Bavi­ta Gopaulchan

Nine­teen years lat­er and the 9/11 at­tack is still etched in­to the mem­o­ries of those who wit­nessed the fall of the World Trade Cen­tre and mass de­struc­tion to near­by build­ings.

A Trinida­di­an busi­ness­man vis­it­ing Low­er Man­hat­tan at the time re­called shop­ping at Ma­cy’s when he heard the ex­plo­sion.

“I was cash­ing when I heard the first boom,” the man who asked to on­ly be iden­ti­fied as “Pan­cho” told Guardian Me­dia.

He ad­mit­ted that while the flash­backs still have him shak­en, he is grate­ful to be alive.

“We were sup­posed to be un­der the World Trade Cen­tre for quar­ter to nine for the train and that was ex­act time the thing hap­pen,” Pan­cho stat­ed.

As fate would have it, he said they were mov­ing lat­er than ex­pect­ed. The busi­ness­man said his friends and rel­a­tives who knew his plan for that morn­ing, were ex­pect­ing the worse.

He told us: “He tell him­self all of us died be­cause he know the time all of us leave and were sup­posed to go un­der the World Trade Cen­tre so he did not know we were go­ing to shop and thing.”

Pan­cho added: “Every body that they bring to the place he went check­ing all of the bod­ies to see if it was us,” he added.

FLASHBACK: A fiery blast rocks the south tower of the World Trade Center as the hijacked United Airlines Flight 175 from Boston crashes into the building on September 11, 2001.

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Among the over 2,000 lives lost dur­ing the dead­ly de­struc­tion were 14 Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als.

Ac­cord­ing to Pres­i­dent of the Trinidad and To­ba­go As­so­ci­a­tion of Psy­chol­o­gists, Wendy Je­re­mie, it is nor­mal to still be trau­ma­tized by the 9/11 at­tack.

Je­re­mie not­ed: “If it is not in­te­grat­ed or di­gest­ed so to speak so that some of the symp­toms that the trau­ma­tised pop­u­la­tion may ex­pe­ri­ence is avoid­ance, flash­backs, numb­ing, dis­tress­ing mem­o­ries of the event.”

She ad­vised any­one ex­pe­ri­enc­ing these feel­ings to seek help if they be­come over­whelmed when con­fronting their emo­tions.

Each year the day is re­mem­bered by the Unit­ed States Em­bassy in T&T. Guardian Me­dia un­der­stands the event will be ad­just­ed to en­sure ad­her­ence to the Pub­lic Health Reg­u­la­tions. A wreath will be laid at the Em­bassy’s Queen’s Park West, Port-of-Spain of­fice and the flag will be low­ered while staff look on vir­tu­al­ly.

Mean­while, For­mer Di­rec­tor of the UWI In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions, Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les, be­lieves an at­tack sim­i­lar to the one that oc­curred on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2001, will not oc­cur.

He said: “Since 9/11 the ter­ror­ist groups have been weak­ened like Al Qae­da that can mount such an at­tack.”