Friday, November 21, 2014

Alison Thompson Personal Account of 911

My account of Sept 11th

by Alison Thompson

Sept 11th 2001-In honor of my 23 friends whose lives were stolen that day in the WTC. It is for them that I have dedicated the past 13 years Volunteering full time around the world starting on Sept 11th. 
Jonathan Connors ( Cantor Fitzgerald 104th FL) RIP.

my Sept day
"My rollerblades squeaked as i sprinted through yet another set of red lights, i had come 5 miles but still had 2 more to go. Over my back hung a bag containing a hefty first aid kit and a small bottle of Chanel #5. I glanced at the sidewalks filled with people gathered around radios and Tv's dragged outside from corner stores and i picked up speed. I had to battle my way through crowds of people streaming in the opposite direction. They walked in a quiet fashion- hair and clothes were covered in white soot and they held onto each other like invalids. They looked like the victims of the nuclear explosion in Hiroshima- there was no color anywhere. I turned onto the cobblestone streets and continued to make my way to the World trade Center. I found myself alone in a blizzard of ash and and smoke that burned my eyes. Inside the cloud, i found a Latino man dressed in an expensive business suit lying unconscious on the ground; I loosened his Gucci tie tilted his chin back and started CPR all the while calling out into the fog for help- 2 ems workers ran over and carried him away- still wobbling on my skates my heart beat louder than rain yet I felt compelled to push farther into the darkness. it was 10;27 am on Sept 11th 22001 and something bigger was about to happen.
i felt the ground moving beneath me and looked up to see the WTC nearby north tower tumbling toward me like a stack of cards. I sprinted away frantically attempting to out-skate the avalanche that was trying to eat me alive, but then i dove under a parked UPS truck. Twenty bucket loads of prayers later, I crawled out into the now even denser fog of sooty darkness i saw pieces of bodies scattered about like roadkill and collected them into a pile. I i looked out into the undergloom of the gates of hell-. i saw a great black pit as though Satan had risen up out of the earth and scorched everything in its path. Fire and steam came spewing from the nostrils of crushed steel which had the greenish color of bile. I closed my eyes and listened to the cries of a 1000 innocent voices and i thought of a quote from Dantes Inferno: Lasciate ogne speranza voi ch'intrate: "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here" 
I came across other ordinary people like me trying to find people alive in the twisted steel and we began ripping wood pylons that were mounted on surround buildings to create makeshift stretchers for the injured.----- A few hours later we loaded into a NYC public bus now manned by a policeman and headed back over to the West Side Highway. Those 5 long blocks resembled a ghost town. The scenery passed by in slow motion as though time itself was snoozing. A buss of excitement hissed through the bus as we headed back into Ground Zero. I felt a surge of pride- WE WERE NOW SOLDIERS FIGHTING ON AMERICAN SOIL......" 
Over one million Volunteers signed up to volunteer at ground Zero and Sept 11th is now a national day of service and volunteering- 
Dedicate a part of your day today to volunteer- in memory of the stolen lives. Love Alison Thompson ( twitter- lightxxx)

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