Seven Years Ago

At the risk of appearing to be living in the past, today's entry is a memorial to that horrible day five years ago when life in the US Changed.

That morning, I was sitting at my desk in the office, downtown Denver, when the news of a horrible "accident" in New York. A plane had hit the north tower of the World Trade Center. First reports were sketchy and conflicting. When one of my co-workers came up to me and informed me of the second crash, I was sure he had heard some rumor that had been exaggerated in the telling.

When reports became clear that both towers had been hit by BIG planes and that there was a third attack, this one on the Pentagon, and a plane down in Pennsylvania. The scale of what was going on was obvious. I had just recently been on a project to define the disaster recovery plan for the company and knew our building to be the second tallest in the downtown area, it was also on the direct flight path of DIA's main east-west runway. And as Denver International Airport was only about twenty miles away of on the plains to the east of downtown (heck, I could see it from my window), the fact that the reports and rumors of airplanes being hijacked did not make me very comfortable sitting there.

But there was a job to do. I was the technical support lead for the product line that I was with at the time. The clients had to be informed that we knew of the situation and that we were actively working on how to deal with the changes that the morning's activities had necessitated. It was during this planning that the first report of a threat against my building was received. The fire alarm was set off, the building security told us all to leave.

Calmly, I directed my staff to leave and was in the process of setting the phones to night service when the all-clear was given. By this point all flights in the US had been grounded. The consultants we had on the road were stranded wherever the planes put down. (I heard stories of commercial jets being forced to land in executive airports, where the runways were way too short for a comfortable landing and hurry-rigged methods of getting the passengers off the plane once it was down; the gates had not designed to accommodate the planes any more than the runways had been.)

While meeting with the programming management on how we were going to accommodate the mass changes that would be required by the broadcasters going to wall-to-wall (commercial-free) news coverage, the second bomb threat was received. Again, I dispatched my duties as a fire warden and made sure everyone was out of the office and headed toward the ground. I then forwarded the phones to night service and headed toward the stairs when, again, the all clear was sounded.

We had an emergency meeting of the management staff and had just decided that we would start letting the staff go home early, letting people leave in staggered groups based on how far away they lived. We had received word from the management of the building that the mayor had asked for the high-rises in town to be evacuated "just in case…" Who were we to argue?

The days which followed have blurred into one-and-other over the intervening years. I remember taking all the support calls from home for the next few days until receiving word that the office was open again. I remember the paranoia that was the norm. I remember the conflicting advice offered by the government on how to best deal with new attacks which may (or may not) be imminent. I remember being on the second flight out of Denver when commercial airlines were allowed to fly again; I had picked-up a trip that the consultant who had been assigned to it didn't want to do.

But I know that no matter how much of an impact those days had on me and my industry, by far the worse were the life and times of the families of all the victims. It is to them that this column is dedicated. Because for all of the bad that happened that day, it was also a day when for once every American was unified. We were truly one country on that day! It's too bad that in the intervening years so many politicians have chosen to besmirch the memories of those who died on September 11, 2001 by using the memory to achieve their own political ends. The victims and their families deserve better.

Wherever you are today, I hope that you will take a moment to reflect on that day and the impact it has had on the world of today.

Don Bergquist – September 11, 2008 – Lakewood, Colorado, USA