TaDa-daLA ... itz ME!

Wow. Just like that, 10 years have come and gone.

I was on the other side of the country when the hijacked planes crashed.

BUT I WAS THERE AT GROUND ZERO…

My memories of 9/11 attacks were more that what was fed to us by the media. I flew to NY as part of the Red Cross National response team.  At the time, we were still in the ‘search and rescue’ mode… not yet ready for the ‘recovery and identify’ stage.

I had two primary tasks —

1. to pull rescue workers OFF the ‘assembly line’ and force them to sleep/rest
2. to take first account witness statements of those seeking assistance, searching for relatives

So while I was not physically in NY on 9/11/01, I did live through the ugliness of that day thousands of times over. Their shaky voices, the horror/fears in their eyes, their haunting details of what they saw, heard, felt were not merely contents of aid forms. To date 9/11/2011, they are still very vivid in my mind.