Any remaining thread of innocence in the country may have been lost forever. Not innocence, as in lack of guilt, but innocence having to do with our hopes, our beliefs, our lives.
Their livelyhood. There’s a good possibility that a lot of people may lose jobs because of this. My dad works at a hotel near Washington National Airport. If they close that, a lot of the hospitality industry in Crystal City will be affected. I’m sure mangement will be OK, but what about the low wage people – the ones who cook and clean. And of course the jobs for people who actually work at National.
And even if National remains open, I’m sure a lot of airlines are almost doomed to go under. US Airways wasn’t looking so good since the merger was called off. Continental has already furlough employees. It remains to be seen what effect this may have on air travel.
Less personal perhaps, but I understand that the Securities and Exchange Commission only had physical files. Remember that investigation into IPO manipulation that was going on? Well, looks like that one might be over.
And also Big Cheese’s comment about the K9 dogs.
Okay, I realize that human life comes first, but this IS zoogirl. I heard on the TV today that people in the area apartments were just let in for ten minutes to grab what they could. I hadn’t realized that they’d had no access since Tuesday and my first thought was that there must be a lot of very hungry pets wondering where everyone went. In times of great stress many people turn to their pets for comfort and the loss of that comfort, combined with worry over their pets well-being must have added greatly to peoples suffering. For single people a cat may well constitute their whole family, and it’s distress may be equivelent to that of a child for them. Most healthy animals can probably survive that length of time, if they have access to water, so I hope there weren’t too many actual losses.
I know that material items, both work related and personal are a terrible loss, but to me, causing suffering to intelligent creatures is worse.
My company was located in 1 WFC [across the street from the towers] our off-site backups were located in the WTC up until about four months ago. Had Arcus not relocated to NJ we’d be operating from month old data.
We had, what I thought, was a really good BRP [Business Recovery Plan]. We had meetings every two months, and a test twice a year. The tests were nice…but they were never like this. The plan basically went out the window. It took about a day and a half to get organized. We had tapes sent to the wrong state; I had to visit the off-site storage facility personally because they couldn’t tell us what was there and what wasn’t. The original BRP identified critical systems that needed to be up before we could do business. But now that it’s happened, guess what, all systems are critical.
But I have to say, even with all of that, the BRP was 1000 times better than nothing. Without it we wouldn’t even have a shot at doing business when the market [supposedly] opens on Monday.
I’ll tell ya, whatever company I work for next is going to have a excellent recovery plan because of what I’m going through now.
“Great Little Jimmy, that’s a beautiful drawing!”
“Thanks, Mommy!”
“Now, could you draw one exactly like it so Mommy has a backup?”
:rolleyes:, I repeat :rolleyes:
What have we lost (aside from the lives of, seemingly, 5000 or so people)? I don’t know, really… material things are just things… not that important; even a Van Gogh (the vast majority of us will never see the real thing, and there are plenty of reproductions)…
But what have we really lost? Maybe our feeling of security, our innocent belief that we were immune to the real evil of the world, maybe more than that…
It might best be summed up by Astrogirl: I saw her today for the first time since it happened (we went out to lunch and heard on a Korean radio station that the US forces were moving towards the Middle East… so we ate quickly and went back to my place so I could watch the news…). During lunch, she said, in Korean, something to the effect of: “You’ve lost your smile.”
Yeah, I guess I have. I hope it’s temporary.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Servo *
**
Man, that’s rough. You can’t ever really know how good your BRP is until you’re forced to use it, I suppose.
We just had a sort of “drill” for our plan because of Tropical Storm Gabrielle. We went through all the “pre-disaster” steps, because we are located in a converted warehouse complex and it ain’t all that safe in a strong wind (that’s how we all feel about it anyway). They always close this place down in TS/Hurricane conditions for fear of loss of human life. And if we aren’t here, we shut down everything and send backups off to Arcus (we do that daily anyway, but we sent all the source software media, etc, too.)
My mother admitted to being concerned about her retirement money, an IRA with Morgan Stanley. Her broker called and and reassured her that “her money is safe.”
