Gambling911.com Reporter Thomas Somach Visits Ground Zero

Gambling911.com reporter, Thomas Somach, also a regular contributor to the San Francisco Chronicle and National Inquirer, recently took a tour of Ground Zero in New York City to commemorate the 10^th anniversary of 9/11.  On September 11, 2001, two planes were flown into the World Trade Center towers.  The two buildings would ultimately collapse.  Nearly 3000 people died in the attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C., where another plane slammed into the Pentagon.  A fourth plane crashed in a Pennsylvania field after passengers stormed the cockpit.

“It’s absolutely breathtaking,” Somach said. 

Ceremonies were to be held at the site of the Twin Towers collapse on Sunday. 

The New York ceremony begins at 8:30 a.m., with a moment of silence 16 minutes later - coinciding with the exact time when the first tower of the trade center was struck by a hijacked jet. And then, one by one, the reading of the names of the 2,977 killed on Sept. 11 - in New York, at the Pentagon and in rural Pennsylvania.

Chris Costigan, Publisher of the Gambling911.com website, had flown into Newark Liberty Airport the evening before 9/11, electing to remain in New Jersey overnight instead of returning to his home in Manhattan.

“I knew a few people who worked in the World Trade Center towers at the time of the terrorist attacks,” he said.  “One of the girls I worked with was 10 stories down from where the first plane hit working for the Port Authority.  She thought there was an earthquake and had no idea what was going on until she finally exited the building, walking down some 70 flights of stairs.

“Another girl I know arrived late to work just as the second plane hit right on her floor.  She witnessed this and was devastated and has never returned back to the city, opting to move to Philadelphia immediately following the attacks.  The supervisor for her company that morning ignored an intercom message advising workers to remain in their offices.  Instead he rushed everyone out from his company out of the building.  Everyone who worked for her company got out alive.  Thankfully everyone I knew who worked in the towers got out as well.

“The sad thing is we would always meet people who had lost loved one’s.  I met a girl who worked at one of my favorite restaurants who lost her fiancé in the attacks.  The fire station up the street from one of my favorite sports bars suffered some of the greatest losses as they were among the first on the scene.”

- Payton O’Brien, Gambling911.com Senior Editor