Another crazy story from that day: The first fireman killed there was a fireman from Brooklyn who was actually hit by a jumper as his company was preparing to enter the south tower. After he was hit, the guys from his company grabbed an EMS unit and the whole company rode to the hospital with him. Shortly after they left for the hospital, the south tower dropped. Had the fireman not been hit by the jumper, the whole company would've died in the collapse.
As someone who is deathly afraid of heights and doesn't like fire I can't even imagine being stranded on one of those floors above the impact zone.
More people will likely die from cancer and respiratory illnesses that resulted from their exposure to the dust and smoke at Ground Zero than from the actual attack itself Falling Man by Don DeLillo is pretty damn good
Imagine if this happened present day. There would be a horrifying amount of pictures and footage out there.
There'd be a thousand videos on youtube of footage from inside the towers above the impact line, which would be fascinating and the worst shit ever at the same time.
not only that, but the pictures and video would be horrifyingly clear compared to the grainy pics/videos from 2001
I want to believe that what happened on that day will never happen again. How great is our government at preventing attacks on US soil since then... It's something I think about
I always think that if someone is willing enough, there is only so much you can stop. Can't control everything. Not saying we shouldn't try... just that it seems inevitable that something like this will happen in our lifetime again to some degree
Great perspective that relatively few people think about. Well over a hundred FDNY guys have died and hundreds more are sick today from exposures there-- many of whom did not respond initially, but worked in the recovery task forces in the ensuing months. The PD has a large number of sick and dead also. I can only imagine the number of civilians who are and have been sick who haven't been tied to the WTC. I know how hard we continue to fight to have it recognized and I know nobody is fighting of the civilians who are sick. Doesn't do you any good to get mad now, but in the days and weeks after the collapse we received dozens of conflicting messages about the dust and our health. Wear this mask, take this pill, etc. Not sure they could've protected everyone, or if our guys would've complied with their orders completely, but we certainly could've done better.
They were positioned by the south tower, heading for the north tower (I mistakenly wrote south tower.) Jumper that hit him came from the north tower (first hit, second to collapse.) They were part of the initial alarms for the north tower and would've been high up when it went down. If they would've stayed with him any longer where he was hit, they would've gotten it in the first collapse. One of those tiny twists of fate that day that made the difference for individual firemen. There are dozens of those stories. This is the first time I've heard nobody jumped from the south tower. I haven't done a lot of reading about it besides internal reports, but that seems strange. I know a lot of people got out after the first tower was hit but they still lost 6 or 7 hundred people. Can't imagine none of them jumped.
I was recently in NYC and walked around Times Square a bit. Someone who wants to do harm could do it pretty easily, I think. Not on the scale of 9/11, but drive a bus with a bomb near a building, or set pressure cooker bombs, or whatever. You can't stop that. It really is amazing that nothing like that has happened.
Watched Judge Judy today. A guy living in a trailer park had his US flag displayed upside down as some sort of protest. He woke up one day to find the flag pole destroyed and accused his neighbor of doing it. Spoiler