This is the picture that broke me down today.

[aquart]

This is my memory: the white-sheeted empty gurneys waiting for the injured who never came.

[Warpy]

1. You didn't see the cononer's trucks lined up, either

preparing to take all the bodies that were never found.

2,000+ people disappeared completely that day. I think that has got to be what haunts families the most, that there weren't even teeth or bone fragments for so many of them.

[roguevalley]

35. all those doctors waiting. a bunch of them were from here. it was

awful.

[REACTIVATED IN CT]

40. that is why the memorial with the names on the brass

panels means so much. I watched the entire reading of the names on CSPAN yesterday. I couldn't stand the commentators on NPR radio talking over the names so I turned to the TV - unusual for me on such a beautiful day to chose to be inside.

I didn't lose anyone that day - by a stroke of luck (train delays) some co-workers were late for a meeting there.
But several weeks later I had a phone call from a man who I dealt with fairly regularly on business (The Transit Center). He was calling to let me know of their new location and it suddenly struck me where his old one was. He was a 2 time survivor - he got out in '93, too. His entire staff survived on 9.11.01 because they knew enough to get the hell out NOW. I still get goose bumps thinking about that conversation with him about making the most of each day because you just never know.

[CTyankee]

2. Oh, god, how sad. they never came. this is hard to take...they all were incinerated or

a very few leaped to their death...OMG

[cali]

7. it wasn't a very few. It was something like 200.

[CTyankee]

8. that many? I had no idea it was so many people!

Wow, that was incredible...all those people choosing to leap to their death rather than wait for the inevitable...just horrible and bad...

do we know who these people are?

[cali]

9. I believe only a few have been identified

but yes, it was that money. I don't advise reading this, though I did. It's pretty horrifying but here's the link:

http://www.esquire.com/features/ESQ0903-SEP_FALLINGMAN

[CTyankee]

11. Yes, I remember a tv show on him and it was incredibly sad.

I have saved your links and will see it later when I can take it. Hard to do so. Very upsetting.

I have thought about this quandary: leap or die from the air poisoned from the fire. I don't know what I would do...

[msanthrope]

29. I remember the couple that held hands and jumped. nt

[Pirate Smile]

12. I saw an article today about the jumpers. How people seem to just try to ignore that it ever

happened. I would think everyone would remember it from that day. I know I sure do.

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Twin+Towers+jumpers+that+Americans+will+not+talk+about+/-/1056/1234160/-/view/printVersion/-/7j4sru/-/index.html

I don't get why it would somehow be a bad thing - face a burning inferno or jump. Death either way. Yeah, I'd jump.

They are right though about how it is just never spoken of anymore. If you don't remember those days from living through them at the time, you'd probably have no idea.

[aquart]

18. Really? The jumpers are what I don't forgive.

People killed instantly...Not the worst way to go. But to sit down with your morning coffee and then have to decide between hitting the pavement or burning to death?

I am sorry they killed bin Ladin so quick. Wasn't there any 103 story building in Pakistan they could drop him off? How about from a plane at 10,000 feet onto land?

Like I said, it's the jumpers I don't forgive.

[Pirate Smile]

21. The article talked about how they didn't want to figure out who did jump.

Like there was something wrong with that choice. That is what I don't understand - Why anyone would think deciding to do that in those circumstances is anything bad. I don't think so. It was from the article I linked to.

I'm not sure what you thought I was saying.

[aquart]

25. I don't think so either.

My unforgiveness is all for the self-appointed gods who forced the choice on them.

[sufrommich]

22. Yep. nt

[sufrommich]

24. I do think most people have the jumpers forever etched in

our brains. I know I do.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

42. Fahrenheit 9/11 plays tapes from police radios and you can hear

the jumpers hitting the ground. :cry:

[msanthrope]

28. Yes. Father Mychal Judge was thought to be killed by a jumper-"The Sphere" was split by a jumper.

Scores and scores....

[nadinbrzezinski]

3. Yup, the triage that never happened.

[lamp_shade]

4. ...

[Gin]

6. I, for one, would not work at ground zero.....the trauma experienced

there may haunt that space for a long time....color me woowoo but it's what I think.

[soleft]

31. My partner worked briefly in the new 7 WTC

There was a bathroom on the floor where objects were thrown about daily, and they were unable to determine who was doing it.

[sufrommich]

5. I remember them talking about hospitals scrambling to

prepare for an onslaught of injured people and how ominous it was that none were showing up.

[Pirate Smile]

15. Remember the people posting photos with their phone numbers - so many people searching for

loved ones. Hoping they had been late for work or had an appointment so they weren't at the office.

Thousands of pictures just posted all over the place in NYC. People searching for the missing but knowing where they probably were.

The reporters would interview them and just cry through the entire thing.

[sufrommich]

19. I remember. I don't think I stopped crying at all that day. nt

[aquart]

26. That day? I don't remember crying at all.

Too shocked. Too hard to believe it was real. Also, grief is for free time, afterwards. We didn't know if it was over. We didn't know if we were safe in our houses. We couldn't cry because there were things we had to do. There was a table for volunteers across the street from St. Vincent's. I was sent home to have lunch before I could volunteer to give blood. Volunteers walked up and down the blood lines feeding us popcorn and bread and juice...all kinds of food. A family friend volunteered her car and drove people wherever they needed to get.

