911: Did You "Forget"?

[acklac7]

I did

 

I completely forgot just how horrifying that day was.

 

Happened upon this segment on the History Channel and was damn near ready to throw up after 30 minutes. Watched the whole thing, it was downright painful.

 

If you didn't take a solid hour to reflect back on everything that happened fifteen years ago do yourself a favor and and watch the entire thing yourself.

 

Never Forget.

 

[dover]

I watched that as well, makes me sick.

[Richard Cranium]

I did

 

I completely forgot just how horrifying that day was.

 

Happened upon this segment on the History Channel and was damn near ready to throw up after 30 minutes. Watched the whole thing, it was downright painful.

 

If you didn't take a solid hour to reflect back on everything that happened fifteen years ago do yourself a favor and and watch the entire thing yourself.

 

Never Forget.

 

 

No, I didn't forget. I was a green as grass new teacher that day. I still teach in the same room and can point to the spot on the floor where I was standing when I heard the announcement that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. It was one of my students (AJ) 18th birthday. I still get torn up thinking about that day. I was kinda glad the anniversary this year fell on a weekend so I wasn't at school for it.

[TTQ B4U]

I still tear up with emotion when I watch all the re-runs and specials around the event.

[AudiOn19s]

I can pretty much remember my whole day that day which is pretty incredible considering I couldn't recount last week in the same amount of detail.

[BStowers023]

I remember I was sitting on the bleachers in the gym during my 6th grade gym class when our teacher told us. We all went home and I remember my parents watching it on TV then going to try to get gas with about a 1/4 mile line at every gas station. It was a crazy and very sad day.

 

It's a day that even through all of the sadness, brought us together as Americans.

[1Quik7]

I forgot how many people jumped...I still can't imagine having to make that choice.

[zeitgeist57]

I forgot how many people jumped...I still can't imagine having to make that choice.

 

That is definitely one of the most horrifying parts of that day that humanized the struggles in the towers for me: To see those people burning from heat and suffocating from the smoke hanging that far outside of the broken windows was haunting. Then you'd see people jumping...

 

The Clarks are a rock band from Pittsburgh that I fell in love with while in college. They did a song called "Hey You" that they wrote after watching people jumping from windows on 9/11. There's a great video on YouTube of them playing live, and you can see the guitarist crying as they're singing the refrain. I'm glad I'm not the only one that was so moved by those images.

 

The other thing I'll say about 9/11 is all the thousands of people (not just first responders) in NYC that contracted disease after the towers fell. My uncle was working at the Merrill Lynch building - green domed building next to Twin Towers - and was running down Battery Park when the first tower collapsed. He walked through the ash clouds eastbound trying to get back to his home on Long Island....the guy never drank or smoked in his life, but started developing breathing problems in 2005. Spots on his organs, he was diagnosed with some auto-immune illness and died in 2010. There were many, MANY more civilians that died years later that were directly connected to the towers collapsing and the airborne debris from that.

 

On the positive side, I think 13 of the last 15 9/11 anniversaries have had knock-out beautiful weather just like on 9/11/01.

[acklac7]

I forgot how many people jumped...I still can't imagine having to make that choice.

 

I never knew that many people jumped.

 

I don't know which is more horrifying, the sound of the fire Alert warning Beacon inside the Trade Center, or the sounds that came from the witnesses as people were jumping out.

 

Can you imagine being a firefighter and going up into either of the Twin Towers with that death curdling, Armageddon-esque siren going off nonstop. The sound of that thing is just beyond creepy.

 

The History Channel should allow other networks to run that documentary on every anniversary. Powefull Shit.

Edited September 12, 2016 by acklac7

[Geeto67]

I want to bitch about something for a second. On Sunday I went to a car show at Karric Place. Small local show, a few interesting cars, not much else. There was this guy at the show with a purple challenger SRT8, "grape SRT" I think on the license plate. Dude had a whole "display" set up under the hood with pictures of planes flying into the towers, and news articles, etc.... The whole thing felt exploitative. That he was doing this to somehow help him win a car show trophy because he was in a show on 9/11. It felt tacky.

