually hearing what had happened as the pieces were ferreted out and put together. 

The one clear action was the grounding of all planes–both commercial and general aviation–in and approaching the U.S.    Pilots were ordered to land at the nearest airport large enough for them to land at.   I remember how strange it was that there were no planes overhead, no jet noises, in Las Vegas.  Even the jets at Nellis Air Force Base remained grounded.   I had never been aware of how airplane noise was simply part of the background ambiance until the silence came.  

The silence was greater than the absense of planes.  People stayed home and watched TV.   Traffic noise seemed muffled.  Fear was everywhere in the silence.