Mister Bump UK

9/11

I just caught Suze’s prompt. She asks:

What were you doing when you first heard about the attack on the Twin Towers in NYC and how did your daily routine change (if at all) as a result of the news?

I was in London at the time, working in the City. It was just after lunch, here, around 2 o’clock.

The first thing made me realise that something was up, I happened to glance out of the window. The coffee shop across the street had people standing outside, looking at the tv in the window. Unusual, and my first thought was simply what’s going on? Course, I had ready access to the internet, so I soon found out.

I was streaming the feed when the second plane hit, and watched from home later that evening as the towers fell.

The thing for me which made it significant was that in ’96, I lived a few minutes away from the World Trade Center in Battery Park City. I used to walk to work past the towers each morning, and of course I’d been to the top. So though it happened thousands of miles away, I knew these places personally.

Other than the shock, it didn’t really change anything for me. And if you look globally, it hasn’t really changed anything. With the benefit of hindsight, we can understand the hijackers’ reasons for doing what they did, and there could easily be people about now who have that same motivation. Just look at the Houthis – the only thing they lack is the means to attack anything other than shipping. Otherwise, it could happen again tomorrow. To any of us.

Unknown's avatar

Published by Mister Bump UK

Divorced, grown/flown daughter. In life, I designed IT systems, taking a career break as a bicycle mechanic, until interrupted by a stroke in 2016, aged 48. As I convalesced, I combined the development of health-related apps with voluntary work, and began writing. After a stint working again in IT, I now write full-time, and use my blog space to let my hair down.

12 comments

  1. I too was working in the City at the time, on floor 36 of the Tower 42 (previously known as the NatWest tower). We were looking at the TV screen, flabbergasted, barely comprehending what was going on. As the news started to transpire that this was a terrorist attack, our boss came round, telling us that those feeling a bit queasy could leave (it was mid-afternoon)… but we all stayed, looking out of our big windows thinking that we were a great target…. but beyond that it didn’t change anything much for me either: We all for once left reasonably early, just to be back at our desk again bright and early the next day….

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  2. That’ wild you lived just a few minutes from the World Trade Center only a few years earlier. My life partner and I owned and operated a bed & breakfast inn in St. Louis, Missouri at the time, and we were in our kitchen preparing breakfast. One of our guests, who was staying in our carriage house, entered the kitchen to come for breakfast, informing us that a plane had crashed into the first tower. As soon as we were done serving breakfast, we were glued to the TV for the next several hours.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • yeah, some of our channels suspended all programming just to show live footage. We heard rumours about other planes hijacked, which it turned out were true. And I heard shortly afterwards that tall buildings in London had SAM units deployed to them, just in case. Never found out if it was true.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  3. I remember the day well. As well as the day of John Kennedy’s assassination. Naturally, both cases, the significance of those events remains high-noon bright in memory. Often for no particular reason, I find myself reflecting on the way the world has since changed and wondered if they had not happened, how lives would be different. There is no “perspective” I can wrap around either to fully understand the whys. In my small mind I cannot allow any justification for either, regardless of what the most eloquent have explained to me.

    Then, old crank that I am, memory is drawn to events I’ve experienced that strike me as disruptive to the cosmos as I perceive it. While many shared these other experiences with me and saw their lives as dramatically altered as mine, save to me, I think, these other events have paled. That I think because for the terrible moments where we were part of 9/11 and November 22, 1963, every one was in those moments inescapably with us.

    Sad. Cruel lessons to be learned that as a species or whatever you call our global community we have chosen to ignore. Stuck in the bowels of a computer center during WTC moments, I had only fits and snatches of real-time “information” on 9/11. Many hours later, the gravity of what had taken place was not softened for the days that followed as newscasts replayed events in great detail.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    • I think it brought home that the foreign policies of our governments (both yours and mine) are sufficiently sinister that people are motivated to suicide in order to harm us.
      It made me ask more questions, read an awful lot more about the Middle East, but too many people are oblivious to what goes on. It doesn’t addect me, so why should I care? kind of thing.

      Liked by 1 person

      Reply

  4. I was in school and one pupil ran into the classroom and shouted to us all sitting there. It was a big shock and we were completely glued to the tv when I got home from school. That was the first time I had heard of ISIS, Afghanistan and that people were unhappy with America. It was a huge life lesson for me. So tragic even today and you’re absolutely right. It could happen to any of us. I remember airports changing things to be more strict, liquids having to be placed in separate bags etc.

    Like

    Reply

Leave a comment