Tonight on PBS there is a show called The Center the World which was the last episode of Ric Burns' documentary about New York City. It covers the entire history of the World Trade Center from it's conception in the 1940's through 9/11 and beyond. It looks at the Twin Towers through the eyes and memories of people who designed, built, worked in, admired, and even some people who never really appreciated them. The first hour is about the towers and what they were and what they were meant to be before 9/11 and the last hour is about their tragic demise.

One of the more interesting people I thought was Philippe Petit who [illegally] strung a tightrope between the two towers and performed stunts and acrobatics a quarter mile in the air above the streets of New York City. His memories of the towers and what they meant to him are unique and very touching in their own way.

I imagine a lot of people don't want to be reminded of 9/11 any more or have seen all they really want to see about The World Trade Center but in my opinion this show combines the good and the bad, the mundane and the etherial, and the inspiring and the tragic aspects of The World Trade Center and September 11th, 2001 better than anything else I've watched or read.

It will be repeated late night on Sept. 18th [here in Colorado anyway].

I can't locate the show on my local PBS channel but I will keep looking for it.

I remember 9/11 well as I was picking up a coffee at a local coffee shop shortly after 9:00am and the shop manager came in and was very distressed and informed the patrons about the tragedy.

We all thought it was just a tragic accident.

I went home and turned on the TV and was transfixed by the events and became horified when the second plane smashed through the next tower.
I then realized that it was not an accident and could not comprehend why this was happening

I watched it most of the day as I was off work at the time

I grew up in NJ and had gone to NYC quite a few times while I lived there. I never visited the WTC but I did go to the top of the Empire State Building which ironically was accidentally hit by an airplane years ago. I could have never imagined that a skyscraper made of steel and concrete anchored to solid bedrock designed to stand for a century or more could actually be so fragile.

The thing that gets to me is that for a long time after 9/11 I looked at every website I could find, I bought and read many different books about it, read entire technical documents from the NTSB and various other agencies, the written accounts from the people that were there or watched it happen from a distance, dozens of videos, thousands of photographs, transcripts from the rescue workers' communications, the written summaries from the first responders that were published by the New York Times and every other thing about that day I could find.

And yet after all of that, and I'm sure after anything and everything that will ever be said and written about that day, when it comes right down to it in a very real way I still can't comprehend that it really happened. That those two gigantic buildings and so many of the ones around them were turned to dust, that so many people who were doing nothing more than going about their ordinary lives on a beautiful cloudless Autumn day in NYC and Washington DC or taking a plane trip to who knows where aren't with us any more. That the first responders gave their lives not because they wanted to be heroes, but because by their very nature they could do nothing other than rescue as many people as possible from a scenario they had never trained for because no one had ever imagined it could happen.

My sister still lives in NJ and she saw the second tower fall from where she was. Her family had been to NYC the week before and my two little nieces had seen the WTC while they were there. After the second building fell my sister called me in tears and asked how she could possibly explain to them what had happened to the 'Two Towers.' I had no idea what to tell her that day. I still don't know. I'm sure I never will.

I guess one thing I'm hoping for is that the feelings of anger, revenge, retribution, and the blame we sometimes seem to be trying to put on others and even ourselves for either creating the tragedy of that day or failing to prevent it can be allowed to fade away. Those feelings aren't wrong or undeserved but they don't have the ability to ever make the sadness and sense of loss any less real or painful. But as they diminish perhaps what will remain are the prayers we will always have in our hearts for all the people everywhere that perished on that day and those that live with the loss of their friends and loved ones still. The best way to honor their sacrifice might be to work towards a future where the unthinkable will never happen again.

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Hello All!

I used to work in those buildings for Citbank and Arcus. My weekly visits to 2 wtc sub basement 2. Took the DC2120 tapes in 2 blue metal locked boxes back to WTC on tuesday mornings. But that contracted ended in Jan 2000. At the time of the attacks I was in ATL on vacation and couldn't return home til mid Oct. Home for me at that time was Indy.

NYC is where I was born and raised. I left NYC when I was 21 and move to ATL. But as life turns out I return to NYC often. Now I'm located in Newport TN.

Honor our Heros, Our Armed Forces! God Bless America, and all of those who passed away! Last count was 2,749. Plus Bayonne NJ as erected a memorial too.

Tomorrow, I'll be putting up a lil memorial on my website.

http://www.stb575.com

It matters what they're designed to take. For instance the planes that struck it weren't even made when the WTC was built, therefore there couldn't have ever been anyway to know how big of a plane would exist in the future and what to build the the WTC to withstand the brunt of.

Anyways we all already know it was because of the fire that weakend the steel supports according to news reports over the last five years which caused them to collapse.

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Probably the most shocking image I still have in my head about that day was seeing people jump from the building to escape the fire. One in particular is I still remember the colour of the shirt and tie a man was wearing as the news camera zoomed in on him falling after jumping from the building.

I just meant it figuratively [I think I spelled that right] in that I always expected them to be there, and not to seemingly vanish in the space of a couple hours. And you're right about the size of the planes. The towers were designed for an impact of a 707 travelling about 350MPH. They estimated the 767s were going well over 500MPH at full throttle with a lot more weight including a full fuel load. Their wingspans were as wide as the buildings were.

I remember there were people who said the buildings may not have been up to code or should have stayed up longer. I read a study about what happened and like you said the steel softened over time and finally buckled and gave way. The investigators talked about the 'not up to code rumors' and they emphasised that they found that not only were they built well beyond the codes at the time but even taking that into account they were still amazed at how long they managed to stand since the outer framework was a major support structure and so much of that had been cut through and otherwise destroyed by the airplanes. They said it was a real tribute to the architect because he would not have had any real financial or other incentive to design them to surpass the codes like he did.

The most shocking pictures I saw were some of the very first ones that came up in a search I did on the web. It was just a basic image search for "9/11" or "WTC" or something along those lines. They were gruesome but what really bothered me was that anyone, including schoolkids, would see those just by searching for basic terms and not something like "victims" where you would probably have to expect to see things like that.

Thanks for the link to your website. I looked through all the pictures from 9/11 and there were many I hadn't seen before. I also checked out some of the NASA links and thought they were cool. I guess some people think NASA's not a good place to spend our taxes, but IMHO I think we get a lot of good return on the money. I know NASA provides all kinds of materials to educators that want to develop a curriculum about space science or similar studies. Then I somehow wandered into an area having to do with computer science or something like that and I had to run away because I started having cranial seizures. Too advanced for me to understand . Nice site though. You've obviously put a lot of work into it and it shows.

Well I gotta go [people reading this are like "Thank God! I thought he'd never shut up! ]. The Path to 9/11 movie on ABC is starting. I keep reading it's a real piece of cr*p but I guess I'll give it a go...

Thanks Mike for your kind words. I do have a 9/11 Banner but I haven't had time to get into my backups to retrieve it. Once I put it up you'll see it on the main page once I get it up. One of my dreams was to work for NASA but you have to be in the airforce. So that is not an option. So I burried myself with computers.