Where were you? What were you doing?

[TK0001]

I was sitting at my desk, tapping away at the keyboard. I hadn't yet donned my headphones, as the ambient noise in the cube farm hadn't yet reached a level that would distract me from my work. The co-worker over the wall from me mentioned, matter-of-factly, that a plane had just struck the WTC. That got the attention of his boss, and together they watched/read the news on CNN.com. Looking back, I can't believe that this news barely registered on my internal RADAR. I instantly assumed that a Cessna had accidentally clipped the building or something similar and my thoughts of the Cessna landing in Red Square some time before that entered my mind, then quickly exited as I returned to my work.

My co-worker and his boss continued to monitor the situation. This particular co-worker had just returned from Manhattan, where our company was installing a system, so he had a vested interest in what was happening. A couple days earlier, he had shown me pictures of the towers that he took from the cafe across the street, and tried to describe to me the awesome immensity of them as I feigned interest.

I had nearly forgotten about the plane incident when suddenly he loudly exlaimed, "Holy *****! Another plane just hit!".

Instantly I knew this was much bigger than I first realized. From that point on, I tried to get onto CNN.com, MSN.com, or any other news outlet, but all attempts timed out. So I scrambled over to my co-workers desk to see the North Tower on fire and smoking for the first time. My mind spun. How could a Cessna cause so much damage?

Quickly I learned this was no accident, and this was not the work of a pair of Cessnas. When my co-worker's connection to CNN would no longer refresh, I went back to my desk, put on my headphones, and tuned into Howard Stern, who did a remarkable job of broadcasting the news as it happened.

I didn't see the actual footage of the planes striking the towers and the collapses until I got home several hours later. My mother was visiting, and as I was soaking the footage in for the first time, she was trying to steal my attention away by complaining about some insignificant problem happening in her life. I clearly remembered snapping at her and saying, "Shut up for a minute! I know you've seen this all day, but I'm seeing it for the first time! My country is under attack, dammit!"

That shut her up, and to this day I hold no guilt for biting her head off at that moment. Whatever her problems were may've been, they were petty compared to what had happened to our nation that day.

I know this is probably in the wrong forum, but no other forum on this board is so 9/11-focused, so I appeal to the mods to keep it here.

[Bradk3]

I had just walked in the house from taking the dog out for a morning walk, when my wife called out to me from the bedroom that New York was under attack.

We spent the next few hours silently watching television, trying to make sense of it all.

[mrfreeze]

I was sitting in history class my senior year. Sadly at the time living in Michigan I didn't even know what the WTC was.

[Josh Redstone]

I was at lunch in my high school cafeteria. By the time someone had told me what happened and I had gotten to the library to see the television, the towers had both already fell, and the CBC was re-broadcasting footage of everything. It scared the heck out of me, needless to say.

[TK0001]

I remember standing outside our office building, looking up at the sky, and trying to take in the fact that no planes were flying overhead. We work about 5 miles from an international airport and the sky was completely clear.

I also mentioned, without thinking, that I had been listening to the Stern broadcast of the events to our office racist/anti-semite. He then took it upon himself to inform me not to trust anything that "filthy Jew" had to say. I somehow restrained myself from making him swallow his teeth.

[Dave_46]

I was working in the Cardington laboratory that gets a mention in part one or two of the loose change thread. A couple of my colleagues walked up to me and said "Dave, your not going to believe this ...". Even today I can remember Rogers words. We watched pictures on a TV with a poor signal because the lab is just a vast tin shed, and signals don't penetrate well.

I was supposed to be looking after a group of forensic scientists who were making and throwing petrol bombs at the time.

Dave

[Z]

I was on my way to work, after changing from P.T. that morning. We heard about it on the radio; the local Oklahoma jockeys were laughing about it, at first, talking about how it was probably a prank call they had gotten.

A few minutes later, the 'Morning Zoo' got awful quiet, when they heard from their news guy that it wasn't just a plane, but a large passenger aircraft.

