The Week From Hell – September 2001

Perhaps those of you living in the USA might wonder why the week that included the infamous 9/11/2001 should resonate so strongly with an Australian woman living in Adelaide at the time? However, that week is indelibly etched into my consciousness very clearly, with horrible yet clear memories.

I’d met, and fallen in love with John, now my husband, a few months previously and had stayed at his house the night of the US catastrophe. John rose at 3am to get ready to go to work as Duty Manager/Team Leader for Ansett Airlines at Adelaide Airport, and had turned on the TV while he ate his breakfast when the first news of the disaster broke here. “Come and look at this,” he called, “Oh, my god!”

Joining him, I was aghast at the images on the TV screen and disbelieving of the destruction as the planes hit the UN twin towers. John left for work but I couldn’t go back to sleep, the shocking images seemed to be etched inside my eyelids every time I closed my eyes. I got up early, preparing for work and drove to teach my tertiary studentsthe various elements of Event Management. The staff room was buzzing with the horrific news from the US and all lecturers were feeling nervous and jittery as we headed for our various lecture rooms.

20 minutes into the first lecture for the day, all staff and students were summoned to the theatre to listen to a visiting lecturer who had been in NYC 2 weeks earlier and kept exclaiming that he could have been ‘atomised’ if the terrorists had struck when he was there! I noticed one of my younger students turn a greenish white and managed to catch her before she toppled off the bench where she was seated.

After some emergency first aid for shock, Melissa told me that her parents were in NY and had planned to go on a ferry cruise that day. She, and other family members were unable to contact her parents and she was afraid something might have happened to them. I contacted her aunt who took the poor emotionally spent girl home and called my students out of the theatre as I had scheduled an exam for them.

Shortly after the exam commenced, I was called to the Director’s office and soundly chastised for my ‘rudeness and immaturity’ in removing my student and then the whole class from the visitor’s talk. On discussing this with my immediate superior, I was told that I’d have to sort out the problem myself and could not expect support from her!

Just 48 hours later, disaster struck Australia. Ansett Airlines closed. John was again the early Duty Managerfor a busy Friday and phoned me at 4am to tell me that the doors to their terminal were locked and that the airline had been closed down and would not fly that day. He rang 30 minutes later to tell me that he’d gained entry and the ‘red eye special’ business passengers were arriving for the 6am flights out of Adelaide and banging on the doors.

“Raid all the food in the Golden Wings lounge and get your staff making tea and coffee,” I suggested. “Give each passenger a hot drink and something to eat, before you announce that Ansett won’t be flying today.” The poor man had to face about a thousand angry passengers who ALL wanted to fly out of Adelaide that morning!

This was the first day of the rapid demolition of Australia’s favourite airline, with over 75,000 employees suddenly out of work and saturating the employment market around the nation, including John.

Today a friend in Perth phoned to tell him that she had just heard on the radio that the Ansett employees were soon to be paid the last of their entitlements, almost 10 years since the airline failed. In that time, over 30 former Ansett staff have suicided, unable to find another job and unable to claim the monies owed to them by the company. John, while pleased to hear this news, lamented that he’d rather be back ‘on the job he loved’ than receiving his super annuation payment.

Yes, next week marks the 10 year anniversary of one of the worst weeks of my life, no argument about that!