Let's Roll

I'm going back to that seemingly ordinary Tuesday afternoon ten years ago, along with countless of people around the globe.

I was home, just had my meal, reading the newspaper. I had a text message from a friend:"Put the tv on, a plane had hit the World Trade Center-building in New York". I fumbled for the remote, putting YLE TV1 on. They were showing the scheduled live broadcast from a parliament session, usually as exciting as following how paint dries or grass grows. Only difference was that there was a news ticker at the top of the screen, giving early information of the first hit. At that point it was reported to be a small plane.

Of course my initial reaction was that it must be a horrible accident. Maybe the weather was cloudy or foggy, I thought since there was no images available at that point. I checked the teletext service and BBC World. No new information on either one.

Not much after that the impact of the second plane was reported. At this point TV1 cut away from the parliament to an on-going news coverage.

The staff of TV1's newsroom remembering the day:



MTV3's news report at 7 PM Finnish time:



Nelonen's news report at 5:56 PM Finnish time:



It also dawned to me it was no accident. Two planes don't hit major buildings moments apart by accident.

The footage of the hit on the South Tower left me speechless. It all seemed surreal. The image of people in panic, fleeing from the huge buildings on fire with a plane shaped holes in them. Then the news of another plane hitting Pentagon. Another one being hijacked. These kinds of things don't happen.

At this point I really didn't know what would happen next, Bad news just kept flowing. I also remember the Internet was pretty much useless. All the major news sites were unaccessible because of overload of visitors. Later proven to be false reports circulate about even more planes being hijacked. No one seems to know for sure.

I remember being on a phone with a friend watching the same news broadcast as the first tower fell. I think it was of Finnish MTV3, who were showing live images but from far, so we ended up asking each others "Did it fall down? It fell down!". There was just all the cloud of smoke and dust on the screen so you couldn't tell for sure.

As the second tower fell, the who magnitude of the attack was starting to come clear to me. Those shots of smoking Manhattan were really haunting. They still are. How is this possible, I asked myself.

The rest of the evening, well into the night I spend watching the news on different channels. I remember late in the night BBC reported of explosions being heard in Afghanistan. Even though unrelated to WTC, even it added to the confusion.

Next day the world woke up to post-9/11-world. World much more in fear, in anger, bitter and vengeful. Still today when we hear reports of an accident, usually the second sentence is "there are no terrorism involved". A western world that had to rebuild its sense of security.

But it also brought people together, bonded by the shock, the loss, the disbelief but offering their support to each other. Indeed, when you strip off all the political and religious ambitions of it, you're only left with unmeasurable amounts of grief and losses for an incomprehensible reasons.

Although being thousand of miles away, a day that I'll never forget.