There are numbers etched in my mind and heart from the tragic morning of 9/11.
– 2,977 lives lost
– 343 bravest of the brave
– 23 of New York and New Jersey’s finest.
Most of these numbers are well-known, but there is one number that stands out. One that is never mentioned.
99.
That is how many days the fires burned at the pile before they were all extinguished.
It has been 21 years. But for some of us, it still feels like yesterday; for some of us, that will be true until we close our eyes for good.
For those of us with hearing loss, watching television can be a challenge.
Many years ago, there was a separate box that hearing-impaired individuals had to get, in order to read the closed captions on their television screens. Now there are chips built in to televisions so people can turn closed captions on their sets on and off.
There are various closed caption providers, such as television station WGBH in Boston. The funding for closed captions is provided by sponsors of television shows – and in some cases, by the production companies themselves.
I used to belong to a group on social media comprised of broadcasters and broadcasting professionals.
I found this from a gentleman named Jeff Hutchins, about closed captions providers from that sad day 21 years ago:
“Here’s a different angle on the coverage of the events of 9/11/2001.
I worked at VITAC, the closed-captioning company headquartered in Pittsburgh. Each day, we captioned live the early morning shows on NBC and CBS. We were on the air starting at 5:30 am and continuing through 9:00 am, a job that required several stenocaptioners (specially trained court reporters) and assistants. VITAC was also contracted to provide captions anytime NBC News went on the air with a Special Report. Another company, the Media Access Group at WGBH (Boston), provided the same emergency captioning service for CBS, while the National Captioning Institute in Falls Church, VA (NCI) covered ABC.
When the World Trade Center was hit, we knew we would be remaining on the air indefinitely, a feat that would require more specialists than we had on the morning shift. We called in our entire staff of real-time captioners.
The captions we created in our studios were transmitted over dial-up modems from Pittsburgh to the networks in New York. Normally, we would disconnect from the data encoders at 9:00 am, but on 9/11, we stayed connected. We were lucky that our phone links were not dropped, and we were able to continue captioning. The other companies were not so lucky.
WGBH was ready to take over for CBS at 9:00 am, but they could not get a line to NYC. Neither could NCI. In an extraordinary moment of cooperation among rival companies, VITAC served as the data conduit for all the live captioning on network news that day and the next day. WGBH and NCI connected to VITAC’s modems, which were then routed through data switchers to CBS and ABC facilities with no interruption of service.
Dozens of court reporters at the three companies worked around the clock for several days to ensure that every word of live coverage was accessible. Although this effort was unprecedented, it was no accident. VITAC had designed and installed data switchers in 1995 for precisely this possibility. Those switchers had never been used until 9/11, but they worked flawlessly, as did the engineers and captioning staff at VITAC, ‘GBH, and NCI.
One thing I will never forget: watching stenocaptioners continue typing every word they heard in real time even as their shoulders shook from crying and tears streamed down their faces.”
I could never begin to thank the closed caption providers enough for the service that most of us take for granted.
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