 

I don't think I will ever be able to forget. And not 1 day out of a year, but I think about it almost every damn day. I think about all my friends, neighbors, family members, that I have lost, and the many that I continue to lose because the scars from this never heal. This is not some detached event for me, There are people I loved that I will never be able to speak to again because of this, the course of my life that had been altered by this significantly, it's a very raw open wound that seeps every day.

 

At the time I really wanted to punch that old dude in the face, but really I should thank him. I need to be reminded that for the majority of America this will never be a personal event, it will be a political statement, or a punchline, or a way to score points in a car show, because for many it's a symbol as much as it is a tragedy.

[mmrmnhrm]

I did not forget, but I refuse to be guilted back into moaning and wailing and the "Save me, Big Brother!!" mentality that this annual ritual feeds into.

[LJ]

Nope I don't forget. I even remarked to myself on my drive in this morning that today's weather is exactly like it was in Central Ohio on Tues, Sept 11, 2001

[Fiji ST]

I remember being in high school in Pittsburgh, 2nd period Business class, when we heard. I had a cell phone at that, but couldn't get ahold of anyone (Dad was at work, mom was actually here at OSU). Had to wait for the bus and watch everything unfold on the little TV we had in our homeroom. I never wanted to be home more in my entire life, especially after the last plane went down in Shanksville.

 

I'm also reminded of it a lot as my father-in-law is a retired police officer as well as a police chaplain for 22 years, and was a first responder who got to Manhattan two days after the attack. I've met several of the people who were there and that he's worked with over the past several years and even though many of them are sick now or have passed because of illness tied to recovery work (my father-in-law is still healthy thankfully), they all said they would do the same thing again if it happened tomorrow. Even though shit sucks right now in this country, it's still good to know there are still decent people out there willing to risk their own lives.

[SpaceGhost]

Imagine the folks that were in Hawaii on Dec 7, 1941.

[El Karacho1647545492]

The other thing I'll say about 9/11 is all the thousands of people (not just first responders) in NYC that contracted disease after the towers fell. My uncle was working at the Merrill Lynch building - green domed building next to Twin Towers - and was running down Battery Park when the first tower collapsed. He walked through the ash clouds eastbound trying to get back to his home on Long Island....the guy never drank or smoked in his life, but started developing breathing problems in 2005. Spots on his organs, he was diagnosed with some auto-immune illness and died in 2010. There were many, MANY more civilians that died years later that were directly connected to the towers collapsing and the airborne debris from that.

 

On the positive side, I think 13 of the last 15 9/11 anniversaries have had knock-out beautiful weather just like on 9/11/01.

 

Speaking of forgetting, and specifically of the health issues, what bothered me most about the attack was not about how it exposed how vulnerable we are, not how it resulted in a massive changes in our government's day to day operations, not how some fucking insane terrorists were able to take out thousands of innocent lives and started a war we're still fighting.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Zadroga

 

Go down to the Federal Law part. It took 10 FUCKING YEARS for Congress to act. That right there is one of the prime examples of the negative influence of divisive politics in America. We couldn't agree how to help those people for 10 fucking years, a time during which many of them were dying of related illnesses.

 

This isn't an assault on a particular party; both Democrats and Republicans are at fault here for not quickly figuring out a way to handle this, implications of socialized healthcare be damned. How many peoples' illnesses could've been diagnosed and treated given the proper resources? How many families would still be spending time with their mothers, sisters, brothers, fathers, etc. but for the Congressional shitshow of the last 15 years?

[RedRocket1647545505]

I want to bitch about something for a second. On Sunday I went to a car show at Karric Place. Small local show, a few interesting cars, not much else. There was this guy at the show with a purple challenger SRT8, "grape SRT" I think on the license plate. Dude had a whole "display" set up under the hood with pictures of planes flying into the towers, and news articles, etc.... The whole thing felt exploitative. That he was doing this to somehow help him win a car show trophy because he was in a show on 9/11. It felt tacky.

 

I don't think I will ever be able to forget. And not 1 day out of a year, but I think about it almost every damn day. I think about all my friends, neighbors, family members, that I have lost, and the many that I continue to lose because the scars from this never heal. This is not some detached event for me, There are people I loved that I will never be able to speak to again because of this, the course of my life that had been altered by this significantly, it's a very raw open wound that seeps every day.

