September 11 terrorist attacks, 2001, by Chris Rea

From MemoryArchive

Who: Chris Rea
What: September 11 attacks
When: Sept. 11, 2001
Where: Durban, South Africa

Durban. South Africa. A colleague rushed into my office to tell me that a plane had just crashed into one of the WTC towers. She was quite excited because she had just returned from New York two weeks previously and had stood atop the one on a lovely summer's day. I went to the net immediately but could not access CNN. I tried the BBC instead. No luck. Eventually a lonely pic of the tower with a hole in it presented itself on CNN.com. It looked almost like a model someone had dummied up with a shoebox. I phoned a friend who didn't know and minutes later he got back to me to say that he had heard on the radio that another plane had ploughed into the second tower. I didn't believe him and tried to access CNN.com a second time. This time it took even longer to get a hit. But when I saw it I believed...and rushed through to our company pub to take it all in on CNN. People just sat there gob-smacked...as though watching a surreal Schwarzennegger movie...and believing no doubt that they would wake up and it would all be over. An hour later the name Bin Laden was first mentioned... Chris Rea.