On September 11, 2001, I was in Singapore. It was early in the night. My wife, at the time girl friend, and I had just gotten into a banger of a fight. I can't recall about what. We were out on a date in a part of Singapore known as Clark Quay. I only recall that we had been admiring the Old Hill Street Police Station, a British colonial building now painted white while the shutters and window frames were painted in a rainbow of other colors. Not long after that the argument began and we split in different directions, screaming at each other. I don't normally drink alcohol and a had a pittance of an English teacher's salary, but made my way to the Raffles Hotel Long Bar and ordered a Singapore Sling. Underwhelming. I made my way out to our HTB flat on Upper Serangoon Road, which we shared with two other flat mates. Shin was there. The TV was on. World Trade One had been hit and was smoking. We forgot our fight and watched the remainder of the events of September 11, 2001 unfold.
I remember seeing footage of all the first responders - EMTs, police, fire fighters and their sea of vehicles with flashing lights surrounding the World Trade Center and thinking it was too much response in one spot, something terrible was going to happen. It did. I heard an NYC fire fighter address the issue this week on the 25th anniversary of the attacks. He said they could have pulled everyone out earlier, saving the lives of dozens, maybe hundreds of first responders; saved NYC Fire Department from their most tragic day in history. Then he countered by saying with no reservations that if had they pulled back and left regular people to die in the World Trade Center, that would have been the most tragic day in NYC Fire Department History, far beyond the loss of life of more than 300 first responders. They had a job to do. They understood it meant risking their own lives, loosing their own. They did it.
I was far away from America on 9/11. I have never marked the anniversary and never paid much attention to it until this year. It's not that I didn't care. I did. I quit my job and returned to America. Rather, it's that I felt disconnected. That's why I returned. This year I did the stair climb in our Embassy with the Marine Security Guard detachment to commemorate the sacrifice of the first responders at the World Trade Center. After the climb I watched videos, hours of them for three days straight, about the attacks, the people who lost their lives and the people who survived. It was the first time I heard that counter argument to my fear 25 years ago in Singapore that the the first responders needed to pull people back, have resources to respond elsewhere. Now I can better appreciate what they went through and why they had to try, stood their ground in the face that looming, hellish catastrophe.
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