This is my account of what I saw on that infamous day, September 11, 2001. The events were interesting because the place where I worked was directly involved in the response to the terrorist attacks on America. Canada's military response was dubbed
Operation Apollo.
The days leading up to September 11th was as normal as any. I had just started a new job. The union at my workplace was planning on striking and picketing buildings. So, the work environment wasn't the most friendly.
On the morning of 9/11, I woke up quite early because my dad was watching the morning news, and the TV's volume was very loud. I got up, and I went to the living room to see what was going on, and my dad had said two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center. I thought, oh a plane accident, that's very bad. I thought nothing of it, and continued on with my morning routine.
By the time I had headed out the door, I saw a glimpse of the TV, and it said that the North American airspace had been closed, and all planes were ordered to land. I thought, that was kind of unreal. This is a big deal if they're closing airspace. This is stuff that movies are made of. However, the thought of a possible terrorist attack didn't event cross my mind.
I got on my bus as usual to my work. When the bus got within a few kilometers of my workplace, the bus stopped because there was a huge traffic jam. This was unusual. There's only one road that leads into my work, and it was backed up as far as the eye could see. The driver let us out, and we walked the rest of the way which took about thirty minutes. As we walked by cars, we saw that both civilian and military personnel stuck waiting in the cars to get into work.
When I finally arrived at the front gates (which is the outer edge of my work) I noticed a huge difference. Normally there's a friendly unarmed old guy from the commissionaires manning the gates. Generally we would show him our IDs, and he would let us in. The commissionaire was replaced by military police armed with automatic rifles. They searched our bags for potential weapons or bombs. Traffic snarled to a halt because the military was there checking cars entering the facility. They were looking for bombs hidden in the car, or under the car.
After getting into work quite late, my co-workers informed me that the a massive terrorist attack was under way in America. The Pentegon was hit and the twin towers at the World Trade Center was hit. There were also rumours of another potentially hijacked plane heading towards the capitol. Many planes that were in American airspace were diverted to Canadian airports, and NORAD had scrambled fighters to escort suspicious planes and force them to land. I thought, woah, this is hardcore!
Our entire facility was under lockdown because it was deemed a possible target in the event of a massive North American terrorist attack, and that's why security was suddenly stepped up. The most important building had anti-aircraft defences against a possible air attack. These defences were care of a certain Canadian frigate ship.
I remember walking around the building, and every office or shop I walked past, people were huddling around radios trying to get the latest news of what was happening. I recall logging on to CNN.com, and their website was being hammered by so much web traffic. They removed all non-essential images and news stories from their website, and put only the latest news about the terrorist attacks because their servers couldn't handle all these readers at the same time. At one point, their website was just plain text, with a picture of the twin towers burning. You couldn't access anything else from CNN.
It was disturbing watching pictures of people jumping out of the burning towers. Even more troubling was when the towers collapsed. A cold shiver went down my spine as there were still thousands of people inside the tower. When the towers came down though, it almost looked like a controlled implosion as it came down fairly orderly. I thought maybe the first responders placed charges throughout the building to bring it down safely. This wasn't the case.
Apparently in the early morning, the union was setting up a picket line in front of the gates. When military sources understood that a terrorist attack was under way, they told the union to take down the picket and get the heck inside the facility. The perimeter was not a safe place to be. (One benefit to the attack was that the labour dispute was concluded quite readily afterwards since the staff were instrumental in national security.)
Later in the day, the base commander gave everyone a briefing of what was going on. He informed us that the state of security would remain high for a long time. Ottawa was dispatching an elite force to our facility to help beef up security. Buses were no longer allowed to get close to the facility (which meant longer walks in the morning). Everything seemed to change that day.
I think everyone was waiting to hear from President Bush, and his response to this attack. The official death toll wasn't in yet, but everyone wanted to know who did this, and who's butt are we going to kick? The international outpouring of support to America was unified and awe inspiring. I think everyone wanted President Bush to succeed in hunting down those who did this. His address to America was strong, and will probably go down in history.
The immediate aftermath of 9/11 was felt throughout the country. The stock markets had shut down to prevent a market crash. When they reopened, the Dow Jones fell by over 600 points. By the end of the week, $1.2 trillion dollars had been ripped out of the stock market because of those dang terrorists.
When we all found out that Osama Bin Laden was involved in organizing these attacks, we were going after him. In October, Canada announced that it would participate in bringing the fight to Bin Laden. Our facility jumped into action to help prepare for the deployment. Many shops mobilized completely, and they were now operating 24 hours a day. Workers in those shops were pulling 16 hour days to get things ready. Operation Apollo was on!
If you'd like to learn a bit more about the September 11th attacks, check out the
wikipedia article as a starting point.
Please, share with us about where you were on 9/11, things that you observed, your immediate thoughts, etc.
