All these accidents
That happen
Follow the dot
Coincidence
Makes sense
Only with you
State of emergency
How beautiful to be
State of emergency
Is where I want to be
– Björk, Joga
Accidents, emergencies, coincidence and connecting the dots. There is a link between emergency and 11 September, not only because of the number 911 being the emergency services telephone number in the United States, but also because of the terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 involving emergency services. Starting on 11 September, the remainder of the year has 112 days. And 112 is the European emergency services telephone number. Was someone destined to make sense of these coincidences? There have been a few peculiar coincidences related to 11 September in my life.
It happens that my office in Leeuwarden is close to a former Schuurmans fireworks plant that had exploded in 1971, and the World Trade Centre, a four-story-high building at the time, making a subtle reference to both the Enschede fireworks accident of 13 May 2000 and the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. Both events relate to coincidences in my life. In order not to make this a lengthy chapter exceeding your attention span, the focus of this essay is on the connections with the 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks. More recently, they have added an 11-storey hotel to the Leeuwarden WTC, with a restaurant named Élevé on the 11th floor, a subtle reference to the number 11, so 11:11.
Marcel is my brother-in-law, and 11 September is his birthday. On 11 September 200,1 he turned 33 years old. My sister Anne Marie had booked a trip to New York for them both as a birthday present. In the morning, she told him that they were going to New York the next weekend. That afternoon, the terrorist attacks took place. They had to cancel the trip and went to a holiday park in the Netherlands instead.
On 11 September 2010, just after midnight, I turned around in my bed. The bed collapsed, leaving me on the ground, wondering. After standing up, I saw it was 0:33. A few moments later, I realised it was 11 September and that Marcel had turned 33 on 11 September 2001. That was nine years before, while nine is three times three. On the same day, two incidents involving planes occurred at Eindhoven Airport.1 A******* now lives in a suburb of Eindhoven.
On 11 November 2009 (11/11/11 as 2 + 0 + 0 + 9 = 11), I went to the town hall to pick up my new parking licence. It had the number 009011. It was valid until 27 November 2011. If you compress the numbers as numerologists often do, then 27 November corresponds to 9/11, since 2 + 7 = 9, and November is the 11th month of the year. The years (20)09 and (20)11 also refer to 9/11. The remaining digits are 20 and 20 = 9 + 11.
The initials of my last name are KI, which is the Dutch acronym for artificial insemination, so the method for virgins to give birth, as well as artificial intelligence, so the programme that has spawned this world ‘like a virgin’. When translated into digits (A=1, B=2), you get 11/9, or 11 September, in European notation. My first name starts with B, which can be translated into 2. My initials represent the digits that make up the emergency services numbers 911 and 112. I was born on the Iepenstraat, which means Elm Street in English, in a place called Eibergen, a reference to fallopian tubes. The horror film A Nightmare on Elm Street was released in the United States on 9 November 1984 (11/9 American notation) and in the Netherlands on 11 September 1986 (9/11 American notation).
In the spring of 2011, a German car with licence plate KLE-KI-911 passed me in Leeuwarden while I was bicycling to my work. This car passed by a few times around the same time near the same spot. The first time, I only noticed the number 911. Seeing the car multiple times made me notice the extent of the coincidence. KLE are the first three letters of my last name, while KI are the initials of my last name. Dutch licence plates linking my name to 9/11 do not exist. The car appeared where I was going to work, some 200 kilometres from the owner’s home town.
In the spring of 2013, I put the apartment on the ground floor of our house up for rent. A young woman applied for it. She was born on 11 September 1990, it turned out, and so she had turned 11 years old when the attacks of 11 September 2001 took place. A few days later, I called her to inform her that she could rent the apartment. When I called her, her father had just been hospitalised. He died a few days later. That was odd.
Latest revision: 17 July 2026
Featured image: Plumes of smoke billow from the World Trade Center after the September 11 attacks. Michael Foran (11 September 2001). Public Domain.
1. Vliegtuig in problemen landt op vliegveld Eindhoven. Nu.nl (2010). [link]
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