26th of July, 2010. Lower Manhattan, New York City.
There are some places on this beautiful planet of ours that are quite simply breathtaking. They're rare, and they encompass all landscapes, climates, countries and continents, but the one thing they have in common is that they are awesome. Not awesome as it is commonly used today by anyone under thirty as a synonym for cool. Awesome as in commands the visitor to stand before it in awe. They demand respect. They literally take your breath away.
Most of them are breathtakingly beautiful. They inspire writers to wax lyrical over colour hues, artists to spend hours at the site with oils and watercolours and tourists to take cheesy snapshots of themselves with said wonder in the background - just to prove to family and friends back home that they were there.
This place is breathtaking, but it is not beautiful. There are no painters here. The writers write, but their stories are of tragedy and death, chaos and destruction, tears, lost loved ones and fallen heroes. Even the tourists don't linger - they come, they wander awhile, trying to imagine what used to be here. They take a few photos of what remains, then they leave the shadows and windswept emptiness in favour of sunshine and light.
Behind me is the Cortland Street subway station. In front of me is an immense construction site. Ten years ago, it looked very different. There used to be five tall office buildings and two immense skyscrapers here. Together, the seven buildings were known as the World Trade Center, the heart of the New York Financial District.
The eleventh of September, 2001, changed all that.
Ground Zero - actually being here - is strange. Like the other tourists visiting New York for the first time, I too am trying to imagine that this huge crater in lower Manhattan was once occupied by two of the tallest buildings ever built, and am finding it a little difficult, to say the least. Some guy flogging an A4 photo book with "Tragedy 9/11" scrawled in red across the cover told me as part of his sales pitch that if you want to get a sense of scale here, double the height of the tallest remaining building in the area, and you're getting close to the height of one of the twin towers.
You can't see much of the site - well, of the ground anyway. All that's visible are the umpteen cranes, each with the stars and stripes proudly, resolutely, defiantly fluttering in the breeze from the topmost point. The two-metre cyclone fencing barricading the area is completely covered with a long plastic banner advertising the visitors' centre, which I had no intention of visiting.
I remember waking up the morning of the 12th of September in Australia - it happened at about 11pm local time in Melbourne. A Tuesday. I watched Rove, then turned the TV off before Sandra Sully's face popped up on screen with the late night news so I could get some sleep and make it to my Italian class at 9am the following morning. My mum woke me up long before my alarm though - she said something, a strange look on her face, then turned the TV on in my room. Like so many people, I thought at first it was a new action movie, then I saw the CNN logo in the corner of the screen, and the footage of the second plane. The coverage had been going all night, and there was no escaping it during the next few hours, days, weeks and months.
That was more than enough opportunity to hear all I ever wanted or needed to know about what happened. Not only does the visitors centre have a photo display and various other informative resources, but they also coordinate guided tours of the site run by volunteers - living victims: people who experienced it firsthand, or who lost their partner, sibling, parent or child that day. There was no way I was going to do that. I wanted to visit Ground Zero, to see the area, see what's left, try to imagine what used to be there. Then I wanted to leave the area and not return. If I wanted to know more from someone who was there, I could listen to one of the hundreds of interviews, read one of the many written accounts or watch one of the several documentaries or feature films. To see the look on someone's face as they talk about their memories of the buildings coming down around them, or as they remembered someone they lost that day, someone they dearly loved and sorely miss... I couldn't do it.
So I didn't. I sat on the steps outside one of the buildings around the outside. For an hour or so. I just sat there, thinking, writing, remembering, imagining. At one point, a fire engine roared past, sirens blaring, lights flashing, and a spectacular American flag emblazoned all the way down the side. I took a deep breath. Listened to the sirens fade into the noise of the city. Then I left.
If you happen to be in New York and can handle an intensely negative experience, go down there. Walk around. See the memorials. Pay your respects. Experience the site. It's worth a visit. But I won't go back.
Showing posts with label tragedy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tragedy. Show all posts
Victoria's bushfire hell.
It's pretty rare that Australia makes the German news. The last time that happened was to announce the death of Heath Ledger in January of 2008, so when it does happen, it gets my attention. It's also very unlikely that the news is good.
I had known that the temperatures in my home state of Victoria and the neighbouring states of New South Wales and South Australia had been scorchingly high of late, with all three states experiencing multiple days of 45ºC and over, temperatures significantly above the normal summer highs of 40ºC, so it was only a matter of time until the first bushfire reports would begin to trickle through. Bushfires are a part of summer in Australia; some years are worse than others, for example Ash Wednesday of 1983, and the horrific Black Friday of 1939, both of which claimed many lives. Usually though, the maximum toll is limited to several hundred hectares of bush, some sheds and livestock, and occasionally some houses which were in the path of the fire. Very rarely are lives lost.
