US incidents' echo in Hyderabad

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD, SEPT. 11. It was not darkness alone that hovered above Hyderabad homes following power grid failure on Tuesday, but fear of an impending doom loomed large as news of terrorist attack in the United States trickled in.

The planes crash into the World Trade Centre in New York and rocket attacks on the Pentagon had the entire city abuzz on this evening. Perhaps, never before a tragedy in a different country has attracted so much of interest and concern here.

Nothing surprising, considering the fact that in the last decade or so thousands of young people from Andhra Pradesh, either in pursuit of higher education or software jobs, had made US their home.

Parents, relatives and friends spent anxious moments, trying to find out more information about the happenings there and the safety of their kin. With the power grid failure, the television went blank. There was no way to confirm the news and it was over to the Internet.

Here too, the gridlock of lines resulted in news coming by at a snail's pace. All the news websites, including those of the US- based newspapers, were updating every few minutes and the news ticker was another source of information as news trickled in piece by piece as the jaws dropped when the magnitude of the purported terrorist attack dawned upon the browsers.

Rapid e-mails were sent to different parts of the world and overseas telephone lines too got busy as frantic calls were being made to enquire the safety of their loved ones in the US.

In some houses, the old radios were dusted and cranked to life as the ears were glued to it. Newspaper offices were flooded with calls from the general public as well as from police officials wanting to know about the US incidents as more and more horrendous details were coming in.

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Section  : Southern States
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