Just Roll A d20 For SAN Now ([info]camwyn) wrote,
@ 2007-09-11 08:48:00
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*glances at the clock*

At this time six years ago I was installing patches to McAfee Antivirus on the computers at the Metropolitan New Jersey Chapter of the American Red Cross. A few minutes later I looked up and wondered, "Huh. How come everybody's going into the board room?"

Turned out it was because that's where the giant TV was.

It's wetter today than it was then.

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[info]thekit
2007-09-11 01:15 pm UTC (link)
In australia, they'd just finished screening an episode of the west wing. No sooner had the credits rolled, the second plane hit the south tower, and the news anchors testily argued with their staff on air.

"Could you please make that monitor the same as what is being broadcast? So I can work with something here? Don't make me ask again."

I remember calling my girlfriend and together we watched silent footage of Al Roker screaming into his microphone as he was engulfed in a thunderhead of gray dust.

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[info]camwyn
2007-09-11 01:30 pm UTC (link)
I called my mom a little while after the second tower was hit and told her to turn on the TV. I still remember the sound of her voice as she said, "Both towers?" Mostly because it fed right into what I had been thinking, but didn't want to say: one tower hit is a pilot with a heart attack. Two towers hit is deliberate action.

I called a friend on the West Coast, too. It was barely past six AM at the time. I got his mother. "I hate to wake you up like this, ma'am, but you need to turn on CNN. Right now."

Didn't get a whole lot of phone calls in after that. They needed to keep the lines open. I did call my parents from the last working pay phone in south Manhattan when I got there, but only briefly. Didn't help that while I was on the phone I glanced up and saw that everyone- reporters, cops, you name it- was standing with one of his or her arms upraised in the reflexive 'please don't hit me' posture. When I stepped back from the pay phone I realized that this was because the horrible noise I had just heard had been another building collapsing a few blocks away.

Word of advice: if you ever go to work for an emergency response organization, or volunteer for them, check the equipment they have in their response trucks and buy extra ground coffee. The day that you have to serve coffee out of their response trucks, you'll appreciate any extra caffeine you can have on hand.

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[info]hortorum
2007-09-11 02:18 pm UTC (link)
I think I still have the email exchange between us two that day. I knew I had a friend in NYC and was relieved to get your "Can't stop now, I'm on my way there." reply in short order.

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[info]camwyn
2007-09-11 02:30 pm UTC (link)
I've still got the shirt I wore that day. I got rid of the trousers and I gave the dust-stained shoes to my Red Cross chapter because they wanted stuff for a display, but I still have my logo shirt.

And a vague desire to trade my current bicycle for one of the big rugged mountain models with tires as wide as a porn star's schlong, just so that when I'm riding in Manhattan and have to take the WTC PATH station to get home, i can ride it over the memorabilia sellers' feet. But that's just me.

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[info]mephron
2007-09-11 02:40 pm UTC (link)
SPIKED tires.

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[info]camwyn
2007-09-11 03:02 pm UTC (link)
"Ewan's Spiked Tentacles of Forced Intrusion!" "... wait, what?"

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[info]mephron
2007-09-11 03:12 pm UTC (link)
"You weren't even using that for anything right at that point."

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[info]mephron
2007-09-11 02:27 pm UTC (link)
Last year I almost didn't leave the house because it was a cloudless blue day.

The same thing the year before. And the one before that.

I'm sort of glad that today, where it's the same day of the week, it's not a pleasant, cloudless day.

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