911

It is one of those times when you do recall what you were doing and where you were.

We were on vacation in Williamsburg VA, and making ready to head out for the day. I decided to turn on CNN see what was happening in the world, as I had not seen the news in a few days.

One tower was burning and the reporter was talking. I was stunned, I assumed it was a fire in the building; I had no idea what was happening. Then the second tower exploded, just like that. I did not notice the plane. I saw it simply explode and assumed something from the first tower caused it somehow still unwilling to believe anything else.

Then when they showed the plan in slow motion hitting it, it was immediately clear what had happened. There was no doubt what was taking place, and it was simply a matter of time before we knew all the details.

Reporters were going nuts they were making up events all over that weren’t happening though You didn’t know anymore what was happening as they were reporting all things and tried to tie them all together.

We stayed home and watched the television transfixed and prayed to God for it to end. We packed as well as we could not continue the vacation from that point on. We had to get home.

The drive home was eerie as all planes were grounded. You could feel it. You could sense there weren’t any planes in the sky and it was unnerving. Knowing the skies were silent and not a single plane was up there.

We saw the signs directing you to different routs as you approached NYC. We opted to head out around the city through PA and up to western NY then back across NY to Albany. There were temporary signs put up telling you about the closed roads. It was eerie. The highway had a silentness about it, At gas stations people were quiet TV’s on and radios on and everyone listening intently not saying anything to one another.

My boy was less than a year old, and even he sensed something, as he was unusually silent and well behaved on the drive home.

We listened to the radio all the way home trying separate fact from fiction as the reports kept coming in. by the time we got to Albany it was pretty clear that there were four planes in all. They dispelled a rumor about some explosions at some federal buildings.

The feeling was surreal, it was hard to comprehend, and hard to accept what happened. It was time to face the reality of it.

At work we lost communications with all our NYC locations. We lost an office. It was devastating to know people we knew through electronic communications only were no longer there. Then reality set in. We lost people. People who we did not know but were part of the team just the same.

You worked on autopilot only. You were numb. We had to restore communications to the other locations as quickly as possible, and we had to assess the damage. You had to focus on the data loss, and the replacement of the outage and try hard to ignore the loss of the personnel.

Let that sink in later right now get systems back on-line and replace the data from backup servers. Get the systems back as close as possible to original capacity. Then and only then let it sink in. We tried to stay on autopilot as long as possible so as to avoid the inevitable.

That was getting people down there to assess the damage. Who to send, everyone was a volunteer. Everyone wanted to do something anything. We built the servers by hand and the volunteers drove them down to the new remote location and got them on-line. We had to use DSL for now as all T1’s were down. Even that was hard to get.

Now to face the human side. Meetings to talk about what happened and where do we go from there. It was hard, a list of names. Names we had seen in emails and memo’s but now names of unknown status. It was hard. No one wanted to do it; no one wanted to face it. Collections for the families, give what you can.

That we can do, we can reach in and give from our excess. We can pass the hat and make some contribution to the families. No time to think about it just do it, give like you never gave before and maybe it will put a salve on it. Maybe it wont hurt as much.

I was not going to write about 911, as so many stories are already out there. But it hard to keep it in. After five years it is still raw and still alive. Memorial services are all over. There aren’t words even after five years that fill the gap or give console.

We do what people always do, we move on. We forge ahead and we keep going. We don’t have a choice after all. We pray to God that he has a plan and that plan we may one day know. We pray for those who are lost, and we pray for those who remain.