It is 7:30 in the morning. looking outside you couldn’t tell a damn thing happened. not now anyway. But just 22 hours ago, I was standing in front of this very computer, when a loud bang outside was followed by a vibration that shook the building.
It was assumed that the president’s home was so much rubble now. Or at least the OEOB.
When I made it to the street, an area that had been crowded with normally jaded downtown workers watching the fire crews race around town just 2 minutes before, the street was empty.
You live in this city knowing you are ground zero for any war that might happen. But I never expected the sky to fall. That was everyone’s reaction yesterday morning. You just didn’t know what was going to happen next. That was the scarey part. No one worries about a nuclear war, since you’ll never see it coming. But this was gruesome.
Americans are strange people. I left the shell shocked downtown for safer destinations. And I passed people having lunches at sidewalk delis. I came back to work to find client called about work, since they weren’t sure if we were going to stay here. In the suburbs people where discussing it in the street like yesterdays Redskins game.
Fifty thousand people worked in the World Trade Center towers every day. Twenty three thousand people work in the Pentagon every day.
This was no symbolic strike at american culture. These weren’t milatary targets, cultural landmarks, or transportation centers. These were probably the two biggest concentrations of people on the east coast. This was simply about wholesale slaughter.
And nothing we do is going to make it all better. There is no justice in a situation like this.