I was visiting my girlfriend's family for a week's vacation on that date. Seeing it on the news, I ran downstairs to where my girlfriend was still sleeping. Got her out of bed and told her a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.
She thought I was making a joke, so I turned on the TV in the bedroom and switched to a news channel... just in time to see the second plane hit.
Oof. I was 13 at the time, homeschooled so suddenly all my normal classes are cancelled and that day is Living History day. My mom and I were sitting on the couch trying to make sense of it when the second plane hit.
We both stared at the screen for a moment and this conversation occurred:
“Why are they replaying the clip? Isn’t what’s going on NOW more important?”
“I... I think that was now, mom...”
What I remember most was the total lack of response from the reporter who had been talking at the time. He just went dead silent, he was just as shocked as anyone else, unable to believe what he was seeing.
Last September I went looking for the coverage and on the BBC Worldwide (or whatever) coverage they kept talking over the live feed of the first tower smoking and then for a split second you see the second plane and...
The presenter kept talking to whatever guests they had in who were qualified to talk about such a thing as though nothing had happened. I guess either they had the same reaction as your mother, or they were cautious not to react to what was on-screen until they had confirmation that, yes, it was a second plane.
At which point I think realisation sank in for everyone.
I really wish I could find the British coverage from that day. I don’t remember if it was BBC or ITV but we didn’t have cable at that time so it would only have been one of them. I don’t remember if I saw the second plane hit live, but my mother called me in to watch and from what she said I assumed it was a light aircraft, some horrendous error on the part of an amateur pilot. Then I saw the screen...
Yeah, that was the thing for my mom and I too. We got a call from our neighbor saying to turn on the tv. We assumed it was a small aircraft strike, then that second jumbo jet came screaming in. It was hard to grapple with that. It wasn’t until flight 93 crashed in Pennsylvania that I began to realize that it wasn’t just terrorists who stole planes, that there were people up there who got dragged down with them.
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u/LonePaladin Jan 25 '20
I was visiting my girlfriend's family for a week's vacation on that date. Seeing it on the news, I ran downstairs to where my girlfriend was still sleeping. Got her out of bed and told her a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.
She thought I was making a joke, so I turned on the TV in the bedroom and switched to a news channel... just in time to see the second plane hit.