I've been reading 102 Minutes by Jim Dwyer and Kevin Flynn. The 102 minutes, of course, refers the time between the first plane hitting the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the collapse of the towers.

I've read quite a few books on 9/11. I feel like there's so much that went unreported that day. Americans didn't see people jumping from the building. We didn't see the carnage in the plaza between the Towers or on the streets. I was taken aback by a passage in 102 Minutes about how the police had to kind of shake people escaping out of stupor when they caught a glimpse of the charred bodies, plane parts and debris in the plaza. I don't think we get a sense of that kind of horror on the ground that day. Maybe it's impossible to, but I do think that some of the images of 9/11 were so spectacular (planes crashing into buildings, buildings collapsing, mountains of smoke) that our brains still kind of read it as a movie, as something that didn't really happen.

I like reading individual's stories of that day because I can wrap my brain around that. Unfortunately, doing that also gets me so angry. Angry at the murderous bastards who want to kill us because of our freedoms and prosperity and angry at HC asshats like Ward Churchill. I've spent the last couple of days reading about some of the people he refered to as "little Eichmanns". People like Frank DeMartini, who sent his wife down 88 flights of the stairs in the North Tower and then went up the stairs with a colleague, Pablo Ortiz, and rescued approximately 50 people near the first plane's impact zone. DeMartini and Ortiz didn't make it out alive. Similarly, there was Windows on the World assistant manager Christine Olender. Olender was heartbreakingly capable that morning. She gathered her guests (she still referred to them that way in many calls for help) and staff away from the smoke and did everything she could to try to get help or information or anything. Unfortunately, their fate was sealed. These weren't "evil" symbols of capitalism and imperialism. These were ordinary Americans, who, like many people, became extraordinary Americans that day.

The book is actually kind of controversial because it rather strongly criticizes some of the heroes of the day: the police and fire departments. On one hand, I understand why people are uncomfortable with that kind of criticism. Those departments lost hundreds of men that day. And, furthermore, there's the danger of saying things like "poor communication caused 500 people to die". When we say things like we shift the blame from Islamofascist terrorists to American bureaucrats. The Twin Towers didn't really collapse because of poor fireproofing. They collapsed because terrorists crashed planes into them.

This isn't to say that we shouldn't critically examine the events of 9/11. Police and fire departments all over the country should be able to learn some invaluable lessons on crisis communication from it. We should be able to improve high rise safety by looking at what went wrong at the Towers. But, at the end of the day, I think it's important that we all understand that the way to make America safe from terrorism isn't to make our buildings stronger.