Remembering 9/11

I was on holiday in New York City on 11 September 2001, the day terrorists hijacked four planes, flew two of them into the World Trade Center, which was just a few kilometres from my hotel, and killed thousands of people. It was one of the scariest days of my life.

My friends and I got up at around 10.30 am and left our hotel without hearing the news. As we walked through the streets of Manhattan, we saw people covered in white powder, which we later found out was dust from the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center.

At Times Square, we joined a group of people outside the CNN building, which was showing footage of the second plane flying into the Twin Towers. The footage looked like a scene from an action film. I couldn’t believe it was real.

We heard a lot of crazy rumours that day about terrorists dropping chemical bombs over the city and killing us all. It was terrifying. Our mobile phones didn’t work so we had to line up at a pay phone to call our parents. And the airports were closed, which means we couldn’t go home.

I stayed in New York for another week, waiting for my flight to be rescheduled. One afternoon my friends and I walked down towards where the Twin Towers had been, now known as Ground Zero. We saw people wearing sandwich boards with faces of loved ones they’d lost. They asked us if we’d seen them. We shook our heads.

9/11 happened ten years ago, but I’m sure for people who lost loved ones in the attacks, it still feels like yesterday. I was thinking of them all on this year’s anniversary.