My mother phoned me at work soon after the first aircraft hit, and as others have said, at first it seemed like some awful freak accident. Later a bloke came to see me who hadn’t heard, and I breathlessly filled him in on what I knew; both buildings collapsed, talk of 50,000 dead (all sorts of rumours at that time) talk of another plane heading for the Pentagon and one for the White House. “Oh, right,” he said, like I’d just told him the toilets were blocked or something; “Do you know where this gauge is?” Weird.
Does anyone else, even after all this time, still find it hard to take in? When I see footage of the second aircraft hitting, there’s a split second when the aircraft just seems to vanish and nothing seems to happen, and in that nanosecond I still suspect I’ve imagined it all; planes just don’t fly into buildings like that. Then of course that awful angry red burst of black and red, and I know it’s all too real.
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