Where Were You ?

Twenty years ago today was one of those “Where were you moments”. Few of those happen in a lifetime, thank fully, as we enthusiastically and unknowingly entered work.

I was a young IT Manager at Norton Rose. It was around 1.45 in the afternoon, people had returned from lunch, the office was buzzing with the usual activity. A rumour of a ‘light plane’ hitting the World Trade Centre was murmured between terminals. A few minutes later this story, delivered via Netscape, was updated to a ‘commercial airliner’. A jet plane had hit the WTC! Bad visibility? Pilot error? Engine failure?

Moments later the phones started ringing “Seen the news”, “Watch the TV!” as a second plane crashed, this time into the South Tower. This was clearly no accident. Someone got a TV operating and the room of some 50 IT staff came together and watched in disbelief as extraordinary images were broadcast on CNN/BBC. The room fell silent apart from occasional emotional gasps and expletives. No one did much work that day, in the department, ?in the firm, probably across the world as the devastating story unfolded. People started contacting relatives in NY, the firm enquiring if any staff were in the city or on flights to the USA as reports of two more hijackings came in. Staff imminently flying to the firms’ offices cancelling.

I had left financial services for law, and knew my previous colleagues would be on open lines to dealers in NY hearing things directly – and also to Cantor Fitzgerald whose HQ had taken a direct hit; No one going to work there that morning would survive – some 650 souls.?

London and NY are joined at the hip like few other cities and though being 3,000 miles apart Londoners felt their pain. Whilst this remains the worlds deadliest terrorist attack, its less known that 67 Britons died that morning in NY, far exceeding the victims yet to come to London on the 7/7 terrorist attack.

People left work earlier that day, to be with families at home. Many walked home as rumours and false security alarms across the city and the on the tube took hold. Some just walked to gather their thoughts alone. It felt to me that commuters seemed unusually quiet, steeped in thought and sorrow as they read the Evening Standard. The images came thick and fast all evening and no matter how many times you saw them they still seemed unbelievable; The deep thud as the towers collapsed, NY enveloped in a massive dust cloud, the frightened business people caked in ghostly white powder running down streets littered unrecognisably with glass and rubble. The tear-jerking image of the innocent office worker falling from the 100th floor rather than facing the flames holding her skirt down in a final moment of dignity. The images were stark. The casualty figures were climbing.

We knew the response would come, that the world would change. The President stated simply to the world “You are with us or against us”. The response to our ally was clear. A new word entered our vocabulary – Al-Qaeda. ?

I’ve visited the 911 Memorial, where the twin towers once stood. It’s a peaceful place despite being in the heart of NY. It will be particularly peaceful today. Let’s hope some good comes from all this as, twenty years later, the impact still affects us all. ?Thoughts with Americans, all victims of 911 and particularly New Yorkers today.?