9/11 REMEMBERED

TEN years ago, today, people across the globe turned on their televisions and were greeted by the horrific sight of two passenger planes slamming into the Twin Towers at the World Trade Center in New York City.

As the world was to learn later, this was no random accident. This was part of a co-ordinated series of four airplane hijackings by terrorists aligned to Islamist militant group Al Queda bent on sending a deadly message of hate to the the US. The events of September 11, 2001 turned the world on its head and plunged the families of 3,000 persons into mourning.

In this Tuesday, Sept 11, 2001 file photo, two women hold each other as they watch the World Trade Center burn following a terrorist attack on the twin skyscrapers in New York. (Photos: AP)  1/4

Today, as the world again joins hearts and minds in remembering the victims of this violent act three Jamaican journalists and media practitioners share their personal recollections of 9/11, the day that changed the world.

Jodi Brown-Lindo, a journalist/communications specialist, was living in New York at the time and working close to ground zero and experienced the chaos and trauma of the attack on the World Trade Center first-hand.

AT the time I was working at Barclays Bank which was then located at 222 Broadway, about a block and a half from the World Trade Center.

I was in the cafeteria upstairs, it was three quarters glass and I remember hearing some talk about a plane looking like it's flying pretty close to a few buildings, but it wasn't a serious conversation so I wasn't paying it much mind. This is New York, hardly anything surprised me. All I remember was that seconds later I heard a piercing scream. It was one of the waitresses, she was standing close to the glass and screaming, other people had begun to rush from their tables to the windows... a plane had flown into the World Trade Center!

I was like, what? I remember getting up to look but the windows were so crowded. I rushed to the elevator to get to the 10th floor where my office was located. I remember by the time I got downstairs the TV sets in the passage already had the news on... I didn't stop to hear. I think most people, though curious and shocked, had, like myself, concluded this was an accident. I remember calling my sister and while on the phone, hearing loud screams. A co-worker ran to me (Karen, she was from Grenada) and said another plane had gone into the remaining tower. I remember being void of emotions. I remember it was utter confusion as to what to do. Most people rushed to get downstairs. When we got there, the lobby was crowded. I remember at one point security had to lock the doors as a flood of persons were coming into the lobby from the streets. The streets were crowded... and emergency vehicles were everywhere. Cops were on Broadway trying to get persons back into buildings. I went outside at one point to try to get on the subway but the subway gates were drawn. We were at one point sent back to our offices. Then the first tower collapsed and there was a rush to get us out of the building.

Don't ask if I didn't panic, especially after it was being reported we were under attack. Trust me, I didn't care whether it was terrorists or not, the whole ordeal made me feel like the world was coming to an end. I mek God some promise dah day deh, trust mi! I didn't know I would make it out of lower Manhattan alive.

The second tower collapsed after we had been ushered out of the building through the basement. The place was already ashy from the first collapse and I remember wandering around a bit to find my bearings, only to hear a loud rumbling. At the time, I didn't realise the tower was collapsing. I thought it was the sound of war planes, missiles... or something, only to see thick gray clouds coming through the openings of the road. I had no idea what it was but it came so fast. I remember being flung to the ground by its force and people stepping over me. I remember crying out when a kind hand pulled me into a building. Never met the person, but to this day I still believe it was the hand of God. Myself and a few others cowered in a room in that building till the rumbling had stopped and the ash had begun to clear.

I walked and trembled for a while. I didn't know where I was or how to get out of the city. I lived in Brooklyn and there was no transportation. I remember turning onto a few roads and had begun to wonder if I were the only one alive. I eventually made it close to the seaport where emergency personnel guided a few of us close to the Brooklyn Bridge. It took me over four hours to walk home. When I got there my feet were blistered and I was numb. My sister greeted me at the door and I don't even think I spoke. I went in the shower and I remember that it was while allowing the water to beat down on me that the tears began to flow. Even at that point I don't think I had begun to comprehend what had happened, I just knew I was terrified, 'fraid, waan go back a mi yard.

My most significant memories lie with three people I met in the first few minutes after the attack. I remember my friend consoling a lady who said she worked in the first tower and that she had an interview that morning with a college intern, or a new employee, and that she had run late the morning and had spoken to her secretary just seconds before after exiting the subway to get to her office.

