Monday, September 11, 2006
Five Years Ago Today I Was Asleep
It's been five years. I was fairly certain that I'd be able to set emotion aside and watch CNN Pipeline's replay of the real-time coverage from a purely intellectual level. I missed it the first time, as I didn't wake up 'til noon, after about the tenth phone call from my future wife. Still, though, just now, I felt a massive, almost heart attack-level jolt when I saw that second plane for the first time.
I don't have any grasp of a timeline anymore. When did we become aware that Al Qaeda was responsible?
21 minutes in and the first speculation that it was an attack.
UPDATE: 28 minutes in, and first word of an FBI warning about a hijacked plane.
2ND UPDATE: I wish I could experience the creation of those special 9/11 tribute versions of "Tuesday's Gone With The Wind" and that awful Live song in real-time.
3RD UPDATE: And at 35:30 they get first word from a "government official" that this was an act of terrorism. I've always found it crazy that Bush was at Booker Elementary. I went to Gulf Gate down in Sarasota, and Booker was always one of our rivals. At least in as much as elementary schools have rivals. I hated them fuckers.
UPDATE: It's about 41:30, and they mention American Airlines and Logan Airport for the first time. This is interesting for me, you see. I woke up a little after noon and all this information was giving to me in like one five-minute conversation.
UPDATE: Dude, I've liveblogging the past.
UPDATE: Starting around the 43rd minute they interview James Lee Witt, the former FEMA director who was in charge during the '93 WTC bombing. He sounds like a bad SNL character. He's got this really fey voice with a Southern accent and makes almost no sense. At some point I'm pretty sure he talks about divebombing igloos. Dude's totally shit-faced.
UPDATE: 45:50 first sight of Aaron Brown. We miss you, man.
UPDATE: Shortly after 50 minutes, a graphic pops up about a report of a fire at the Pentagon. Neither Aaron Brown nor Major Garrett have made any mention of this, though. And now I've gotta use the bathroom, which will totally ruin the flow of this thing.
UPDATE: 52:15. They cut off Ted Kennedy, who's rambling on about something at (I believe) Faneuil Hall, to go to a CNN correspondent at the Pentagon. First on-air mention of the Pentagon attack, but no reference to an airplane yet. And at 53:30 they evacuate the White House. This had to be some frightening stuff at the time.
UPDATE: 56:00. Greta Van Susteren's on the telephone, live from some airport somewhere. We don't miss you, at all, lady. And at 57:16 there's the first mention of a plane hitting the Pentagon.
UPDATE: 58:20. Oh, man, the CNN man at the Pentagon just loudly and abruptly cleared his throat in the middle of a sentence, and I thought maybe he just got hit by a plane. It was fuckin' dramatic.
UPDATE: And at almost exactly one hour they report that all airports in America are closed. It's probably around now when my brother leaves a message telling me that he won't be driving me to Hartsfield the next day after all.
UPDATE: 1:08:52. Some guy's been talking about the DC situation for the last minute or so. Suddenly from off camera you hear Aaron Brown yell "Wow", then ask the other guy to stop talking. Aaron says they just saw a huge explosion from the second tower, and at exactly 1:09:00 they switch from a shot of DC to a close-up of a massive cloud of smoke pouring forth from where the second tower used to be. Smoke and debris are now covering everything for blocks around the WTC, and, as Brown says, it truly is "as frightening a scene as you'll ever see". Meanwhile I'm playing ping-pong with Yasmine Bleeth in a dream.
UPDATE: 1:14:20. A witness calls in, and we get the first report of people jumping.
UPDATE: 1:19:00 or so. Confirmation that the tower has collapsed. The first tower hit is still standing. I've probably slept through four or five phonecalls by this point. There were like 12 messages when I woke up.
UPDATE: Aaron Brown regularly mentions reports of a fire at the mall in DC, and just mentioned a report of an explosion on Capitol Hill. I don't remember hearing about these. Were these false reports? The Pentagon's not near the mall, so I doubt it could catch fire from that attack.
UPDATE: 1:25:00. I think Aaron just burped.
