300th Review - My September 11th (Attacks on America)

Member Name: adambrown400

Product:	Attacks on America
Date:	06/08/09 (110 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Wrong place, right time

Disadvantages: Right place, wrong time

I thought for my 300th review I would tell you about my experience of September 11th 2001 which when looking back now will probably be one of the scariest few days of my life. It certainly is going to be something that will stay with me forever - and will certainly be something I can dine out on for a few years yet!

Back in 2001 one of the main ways to book a holiday was to check 'teletext' for the latest offers. Because my dad's birthday is on the 12th September we decided to go around this time and because I wasn't due to go back to University until late September. I booked up the flight and we went with 'Air India'. The flight took seven hours and we were only due to go for three nights so it was a big deal - for my dad and myself it was going to be our first time on an aeroplane.

We arrived at JFK quite early in the afternoon on September the 10th and got into a yellow cab and headed out to Manhattan Island. Out of the window of the taxi I can quite clearly remember seeing the twin towers looming on the horizon. We had that trip pencilled in for the next morning, but we were bushed and got a bit of kip at the hotel before venturing out for evening dinner. Our hotel was based on West 96th Street, which was parallel with Central Park, the Museum of Natural History (where Ben Stiller fights dinosaurs in Night at the Museum) and the University (where Bill Murray dances around the fountain in Ghostbusters). So we had a Subway for our dinner and decided to get up early the next morning and head on down to the World Trade Centre to get a glimpse of the city from above.

When we woke it must have been around 8am. I knew I had to make a call to the airport first thing, so I called them at around 9 after a bagel breakfast. The lady on the phone was obviously distracted but I couldn't tell why. When I put the phone down I overheard a conversation between a couple behind me saying an aeroplane had gone into the World Trade Centre. I had once heard a story of a helicopter flying into the Empire State before by accident, terrorism never once entered into the explanation.

I talked to Dad about what I had heard and we didn't really think much of it to tell you the truth, because at that time we hadn't really taken in the scale of the building or seen any footage from television, this was just word of mouth. However, as we walked down Broadway and then 5th Avenue it became apparent what had happened was a little more serious than we had first imagined.

People were walking in the opposite direction from us and were obviously flustered. We heard people's radios from taxis relaying the information and it started to get a little scary. We could see dust and a large cloud starting to form at the bottom of 5th avenue. It was then when we heard a massive rumble; we knew then that this was one of the towers collapsing.

Minutes later as we approached 42nd street there suddenly came a huge throng of people running and screaming towards us. Someone shouted that a bomb was about to go off in Grand Central Station. There really was nothing else to do but run ourselves - we were literally bricking it. We ran into a shop, but knew if a building was to collapse there really was nowhere to escape in a city of towering buildings. I can only describe that moment as one of the scariest moments of my life and when I saw the film 'Cloverfield' it brought me right back to that moment when they run into that shop when Godzilla comes down the street.

Luckily it wasn't Godzilla and there was no bomb in Grand Central. We emerged from the shop and headed down to Times Square, it was there in a McDonalds where we had our lunch did we see the footage on the TV screens. It was then when we realised how bad things were.

The strange thing was that things were still happening and open. The shops and restaurants were still open and busy, for the next few days at least. People seemed to be going about their business as usual. I won a HMV voucher in a store on September the 11th; we ate dinner in a nice restaurant in the evening on Manhattan Island, so not everyone was as affected looking at it now.

However, we did try and get down as far as we could to the World Trade Centre, which was a few blocks up. We saw helicopters, army, firefighters and police heading down towards 'Ground Zero'. Many people were cheering for those guys going into the remains of the towers.

We spent the next couple of days going around the city, not really doing much, the Empire State was closed for obvious reasons, some of the shops were still open - but then we started to get worried about getting home. How would we get back? We did manage to obviously - and stay a few more nights in our hotel. The rest of the hotel was being used by various firemen who had come as far as San Francisco to help in the relief effort. It certainly was a crazy time, but from where we were life seemed to go as normal in New York.

Whatever you say about the lunatics that committed the mass murder on that morning, we should never have used it as an excuse to go to war. You can now pinpoint from that moment until now how our civil liberties have changed - ID cards and stop and search. No one had ever heard of 'extreme' Islamic militants - let alone having them live and train in our country. Whatever happened on that day, we should never have then gone onto kill three times as many more Iraqis and Afghans because of it.

It's a day I will never remember for the rest of my life, and I can tell the story over and over again and I never get tired of it - it will be interesting to see if anyone else on here was there at the same time. I certainly caused a big fuss when I returned, especially for my family who were obviously distressed about Dad and I out there at the time. For me, I wished I could have been there before and witnessed the towers before they were destroyed, just to see what they were like. You can never really adequately explain to people the size of the buildings in New York and their dominance on the skyline, lets hope whatever they put there in that place will be equally as magnificent and send two fingers up to Al Quida and Bin Laden.

Summary: A day never to forget