Friday, September 11, 2020

On the Morning of 9/11

 Normally I would post a picture or something and I probably will but today I just wanted to go through some thoughts.  When I went to work on the morning of Tuesday September 11, 2001, it was just like any other morning.  It was a nice fall day and there wasn't a cloud in the sky.  It was sunny and as I looked up in the sky, you could see the contrails of many flights that were crossing the country.  Who would have thought that would change within hours?

At around 9:00 in the morning, I saw a news blurb on my Yahoo page that one of the towers of the World Trade Center had been hit.  I didn't think anything of it because it was entirely possible (although unlikely) that a plane had accidentally crashed into it.  The airspace around New York is fairly crowed, so its possible.  When I heard that the second tower had been hit, the likelihood of a random accident went down considerably.  One plane hitting the towers is in the realm of possibility.  Two in the same day, nearly impossible.  After that, it was difficult getting news as all of the news websites were being overwhelmed by the number of people looking for information.

When I heard that the Pentagon been hit, it was apparent that those buildings had been attacked.  A friend of mine wheeled a TV into one of our conference rooms and there it was.  CNN had the image of both of the towers burning.  I didn't see the collapse happen live but the burning image will stay stuck in my brain.  It wasn't until later in the day that I found out one of the planes had crashed in Pennsylvania.  And it wasn't until much later that I found out that it was because the passengers had struck back.

When I went home that night, I looked up in the sky and I could only see a lone aircraft circling high above us.  I think it might have been a tanker out of Selfridge for refueling the patrol aircraft that were certainly in the area.  It was odd not seeing a single contrail in the sky.  It was disorienting for an aviation fan such as myself.

In many ways, 9/11 was the first event of the instant information age.  As a result of servers not being able to handle the surge, many news organizations added more capacity.  The passengers of Flight 93 learned of the other three planes through their calls with friends and family.  Their friends and family learned what they were going to do because of the availability of instant communication.  The terrorists were able to use many of these tools to coordinate themselves.  Showing once again that for every good use of technology there are ways it can be used in a bad way.

One thing stands out from 9/11 though, for a brief period of time, the United States was unified.  It doesn't seem like it took long for that unification to end but it was kind of nice.  Now like so many other things, it is used as a club against those people that disagree.  In doing that, I think the memory of the victims is tarnished.  It was a horrific attack in many ways and it also showed that the oceans are no longer the walls that they once were.  It would be nice to get that unity back, especially in another time of trouble and turmoil.

Anyway, I saw I would post a picture.  Here is a 757 coming for a landing at Detroit Metro.



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