By the time we got to work, it was apparent that no one would be working today. We were all told to go home, spend some time with our families, and stand by for further instructions. We were all certain we'd be on planes, headed to the Middle East, in a few hours. As it turns out, it would be another two months before my unit deployed - by which time, I was already out of the military.

In some ways, I regret the timing of my E.T.S.; in most ways, though, I'm very grateful.

[Twilek]

I was working alone in a small warehouse in Plattsburgh NY and heard the initial report about the North tower on the radio, right as I was walking out of my office to go inventory some pallets.

At the time I was such a noob on computers that I didn't know to pull up CNN live or something to watch. Instead I made a beeline for a bulletin board on which I knew folks.

The very first thread at the top simply said "Dude", and I knew that was the one. We spent pretty much the whole day talking about it as it was happening. Many of them were in front of TVs (some were also in NYC themselves) so I was actually getting details more quickly from them than Canadian radio. I didn't get to see any footage until I got home that night.

I must say, 9/11 was when I became a news junkie. I had newspapers, TV and radio surrounding me constantly for about the next 3 days, and I haven't slacked off much since. I just get most of it from the internet and papers nowadays.

[DarkMagician]

Electricity and Electronics class, high school, Junior Year.

[sophia8]

I wrote a lot about this in my personal diary. So here's a summary.
I was on my way home. Feeling very pissed off. I was working part-time, somebody had got the schedules mixed, and I had turned up for an afternoon's work when I should have come in the morning. So I'd had to turn around and get back on the bus.
I needed some shopping, so I got off several stops early to pop into the supermarket. That would have been about 1.45pm UK time. Just about the time the first plane was about to hit.
There was no hurry, so I took my time. While I was picking up a loaf of bread and a carton of milk, wondering which breakfast cereal to buy, wondering if I needed to get potatoes, buying a lottery ticket, people were burning to death or jumping out of windows.
I would have got home about 2.20 - after the second plane hit. My teenage son was home early from college and already had the TV on. He was shouting, practically screaming at me to come and look.
I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I had to tell myself it wasn't some movie. I had to keep asking "That couldn't have been a passenger plane, could it? It must have been some little executive jet, surely? Not a full passenger plane!"
I literally couldn't believe it. My son had to keep repeating to me what the news people were saying.
It sunk in eventually.

[chipmunk stew]

I was getting ready for work (I had a mid-shift that day) when my sister called to tell me a plane hit the WTC. My stomach dropped at the news as I imagined the horror the people there were experiencing, but I continued getting on with my morning without turning on the news.

My sister called back just as I was about to head out the door to tell me a second one hit. I rushed out the door and drove to my fiancee's house.

My fiancee was sitting on the floor in front of the TV bawling her eyes out. We didn't say much, just held each other. She had recently applied for the foreign service and missed the cutoff by a fraction. She had been planning on trying again, but she knew that this would drastically change our country's relationship with the world, and she was sure it would not be the relationship she had envisioned being a part of.

As we watched the first tower collapse and then the next, I remember feeling numb by that point. It seemed so unreal, watching it play out flatly on our small screen. I recognized this in retrospect as an effect of the shock and trauma.

I was late for work that day. No one cared.

[B-Man]

Sitting in the Mercure Hotel, in Algiers, Algeria.
We packed up shop the next day and left the country.
:)

[TheCzech]

At the time, I lived in a high rise in Crystal City, a neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia which is within walking distance of the Pentagon.

I was at a dental appointment which I left shortly after the first plane hit. My car radio was not operational, so I didn't hear any news at all. I called into my job in Downtown DC since I was running a little late, and my co-worker made a cryptic comment about a plane crash in New York. I didn't think anything of it.

I then drove home to drop off my car. Oblivious, I walked over to the Metrorail station to commute into work. My train was stopped in the Pentagon City Metro station (the one just before the Pentagon station itself) and the messages over the intercom were cryptic. The train was offloaded with little explanation.

I just thought it all seemed odd, so I started to make my way up the escalators to the street level. Just before I made it, another announcement came on saying the Pentagon Station was closed until further notice because of terrorist attack. I said "Oh [expletive]" and hurried up to the surface.

