Looking Back 7 Years Ago...

It's so hard to believe that it's been 7 years since the horrific tragedy that immobilized this country. This morning, I arrived in the CNN parking lot around 8:40am. I had my car radio tuned in to The Bert Show on Q100 awaiting the touching tribute to 9/11 that they have done every year to commemorate and pay respect to all those affected. As I searched for a parking spot, I looked at the people walking by with their briefcases, laptop bags, blackberries, in rushed yet eager anticipation of starting another work day. I found a spot at about 8:43am. As I sat in the car on the upper deck of the CNN Center parking lot, I stared directly at my place of employment. It looks so massive from the upper parking deck at 14 stories high. I tried to imagine a building a little short of 10 TIMES taller than the CNN Center before me. Then I pictured two buildings of that size standing side by side. I definitely felt the sting in my eyes.

At 8:46am the Bert Show went completely silent for 60 seconds. It's really hard to be still and quiet and imagine what happened during this time 7 years ago. The people, just like the ones I walked by this morning, sitting at their computers, in line at Windows on the World ordering a coffee and a bagel, in an early meeting making plans to generate revenue for the company...within an instant, about 200 of these people were killed instantly by the impact of the first plane that hit the office tower. So were the people on the plane itself; I think often about how they actually saw their impending doom. What could those last moments have been like?

After the minute of silence was over, The Bert Show then plays the montage I mentioned above. It is the most touching, emotional thing you will ever hear. The montage is comprised of audio clips from 9/11 as the events actually unfolded. My hair stands up on the back of my neck EVERYTIME I hear DJ Bert Weiss say, "OMG, another plane just crashed into the damn building!!" This happened at 9:06am 7years ago. Fellow DJ Jeff Dahler immediately states "It's got to be some sort of terrorist thing!" He had no idea at the time how squarely on the head he hit this.

It's so easy to think on all those people who were at the Trade Center towers, at the Pentagon, and flying in those planes and dismissively say "Oh those poor people...God Bless them". I think most of us do this because we're human and can't bear the thought of what these people went through. The specific details that have come out over the past 7 years of what specific individuals trapped in the towers, on the ground, in the Pentagon and in those planes went through are so horrendous that it's still hard for me to mention on this blog; reading it was hard enough. I just sat in the car this morning and pictured teachers in classrooms not too far away from WTC towers quickly rounding up their students and running out of the door and down the street in an attempt to get as far away from Manhattan as possible. Parents evacuating office buildings and seeing little kids run by them, wondering if their kids were in that group or somewhere blocks away running through traffic to avoid only God knows what. One of the things that made 9/11 so harrowing was the fact that with each event that took place, you never knew what would happen next, and where. Landmarks, tall buildings, in major cities all over the country were being evacuated at the same time. When that US Air Flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania, the panic seemed to increase even more across the nation...Pennsylvania?? That seemed so random at the time, and no place felt safe anymore.

Then there were all of the false, inaccurate reports that were going out. Somewhere between the Pentagon crash and the Pennsylvania crash occurring the FAA immediately grounded all commercial flights. Throughout the day there were reports of one or two planes that hadn't been accounted for yet. Reports of people hearing loud booms here and there. And for the first time since it's inception, CNN.com was COMPLETELY hosed and it was impossible to confirm or deny anything for a long time. It was impossible to reach friends and loved ones in New York and DC. The building I was working in at the time was blocks away from the Bank of America building, the tallest building in the Southeast US. Do you know that it is only HALF the height that the World Trade Center towers were? For those of you here in Atlanta who've never been to NY, stroll down to Midtown and stand out in front of the Bank of America tower and look up at it. Dizzying, huh? Imagine a tower twice as tall as this! So many rambling, roving recollections right now.

But the one thing that always stays with me almost every single day is the phone call that Kevin Cosgrove made from one of the floors where everyone was trapped in the World Trade Center. It's so helpless to listen to this and know his fate and that we can't do anything to save him. WARNING: The phone call ends with Kevin realizing that the building is caving in; the terror in his voice is almost unbearable.

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