Last night I watched the documentary, 102 Minutes, on The History Channel. It was film footage from a number of sources, laced together in real time, to paint a picture of the events on September 11, 2001 in New York City.
Honestly, it was the most powerful piece of television I have ever watched. Some of the footage was from news people but some was from the average Joe that happened to have his video camera handy.
There were a couple of things that really stood out for me.
One was footage of firefighters heading into the burning buildings. Knowing what was to come, I wondered if any of them had made it out. I tried to memorize their faces, examining them to see if I could detect a look of fear in their eyes. It wasn't fear that I saw. It was determination mixed with questioning how they were ever going to be able to put that fire out. At the end of the piece, I learned that the firefighters in that particular segment all perished in the collapse.
Second was the noise and lack thereof. In the clips that we all watched on CNN, the noise had been edited away. It was a cacophony of different sirens, people crying, people shouting, alarms. And then after the collapse, silence. Just the sound of the wind.
102 Minutes brought back every feeling of fear, shock, outrage, etc that I felt that day in our not so distant past. If you get a chance, watch!
2 comments:
I am not sure I could handle watching this all over again, it brings up such emotion in me.
Every American just stopped what they were doing that day and chose to become united, yet it seems today that has lessened. That is really sad.
We all need to watch it, and re-dedicate ourselves to this country and to one another.
I agree with PP - the emotions are hard to handle at times. Still feeling chills seven years later...
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