Ten Years On

It's a decade after the terror attacks of September 11, and people everywhere are remembering. Depending who you are and how old were, you remember different things about the day.

I remember listening to CJOB that morning and it was on that station that I heard the news of the first plane hitting the first of the towers. At the time, it sounded like an accident. I remember thinking about a couple of other aviation accidents few weeks prior and figuring this too was accidental.

At some point, CJOB switched over to CNN's audio feed, so I did as well. I also made my way to work, which at the time was the Winnipeg office of one of the city's members of parliament. Everyone in the office basically just watched coverage all day long, as did pretty much everyone. One of my co-workers was sick when she watched footage of people jumping from the towers.

We had two phone calls that day, one from our office on the hill where the Ottawa staffer told us that that snipers had been posted on the roof of centre block and everyone was being sent home. The other call was someone who needed help with student loans. I'm not sure if that caller was unaware of what was going on, or just unconcerned.

I also remember the internet pretty much stopping. CNN's homepage was reduced to a simple couple of text links taking visitors to other parts of the their site. CBC's site wasn't working so well either. Everyone wanted information and news sites couldn't keep up.

Search engines weren't much better. But I do remember running Osama Bin Laden's name through a search when the initial speculation was that he was connected/responsible for the attack. Among the first three hits was a satire of some sort that on a free host like Angelfire or Geocities that had been done months or years before. I found it again a day or two later and the author had voluntarily taken it down, saying it was in now in poor taste.

The Winnipeg Free Press published a special edition that afternoon. I only remember it was filled with pictures. I assume there was articles with the best information available at the time. I don't think I have it anymore, but I wish I did.

As I did every Tuesday at the time, I went out to dinner with some friends. There was some uneasiness about that, but we forged on and discussed the day's events. I don't recall anything specific, other than speculation about the death toll. Someone at the table said 20 thousand. I remember responding that, if true, the death toll was more than D-Day.

About the only other thing I remember from around that time was going to the first Blue Bomber game following the attacks. The game sponsor was Boeing, and I recall the coincidence being slightly awkward.

Since everyone else is rolling out remembrances, I'd like to recommend "That Day" from WGN radio in Chicago. Its only an hour and available for listening or download via the link above. It's exceptionally well produced and gives a bit of an insight what it was like to be in a news room that day.

WGN has a variety of other audio clips on the site that are worth a listen. Especially interesting is the audio montage and the raw audio they have of other calls and radio traffic from the day of the attacks.

And it's not up yet (and may never be) but their overnight host had an excellent clip-by-clip breakdown of that montage (plus a couple others) between 1 and 2 am which aired on Sept 11, 2011. If it shows up as a podcast, I'll edit a link into the post, so check back.