For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
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By kanga
#1870015
Working in UK in a MoD-connected office with a permanent seconded presence of a number of allied personnel, civilian and military, the largest number being from US. I had also worked in US counterpart office, part of DoD near DC. We had by 2001 standard good to excellent electronic channels to parts of many DoD premises worldwide, although videoconferencing was deemed too greedy on bandwidth to have set up most of the time. Oh, and there were very few broadcast TV receivers in the building, none in the day-to-day 'operational' offices apart from in the restricted access 24h 'cell'.

ISTR the first I knew was a internal email to all recipients in the operational areas saying that because of an 'incident' our US counterpart was going into a mixture of lockdown and evacuation, and that we should not attempt to initiate any electronic exchanges with any DoD offices so as not to overburden either communications channels or US colleagues still at work. There was then an email from the boss of our (large) area telling us that more of us would be going to 7/24 working, and appropriate managers should identify appropriate (through skills and experience) people for rostering into shifts. It was only later that someone very senior announced over a whole site tannoy system a gist of what appeared to have happened. Everyone was told to keep on working and not to congregate at the few TVs or turn on personal radio receivers for more details. So I heard about the details only on the car radio as I drove home, and saw TV pictures only at home.

A significant number of my US colleagues were at a conference (with some allied including UK delegates, close colleagues) in California. They were precisely the sorts of people who would be needed back in DC. They obviously could not fly back, so they hired some minibuses to drive all the way, taking it in turns to drive, non-stop. The conference was cut short, and the other allied delegates went to work as best they could in the hosting Californian DoD office, but in that era portability of logon credentials was much less, so they were probably of limited use to their hosts.

No one lost was known to me personally (the Pentagon and other DoD footprint in the DC area huge) but many of my US colleagues did lose both friends and family members. However, the aftermath certainly affected my tasks for most of the rest of my career.

Vicariously, one of our children was working at the time in a niche UK startup in specialist software for financial institutions. It was a small world. Their company was the nth (n small, 5th or 6th) largest company in the sector worldwide. After 9/11 they were suddenly n-1th: one of their competitors had been wiped out, losing all its employees.
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By Propwash
#1870018
This will probably be an unpopular view, but as someone who personally attended numerous terrorist incidents throughout the 1970's and 80's, and saw the carnage, destruction and mangled remains of many innocent victims, I always reflect during 9/11 commemorations how little they remain in the public consciousness even in the UK, let alone globally. I doubt any American would even know what you were talking about if you mentioned the Guildford pub bombings, those in various London locations including Hyde Park, or Manchester or Warrington.

Of course watching events unfold on live TV may have something to do with that, or the sheer scale of the destruction, or the impact on everyday travel globally because of the method used, but I have always had the sneaking suspicion that it is because the outrage happened in the USA and not here. If there was any good to come out of 9/11 it may be the awakening in America to the reality of terrorism, something too many had previously seen as romantic struggles in far away countries.

Whatever, I use the publicity around 9/11 to commemorate and recall all the victims of terrorist atrocities and don't limit my sympathy to just those in New York.

PW
kanga, T6Harvard liked this
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By kanga
#1870022
Propwash wrote:..If there was any good to come out of 9/11 it may be the awakening in America to the reality of terrorism, something too many had previously seen as romantic struggles in far away countries...


that has indeed been my experience, even among US colleagues who had a prior professional interest in 'global terrorism'.