The surface escalator at Pentagon City brings you up facing directly away from the Pentagon, so what I saw were lots of gaping people. I turned around and saw the thick column of black smoke. That is the image that I will remember from the day.

After finding I couldn't get a cell phone line, I trekked home. I had only gone one station anyway. I called the office to find that pretty much everyone had cleared out and everyone else was on the way out. The office was only a block and a half from the White House. We couldn't go to work the next day either because of security barriers.

It turns out I was on the first train to be stopped. That was a lucky thing too because it saved me the trouble of having to get home in the mess. Other people I worked with who lived in my area had to spend the night with friends in other areas of town. As it was, I had no choice but to be anywhere but home. The streets in my neighborhood were closed down.

I had the TV on for a while, but after I saw the first tower collapse, I turned it off. I couldn't take any more. After calling my parents to let them know I was alright, I spent the rest of the day in what felt like slow motion...occasionally looking out my eighth story window to see the smoke.

[TheCzech]

Just realized that was my first post. How depressing...

[chipmunk stew]

Just realized that was my first post. How depressing...
Welcome. Thank you for sharing your story.

[TobiasTheViking]

seconded. welcome

:hug2:

[gfunkusarelius]

was at work, went home to fix the printer for my wife (lived a half mile from work) and when i got back, someone told me a plane hit the tower. we thought it was a cesna, didnt take it too strongly and went down for a soda and was in the breakfrom for the next hour watching in disbelief. one on my co-worker's fathers worked there

[TK0001]

one on my co-worker's fathers worked there

Did he make it out?

[Quinn]

I was on the west coast, so I was still asleep when it happened. My then-wife woke me with the words, "You need to get up, something's happened. It's not your family... but it's bad."

[Tamarillicent]

I was showing up late for work on W 30th Street in Manhattan. I arrived in the lobby of work and the receptionist told me a plane had hit the WTC. By the time I got upstairs someone else told me about the second plane. I listened to the radio because we didn't have TV's at work and listened to the drama and rumers unfold. I didn't see anything until I went home to Staten Island. We were trying to figure out how to even get home, since everything south of 14th Street was blocked off we couldn't get to the Staten Island Ferry. It wasn't runing anyway. I remember standing in Union Square and looking south. All you could see was smoke.

Then, we finally found a bus that was going to SI. The bus took the BQE which runs parallel to lower Manhattan at points. We were driving under this massive cloud of smoke and debris. I didn't see any footage until I actually got home. SInce we didn't have cable, we could only get a few channles and Telemundo had the best reception, so I followed the action in Spanish.
I was stuck on SI for 2 days. The first day, it was just impossible to get in since the ferry wasn't running. The second day, the island was on "lock-down" because of a suspicious truck seen on the Verrazzano Bridge. The third day I made it into work by a very crowded bus.

Once the ferry started running again, it was the only reason average people were going south of 14th street so it was VERY eerily quiet. Just military and emergency vehicles, and folks taking the ferry. The tourists didn't really come back until St. Patricks day. That's when things started to become mormal again.

Sorry it's so long. I didn't loose any friends or family. The day wasn't really traumatic in the way it would be had I seen the whole thing in person. But it was still pretty sucky in it's own way. I had nightmares about planes falling from the sky in random places in Manhattan for a few months.

Sorry it's so long. :)

Tam

[Stellafane]

I had just started my weekly Monday 9:00 AM 1/1 meeting with my boss. A few minutes into it, his AA called and informed him that a plane hit the first tower. He guessed right away it was a terrorist attack, I thought it might be an accident. A few minutes later we went down to the lunch room because there was a TV there. The tower was burning. I went a way for a few minutes, and came back. In that time the second plane had hit. I still was trying to make a case that it was an accident, maybe the second plane was a news plane that got too close (I was in deniel most of that day and wasn't thinking clearly).

