Editor's note: At the time of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001 Coast Reporter spoke with locals who had a connection to the tragedy. This week we catch up with two of those locals to get their views on the tragedy 10 years later.
Hilary Clark was a reporter on the Sunshine Coast who moved to New York to live with her boyfriend Matt Potosnak in 2001. She worked across the street from the World Trade Center, but had stopped working just 10 days before the terrorist attacks as her work visa had expired.
On the day of the attacks, Clark was sitting in her New York apartment when Potosnak called and told her to turn on the TV.
"It didn't seem real. I couldn't believe what I was seeing," she said.
Potosnak told her to call her parents and tell them she was OK. Before he hung up the phone, he said he was on his way home. He worked just blocks from the World Trade Center.
She started to panic and the next few hours seemed to take forever, as she waited for Potosnak to come home.
Although her friends and family were safe, she remembers feeling as if things would never be the same.
"At that moment, I felt the world change," she said.
More change has come over the years for her. She married Potosnak, gave birth to two beautiful children and, just a few years ago, bid a tearful farewell to New York.
"It's a city that, over the nine years I lived there, became a part of who I am," she said.
Her family was touched by the war that followed the terrorist attacks as well, with a brother directly involved in the war in Afghanistan.
"Ten years is a long time but that moment is always there in my mind, as clear and real to me as the horrible instant it happened," Clark noted.
Edith Iglauer is a former journalist for the New Yorker magazine who lives in Egmont. She has a keen understanding of the Twin Towers, having published an article on the foundation of the World Trade Center in 1972. Iglauer also wrote an article following the 1993 attack on the towers that saw terrorists plant a bomb in the foundation of one of the buildings. The building withstood that blast.
When Iglauer saw the terrorist attacks unfold on Sept. 11 from her home in Egmont, she couldn't believe what she was seeing.
"I was absolutely floored. In my wildest dreams I never thought they'd use a plane to crash into a skyscraper," she said.
Iglauer holds dual citizenship and has been back to New York often since the attacks.
She thinks the event brought the fear of terrorism to the common person.
"I think before that event everybody felt it was something that happened in the rest of the world, not to us. It brought home a world-wide problem, and we ended up dealing with it just like any other country would," she said.
When Coast Reporter interviewed Iglauer in 2001, she said, "I think our lives have changed because of this."
She sees that change in people's attitudes toward terrorism when she talked with is this week.
"I think everybody's more cautious now about what they say, which is both good and bad. I think we now realize much more that nobody really is entirely safe. You can't predict where it's going to erupt. You can sometimes, but not others. It's sadly become just part of living," she said.
