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Ground Zero
Aug. 5th, 2003 12:11 pmI was living in California on September 11th 2001, it’s only a couple of days after my birthday and we’d just got back from a really fun trip to Disneyland and Vegas, where we made use of internal domestic American Airlines.
I remember at the time being slightly less than impressed, as I always was, with the condition of the aircraft and the general security and state of the airports.
I woke up at about 7.30, stomped through to the living room, got some rice crispies and turned on the TV to see what “non-news” the local CNN feed was bring us. I blinked. I changed channels a couple of times to check – the world trade centre was on fire. I called for M to come and watch, she stumbled through from the bathroom complaining that it had better be important.
It was. It was 9-11.
A few weeks later our company folded its US operation and we had to return to the UK – the San Francisco Bay area has a lovely climate, the UK in November does not. I’m still annoyed about it.
I was in New York recently and therefore thought it would be interesting to finally see Ground Zero close up, by the time we woke up in California it was pretty much all over, so I braved the New York subway and took a train to City Hall and walked the rest of the way.
My first thought was the site wasn’t all that big. As you approach down the side streets with their towering skyscrapers around you, it is really hard to get a proper sense of scale. After all, the towers were high, not all that wide. As you get closer you realise there is something of a hush, sure there is traffic noise, and the noise of the equipment but there isn’t too much being said by the people lining the edges of the area. I crossed the road and peered through the fence.
It’s not easy to get a good view, the construction site is, when you get close, huge. 22 acres, 4 stories deep and while they haven’t quite made up their minds what is going to be built there, they are taking the chance to sort out what were apparently a lot of infrastructure problems underground.
I followed the fence around towards a building still sheathed in nylon netting with a huge hole in the side where it used to be attached to other buildings. Picture boards tell the basics of the story how on the morning of September 11 2001 a group of terrorists flew planes into the towers of the world trade centre murdering almost 3,000 people. There’s a satellite photo of the wreckage on fire taken on the 12th. At the north end of the site, there’s a walkway around the nylon covered building – a hoarding has been erected and painted green. Messages and flags are left here; I overheard a worker explaining that they’d repaint it every few weeks, but it filled up again pretty quickly.
It was hard to read the messages and I let them be and walked around for a little while, taking a few pictures of the scale of the hole, before walking around to the front again. A series of signs hold the names of the dead.
Standing by this was a woman in her early 40’s holding a petition; “Please don’t dump our loved ones – the ashes are people, let us have them back.”
Says it all really.
I remember at the time being slightly less than impressed, as I always was, with the condition of the aircraft and the general security and state of the airports.
I woke up at about 7.30, stomped through to the living room, got some rice crispies and turned on the TV to see what “non-news” the local CNN feed was bring us. I blinked. I changed channels a couple of times to check – the world trade centre was on fire. I called for M to come and watch, she stumbled through from the bathroom complaining that it had better be important.
It was. It was 9-11.
A few weeks later our company folded its US operation and we had to return to the UK – the San Francisco Bay area has a lovely climate, the UK in November does not. I’m still annoyed about it.
I was in New York recently and therefore thought it would be interesting to finally see Ground Zero close up, by the time we woke up in California it was pretty much all over, so I braved the New York subway and took a train to City Hall and walked the rest of the way.
My first thought was the site wasn’t all that big. As you approach down the side streets with their towering skyscrapers around you, it is really hard to get a proper sense of scale. After all, the towers were high, not all that wide. As you get closer you realise there is something of a hush, sure there is traffic noise, and the noise of the equipment but there isn’t too much being said by the people lining the edges of the area. I crossed the road and peered through the fence.
It’s not easy to get a good view, the construction site is, when you get close, huge. 22 acres, 4 stories deep and while they haven’t quite made up their minds what is going to be built there, they are taking the chance to sort out what were apparently a lot of infrastructure problems underground.
I followed the fence around towards a building still sheathed in nylon netting with a huge hole in the side where it used to be attached to other buildings. Picture boards tell the basics of the story how on the morning of September 11 2001 a group of terrorists flew planes into the towers of the world trade centre murdering almost 3,000 people. There’s a satellite photo of the wreckage on fire taken on the 12th. At the north end of the site, there’s a walkway around the nylon covered building – a hoarding has been erected and painted green. Messages and flags are left here; I overheard a worker explaining that they’d repaint it every few weeks, but it filled up again pretty quickly.
It was hard to read the messages and I let them be and walked around for a little while, taking a few pictures of the scale of the hole, before walking around to the front again. A series of signs hold the names of the dead.
Standing by this was a woman in her early 40’s holding a petition; “Please don’t dump our loved ones – the ashes are people, let us have them back.”
Says it all really.
