Scott E
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Registered: 07-2004
Location: Dingmans Ferry, Pike Co. PA
Posts: 29
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Where were you on 9/11?
On the morning of 9/11/01 I was sitting with my wife and oldest son, she was on the computer and he was watching Sponge Bob Squarepants, he was 5 years old then. I had got up and went over to the computer after my wife got up, I wanted to checkout the bass fishing site and to see if anything new was posted. The adminastrator of the site Mike was asking for information about what was going on at the World Trade Center, he lived 20 blocks away between Chinatown and Little Itally and could see the smoke by the towers from his apartment window. He had no TV or radio, he had tried making phone calls but all the lines were down or busy in his area.
I had changed the channel from Nickelodeon to CNN with protest from my son and I started tapping away at the keyboard, typing almost word for word what was being said. At that time only the one tower was hit by an airplane and just seemed like an odd accident. We watched on and as Mike and I had posted the information back and fourth and then we both in disbelief watched the second plane hit the tower, he from his window, me from my TV. We knew then this was no accident and wondered who would do this, quickly Osama Bin Laden came to my mind...It was sometime shortly after that the Pentagon was hit by the third plane.
After the towers ha crashed down we started wondering about members of the site that worked in the area, some were good friends of both Mike and myself. Many of us had fished together or had met at our annual bass fishing get togethers, guys like Robbie and Craig who were police officers in Manhattan and working near that area. Then Mike started thinking about getting out of Manhattan for a while until things calmed down, he was talking about heading to Lake Champlain were his family lived...Problem was no one was leaving the city by car, bus or train all the bridges and tunnels were closed, plus his wife is disabled.
At the time I lived between Stewart International Airport/Air National Guard base and West Point Millitary Academy, usually we had the sounds of commercial aircraft and millitary aircraft(C-5a, C-140 and helicopters) flying over the house. I remember getting ready for work that early afternoon as I had to work the mid-shift and noticing silence except for the occasional helicopter flying over shaking the windows of the house. As I headed to work I got near the Hudson River crossing well north of the city, there must have been a dozen NYS police cars parked near the bridge on each end. After getting past the bridge and almost to work I sat in traffic, many of these people in cars around me were trying to get near the city to pick up relatives that had walked across the bridges coming out of the city. I remember seeing a line of red flashing lights and cars pulling to the side of the road behind me, lines of firetrucks from volunteer fire companies in the Hudson Valley heading to the city to lend a hand.
I got to work in the power plant were I worked, and everyone there was in the control room, the guys in the earlier shifts had rigged up an antena to the closed circuit TV monitor so they could get the news of what was going on. Everyone was in a daze as was I about the days events, then we had learned that the second plane had flown right over the power plant as we were right on the river. My boss called me on the radio and told me to grab a forklift, we just got word from corporate to load up as many leather gloves, face sheilds, hard hats, dust masks and cases of bottled water we could fit into the company truck and get a driver to meet up with a few of our other power plants trucks in NJ, these supplies were headed to the WTC site, our southern plants were sending supplies to the Pentagon.
Later that night when I got home I checked the computer before heading to bed, one member had said he was in a bus near the site of the WTC when the building came crumbling down, he said every window in the bus was blown in and everyone that was on the bus with him was alive, but none had walked out of the bus without cuts all over their bodies. A few members said they knew people or had family members missing, but most of our members had checked in except Robbie and Craig.
A few days later Robbie and Craig checked in, they were both safe, they were on their way home from Manhattan to Long Island when they had heard on the radio that the second plane hit the WTC. They had decided to turn around and head back to NYC to see if they could help in the rescue operations, before they made it into the city the buildings fell.
Robbie and Craig stayed in the city for the next couple days, helping in the recovery and working the supply lines in getting the donated food, water and safety equipment that came in from around the country out to the firefighters and steel workers working on the recovery effort. Robbie had volunteered his time to go to the site were all the rubble from the WTC was dumped, to sift through the small bits and pieces to make sure there were no small fragments of remains...He was there for months sorting through crumb sized pieces of what was the World Trade Center towers.
As a child I had visited the World Trade Center twice on school field trips, I saw the commodities trading floor and went up to the observation deck to look out over the city, the Statue Of Liberty and other NYC sites. I grew up looking at these buildings in the skyline from my bedroom window in New Jersey, it was a sad day to see those big tall buildings fall, made worse by all the innocent lives that were lost.
To anyone that lost family and friends at the WTC, Pentagon, Flight 93 and in the fight against terrorism, my and my families prayers are with you.
9/11 memorial videos
http://www.fdnylodd.com/BloodofHeroes.html
http://attacked911.tripod.com/
http://www.nyc.gov/html/fdny/media/tribute/tribute.html
http://www.nysfop.org/wtc/papdvideo.html
http://www.mshepp.com/911flash.htm
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Scott E.
Webmaster Tri-State Bass
Delsmallies@aim.com
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