 

At the time I really wanted to punch that old dude in the face, but really I should thank him. I need to be reminded that for the majority of America this will never be a personal event, it will be a political statement, or a punchline, or a way to score points in a car show, because for many it's a symbol as much as it is a tragedy.

 

This reminds of of Toby Keith, the country 'singer'.

 

I get so pissed thinking about every song that fucker has wrote since 9/11. I think he's trying to come off as patriotic, but to me, it seems as though he's trying to make a buck off the whole 9/11, war, soldier, etc.

[Rocky31186]

We tried explaining to our 4 year old what was going on while we watched it.

 

I think there should be emergency evacuation programs in place such as parachutes. If something like that were to happen all the people who jumped could have at least had a chance of survival. I remember being in high school.

[xlr8tn]

A&E didn't forget.......video is blocked now. Guess they thought they could make a few more dollars off of it.

[mmrmnhrm]

I think there should be emergency evacuation programs in place such as parachutes. If something like that were to happen all the people who jumped could have at least had a chance of survival.

 

I wondered the same thing (though more along the lines of why radio/television techs don't jump when they're dead tired and done working), but the answer is actually quite simple... it takes ~2000ft to fully deploy and bring a person to landing speed. BASE jumpers with modified gear and ejection seats can do it in far less, but those are entirely different beasts.

[Rocky31186]

I wondered the same thing (though more along the lines of why radio/television techs don't jump when they're dead tired and done working), but the answer is actually quite simple... it takes ~2000ft to fully deploy and bring a person to landing speed. BASE jumpers with modified gear and ejection seats can do it in far less, but those are entirely different beasts.

 

I'm just thinking if something like that happened you could bust your office window out and have more of a chance than 0%. Not sure what other way you could get down from 1300ft tower.

[Forrest Gump 9]

I can pretty much remember my whole day that day which is pretty incredible considering I couldn't recount last week in the same amount of detail.

 

Same here. Certain events just edged into your memory, 9-11-2001 was one of those.

 

I remember starring at the TV thinking how are they going to fix that and then the second plane hit.

[mmrmnhrm]

I'm just thinking if something like that happened you could bust your office window out and have more of a chance than 0%. Not sure what other way you could get down from 1300ft tower.

I dunno... it's a really shitty elevation to be at. Too high for any realistic chance of not going *splat*, but not high enough for a parachute or wingsuit to get enough air underneath it to be useful. The only thing I can really think of that would be helpful in that sort of situation is a hang-glider, but they're too big to fit in your typical office cubicle.

[Orion]

I dunno... it's a really shitty elevation to be at. Too high for any realistic chance of not going *splat*, but not high enough for a parachute or wingsuit to get enough air underneath it to be useful. The only thing I can really think of that would be helpful in that sort of situation is a hang-glider, but they're too big to fit in your typical office cubicle.

 

 

Collapsible external elevators? Something attached to the top of of the building, like a window washers catwalk, that only deploys in an emergency?

 

Perhaps static line chutes above a certain height threshold? Not "jump out and pull the cord" type chutes, but chutes that are attached to a line in the building, so that they are opened the second you jump from the building.

 

Slidewire basket system, like what they use at the Shuttle launch pads? Something deployable...like the fire department hits a button and these things fire over to the nearby buildings or something where a team is ready to set them into some predetermind catch locations.

 

Its crazy to me that we haven't come up with SOMETHING that we can use with some degree of confidence, especially in the last 15 years.

[mmrmnhrm]

Its crazy to me that we haven't come up with SOMETHING that we can use with some degree of confidence, especially in the last 15 years.

 

Not crazy to me. Engineer says "We can make this system, it'll cost $$$." Building owner says "That's nice, but the insurance liability for not installing it is only $. Go jack off somewhere else."

[Orion]

Not crazy to me. Engineer says "We can make this system, it'll cost $$$." Building owner says "That's nice, but the insurance liability for not installing it is only $. Go jack off somewhere else."

 

And normally I would agree with you, but the fear mongering and "patriot-gasm" (I mean no disrespect to those that were actually moved to do patriotic things as a result of the attacks, but if you tried to make a buck off of it, fuck you) that followed in the wake of the attacks, and indeed, lives on today (as mentioned earlier in the thread in a few examples) makes me think someone would have done something.