Remembering 9/11, from space

As a New Yorker who was in the city of Cork in Ireland on September 11th, I’ve always asked people where they were and how events transpired on that day.

It’s a strange feeling being away from the only place you’ve called home on the most defining day of its history in recent memory. Being abroad gave a different perspective- I’d not have believed that Ireland would be as affected if I’d not seen it with my own eyes. I remember the moment I really processed what was happening back at home. My Irish mother in law had called for what must have been the fifth time on the hour-long drive to Cork- but this time to inform us that New York was under attack. My husband turned on the radio and reports had started to come in that people- as in more than one person, perhaps dozens- were leaping and falling to their depths below from the towering buildings I’d commuted under hundreds of times in college. At the time, we wondered how many more would die before they were rescued from the rooftops. It seems naive at the time, but the idea that rescue would never come never crossed our minds. The ensuing demise of so many of the NYFD- 343 of them, all heading up into the massive inferno to their deaths- would have been unimaginable.

Transmissions filtered through to RTE and BBC channels from CNN and 1010wins and the day we left, on the first flight out of Shannon since the attacks, the entire country halted in a national “Day of Mourning.” (Though even then, albeit sparingly, people in England and Ireland had begun casting blame at America for spurring on the attacks, much to my horror and again, naivete.) I’d get my first and only first-hand glimpse of the destruction driving to my home in Babylon through Newark- the smoke plumed from the site in indescribable volume, visible from over an hour away on Long Island. It was one of many breath-snatching moments in the blur of days following the attacks, but something that seeing with my own eyes made horribly, indescribably real.

The picture above shows a NASA satellite image of the fire, visible in the sky from many miles above. And again, as I look at it, the horror I felt at the destruction of lower Manhattan doesn’t feel all that far away eight years on. And as I’ve asked of many people since, I’d like to know- where were you when you found out? When did it hit you?

[Image: Gizmodo]