This is a terrible day.

I was driving in to work when I first heard it. I couldn't believe it when I heard it on the radio in the truck -- a plane had crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers. Was it navigation error? A terrorist attack? Nobody knew. Then, fifteen minutes later somebody came on the CB radio and informed everyone listening to turn to 99.5, the local country station, stating they had live coverage.

That's when I heard about the second plane. That eliminated any thought of coincidence -- it was hijacked planes and a terrorist attack.

I got to work and heard that another plane had crashed into a helicoper pad at the Pentagon. A car bomb had gone off outside the State Department's building. A third plane crashed 80 miles out of PA. Not long after that, I heard that both of the towers had collapsed under the fire, stress and damage from the impacts.

How many thousands of people dead? Nobody can know. It may take months for them to sort it out.

This isn't terrorism. It's an act of fucking war.

I came home...

I left work at about 12:15 this afternoon. I forced myself to eat something, and I turned on CNN.

I cannot begin to describe the horror. Video clips show scenes that are so... so completely terrible they're burned into my mind. These same images are the ones that will define an entire generation. Like the JFK assassination, like the explosion of the Challenger space shuttle, there are images here that we as a nation will never be able to forget, and must always remember.

The North tower, burning, a huge hole in its side belching billows of thick black smoke. Then, from out of the frame, the second plane, banking so that it turns dead-on towards the second tower.

The fireball from the second tower as the plane strikes the side.

The spray of concrete and glass debris, falling from the sky upon the witnesses below.

The plume of dust and smoke as the top stories of the South Tower collapse upon themselves, and then the entire structure gives way as the support columns buckle and then collapse. It was as if the building had been imploded...

The gray plumes of smoke pouring from the Pentagon building.

The collapse of the North tower, thirty minutes after the first... disappearing before you....

The home video taken by an EMT only a block or so away from the center as the first tower collapsed... there's ash everywhere, on the ground and in the air. It's dark as dusk because of the smoke, and papers from the destroyed offices litter the ground like so much confetti.....

My apartment complex, and the school across the street from us... both flying flags at half mast.

We must not forget.

....

I'm so numb.

I want to cry, and I can't.

Prelim reports...

200 police, 250 firefighters missing because of their presence at the WTC when the first tower collapsed.

My father is a fire fighter.

Debris is still falling from these collapsed buildings.

I am well on the way to being drunk. CNN is still playing on my TV. I still want try cry, and I still cannot. This tragedy is so unbelievable.

....

If this day doesn't become a national holiday, I won't understand how.

This is so tragic. I just... I cannot find the words to describe this. I'm failing to "use" LiveJournal the way it's meant to be used, but fuck that noise.