I wrote this on September 10, 2021 in Houston, Texas.
On the morning of September 11, I was driving to work listening to the radio. The announcer said that there were reports of an airplane crashing into the World Trade Center in New York City. I thought someone in a piper cub type airplane had practiced in Microsoft Flight Simulator and decided to try it in real life – then ran into trouble. Maybe caught by an updraft and crashed into someone’s office. I had an irreverent thought. John Cleese, of Monty Python fame, walks past his secretary and into his office. There is a small plane, possibly from the WWI era, three quarters of the way into his office, papers are all over the place, the walls are black with soot. The pilot looks up and says, in an English accent “Dreadfully sorry about the office old chap.” Cleese backs out of his office and exclaims to his secretary “There’s an areo-plane in my aw-fice!”. The secretary replies “Yes sir, that came for you about an hour ago.” and she returns to her typing.
I worked in a building on Houston’s beltway about 10 or so miles from downtown and arrived at work about 8:30 to find out that this wasn’t a minor event involving a little piper cub, but a full-sized disaster – a commercial passenger airplane had hit the Trade Center. Of course, there was no work getting done – everyone was looking at news sites on the web and constantly refreshing their browser. I went upstairs to get a Coke in the break room. Several people were gathered around a TV and we saw a replay of the footage of the second airplane hitting the South Tower. About 10:30 or so, we were told that building management was closing the building and that everyone needed to go home.
On the news I heard that the nearest hospital to the Trade Center was St. Vincent’s. There was something oddly familiar about that name. After a while, I remembered that my Aunt Ellen, (my father’s sister), worked at St. Vincent’s. St. Vincent’s was a major trauma/critical care center and the primary admitting hospital for Trade Center victims. After Ellen moved back to Houston, she told me that on September 11 they went into full disaster mode – extra cots, ready to triage badly hurt people, surgeons on stand-by, etc. However, most of the people that came in were not that serious; just treat and release. Ellen said that what was hard was all the people coming to the hospital looking for their family and loved ones and not finding them.