Do you remember where you were eighteen years ago today?
Category: 9/11
I’m speaking at SQL Saturday Virginia Beach — June 8
Saturday, June 8 is coming soon (a week from this Saturday). How will you be spending it?
For me, I will be speaking at SQL Saturday #839, Virginia Beach that day. I will be doing my presentation entitled: “Disaster Documents: The role of documentation in disaster recovery.” In my presentation, I tell the story of my company and my workgroup — which had an office in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. I had written several documents for our organization, and they ended up being critical to our recovery.
Come on out and check out my presentation. I can always use a good audience. Hope to see you there!
Memories of 9/11
On this somber anniversary, I am reblogging this post from last year.
(Photo image courtesy of Wikipedia)
I still remember the morning of September 11, 2001 (15 years ago today) like it was yesterday. It was an ordinary Tuesday morning. At the time, I lived in a townhouse in Clifton Park, about 15 miles north of Albany. I got up, showered, got dressed, kissed my then-girlfriend (now wife) good day, stopped at the local convenience store to pick up the day’s New York Times, and drove to work.
My company had an office in the World Trade Center. Although I was based out of the Albany, NY office, I regularly made business trips to the World Trade Center roughly about once every couple of months; in fact, I had been in the World Trade Center only a couple of weeks earlier. I had been down there often enough to become well-acquainted with the area; I knew the hotels (including a Marriott right…
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Memories of 9/11
(Photo image courtesy of Wikipedia)
I still remember the morning of September 11, 2001 (15 years ago today) like it was yesterday. It was an ordinary Tuesday morning. At the time, I lived in a townhouse in Clifton Park, about 15 miles north of Albany. I got up, showered, got dressed, kissed my then-girlfriend (now wife) good day, stopped at the local convenience store to pick up the day’s New York Times, and drove to work.
My company had an office in the World Trade Center. Although I was based out of the Albany, NY office, I regularly made business trips to the World Trade Center roughly about once every couple of months; in fact, I had been in the World Trade Center only a couple of weeks earlier. I had been down there often enough to become well-acquainted with the area; I knew the hotels (including a Marriott right between the two towers) where I regularly stayed on business, I knew some of the restaurants in the area, I’d become familiar with the subway lines that went in and out of the area, and I’d become accustomed to taking walks in Battery Park. While I am a lifelong upstate New Yorker and not an actual resident of New York City, I’d been to the City often enough that, to me, it felt like a second home.
Likewise, I knew the thirtieth floor of Tower 1 — where one of our offices was located — very well. One of our large data centers, a server room (in which I spent a lot of time when I was there), was on that floor. I made sure our server room maps and information were up-to-date. I had come up with a map grid system (identical to the letter-number grid combinations that you’d find on road maps) to identify and label server racks. Whenever we added a new server rack, I’d create a label for it, record the servers within the rack, and make sure it was updated on the map. Years later, I would eventually come up with an online system, including a SQL Server database back-end, that automated most of the data that I gathered from my regular server surveys, but in those days before automation, I had to do the work manually. No matter. I enjoyed working in the World Trade Center, and I always looked forward to my excursions down to the southern tip of Manhattan. Those trips always made the mundane work worthwhile.
At first, there was nothing out of the ordinary (from my perspective, anyway) when I arrived at the office in Albany and went upstairs to my desk. Someone told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I didn’t think anything of it at first. My first thought was that a small single-engine Cessna had hit one of the towers. How tragic, I thought, and I told myself to check the web for any news about it later that morning. I dropped off my briefcase and my newspaper at my desk — again, another normal, typical morning for me — went downstairs to the cafeteria to get myself some coffee and some breakfast, and went back upstairs to my desk.
At this point, the office was abuzz. I checked a few news websites for information. That’s when I discovered that the plane that had hit wasn’t a small private plane; it was a Boeing 767.
I called my house immediately. I told my girlfriend, “turn on the TV right now!”
That’s the last of what I remember clearly from that day. The rest of the day is a blur. While my memory of the events from that point forward is hazy, this is what I remember.
No work was done for the rest of that day.
I made my way over to the help desk area where a TV was broadcasting the news. Other than the news broadcast, the entire area was deathly silent. I remember one girl on the help desk was sobbing.
My manager had gone down to the City that day; he was there every week. I remember his wife calling me. She was understandably in hysterics. I told her that I had not heard anything from him (the lines were all jammed from the amount of cell traffic, so no calls were getting through), and I promised that I would give her a call once I’d heard any news.
(I did see my manager later that evening; he told me that as he approached the office, a crowd was heading in the other direction. He was there to see the towers fall.)
I remember Dan Rather broadcasting the events. I remember the stunned silence as we all watched the towers fall.
I had heard stories from my friends and co-workers who worked in the World Trade Center. One person was downstairs getting breakfast. He had only moments earlier gotten out of the elevator — when flames shot out of the elevator. Another person ignored announcements to stay where they were, and escaped down the stairwell — a decision that likely saved his life.
The next few weeks were hectic. Our department (we were responsible for supporting the company’s server infrastructure), including employees from New York City, Harrisburg, Syracuse, and Middletown, convened in the Albany office to come up with a recovery plan. We started with rebuilding critical domain controller servers and went from there.
All that time that I had spent in the World Trade Center documenting the servers proved to be crucial. Based on the data we had, we were able to recreate the servers we had lost and rebuilt the infrastructure. We obtained backup data from offsite storage — proving the value of backing up your critical data and storing it offsite — and recovered much of the data stored on the lost servers. We worked thirteen straight days around the clock, working in shifts. A server engineer would rebuild a server; if it wasn’t finished by the end of his or her shift, another engineer coming on-shift picked up where the previous person left off.
Everyone wanted to do their part. I remember one of our colleagues was away on vacation when the planes hit; he was unable to return immediately because all flights were grounded. He eventually was able to make it back to contribute to the cause. Even my own manager had to tell me to go home and get some sleep. He knew I wanted to do my part, but he also knew that it was important for us to get our rest so we could contribute.
I was willing to give up my extracurricular activities to help out. I was going to skip band practice to help rebuild. No, I was told. If you skip things like that, the terrorists win. Stick to your normal routine. It’s important that we maintain morale and keep our spirits up. We were all encouraged to work and to rest when we had to. Employees from out-of-town were encouraged to take trips home to spend time with their families, then return to Albany to continue with the work (we set up a schedule so that everyone could do so). Any sense of normalcy and efforts to boost morale were evident. The company even served us breakfast during those two weeks; I remember eating a lot of pancakes, eggs, sausage, and bacon when I got into the office each morning.
After two weeks, we had rebuilt enough of the server infrastructure that we were able to maintain our business. We weren’t at 100%, but it was enough to keep it going.
It wasn’t until later that we discovered the aftermath in regards to our company. We lost nine employees. Among our lost employees were a man confined to a wheelchair and his friend who wouldn’t leave his side. Every year, on September 11, I still think about those nine co-workers that I lost. I didn’t really know them. (Regarding the man in the wheelchair and his friend: I vaguely remember exchanging a couple of emails with them, and I think I spoke to one of them on the phone a couple of times, but I did not know them that well.) Nevertheless, I still consider them as I would friends or family members that I lost.
Fifteen years have passed since that fateful day. It is important for us to remember. We can and must always remember the lessons of 9/11. However, it is also important for us to continue with our lives. Not moving on would be a great disservice to everyone who lost their lives on that tragic day.
Life goes on.
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