September 11th

Today is the 4th anniversary of the September 11th terrorist attacks on the United States. I remember the first time I heard anything about it. I was just turning in to the campus where I work. For some reason I went in the west gate that day, and I very rarely do that. On NPR (89.1 KSTX) I heard that a plane had crashed into the WTC. They didn't really specify what it was, but I immediately thought of a little plane like a Cessna or something. I had no idea what was to come. I know that we sat in the cafeteria for a lot of the day watching CNN.

Here's what I was hearing on NPR as I drove in. (Requires Real Player)

At about 8 minutes in, there's an actual news report. It's really worth listening to. The commentator for the first portion is Bob Edwards who is normally very calm and smooth on the air. The fact that he's speaking in broken sentences and faltering shows that he's unsure of what's going on and just doing his best to keep an even keel.

You can skip to 11:14 to continue coverage. There are several minutes of non-attack related coverage in there that aren't really pertinent. It's really very informative even for me to go back and listen to this. President Bush's remarks start at 13:25 in. Another interesting part of this report comes at 25:04. Bob mentions that all air traffic in the US had been grounded. That's hundred of planes. That was an amazing part of this. A powerful part also come at 27 minutes. That's when Bob first saw the collapse of the North Tower. It really affected him strongly.

I really hope that it is available for the forseeable future. Brendan, I hope you're listening to this some day...it was a very important event in US history.

Here is some more info. I didn't listen to all of this, but it might be of interest.
The 9-11 Commission An Audio Chronicle

I've downloaded the full report from the 9-11 Commission (7.5 Meg) in case it somehow becomes unavailable in the future. It's available here.

I have made this post at 7:46 am my time in honor of the first plane strike. It happened at 8:46 NYC time.