Evening News sub-editor Julie Keen woke to find this email from her brother in New York this morning

From: geoff.player@**fem.com

Sent: 12 September 2001 00:58

To: Julie keen

Subject: Re: hiya

Most companies across the country shut down today. In our New Jersey office one of our employees was talking to her cousin in the second tower as the second plane hit - she has not heard anything since.

Another of my employees wife was en-route to Las Vegas as this all went down. We were very worried about sending him home alone.

I took him to our travel department where they could track where planes were. He didn't know the flight number or the time of departure. We checked each on. One had not taken off, one had been diverted to Columbus Ohio, one we didn't know where it was.

His phone rang as we were in the travel office - it was his wife. She had been diverted back to Philadelphia where she had departed - thank God.

Another person told me that his friend called him on his cell phone from the East Village in NYC asking what was going on - they couldn't get any news in New York City - "Was there gas, they were scared there was gas. People are running around with towels on their heads". There was no gas.

The mood is very dark. "Shock Jock" radio stations like Howard Stern are not holding back in their hostilities. "Let's get it over with, let's just nuke Palestine and end this." I would be very afraid if I were an Arab in this country today.

The local 7 Eleven where I buy my morning coffee is Arab run - I don't know if the windows will be intact tomorrow.

The news has been fantastic by American standards - they haven't shown a commercial all day!

None of us know if we have lost somebody we know in the towers today. They are talking about 200 dead firefighters in NYC today.

The FAA (Federal Aviation Authority) closed all airports and banned all flights for the first time on US history.

Devastating. We have all witnessed terrorism and tragedy in the UK but I can say that I have never witnessed anything on this scale. The ramifications will be almost as horrible - entire companies and their employees lost - insurance, finance, banks - gone with all records. Small businesses that rely on the twin towers for all their business - gone.

Blood is desperately short. QVC went off air and replaced with pleas from the American Red Cross for blood.

Stores closed early, shopping malls closed early. I went for dinner at a local restaurant with Mario. Dead - very few people there. The foundations of this decadent, loud, overbearing, big-headed country have been shaken to the core.

Maybe now they will understand what they did to us in Northern Ireland.

Regards,

Geoff Player