UPDATE: Brian K. Vaughn's Ex Machina is the finest work of 9/11-related fiction that I know of. I imagine it must be far better than this thing, which I readily admit I have never read a word of.
UPDATE: CNN's split the feed into two streams. At 00:00:56 of the second stream we see the first on-the-ground footage, at the base of the towers. It's all hand-held and shaky, people rushing forth from a massive pillar of smoke.
UPDATE: 2nd stream, 00:02:57. Aaron Brown is recapping the situation for new viewers when the other tower suddenly collapses. It's odd how quickly it's over once the collapse begins. It stood for over 90 minutes after the collision, before abruptly falling in on itself in like 15 seconds. You can hear what I imagine to be CNN staffers moan and whimper in the background. Somewhere in Hollywood somebody starts reediting that Spider-Man trailer.
UPDATE: 2nd stream, 00:08:15. An aerial shot shows what looks like the entire southern tip of Manhattan completely engulfed in smoke. And more misinformation at 8:20, as Brown mentions a report of a car-bomb explosion at the State Department building.
UPDATE: 2nd stream, 00:11:57. First report of a 747 going down in Pennsylvania. Brown cautions that it's just a report, and that they're getting many reports, and it's hard to guage the veracity of all of them, etc., which he didn't say when talking about fires and explosions in various locales around Washington DC. He again repeats that the Pennsylvania reports are unconfirmed.
UPDATE: 2nd stream, 00:20:13. An AP report says that federal officials believe there's a second hijacked plane headed towards the Pentagon. Brown doesn't know at what time that report was released. I suppose this is probably in reference to Flight 93, although when I finally started watching the news that day everybody was talking about how there might be as many as ten hijacked planes still in the air. That was after noon, almost two hours after Brown mentioned this AP report. When I started watching the news I'm pretty sure I went to MSNBC; I still had a thing going for Lester Holt after his great work during the 2000 election.
Anyway, I think I'm going to stop it here. Lunch is coming up, and most of the major news has already happened. Everything from here on out is conjecture and misinformation, until Al Qaeda takes responsibility, which I'm not sure happens during the three hours they're replaying on Pipeline.
It's been five years. I was fairly certain that I'd be able to set emotion aside and watch CNN Pipeline's replay of the real-time coverage from a purely intellectual level. I missed it the first time, as I didn't wake up 'til noon, after about the tenth phone call from my future wife. Still, though, just now, I felt a massive, almost heart attack-level jolt when I saw that second plane for the first time.
I don't have any grasp of a timeline anymore. When did we become aware that Al Qaeda was responsible?
21 minutes in and the first speculation that it was an attack.
UPDATE: 28 minutes in, and first word of an FBI warning about a hijacked plane.
2ND UPDATE: I wish I could experience the creation of those special 9/11 tribute versions of "Tuesday's Gone With The Wind" and that awful Live song in real-time.
3RD UPDATE: And at 35:30 they get first word from a "government official" that this was an act of terrorism. I've always found it crazy that Bush was at Booker Elementary. I went to Gulf Gate down in Sarasota, and Booker was always one of our rivals. At least in as much as elementary schools have rivals. I hated them fuckers.
UPDATE: It's about 41:30, and they mention American Airlines and Logan Airport for the first time. This is interesting for me, you see. I woke up a little after noon and all this information was giving to me in like one five-minute conversation.
UPDATE: Dude, I've liveblogging the past.
UPDATE: Starting around the 43rd minute they interview James Lee Witt, the former FEMA director who was in charge during the '93 WTC bombing. He sounds like a bad SNL character. He's got this really fey voice with a Southern accent and makes almost no sense. At some point I'm pretty sure he talks about divebombing igloos. Dude's totally shit-faced.
UPDATE: 45:50 first sight of Aaron Brown. We miss you, man.
UPDATE: Shortly after 50 minutes, a graphic pops up about a report of a fire at the Pentagon. Neither Aaron Brown nor Major Garrett have made any mention of this, though. And now I've gotta use the bathroom, which will totally ruin the flow of this thing.
