{"id":1679,"date":"2004-09-10T16:17:48","date_gmt":"2004-09-10T20:17:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=1679"},"modified":"2010-07-12T10:25:34","modified_gmt":"2010-07-12T14:25:34","slug":"the-falling-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/?p=1679","title":{"rendered":"The Falling People"},"content":{"rendered":"

I found this article – “Falling Bodies, a 9\/11 Image Etched in Pain”<\/a> intensely painful to read … but I also felt compelled to finish it.<\/p>\n

It wrenches up the soul to think of the people who fell, or who jumped. It haunts me. As I know it haunts many others. It horrifies me, in such a deep I’m-an-infant-having-a-nightmare kind of way, that my brain tries to protect me from getting near enough to it to contemplate.<\/p>\n

One horrible anecdote:<\/p>\n

Police helicopter pilots have described feeling helpless as they hovered along the buildings, watching the people who piled four and five deep into the windows, 1,300 feet in the air. Some held hands as they jumped. Others went alone. As the numbers grew, said Joseph Pfeifer, a fire battalion chief in the north tower lobby, he tried to make an announcement over the building’s public address system, not realizing it had been destroyed.<\/p>\n

“Please don’t jump,” he said. “We’re coming up for you.”<\/p>\n

Almost instinctually on Sept. 11, people recognized that they had an unfortunate view into an intensely private matter, an unseemly intrusion not just into someone’s death, but into the moment of their dying. American broadcast networks generally avoided showing people falling. A sculpture that depicted a victim, known as “Tumbling Woman,” was removed from display at Rockefeller Center after one week.<\/p>\n

Some commentators later remarked that those who had fallen had made one brave final decision to take control of how they would perish. Researchers say many people had no choice. Witness accounts suggest that some people were blown out. Others fell in the crush at the windows as they struggled for air. Still others simply recoiled, reflexively, from the intense heat.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

God rest their innocent souls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I found this article – “Falling Bodies, a 9\/11 Image Etched in Pain” intensely painful to read … but I also felt compelled to finish it. It wrenches up the soul to think of the people who fell, or who … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[22],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17618,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1679\/revisions\/17618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sheilaomalley.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}