I haven't been to war, but I have been overseas with missles poised and
"DEFCON 4" in effect. I've been a field medic, an EMT, a volunteer
firefighter, an accountant ... I could do the math, I could count up the
casualties that could likely run to tens of thousands.
Tens of thousands of people dead in two buildings is hard to believe ...
it's like talking about a googleplex ... a concept that somehow is not
real.
Then I heard something that kicked me in the gut. I knew that a number
of firefighters had gone into the towers, trying to get as many
people as possible out safely, and I knew that many were still in there
when the tower collapsed.
But when I heard the number, that number I could related to -- three
hundred, 300 ... three hundred firefighters were missing, unaccounted
for after the building fell. Thirty-three police were missing, but
three hundred firefighters.
That's about the winter population of the town I grew up in, the town
where I later was a volunteer firefighter.
That's also about the total number of firefighters, paid and volunteer,
in this county, and the county south of us that houses Cincinnati.
Three hundred ...
and for the first time in 15 hours, I cried.
-- Arachne V1.70;rev.3, NON-COMMERCIAL copy, http://arachne.cz/