Weirdest part of the day: Got back to my office, my ex-wife had just sent me an email that contained an audio file of some Canadian singer singing this viciously nasty anti-American song. The chorus went "Burn, burn, burn," in apparent reference to the burning of the White House during the War of 1812. Of all days to get something like that. Got another email that the Pentagon had been hit, now things were starting to get really scary.

A little while later I was in a meeting. Someone was calling in, while watching CNN. He was reporting the latest. It was he who told us that the first tower had fallen, something that hadn't even crossed my mind as a possibility for some reason. I vividly remember my highly intelligent response: "Fallen? To the ground?" (Is there any other place a skyscraper falls to?) After that I was speechless; I just called off the meeting.

Got back to my office, and my wife called. She was scared, crying, wanted me to come home. I asked my boss if I could leave, he immediately sent out an email to everyone suggesting they go home and be with their loved ones if possible. In the car I turned on the radio, only to learn the second tower had fallen. Listened to Howard Stern's live broadcast the rest of the way home. (Whatever you think of the man, his crew did an incredible job reporting live from the scene that day. I swear if it had been anyone other than Stern, he would have won a Peabody or some other award.) Got home, and spent the rest of the day watching CNN.

That's it. Hate to be melodamatic, but that just took a lot out of me to write -- or more accurately, remember.

[TK0001]

Sorry it's so long. :)

Not at all. I'm always fascinated by stories from those who were in Manhattan and DC that day. Thanks for sharing.

[CFLarsen]

NYC

[Patricio Elicer]

I vividly remember that day. It was an off work day for me. Around 9:30 am (same time NY zone I guess) I was in bed watching a dull Animal Planet program when I got a phone call from my brother. ¿Did you know, a plane hit one of the Twin Towers? (we'd visited the towers the very previous year, BTW).

I rapidly switched to CNN, and there it was, one of the towers enrolled in smoke. From my brother's account I thought it was just a small plane, just an accident. But then I saw a replay, and it was ... a commercial plane!

The rest was simply aweful. Every event was followed by a more aweful and awesome one. When I watched the first tower falling down, I simply couldn't believe my eyes. I must be dreaming I told myself, a kinda surreal dream, this cannot be happening in reality. Sadly it turned out to be real. This is by far the most horrendous real life event I've ever watched.

[jhunter1163]

I was on my way to work when the news of the first plane hitting came over the radio. It literally never occurred to me that it might be anything but a small plane. I thought "some idiot flew his Cessna into the WTC"... I said as much to our receptionist when I walked into the office. She looked at me with wide eyes and said "noooooo...."

We pulled a TV out of the conference room, set it up in the common area of the office and tuned it to CNN. I watched for a minute, then went to my desk to bring up MSN to see what I could find out. I checked every news site I could think of, then went into a chat room to see if anyone there knew more than me. I talked to everyone there, like a maniac. Over and over, "what do you know? what do you hear?" There was this overriding sense of fear... what would happen next? were there more planes? what else might they use? bombs, anthrax, chemicals? We placed frantic calls to our home office in the WTC, trying to find out what we could.. then we were left to wonder, after the collapses... did our co-workers and friends there get out? (Three of them didn't.)

In the chat I was in, there was one woman who was as calm as could be, even when others were freaking out. I started talking more to her, mostly because I needed calming myself. Ms. GoldFaerieDust02 and I talked for hours, about life, fear, all sorts of things. I had always looked at Internet chatrooms as vaguely geeky places, not worthy of serious attention. But on this day, here I was, pouring out my heart to a total stranger.

She was on vacation that week. We talked again the next day, and the next. One thing led to another, as they say, and in June of 2004 we were married. I know that many, if not most, of the people on this forum don't believe in God, or fate, or anything like that. I'm an agnostic myself in these matters, but if there IS a God, I would thank him every day for the angel he sent to me on the day the devil walked the streets of New York.

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

I remember the US based news sites becoming so bogged down we couldn't access them. So, a number of us switched over to things like bbc.co.uk and guardian.co.uk so we could stay up to speed on what was going on.

[joobz]

A graduate student in Philadelphia, sitting in lab avoiding starting my experiment.

