Tuesday Tell All.. September 16th

So I found this website on a friends blog called Tuesday Tell All.. They pick a topic every week for you to blog about on Tuesday. I liked that it gives you new topics to talk about and something new to blog about every week! So here goes.. This week's topic is: "September 11th. It has been seven years since the terrorist attacks at the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania field. Where were you when you heard the news? How did you react? What are your feelings now seven years later?"On September 11, 2001 I had just dropped Cody off at kindergarten and was driving home with Kellie, who was two at the time, when the DJ on the radio broadcast what had happened in New York. I came home, turned on the tv and stayed there for the rest of the day. I called Jon and we debated my going back to the school to pick Cody up since we really weren't sure if the attacks were over.

I had been working at my job for SLCPD for about 5 months and had a whole new perspective of this kind of tragedy. I can't now and couldn't then imagine sending my officers into a building and never hearing from them again. To call them on the radio, one after another, and get nothing but dead air on the other end. There must have been millions of 911 calls that flooded their centers and no way for these dispatchers to help. They must have been so overwhelmed and unprepared for what they heard that day. I personally have calls that I will never forget, and I'm sure these dispatchers remember calls from that day in their nightmares.

My feelings now, seven years later are still the same. I wonder if something on this scale will ever happen again. I know that as a city Salt Lake is not prepared, but is probably more so now than it was seven years ago. I know that if something like that were to happen here, that I could be expected to go to work, while other people head home to their families, and the odd part about that is I would want to be there. I know I am not prepared as an individual to sustain my family in the event of a major disaster and that scares me.. What a wake up call to all of us that we are not as safe as we once thought we were. I hope it is something our country never has to witness again.