How I survived the September 11 attack on US

Exactly 20 years ago today, terrorists inflicted a grievous wound on the United States of America when agents of the notorious Al Qaida group led by Osama bin Laden spectacularly flew three hijacked commercial aeroplanes into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon killing more than 3000 people.

A fourth plane which had also been seized by the terrorists failed to reach its intended destination believed to be the White House, crashed into the open fields of Pennsylvania killing all on-board.

At a time when doomsday prophecies were not as fashionable as compared to these days, not even a clairvoyant could have imagined such a grotesque incident occurring anywhere in the world much less in the heartland of the world's superpower, the United States of America. Yet on the balance of probabilities and preponderance, no one could afford to tempt fate and get away unscathed.

Two days before the September 11th attacks, I had left Accra on a British Airways flight to New York to join two other journalists from Tanzania and Thailand to cover the 55th Session of the United Nations General Assembly of Heads of States and Governments.

The three of us had been awarded the prestigious Dag Hammarskjold Fellowship by the United Nations Correspondents Association (UNCA) and our remit was to report those events through our lenses as journalists from the Third World. And we were raring to go.

After an uneventful flight, my plane landed at JFK International Airport in bright, beautiful weather conditions. September being the early onset of Autumn, the sun was imperiously visible and glorious too but I was well bundled up just in case. It was only my second visit to New York a city of breath-taking beauty and also very fast as hell and confusing too for both locals and visitors alike.

I was fortunate because what my sponsors could not provide in the form of an elaborate welcoming party for me at the Airport (who am I?) was amply compensated for through the provision of a guidebook on how to comfortably find your way through this amazing, quintessential melting pot called New York City.

Straight away I realised that I was being put through my paces and the sooner I learnt to adapt to this new culture and my new settings, I risked being left behind.

So after dealing with the mundane task of going through immigration formalities, I "chartered" a cab to the UN headquarters located at 405 East 42nd Street, New York.

Meet up and Orientation

Meet up and orientation for the awardees was scheduled for 3pm at the UNCA office, which was located in the main UN building on 42nd Street. However, you had to visit the accreditation center to be verified and cleared in order to enter that humongous building. Fortunately, the accreditation center was just across the street from the UN building.

Meeting my colleagues from Tanzania and Thailand for the first time was a pleasant experience. Our scholarship was to run for three months within which period, we were to file reports to our media houses back home and to perform other editorial tasks as directed by the United Nations Correspondents Association.

Yet In our heart of hearts we deeply yearned for an opportunity to interview Mr. Kofi Annan. All I can say is that we tried but it didn't quite turn out the way we expected. Be that as it may, we had very elaborate plans on how to maximize the use of our time in New York.

Lunch at World Trade Center on 9/11/01

Top on the list of iconic places to visit was the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center where we had planned to have lunch on that fateful day. So after orientation was done, we checked into our apartments located on 78th Street, freshened up and came down later to conduct a proper tour of Manhattan. And boy were we blown away?

Manhattan is a very expensive place for even the diplomats who live there, much less journalists from the Third World living on a daily stipend of $45. And it is not as if we weren't warned. The warning was boldly written in black and white and underlined in the guidebook given to us by our sponsors.

September 11, 2001

September 11, 2001, had no menacing clouds hanging around it. In fact it was as glorious as the day before as the early sunrise cast its magnificent hue on the beautiful Manhattan skyline punctuated by a bevy of skyscrapers radiantly represented by the "bespoke" architectural masterpiece called the Twin Towers.

Something very curious happened that morning. While drooling over the prospect of visiting and later having lunch at the World Trade Center I felt some apprehension and unease come upon me that was strange and inexplicable.

It was as if I was caught up in the mystics or so I felt. Suddenly there was this strong, profound and immediate intuition to leave Manhattan as soon as possible. Being a very rational and composed individual not easily given to bouts of spiritual ecstacy, I stood my ground.

The more stubborn I got, the urge to leave became stronger and stronger. To have my peace back, i had to settle for a trade off of sorts. I decided to visit my sister in Staten Island earlier than the initial plan thus potentially jettisoning the earlier plan to visit the World Trade Center with my colleagues.

I called them in their rooms to inform them about the change of plans and they agreed to shelve plans to visit the World Trade Center till I got back from Staten Island.

Ferry to Staten Island

All this while it was just 7 o'clock in the morning but the events before had felt like time had come to a standstill. I took a quick cold shower (ostensibly to rouse myself from spiritual ecstasy) packed a few clothes and came to the front of the apartment building. It didn't take long before I got a cab to take me to the Port Authority in downtown Manhattan where I joined the ferry to Staten Island.

As the ferry pulled away, my eyes were drawn to the One World Trade Center and the Two World Trade Center popularly known as the Twin Towers in all their glory and elegance only to be reduced to a steel and concrete rubble in a matter of few hours.

Indeed it was an hour and a few minutes after I arrived in my sister's house in Staten Island that the first plane American Airline 11, hit the North Tower at exactly 8.46 am to be followed seventeen minutes later at 9.03 am by United Airline Flight 175, which hit the South Tower. Then at exactly 9.37 am, American Airline 77 crashed into Pentagon killing 189 people.

Bedlam

What followed after these clearly well coordinated attacks, which bore the trademark of the Al-Qaida terrorist group was total bedlam.

All 21 bridges and 15 tunnels linking Manhattan to the rest of the world were closed in an unprecedented lockdown comparable only to the post Covid-19 era.

All flights were also grounded all over the United States. No flights came in and none went out. America's airspace was shut down with only fighter jet formations allowed to regain tactical advantage until the situation had been stabilised.

Then we all know what happened. President George Walker Bush declared his famous war on terror which culminated in the toppling of the Taliban in Afghanistan, the killing of Osama bin Laden by American special forces and the rest is history.

20 years later, American and allied forces have left Afghanistan and the Taleban are back in control of Afghanistan. Would the Taleban continue to use Afghanistan as a safe haven for potential terrorists? I am not qualified to answer that question.

What I am quite certain about is the fact that if my colleagues and I had gone ahead with our plans to visit the World Trade Center on that fateful day we wouldn't be alive to mark the 20-year anniversary of 9/11/01.