5 Years Ago

The beginning of September 11th, 2001, was beautiful. Crisp air. Flawless blue sky. A gorgeous midwest autumn day.

I had recently started working out of my home office and my morning began with seeing everyone out the door. The girls caught the school bus at the front curb. My husband kissed me goodbye and left for work. I dropped my son at his pre-school and stayed to chat with the teachers for a few minutes. My pager went off as I was climbing back into our white mini-van. There was a fire at the World Trade Center, it said, and an emergency phone bridge was being established for one of our customers, a tenant of the WTC. My son's school was only a mile away from home and I sped the entire way back.

I hurried to dial into the conference bridge, simultaneously flipping on the TV to see if anything was being covered on CNN. Our customer was already on the call... they were being evacuated and they asked us to monitor their critical systems. At that point it was still not entirely clear what was happening. With the call running in the background, I turned my attention to the news coverage just in time to see the second plane hit the South tower.

It was shocking to see it and I sat transfixed, watching the coverage. Reports of people, trapped, jumping to their deaths from burning floors. Reports of a third and fourth plane having been hijacked. Reports of one of the planes smashing into the Pentagon. Speculation about where the 4th plane would hit and whether it would be shot down until finally, tragically, it was reported to have crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Reports of a fire on the Mall in Washington.

It felt like we were under attack. My husband called to ask if I'd heard the news. I called my mom. A friend called from her cell phone at an airport in the North East. "What's going on?" she asked. "They've pulled us off the plane but they won't tell us anything and every TV in the terminal is off."

I watched the horrific collapse of the South WTC tower, unable to believe what I was seeing. I watched the North tower collapse not long after. Reports of the estimated number of dead were high... tens of thousands. I had been at the WTC just the month before for a customer meeting. It had been thrilling to look out the window from the 67th floor of the South tower to see the Statue of Liberty. I suddenly felt very, very lucky to be home.

After a while the customer began rejoining the conference bridge but, after the morning's events, they were less interested in the status of their systems than in determining if their friends and coworkers had made it out ok. "Did you hear from Jim? Did Bob make it out ok? Have you seen..." The TV showed video of ghostly looking people covered in white dust randomly wandering the streets of lower Manhatten. They looked dazed and numb.

I watched the news all that day and most of the night. We had the TV on for days after, flipping compulsively between CNN, FOX, MSNBC, and CNBC. We fell asleep watching the endless news streams and woke up watching them. The images of the planes hitting and the towers collapsing played over and over again. The destruction was all consuming. Five years later, these memories are among the most vivid I have... visceral and perfectly preserved.