| My fellow aviation accident
investigators and I were in our offices at the
Transportation Safety Board of Canada on the morning of 9/11
when our Communications Department came around to advise us
that an “aircraft of some kind or something like that” had
hit one of the twin towers in New York. Many of us,
including myself, went to the Communications room to watch
the news on TV. As we were watching the smoke billowing from
one of the towers, and listening to the reporter trying to
figure out what had actually hit the tower, we watched in
astonishment as the second aircraft came into view and
plowed into the second tower.
We looked at each other (10 or
so of us in that room) and knew at that very instant that
the world of aviation—and the whole world that we knew, for
that matter—had just changed dramatically. The impact of
that realization was so violent that no one spoke for quite
a while. Like mine, all thoughts were likely turned to the
atrocities suffered not only by all those who had needlessly
died in this horrible terrorist act, but also to those who
realized they were about to die without being able to do
anything about it. Throughout the remainder of the day we
walked around like zombies, unable to comprehend what would
make humans perform such horrible acts on innocents.
We once again relearned the
hard lesson that man is the only animal species that can
repeatedly find what it calls “good reasons” to kill its own
kind and feel good about it.
Réal Levasseur, ALPA Safety and Security Representative |
