10 years ago today I was in the test room at my work at Ericsson Intracom based in Leicester. The dot-com bubble had long since burst and Ericsson had given up on its ambition to rule the world of 3G and was contracting back to Sweden. As a result of this it had already been announced that Ericsson Intracom would be sacrificed as part of this retrenchment. As such I wasn't exactly interested in working too hard, but the test room with its rows of ATM racks and sun work station was a good place to hide from the general gloom predictable affecting the office downstairs.
I think it was in the early afternoon that John came up to the room. Had I, he asked heard about New York? No I answered. He replied that something had happened at the world trade towers. As luck had had it, Ian the IT admin had only recently showed me how to bypass the company firewalls to stream IP. As you could probably guess, with the the work force already on the chopping block, there was some serious IT abuse going on and whats the point of being a communication company if you did not have a big fat network pipe. Anyway I quickly configured the system and attached to one of the news feeds, probably the BBC's.
What I saw was initially very hard to make sense of.
The first tower was on fire about a quarter from the top. There was the usual confused commentary from the news presenters who were desperately trying to balance the need between providing facts and generating panic with wild speculation. What was clear was that a disaster of major proportions was unfolding in the biggest city in the USA, live on television.
The commentators announced that they believed an air liner had collided with one of towers. Two things come to mind from that time. Firstly at first it seemed nothing more than a tragic an accident but nothing more. The second thing is that most of the thoughts were for the plane passengers. I certainly assumed that the emergency services would soon have the fire in the tower under control and that would be that.
Word quickly got round the office downstairs that we had a live feed and quickly the room became crowded with co-workers watching the images coming in. I think it wasn't long after the room had filled that the 2nd tower was hit. This event changed the thoughts and the mood in the room. Finally it could no longer be assumed that this was a one off tragedy. This was a planned terrorist act of the most evil kind, aimed at the heart of the most powerful nation on earth.
I remember chatting among ourselves trying to make sense of what we saw. I remember asking our manager, Bob, whether there were any passengers on the plane. He answered he thought they must of been empty and the planes stolen from airports. Today it sounds naive, but in some ways, the thought of someone deliberately flying a plane into a building filled with passengers was such an alien thought that we desperately sought alternative explanations. Even then I had doubts. How would you steal a plane, who could take it off, fly it? But I had no better answers so I kept quiet.
Time moved slowly on. The shots from helicopters of both towers burning were continuously cut in with repeated footage of the 2nd tower exploding into flame as the plane slammed into it. Strangely when a report started coming in of smoke coming from the Pentagon in Washington DC, it was almost came as a incidental report, even though the later what-if scenarios of a plane being targeted at the seat of American power were even more scary to contend with. But at the time it seemed reality was confined to New York.
Suddenly the 1st tower collapsed.
Not a slow tumbling, but a sudden explosion of dust and rubble as the floors compressed against each other. I can only remember the silence in the room as the we watched it. It was hard to believe that the horror could get any worse, but I think then we suddenly realised that anyone in that building and its surrounding were dead. In some ways it was probably my first thoughts of the buildings inhabitants. By this point the collapse of the second tower was inevitable and we could only sit there watching for it to happen, powerless to stop or effect it.
I am not sure when I went home, but almost certainly it was early. I spoke to my wife. She was at home with my two year old daughter, Charlotte, but had not seen the live feed. In some ways I think because of this, the impact on her has been less than on me. Or maybe it was because I realised early on that day that our world had changed, certainly in my lifetime, and maybe forever. Of course I could not of predicted how. At first it seemed the tragedy would bring the world closer together in joint condemnation.
However it wasn't to be.
Political mismanagement ensure that opportunity was lost and instead the world, and the west in particular, changed to one of paranoia and mistrust. One where every passenger is checked on no fly list, anyone called Mohamed is seen as a potential terrorist, torture is officially sanctioned, people can be held for years without charge and far right wing parties can use the fear and doubt to there own end.
It also changed me.
I remember being on an airplane 6 month later. A women called the air stewardess over and asked if it was possible to watch the pilot fly the plane as a friend of hers had done a year ago. I still remember the disgust on the stewardesses face as she explained that it was not now possible to do this. Personally I had a strong desire to shake the women and shout at her about why she did not realise that we do not live in that type of world anymore. One where we can trust each strangers and assume all peoples have our best intentions in mind.
Charlotte is now 12. I was talking to her today and I was amazed when she asked what 9/11 was. It seemed inconceivable that anyone alive would not understand its significance, but to her it was just two numbers. So I dug from the bottom of my filing cabinet for a Sunday paper I had saved from a few days after the event. She went away with it and about 10 minutes later she came back handed the paper back to me."nasty" she said.
It is then that I understood. To Charlotte and anyone who did not live through the event it is just history, no more real than the Holocaust, the 2nd World War, Trafalgar or the battle of Hasting. In the same way that I can in no way relive my fathers experience in the 2nd world war, she can not understand the effects of watching planes live being deliberately being slammed into sky scrapers.
So why am I writing this?
Firstly it is my attempt to try and get my daughter to understand why this day is to all of this so important and for her to understand how it effects her world today and will likely shape her future.
Secondly my memories even now are fading. What order did events occur? Who was there in the room with me? There is no guarantee that these memories will be available to me in another 10 years time. This gives me the opportunity to write down my personal testament to the tragedy of that day.
Finally it is an opportunity for me, in my own small and unconventional way, to pay tribute to all those who lost there lives on the day, and the others who would still be living if not for the ripples spreading from that terrible day.
