- Sep 2024
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www.anildash.com www.anildash.com
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It only took days for public spaces to be fully occupied by soldiers with long guns, a full occupying force that was the first sign of the new militarized reality that broke through the camaraderie and care that everyone was showing to each other.
Similar to Enschede Vuurwerkramp. Even though it was an accident not deliberate. Highways into town were closed off to keep gawkers away. I cycled to work 2 days after and came across lorries with soldiers being unloaded, to prevent looting after the fires went out. That never happened because it pulled the town together, and looting wasn't a response.
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Anyone who says they were here then, and doesn’t mention the smell… well, they’re flat out lying.
Dash is right here. Smell, and in Enschede's case the shockwave too. The shockwave going through your body was the dividing line between those who were there that day and those who weren't. It was and is a clear tell 24 yrs on.
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That was the emotional context, but there was also the visceral, sensory experience of being around those days. The most pervasive part was the acrid, searing smell of electrical fire, from the smoldering rubble pile that would keep burning downtown for the better part of a year. It pervaded everything, and you could be almost anywhere in town and the wind would change and then suddenly the smell would catch you off guard and you’d be crying again.
When I stood at ground zero a few weeks after, the smell is what made me cry then. It catapulted me suddenly back to the explosions in my home town a year before. That a smell could so abruptly and vividly surface those emotions took me by suprise.
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Shortly after the news had broken, I had gone outside into the street. We all did. Everyone poured out onto the sidewalks and into the streets themselves (all traffic was shut down in a way that we wouldn’t see again until Covid hit)
Same in Enschede 2000 we just had to go out. https://www.zylstra.org/blog/2020/05/enschede-13-5-2000/
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