As soon as I heard the words "Australia" and "bushfire" in the Berlin radio news recently though, I knew that this could not be your average bushfire season, especially since the piece had made it all the way up the list to second billing behind the latest developments in the German financial crisis. I kept listening, and what I heard shocked me into silence.
Thirty-one fire fronts across the state. 330,000 hectares burnt out. Entire towns razed to the ground. 750 homes destroyed. 108 people confirmed dead, with this number rising all the time as more towns were reached. Thousands of people homeless. Emergency services working around the clock to bring the infernoes under control.
The worst part? Some of the fires are suspected to have been deliberately lit. The notion that anyone would concieve of lighting a match and setting it to the tinderbox that south-eastern Australia had become during the heatwave of the previous two weeks is nothing short of horrifically sickening. In one fell swoop, one or two individuals had created the worst bushfires in Australian history. Lives of innocent people have been extinguished, homes have been destroyed, communities decimated, and countless volunteers have, without a second thought, put their own lives at risk to fight bushfires which need never have been fought.
I know there's nothing I could do even if I was at home. But being this far away is torture - hearing via online reports and Berlin radio news updates that my home state is an deadly inferno is very difficult to handle. The fact that, as far as I know, my family and friends are very fortunately all safe, reassures me. But just because I don't know the hundreds of families who have been affected doesn't mean I'm not thinking of them, or that I'm any less upset.
This post was partly inspired by the ever-eloquent MD; therefore, I conclude with a brief quote from my favourite Inspector Rex fan.
"Love those around you. Hold them tight, tell them that you love them and never, ever let them forget it. ... Like most Victorians, I have friends affected by this - and some we're yet to hear from. If you've any prayers going spare, we could use them. ... So tonight, do me a favour. Hug someone you love. Tell them you love them. If not for you, then for all those who can't."
And my request to you? Pray for rain and a cool change, and an end to the inferno. Then tell your family and friends how much they mean to you, because there are 108 people who will never get the chance again.
I had known that the temperatures in my home state of Victoria and the neighbouring states of New South Wales and South Australia had been scorchingly high of late, with all three states experiencing multiple days of 45ºC and over, temperatures significantly above the normal summer highs of 40ºC, so it was only a matter of time until the first bushfire reports would begin to trickle through. Bushfires are a part of summer in Australia; some years are worse than others, for example Ash Wednesday of 1983, and the horrific Black Friday of 1939, both of which claimed many lives. Usually though, the maximum toll is limited to several hundred hectares of bush, some sheds and livestock, and occasionally some houses which were in the path of the fire. Very rarely are lives lost.
As soon as I heard the words "Australia" and "bushfire" in the Berlin radio news recently though, I knew that this could not be your average bushfire season, especially since the piece had made it all the way up the list to second billing behind the latest developments in the German financial crisis. I kept listening, and what I heard shocked me into silence.
Thirty-one fire fronts across the state. 330,000 hectares burnt out. Entire towns razed to the ground. 750 homes destroyed. 108 people confirmed dead, with this number rising all the time as more towns were reached. Thousands of people homeless. Emergency services working around the clock to bring the infernoes under control.
The worst part? Some of the fires are suspected to have been deliberately lit. The notion that anyone would concieve of lighting a match and setting it to the tinderbox that south-eastern Australia had become during the heatwave of the previous two weeks is nothing short of horrifically sickening. In one fell swoop, one or two individuals had created the worst bushfires in Australian history. Lives of innocent people have been extinguished, homes have been destroyed, communities decimated, and countless volunteers have, without a second thought, put their own lives at risk to fight bushfires which need never have been fought.
I know there's nothing I could do even if I was at home. But being this far away is torture - hearing via online reports and Berlin radio news updates that my home state is an deadly inferno is very difficult to handle. The fact that, as far as I know, my family and friends are very fortunately all safe, reassures me. But just because I don't know the hundreds of families who have been affected doesn't mean I'm not thinking of them, or that I'm any less upset.
This post was partly inspired by the ever-eloquent MD; therefore, I conclude with a brief quote from my favourite Inspector Rex fan.
"Love those around you. Hold them tight, tell them that you love them and never, ever let them forget it. ... Like most Victorians, I have friends affected by this - and some we're yet to hear from. If you've any prayers going spare, we could use them. ... So tonight, do me a favour. Hug someone you love. Tell them you love them. If not for you, then for all those who can't."
And my request to you? Pray for rain and a cool change, and an end to the inferno. Then tell your family and friends how much they mean to you, because there are 108 people who will never get the chance again.
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