I remember her words "they are dead, I could have been dead. The plane went into my floor." I have often wondered what happened to her.

Then there was this bald-headed black American. We met after checking to see if the subway was open... he was sweating profusely and said he had made it out of one of the towers. He was nervous and shaky and all he wanted was a cigarette.

Then there was this little boy, he couldn't find his mom, he was no more than four or five. He was crying uncontrollably and I've always thought if mi big and feel so, wonder how he felt. I was told he was left at a hospital near the port and later reunited with his relatives.

On the morning in question I wanted to go to the post office and Karen wanted to visit the Gap store in the World Trade Center to buy jackets for her kids, but our supervisor refused to have us take our breaks at the same time.

You want to hear how we quietly 'cuss out' the woman, but, as fate would have it, the attacks took place minutes later.

I can't say anything would have happened to us, but if the ordeal, as I experienced, it was so traumatic, I can't imagine being more up close and personal.

I lost my bag and a few other personal items that day and it took me two years before I washed the outfit I was wearing on that day. It was washed by mistake during our move to a new apartment. I still have the jacket, though I've never worn it since.

To this day my heart still races when I hear thunder. I remember my first Christmas in Jamaica after the attacks and being in church on Watchnight (New Years Eve), when clappers (firecrackers) started going off. I had a panic attack. I still can't talk about 9/11 in detail. Even responding to the Sunday Observer's questions makes my heart feel like it's ready to burst from my chest and it pains me.

I have intentionally left out the details about some of the images I watched from my office window, that are still etched in my mind. I have omitted my speaking of my fear of going back to ground zero to work for weeks after the attacks; the smell; the atmosphere and how I had to call it quits and leave NYC behind me for a while.

To this day I cannot watch the images of 9/11, I have never watched a documentary or an interview. I see it, I turn off my TV or change the channel. I would never want to confront that again...NEVER!

Ground Zero, one month later

Veteran journalist and broadcaster Barbara Gloudon landed in New York city, with a team from the RJR Communications Group, just a few days short of the one month anniversary of the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2000, She was part of the first Jamaican media team to visit ground zero. These are some of her recollections.

"WE got there Thursday, October four. It was me, Hol Plummer and Charles Lannaman from RJR.

Early Saturday morning, we got up to go and look for this place they were calling ground zero. No taxi would take us. Nobody wanted to go down there and there was this uneasy calm over the city.

We eventually found a Russian taxi driver and he took us and we made it past many road blocks until eventually, the cabbie said he is not going any further and he dumped us off. So we started walking and every street corner was blocked with fire engines, ambulances, armed guards, firemen and policemen.

None of us had a press pass, but we had our passports and we went and used that, and we were the only overseas media in the whole area, no other media was there, so they (the authorities) didn't know what to do with us, so they let us go by.

The nearer you got, the more acrid the smell was, (it was) a terrible smell, and you began to see the flakes in the air and you began to see the plumes of smoke. The city air was dead quiet and when people talked, they talked like they were whispering to each other.

We buck up on a Jamaican woman who was running a little breakfast shop, selling coffee and muffins. We said 'that looks like a Jamaican' and we went and talked to her and even she talked in a whisper, its like nobody wanted to break the silence.

We turned the corner and this thing (World Trade Centre) was on the ground. It looked like a big big, big, big condensed can that somebody take their foot and stamp down on it and it flattened down The morning sun was coming up and it hit the metal (building framework) and the whole place was lit up as the light hit the metal and the metal bounced back the light.

I had on a black jacket and this thick white ash was coming down till it occurred to me, this is a crematorium. An estimated 5,000 bodies were still unaccounted for (at the time), and it was burning, so clearly this was human flesh that was burning. I think I (later) threw away the jacket that I was wearing, I never wanted to wear it again.

Some people were wearing masks over their faces as they worked. Everybody quiet. The only noise you heard was the trucks moving debris that they scooping out of the spot to the dump.