In her own version of dark humor, (thank goodness the people who raised me can have a sense of humor in times like this!) she said that whenever she saw a piece of paper fluttering down on TV, she’d say “There goes my retirement.”
We once had a field fire that got out of control in one of the fields neighboring our house. My mom grabbed us, and my grandparents’ (both sides were avid photographers) pictures. It would be hard to rebuild. It would be impossible to replace the snapshot of my grandmother and her sisters, arms linked, strolling down the Boardwalk as teenagers. Luckily, the fire was contained before it reached the house. But that’s what we took first.
$140M in Gold. It’s now in the basement area somewhere.
We lost a big chunk of the telco infrastructure. Several public data switches were in the towers, and some high capacity trunks in that area will be out of service for a long time. At last count, 10 OC48 trunks are out of service; some beyond repair. That’s equivalent to 1344 T1 lines, or over 32 thousand voice channels.
We’re still trying to determine of the West Street central offcie building is structurally sound (it’s right next to WTC#7) or if it has to be demolished.
Of course as soon as I posted that I realized that there are quite a few businesses that won’t be needing data lines, due to the fact that said business don’t exist any more. 
Where was it before the collapse? Who had it?
And how do you know this? 
My idealism, my innocence, my belief that good will always win.
I don’t know how everyone else is doing, but I feel like I’m slowly losing my mind. Twice now I’ve had to pull over because I was crying too hard to drive.
I feel like I definitely lost a part of my idealistic, pacifist spirit. It hurts.
the web site of the Afghan resistance is http://www.afgha.com Has a lot of articles written by journalists from all over the world. Explains the who, how, why, and when of the Taliban, Bin Lade, relationships with Pakistan, and other countries. It’s updated daily & helps me understand what’s happening.
According to the AP, 13 tons/$110 million in gold and $120 million in silver are buried in vaults underneath 4 WTC, one of the smaller buildings that collapsed. It belongs to people or firms that trade futures contracts on the NY Mercantile Exchange.
Don’t ask me to explain what futures or mecantiles are though.
Big Cheese: Can it be retrieved? After the towers are cleared, of course; after the…you know…have all been retrieved. That’ll be a while, of course, but when it’s possible and appropriate to do so, can a crew uncover the vaults and break into them?
From the online dictionary (sorry, don’t have time to get ol’ Noah)
futures Business. Commodities or stocks bought or sold upon agreement of delivery in time to come.
mercantile \Mer"can*tile\ (?; 277), a. [F. mercantile, It. mercantile, fr. L. mercans, -antis, p. pr. of mercari to traffic. See Merchant.] Of or pertaining to merchants, or the business of merchants; having to do with trade, or the buying and selling of commodities; commercial.
Mercantile agency, an agency for procuring information of the standing and credit of merchants in different parts of the country, for the use of dealers who sell to them.
Mercantile paper, the notes or acceptances given by merchants for goods bought, or received on consignment; drafts on merchants for goods sold or consigned.
Usage: Commercial is the wider term, being sometimes used to embrace mercantile. In their stricter use, commercial relates to the shipping, freighting, forwarding, and other business connected with the commerce of a country (whether external or internal), that is, the exchange of commodities; while mercantile applies to the sale of merchandise and goods when brought to market. As the two employments are to some extent intermingled, the two words are often interchanged.
Source: Webster’s Revised Unabridged Dictionary, © 1996, 1998 MICRA, Inc.
I assume it can be. They don’t seem to be too worried, I’d be freakin’ though.
from the AP again:
The Times quoted James Newsome, acting chairman of the Commodities Futures Trading Commission, which oversees futures markets, as saying there was not much concern about the gold and silver “because the metal is secure and because there is ample supply.”
Even if for some reason the gold can’t be recovered, there’s plenty of supply in the world. One company estimated the trade center hoard to be 0.3 percent of the global supply.
The precious metals are used to settle trading in futures contracts. Futures traders generally don’t want the actual gold; instead they’re buying contracts based on it to hedge or speculate.
Me, I’m worried I’ve lost the free and easy access to both sides of the border. Goodbye swinging down to Seattle on a three hour drive. It’s likely to take 5 or 6 now.