10 years ago, I was staying in Seoul Hilton. I had early dinner of Korean Ginseng Chicken. As usual, I will listen to CNN just to keep in touch with the latest news. The next morning, I was due to fly to USA. I never did and spend 5 nights in Seoul as the entire USA airspace was locked down.
I remembered very clearly, CNN came on air with its trademark Breaking News. Apparently a light aircraft had flown into World Trade Centre and there was fire in the building. There was plenty of speculation on what type of aircraft it was. Nothing was mentioned about terrorism and the news anchor kept reminding listeners and update will be available soon.
Soon live report of the smoking tower become available. I am one of those that can be hooked on news and kept the channel switched on 24/7. To my bewilderment, I watched live, another plane slammed into the other twin Tower. It was then CNN knew something big, strange and terrifying was happening.
The next few hours, streams and streams of news just flooded in. Then there was also news of another plane slamming into Pentagon and another crashed somewhere. Anyone watching such news would be mesmerised and consumed by what happened subsequently. I saw the first tower crumbled unbelievably, it just sank into the ground. Greyish smoke and dust billowed into the clear blue sky. Soon the second tower crumbled and sank as the first. It was like a war movie shot on epic scale in Hollywood.
It was now clear that America has been attacked. That’s the way I remembered 911. And today is ten years after. All the news media around the world had something to write or telecast about 911. Yesterday, BBC even ran in a special broadcast about the 911 ‘conspiracy theory', as many events and facts cannot be explained and reconciled.
911 have certainly changed the world. It has made my job tougher and more inconvenient especially those in the aviation industry. My perception of all the security measures implemented, does not seem to make the world safer.
1 comment:
Post a Comment