Got a call from my advisor telling me what happend and to go home. Didn't start the experiment.

[Morwen]

I was sleeping, in Oregon. My father phoned me from Spain, "A plane has crashed into the WTC", he said. I switched the TV on and I saw the second plane hit. The day went by as if shrouded in cotton. We had lab meeting, nobody came. I had my walkman on all day long, trying to make sense of it all, failing. It only hit me four days later, at night. The three thousand deaths hit me then, and I wept most of the night away. Delayed shock, maybe. Also, I was very very scared for the whole world in general and myself in particular. For a day after the attacks, I wasn't at all sure that WWIII wouldn't start and I would never be able to go home to my family again.

[Sword_Of_Truth]

Copy/paste from the same thread over at Screw Loose Change forum -

I was sleeping late, I had the day off. One of my roommates worked with my sister mowing lawns over the summer. So she came to pick him up every morning. When she came that day, she knocked on my door and told me "Hey Aaron, go turn on the TV! One of the Wolrd Trade Center buildings has been destroyed and the White House is on fire!"

"Ha, ha... very funny" I groggily said back to her. "I'm serious" she said, Go turn on the TV!"

To humor her, I got up, slipped my pants on, stepped across the hall into the living room and turned on the TV. I didn't even have to change from the channel it was on to CNN or anything like that. It was on every channel. Me, my sister and my roommate sat and watched in silent horror. My sister heard over the radio on her way to my place and hadn't actually seen it yet.

Then the second tower came down before our eyes. Oddly enough it was this shock that snapped her out of her stupor, she grabbed my roomie and left to go to work.

As I had the day off, I turned on my comp and started to attempt to play some Tribes 2. The chatrooms on the matching server were all flooded with chatter and the servers themselves were largely empty. I hooked up with my clan and was told that our match against a competing clan that afternoon was cancelled. We spent a couple hours trying to figure out if a couple of our New York members were OK.

So we sat in the chatrooms watching and making the odd comment on what was happening.

CNN eventually started reporting explosions the capital of Afghanistan, where it was just past midnight local time. The explosions later turned out to be a mortar attack by the anti-taliban "Nothern Alliance" in retaliation for the perhaps not coincedental assisination of thier leader a few days earlier. But we wouldn't learn this for at least another 24 hours. I quickly alerted my clanmates to turbn thier TV volumes up and get back to CNN (as if any of them had turned it off). "THEY'RE BOMBING KABUL!!!" I pounded out with one finger on the shift key.

Our clan leaders girlfriend typed back...
"Oh my God... we're at war..."

[Omnilingual]

I woke up and turned on the TV. (I live in California, so the planes had already hit, but the towers were still standing. I'm pretty sure the footage of the second plane hitting I saw was a rerun, not real-time.) After a couple of minutes, I called my mom to ask if she possibly made a mistake about the date of my birth. (She hadn't.) I sent e-mail to some friends canceling the plans we had made for the day and spent the rest of the day avoiding the news and thinking dismal thoughts about human nature.

[Bradk3]

Thanks everyone for posting these. It brings back tears, but it's good to remember.

[TobiasTheViking]

i agree.

[Pardalis]

Thanks everyone for posting these. It brings back tears, but it's good to remember.

Yes, it's important that we do.

I had gotten up and fed the budgie, and as I turned on the tube I saw the first tower on fire. I switched the channels and every one of them was broadcasting the same event. Like everybody else I thought that it was a devastating accident, but at the same time I was sure that the people would eventually be rescued by the roof. That thought kind of reassured me so I didn't take much notice of it until when a few minutes later, I saw that black plane coming towards the WTC towers.

It was black because it was in the shadow of the tower, but as I saw it approach, for these few seconds, I am convinced I saw Evil (maybe the blackness helped creating that impression). I am agnotisc, but that was as close to Evil as you can get. If I have to put an image on the word 'Evil', that is it. That was a deliberate act, a geste as we say in French, which made it even more sickening. It was also a frightening statement.

