April 19th - to me.
I was in Oklahoma City, OK when the Alfred P. Murrah building was bombed. It was weird. I was in the basement of the hotel downtown where I worked. I felt nothing. I heard nothing. I was oblivious to the entire event at the moment of impact. My husband was 7 miles north and felt the shake under his feet. I can only guess that it was because I was below ground level.
A delivery driver came in and asked if I heard that explosion. I said no and kept working. My dearest friend came in from down the hall and told me again there was a massive explosion. She and I went out to look.
It was silent. No sirens. No screaming. No running. Nothing but crunching of broken glass under foot.
I was not prepared for what came next. The massive media influx - stayed at our hotel. The massive government influx - stayed at our hotel. The massive rescue workers - stayed at our hotel. When we were full they stayed across the street in the convention center on cots.
The management meeting that followed was how we respond to this disaster. Staffing, accommodations, provisions, supplies, access to and from work, transportation for line employees.... etc.
It lasted months. It wasn't until the first anniversary that I cried. That goes for many of the employees of the hotel too. We didn't see the news coverage 24/7. We didn't see the recovery efforts. We didn't see the fence of commemorative items. We were working to keep the people there in clean sheets, food and drinks, trash taken out and all the telecommunications work that all of the above require. It was quite the task. When they finally left the downtown area and we had time to breathe, the moment had passed. The urgency and constant conversation had waned. But at 9:02 the next year, we all gathered outside for a moment of silence - and cried.
I also experienced the Towers - not directly - but as a domino effect. I worked in a hospital. We had the same management meeting. Staffing, accommodations, provisions, supplies, access to and from work, transportation for line employees.... and the addition of blood donations, moving non critical patients out so that acute patients from the city could move in. It was the most depressing deja vu I've ever experienced. The city hospitals were anticipating many more injuries. 24 hours after that meeting. They called and said to stop preparing. Send back your ambulance crews. No more blood donations. No more bed preparations. Send us body bags instead.
The worst part of this day - is that it is the birthday of a wonderful friend. He's ### years old - I won't tell unless he says so first :) He's fun loving, full of life, inspirational, smart, funny and the antithesis of all the hatred this day represents for me. It saddens me that this day will have that shadow for him. His birthday is April 19th - mine is June 11th - the day Timothy McVey was put to death. There is an odd cosmic connection to that.
