A decade ago, people watched with horror and disbelief as the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were deliberately hit by airliners, and collapsed, killing thousands of people and throwing up a huge, thick cloud of dust over Manha
A decade ago, people watched with horror and disbelief as the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York City were deliberately hit by airliners, and collapsed, killing thousands of people and throwing up a huge, thick cloud of dust over Manhattan Island.
As it turned out later, another airliner crashed into the Pentagon, and a fourth plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania, thwarted from its target, thought to be the White House or the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C.
The world changed forever on that day, and to this day, no one can travel on any airliner without going through the rigors of high security, one of the lasting legacies of that day, known simply by the date of "9/11".
In the Weyburn Review of Sept. 12, 2001, an interview was held with a former reporter and editor, Naomi Horne, who worked in Manhattan for the BBDO advertising firm, in an office a couple miles north of the Trade Center towers. In one comment she made at the time, she said, "I just feel dazed now. I hope I never ever live to see anything like this again."
Contacted by e-mail on Monday, Horne said she tries not to think about the horror of what happened to the twin towers, but instead remembers fondly how her city responded in the aftermath.
These include "the people who, instead of running away from the attack, went downtown regardless of their own safety to help rescue survivors; the volunteers who did their shifts at the site and then went around and got in line again to do another; the way everyone flooded the blood banks across the city to donate; the firefighters who came from across the entire Eastern Seaboard to attend funerals of men they'd never met because our NYC firehouses had been so decimated they couldn't spare the personnel to honour their own dead."
Thinking of these and other examples, Horne commented, "It was, in a weird and twisted way, New York's finest hour, and I was, and am, proud to call the city home."
Asked if she thought the ceremonies were overblown at all, she replied, "No, I don't believe the memories of September 11 are 'overblown'. Thousands of people died that day; many thousands more had their lives turned completely inside out; and anybody who was here that day found himself or herself changed forever. I thought (Sunday's) tributes were fitting; that the memorial that was unveiled is lovely; and that the construction work going on downtown is a testament to the city's resilience and the fulfilment of a promise the mayor made 10 years ago when he looked at the rubble and said, 'We will rise again.'"
MP Ed Komarnicki was not a Parliamentarian a decade ago, but was an Estevan lawyer getting ready to work when the news came out with details of the attacks.
"I was watching the news and they showed the first plane hitting the World Trade Center, and I wondered what was up. When the second plane hit, I thought, 'America is under attack'. I wasn't sure if it was over yet, but I knew it was a significant event and would change things forever," he said.
Once he was elected as the MP for Souris-Moose Mountain, he's had to fly often to and from Ottawa, and has seen the many security measures put in place as a result of 9/11, including deciding whether to be patted down or to go through the X-ray machine.
"It really has been a complete sea-change," he said. "I don't think we'll be any safer, but we'll always need to be vigilant. I don't foresee that changing in the foreseeable future. That's the world we live in now. If they can strike at the heart of America, they can strike anywhere."
Asked where he was on 9/11, MLA Dustin Duncan recalled that he was a student at the University of Regina at the time, and was in his apartment in downtown Regina getting ready to go to class.
"I had the news on, and I ended up skipping class for the rest of the day as I watched the reported. It seemed unbelievable at the time. I remember there were a lot of rumours that weren't true then the crash into the Pentagon happened and the plane crashed in Pennsylvania. At the time, we didn't know if it was going to end," said Duncan.
The next day he went to his political science class at university, and the professor and the students ended up talking about the events of 9/11 for the entire class.
Looking back now, he said, "It seems hard to believe that there was a time before that" when there wasn't such stringent security measures in place.
"I don't think we'll ever go back to those days, it's changed so much," he said, adding that the incident showed people in North America that terrorism isn't just something that they saw on the news from the other side of the world, that it was brought home to this continent and could happen anywhere.
After watching some of the TV coverage of the 10th anniversary of 9/11, he said one lesson that was brought home to him was the importance of family and home. "It reinforces how precious life is, and how much your friends and family means to you, because it can change instantly."
