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Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management Crisis and Emergency Management Newsletter Website |
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December
2006
Volume
11 - Number 3 |
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By Daniel Paepke I remember February 26, 1993 a lot better than I probably should. I was only 11 years old at the time and was staying after school. My mother picked me up and looked sullen. She told me that the World Trade Center had been bombed that afternoon—being in school all day, I had not heard any news from the outside world. Rather callously, all I could think of was “So what?” She then told me that my father—who frequently traveled to New York and worked in a building near the World Trade Center—was in New York and that no one had been able to reach him since the bombing occurred. That is when the dread began to set in. I realized at that moment that regardless of the aims this terrorist plot had against the governments of New York or the United States, the bombing had an impact on me: an 11 year-old boy some 150 miles away. Thankfully, my father was fine. He had managed to leave work early shortly after the bombing and caught a train back home. While I thought that I had left behind this experience that afternoon in 1993, it resurfaced again on September 11, 2001. As a sophomore at American University in the fall of 2001, I was looking forward to sleeping in that Tuesday morning. Of course, as it did every morning, the phone rang—I assumed it was my roommate’s girlfriend checking in before she headed off to school. But my roommate’s reaction to whoever was speaking on the phone—which I now realized was someone other than his girlfriend—was highly alarming. Instantly, we turned on the television. A few minutes before the phone rang, a second airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center. My roommate and I were speechless. For what felt like hours, we stood in silence and watched our screens, unaware of what was about to unfold. About a half-hour later, an airplane crashed into the Pentagon, turning this event from something that was happening far away to something that would now impact me. Once again, I felt the same emotions I had in 1993—a terrorist event had not only effected the United States government, but it had also affected a young college sophomore. I tried calling my parents but only got busy signals. When I finally did get through, my father’s answering machine picked up. “Where are they?!” I was furious—how could they not pick up the phone? After many attempts, my mother was able to call from her office. She explained that my father was not at home but was in Massachusetts instead. After being able to speak with both him and my mother, I finally felt a tiny bit of comfort. At the very least, I felt thankful that my parents knew I was safe and that I knew the same for them. While I did not personally lose anyone on September 11, 2001 or February 26, 1993, these attacks still impacted me. I always had the naive perception that terrorist actions only could affect governments—I never suspected that an attack could make me feel vulnerable or defenseless. It was these emotions that first brought me to study the field of emergency management and, I suspect, many others as well. |