I was about to leave for work when the news reported an explosion at the Pentagon. I had to go to work, to a company ironically called 'Jet Films', and on my way, I thought to myself : "This is WW3". When I arrived at work, everybody was in the conference room watching the news, the last tower had fell. I was shocked, I never expected them to fail. The images of that greyish powder covering everything, the people covered with it on the streets, the devastation... It was too much and I went to the bathroom and cried. I couldn't understand how people could do this to other people.

Needless to say I couldn't concentrate on my work that day, my hand just didn't want to draw.

[Z]

I honestly don't know that many of us did work that day - unless you were in rescue services, medicine, or some immediate security or quick-response military unit, you probably went home and sat in shock, or stayed at the workplace, glued to whatever media you could get.

It was a very unusual day, to put it mildly.

[chran]

I was coming home from shopping, when a friend of mine called me and told me that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Center and that one had hit the Pentagon.

I ran the rest of the way home, and sat in stunned disbelief with my friend on the phone, watching the news. I got to see both towers collapsing live. The reporters on the TV station I was watching didn't report the collapse at first, they just didn't mention all the dust and smoke in the air where a tower had once stood. I thought that was strange.

I vividly remember the drive to work the next day on the bus. Usually there's a lot of talk and laughing. This morning it was quiet. Everybody was lost in thought.

[russell_morris]

I was in a suit-and-tie out in front of the student center at my college waiting for the shuttle that ferried kids back-and-forth to the career fair for graduating seniors. A good friend came out of the student center and told me that two planes had hit the two WTC towers, and that both were wobbling badly and would probably collapse.

I remember my reaction vividly. I was angry at him for a split second (for no rational reason of course). I guess I had that little flash of denial you sometimes get when presented with extraordinarily world-shaking news. I remember thinking "sky-scrapers are supposed to wobble a bit you idiot - that's how they're built!". But of course once I followed him into the student center and saw the whole horror on TV, my silly "denial phase" ended quite abruptly.

I still think back to those initial seconds whenever I'm confronted with really bad news: you can't trust your initial emotional reactions to extraordinary circumstances like that any more than you can keep yourself from having them. You have to do your best to calm down and then re-analyze the situation. I don't know how many other people that applies to - but my initial reactions to jarring situations like that are almost always somewhere between useless and mind-numbingly idiotic.

I sort of stared at the TV, along with everyone else in the main hallway of the student center at the time, until I got my bearings again. I decided that the only thing I could do was go back outside and wait for the shuttle again. I took the shuttle down to the fair, made out a nametag for myself, and walked inside.

The towers had collapsed during my shuttle ride to the fair, which was held in the concourse of the school's (Georgia Tech's) basketball stadium. Being a stadium as such, the concourse was lined with TV's every 20 or 30 feet. I stood near some company's booth and watched the towers collapse for the first time. I remember saying "Oh... God...", turning to look away, and then seeing the same horror repeated on the long string of TV's all the way down the concourse.

At this point it dawns on me that nobody's doing career-fair stuff anymore (obvious, I know, but I was still in shock at this point). I was graduating that semester with a degree in Computer Science, and I had no job leads whatsoever. I didn't get any leads the previous day at the fair, but I wasn't worried because that day the big established companies (i.e. the one's that weren't completely decimated after the dot-com bust that occured less than 6 months earlier) were scheduled.

I walked out of the fair and walked all the way back to the student center (where I had parked my car). I felt like my entire world had come completely unanchored. The industry which I was about to step into had just collapsed, leaving behind a sea of experienced people that would compete with me for any job available. I had no job leads with less than 3 months left before graduation. My best hope for job leads was just cancelled. And my country was literally under attack. Things only grew worse on the walk back, as it started to dawn on me how many people must have died, and how my worries were so completely trivial compared to what their friends, families, and loved-ones must be going through, and to what the country and world would inevitably have to go through in reaction to this.

I had been a fence sitter between deism and atheism up until this point. Being at a science-focused school like Georgia Tech whittled away at my deism a good bit, but I still held on to it, all be it more and more abstractly. I prayed on 9/11, and for the the next few days. With all the soul-searching I was doing at that point, it soon became undeniable to me that my deism/Christianity was a crutch I used when I was scared. I didn't really believe those things. I've considered myself an atheist (weak atheist, to be precise) ever since.