We found a big fat black man, who turned out to be from Portmore, We never even got his name, he just held on to us and started to cry. He worked in this shop, little shop, this mail delivery shop in front of Tower 2. He said (on September 11) he had just come in and was opening up the shop when he heard a loud 'Whoomp!'. But because he is accustomed to big trucks coming through the neighborhood he didn't take it as anything. Then sometime later he heard another loud noise and he said 'No, this is strange,' and when him fly around the front only to see the devastation in front of him. He just saw this big hole and a church that was between Tower 1 and 2 ,and it was covered completely in ash. He didn't know if he should run up the road or run down and he just stood there and people came running up the street. This little elderly white lady ran up and held him and was crying, and he held her, and she held onto him, and the two of them crying, and him still don't know what happen. Then now, when the thing got bad is when he looked up and people were jumping through the windows. Four at a time in some cases, holding hands. Men and women out of the (high rise) offices were jumping out the windows and you know they going to die, they just coming down like toys. And he just stood there as a big man and just bawling.

From that night he said he could not sleep, he couldn't eat, he just remembered the people jumping to their deaths. People were just numb, they were catatonic.

As a journalist in these things you can't stop to think about it, what you have to do is get on the air, get on RJR, and we finally set up a feed in the hotel room and we began to take calls.

I remember there was this Jamaican man who called whose son worked in a brokerage firm and he comes home every evening at six. When he comes, he opens the door and flings his keys in a dish on a table by the door and he calls out "Daddy". The man said from September 11 -- and we were talking to him on October 5 -- every evening at six oclock he is waiting for the door to open and the keys to drop onto the dish and he said he is waiting for his son to call him to tell him where he is so he can go and pick him up. We got a number of stories like that.

Air travel became a total nightmare. At that time I was at the UNESCO commission for Jamaica and diid two trips a year to paris. The journey became a nghtmare, To get there was a nightmare. Once, in Paris, I went through four checkpoints starting from curbside. They patted you down and searched you. The whole world became paranoid and why should they not be paranoid?

NYC, one year after

Journalist and attourney at law, Dionne Jackson-Miller found herself in New York City on the one year anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks providing coverage of the still shell-shocked city's memorial service. She recounts her reaction to the attack and its aftermath.

I remember I was carrying my children to school, when I stopped at the school someone told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.

I said 'okay' but of course, at that time, I had no idea of the magnitude of what had happened. I spent the day in shock watching what was happening while we were scrambling to find Jamaicans to talk to later on "Beyond the Headlines".

Watching TV at home later on I cried. Man, I cried for two weeks straight. The tragedy unfolding before our eyes was so huge. The attacks were one thing, the day itself, but the stories that kept coming at us... I still remember some of the stories and the images... The man whose company was located in the World Trade Center and who stayed home because he was sick, and then every single person who worked for him died... The doctors who all rushed to the hospitals to help and had nothing to do because there was no one to help, most people were dead... All the people on TV crying and holding up pictures of their loved ones and asking if anyone had seen them, when they were clearly all DEAD... and the one that I will never ever, ever forget... people jumping out the windows of a skyscraper to escape death by fire.

A year later, before we went to ground zero on the one year anniversary of the attacks, I interviewed a couple of Jamaicans who had been affected.

I interviewed the family of Vivienne Griffiths — I still remember her name — who died in the WTC. They told me she called her mother in Jamaica when she realized what was happening and told her what was happening, that she was going up to the roof with some others and asked her to take care of her kids.

Wow! Imagine facing that. So Vivienne Griffiths was on my mind throughout the ceremony. We did a live broadcast from New York on the first anniversary because we thought it was very important to recognise something that had been so huge for the world.

We got into the area where the families were, and you had all these people holding up signs with the names of their loved ones. It wasn't so much open grief at that time, but a lot of sadness. You could feel the weight of it. When they read out the names of the victims — it took hours — you would see the families of the victims reacting when they heard their loved ones' names, that's when they would start to cry. It was such a reverent ceremony, and I think did truly honour the memories of those who died.

Ten years later, it's clearly not an understatement to say that our lives were changed for good. Some of the changes are annoying — the restrictions on air travel for example, and some of them are sad, like the increasing distrust of Muslims, and the anti-immigrant backlash.

Some is tragic — the thousands of innocent lives lost in the "war on terror," most of them forgotten and ignored by the world because they aren't "troops" whose deaths seem to be the only ones that count and because they are not in the US or UK or some NATO country.

And although it's not something I dwell on, there's always a niggling fear at the back of my mind — after Bali, I can't help but wonder — as a major tourist destination, will it be our time one day?

Read more: http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/9-11-remembered_9664927#ixzz1Xf42W1D5