Crying came days later. When I finally believed it.

[sufrommich]

30. I'm assuming you were in NYC ? I can't even imagine.nt

[aquart]

36. I'm 2 blocks from St. Vincent's. 32 blocks from Ground Zero.

I took a street map and counted. The border of the frozen zone. People needed valid ID and copies of their lease to go around the corner to their homes.

[aquart]

20. And every wall where pictures were posted becoming a shrine

With flowers and candles and notes.

[maryellen99]

33. I remember the picture of Rachel Uchitel holding the picture of her missing fiance

She became infamous later for being one of Tiger Wood's mistresses.

[aquart]

23. They expected so many that they put white sheets on rolling office chairs.

And stood there, the gurneys and the chairs and the hospital staff, outside St. Vincent's, waiting.

[REACTIVATED IN CT]

41. I remember that too. And I remember telling distraught

co-workers who wanted to do something to help to go give blood because they would need so much blood to treat the injured.....

[Lydia Leftcoast]

44. The sister of my parish priest at the time was a nurse in a hospital in New Jersey

She reported that many of the less injured people made it onto the ferries (operating on adrenaline, no doubt) and went to ERs on the Jersey side.

[babydollhead]

10. my daughter, then 5, said, "What do dead people need ambulances for?"

she was watching the coverage, they were asking people tp donate blood and talking about ambulances and showing those empty gurneys...she understood what we couldn't.

[Bluebear]

13. Did you know that fine hospital has closed? The only one serving lower manhattan

      Former employees of now-defunct St. Vincent's Hospital say the 160-year-old Manhattan institution was destroyed by mismanagement -- including expenses like a $278,000 golf outing.

      According to a lawsuit filed Monday in state Supreme Court in Manhattan, hospital executives also spent $17 million for management consultants and $104 million on other, unspecified expenses.

      The Greenwich Village facility closed in April with a debt topping $1 billion dollars.

      Doctors and nurses charge that 10 top executives had salaries of $1 million each as the hospital was headed for bankruptcy.

      St. Vincent's was founded by the Sisters of Charity, a Roman Catholic order of nuns.

[aquart]

16. I was at the protest.

[Bluebear]

17. 278K. For a golf outing.

Shaking head.

[aquart]

27. Unspeakable.

[Skittles]

14. I remember

hoping and hoping they would find large pockets of many survivors in the rubble :cry:

[spooked]

32. THIS is the picture that breaks me down every time...

"A five-year-old Iraqi girl screams after her parents were killed by U.S. soldiers in Iraq, January 18, 2005"

[Bonobo]

34. That picture is nightmare worthy. nt

[aquart]

38. Yup. The only crying child in the world.

How about the ones who are too weak from starvation to cry? Here:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--NXU5sO4n5M/Ti3KaaMBygI/AAAAAAAAO18/DSEG2aFslk4/s1600/somalia+3.jpg

[aquart]

37. Well, good for you to spit on us with your far more superior grief.

Couldn't contain your contempt for a single day? I do appreciate your great righteousness. But how cowardly to be so afraid of OUR feelings that you attempt to make us ashamed of them.

Were you hoping we'd start apologizing to you? GOOD LUCK WITH THAT.

[REACTIVATED IN CT]

43. Good grief - where did that come from ? ALL of these

photos show horrible things we do to each other - or allow to happen to each other. One of the founders of 911 Families for Peaceful Tomorrows said on Need to Know that we need to move past the anger and allow ourselves to feel the grief. And he resolved to prevent other families from having to feel what his family had to feel.

[Divernan]

47. You seriously need anger & grief management therapy.

I've never seen such an over-the-top response. There was NO contempt, NO righteousness, NO attempt to make anyone ashamed in the post you attacked.

What is it with you? Do you hate Iraqis, even 5 year old children?

Osama Bin Laden was Saudi Arabian, you know, not Iraqi.

Shame on you!

[REACTIVATED IN CT]

48. You are right - she needs help with dealing with these feelings

and I sincerely hope she seeks it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

45. Or the picture that I can't find anywhere of the funeral of the first Oregonian

killed in Iraq--the 19-year-old only child of his parents, whose anguished faces should haunt the architects of these accursed wars for all eternity.

[Divernan]

46. If pictures like this were published back in 2005, we might actually be OUT of Iraq by now.

I had not seen this before, and it is extremely powerful.

Don't understand why you got harshly attacked for posting it. You in no way implied your photo was meant to "outdo" or detract from anyone else's posts. The poster having personal ties to 9/11 was no excuse to flame you. I also had close ties to 9/11. One daughter living in Manhattan regularly attended bank meetings at the WTC, and we were unable to contact her until late that afternoon. Another daughter was the FEMA liaison to the Pentagon and was sent there immediately post crash. That personal connection does not leave me unwilling to acknowledge the suffering of this child which resulted from the US's distorted response to 9/11. She was a delayed victim, so to speak of the same terrorists who flew planes into the WTC, albeit the terrorists were abetted by Chaney/Bush in attacking her country and her parents under false pretenses.

It's been 10 years since anyone was photographed jumping to their deaths, but tragically, children are being orphaned every day when their parent(s) are killed by US forces/drones. We just don't see photos of those innocent victims.

[Liberal_in_LA]

39. wow. k&r