Sixteen years ago today the world changed forever. Today is the anniversary of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center in America and I can tell you exactly where I was on that fateful day.
I was right here at the Burton Mail offices. I was deputy news editor then and we were still based in High Street. I had just popped into town to pick up a sandwich on what was a normal September day. But when I walked back into the newsroom everything was about to change. I was told by an red-faced junior reporter, 'there's something happening in New York at the World Trade Center'.
I remember lunging for the TV remote and punching in the news channel, and there it was thick black smoke billowing from the twin towers. At first it was difficult to tell what had happened and the TV reporters at the scene had no more idea than we did what was going on. A massive fire or terrorists had detonated a bomb inside the buildong, we thought.
But as the as the minutes past, information was flooding in, a plane had crashed into one of the towers and I remember thinking it must have been a terrible accident then. But as footage continued to come in from a news channel helicopter circling the towers, it was clear two planes had crashed, one into each tower. It was no accident.
The general chatter in the newsroom had stopped and all eyes were on the TV as we realised this was a major news events. As word spread around the Mail, staff from advertising drifted in and stood quietly at the back of the newsroom as they watched the horror unfold in real time in front of our eyes.
News also flashed up of another plane crashing into the Pentagon in Washington and another in Pennsylvania.
But it got worse and I remember the collective anguished gasp from the now packed newsroom, as first one, then the other tower collapsed. I remember someone saying, has that really just happened? It's full of people. They can't have got out can they?'
In all 2,996 people from 93 countries died and 6,000 were injured at the World Trade Center, 140 died in Washington and 40 in Pennsylvania in the co-ordinated terrorist attacks, which al Qaeda claimed responsibility for.
I was stunned by what I was seeing and we initially thought that someone had declared war on America. I phoned my husband who was at home with our two young children telling him to switch on the television straight away – he would not believe what had just happened.
It took all in the newsroom a while to compose themselves the footage was so shocking, people were standing with their hands over their mouths - aghast. But we knew we had a job to do. We ushered the advertising people out and started planning our coverage. This was going to be one of the biggest stories we would ever cover – world changing I remember thinking.
There was no Burton Mail website then, just the newspaper and that day's edition was already on the streets. The next one was the day after and I knew that edition of the paper would be one of the most important I would ever work on.
We had to cover the international story but we also had to get the reporters working on finding local angles. The front page and most of the main pages in the paper were cleared for coverage, including using many of the shocking images of the planes crashing into the Twin Towers.
We worked late that night as the story was simply enormous. I got home around 9pm. That night I crept into my son and daughter's rooms and kissed them, grateful that I still had my loved ones - so many families did not after this day.
The next morning I couldn't stay away from the office and got into work for 7am when I took a call from a woman in Burton whose son had a lucky escape from the World Trade Centre. He had been due at a meeting in one of the towers 90 minutes after the terrorists attacked. I went out to interview this mother myself. She told of her upset at the attacks and how relieved she was her son was safe and well. 'Can you believe it happened? She kept asking me. 'No,' I kept replying. No-one could believe it – the world was in shock.
That weekend and the following week fund-raising efforts were held for the victims of the attacks across Burton and South Derbyshire as they were up and down the country and thousands were raised. I made a point of taking my car to a fire service car wash and duly dropped my £20 in the collection bucket. It wasn't much but in some small way I wanted to show I was with the victims and their devastated families.
In the days that followed there was a feeling of outrage which grew and grew in the UK as did our solidarity with our brothers and sisters across the pond. We all wanted to do something to help. It also brought it home to me just how much hatred there was in some parts of the world from such terrorist groups towards the West. It left me feeling a little frightened – if it could happened in the heart of New York it could happen here and sadly it did in London in 2005. By Julie Crouch, Burton Mail digital editor
