[Mike375]

First off, I fully understood that you in no way personally meant disrespect to this city or the heroic individuals who ran into those burning towers that horrible day, while so many others ran out. And you are right, in the future, I'm sure that robots will be employed in fire operations. There was even a piece recently on a local news station about how FIRST style remote control robots were being used to search the vast debris field for any signs of remains.

I guess partially part of my anger was your mentioning of 9/11. Frankly, even if every fire truck in the nation was at the base of the towers, for countless reasons, those fires were not going to be put out, and they were doomed to come down. I just can't envision FIRST holding such a competition. To give some prior examples it would be like a competition to design a bomb removing robot after Oklahoma City, or the first strike on the towers. If you had mentioned this idea September 10th, I would have probably agreed that it was a good idea. But in this new age, I'm looking forward to this year's project as a way to sidetrack my thoughts from the events that have recently unfurled in my backyard, not to focus on the what-ifs.

I apologize for over-reacting, I've just been bottling up quite a bit of emotion for a while. I just hope the eventual result of this is that everyone doesn't wait for such an unimaginable tragedy to happen in your community to grow a higher level of respect for your local public safety officials.

-Mike Team 375

PS: I realize in advance some of you will feel this has nothing to do with this topic, but you need to learn that no matter what self-assigned role you've given yourself on this board to make yourself feel important , people need and deserve an opportunity to express themselves.