UPDATE: 52:15. They cut off Ted Kennedy, who's rambling on about something at (I believe) Faneuil Hall, to go to a CNN correspondent at the Pentagon. First on-air mention of the Pentagon attack, but no reference to an airplane yet. And at 53:30 they evacuate the White House. This had to be some frightening stuff at the time.
UPDATE: 56:00. Greta Van Susteren's on the telephone, live from some airport somewhere. We don't miss you, at all, lady. And at 57:16 there's the first mention of a plane hitting the Pentagon.
UPDATE: 58:20. Oh, man, the CNN man at the Pentagon just loudly and abruptly cleared his throat in the middle of a sentence, and I thought maybe he just got hit by a plane. It was fuckin' dramatic.
UPDATE: And at almost exactly one hour they report that all airports in America are closed. It's probably around now when my brother leaves a message telling me that he won't be driving me to Hartsfield the next day after all.
UPDATE: 1:08:52. Some guy's been talking about the DC situation for the last minute or so. Suddenly from off camera you hear Aaron Brown yell "Wow", then ask the other guy to stop talking. Aaron says they just saw a huge explosion from the second tower, and at exactly 1:09:00 they switch from a shot of DC to a close-up of a massive cloud of smoke pouring forth from where the second tower used to be. Smoke and debris are now covering everything for blocks around the WTC, and, as Brown says, it truly is "as frightening a scene as you'll ever see". Meanwhile I'm playing ping-pong with Yasmine Bleeth in a dream.
UPDATE: 1:14:20. A witness calls in, and we get the first report of people jumping.
UPDATE: 1:19:00 or so. Confirmation that the tower has collapsed. The first tower hit is still standing. I've probably slept through four or five phonecalls by this point. There were like 12 messages when I woke up.
UPDATE: Aaron Brown regularly mentions reports of a fire at the mall in DC, and just mentioned a report of an explosion on Capitol Hill. I don't remember hearing about these. Were these false reports? The Pentagon's not near the mall, so I doubt it could catch fire from that attack.
UPDATE: 1:25:00. I think Aaron just burped.
UPDATE: Brian K. Vaughn's Ex Machina is the finest work of 9/11-related fiction that I know of. I imagine it must be far better than this thing, which I readily admit I have never read a word of.
UPDATE: CNN's split the feed into two streams. At 00:00:56 of the second stream we see the first on-the-ground footage, at the base of the towers. It's all hand-held and shaky, people rushing forth from a massive pillar of smoke.
UPDATE: 2nd stream, 00:02:57. Aaron Brown is recapping the situation for new viewers when the other tower suddenly collapses. It's odd how quickly it's over once the collapse begins. It stood for over 90 minutes after the collision, before abruptly falling in on itself in like 15 seconds. You can hear what I imagine to be CNN staffers moan and whimper in the background. Somewhere in Hollywood somebody starts reediting that Spider-Man trailer.
UPDATE: 2nd stream, 00:08:15. An aerial shot shows what looks like the entire southern tip of Manhattan completely engulfed in smoke. And more misinformation at 8:20, as Brown mentions a report of a car-bomb explosion at the State Department building.
UPDATE: 2nd stream, 00:11:57. First report of a 747 going down in Pennsylvania. Brown cautions that it's just a report, and that they're getting many reports, and it's hard to guage the veracity of all of them, etc., which he didn't say when talking about fires and explosions in various locales around Washington DC. He again repeats that the Pennsylvania reports are unconfirmed.
UPDATE: 2nd stream, 00:20:13. An AP report says that federal officials believe there's a second hijacked plane headed towards the Pentagon. Brown doesn't know at what time that report was released. I suppose this is probably in reference to Flight 93, although when I finally started watching the news that day everybody was talking about how there might be as many as ten hijacked planes still in the air. That was after noon, almost two hours after Brown mentioned this AP report. When I started watching the news I'm pretty sure I went to MSNBC; I still had a thing going for Lester Holt after his great work during the 2000 election.
Anyway, I think I'm going to stop it here. Lunch is coming up, and most of the major news has already happened. Everything from here on out is conjecture and misinformation, until Al Qaeda takes responsibility, which I'm not sure happens during the three hours they're replaying on Pipeline.