Please understand that I don't present the last part of this as an affront to religous folks or as some sort of '9/11 is proof that there is no God' argument. I do not want to polarize the mourning or remembrence in any way. I mention it in answer to the "What were you doing?" portion of the title: I was experiencing my world-view being refuted and crushed.

[T.A.M.]

Five years ago today I woke up in my small city 2000 miles from Ground Zero, even further from DC, and I went to play a round of golf with my Father In Law. On the way to the course we heard on the radio that a plane, believed to be a commuter plane, had struck one of the twin towers in NYC. I looked at my In-law, and he at me. We shook our heads, but then I said,

"Probably just a freak accident."

He nodded, and we drove on. We played our round of golf, not thinking about much more than how odd the event seemed, and mainly, on the wonderful weather we were having.

After the round we came into the club house. I remember going to the bar for a beer, and turning around to the big screen TV that everyone had suspiciously gathered around. I think my heart sunk into my golf shoes when I read the caption on the screen as people were running along a city street, chased by a cloud of dust.

"America Under Attack" was all it said. I moved to get a better look, and to hear what was being said. Over the next ten minutes my heart sank further, and I could feel that lump you get in your throat that you can't swallow.

We drove home, silence for most of it, occasional comments of disbelief the rest of the way. When I got home my wife, mother in law, and my brother in law were all gathered around the TV, watching, like the rest of the world...we watched the entire day........

TAM

[stateofgrace]

I remember 911 very well.

Over in the UK I first heard about something was going on in one of the Towers on the radio, it was sometime in the afternoon. Anyway we just went about our normal business and never really gave it a second thought. We went shopping, me and my wife and started off back home. During the car journey home more news flashes kept coming on the radio.

By the time I got home and switched on the news it was clear that it was very serious. It was on every single channel. The Towers were in flames and more and more reports were coming in.

I honestly can’t remember whether I actually saw the first Tower go live or whether it was reruns but I remember vividly the unedited screams and gasps of horror as it fell. It was strange but we knew, we just knew the second Tower was going to go.

We watched it all for as long as we could and finally my wife simply said" Please turn it off" So we did.

Later that night I switched the TV back on, when my family was asleep. Maybe it was the couple of glasses of wine or just the shear shock of it all. I wept.

[gtc]

It was late evening in Australia. Like many Australians I was already asleep, although some of my colleagues were watching the late night news when they started reporting the events.

The next morning I turned on the breakfast news and saw footage of the second plane hitting the WTC. Because it was breakfast TV, I assumed it was a trailer for a new film.

I don't think anyone missed work that day. We were all glad to hear that the workers in our New York branch, which was across the road from the WTC, were safe although their offices were extensively damaged.

[Tamarillicent]

Thanks everyone for posting these. It brings back tears, but it's good to remember.

I agree, too. It's really interesting to read other people's recounting of their day. Sometimes here in the city, it's easy to forget how much the rest of the country was shocked, too.

[Hamradioguy]

Thanks everyone for posting these. It brings back tears, but it's good to remember.

Yes, it IS good to remember. I happened to turn on network TV news just minutes after the first plane hit. I have a brother who is a pilot for United and I've flown missions with the CAP, so I immediately knew it was no accident. Terrorism did briefly cross my mind but I pretty much convinced myself that it was a suicidal pilot (There was a case of this happening with Egyptair 990 a few years previously.) When the second plane hit the South Tower it was immediately clear that the suicidal pilot scenario was wrong. (NYC is controlled airspace and it was a clear day.)

The hardest part for me was that as a long time volunteer firefighter I knew immediately that the chances of anyone surviving above the fire floors was close to zero and that there would be no effective way to fight the fires. That for me was particularly tough.

I actually loaded up my turnout gear in my car and put the red light on the roof in preparation to head to NYC. Then more rational thinking kicked in- FDNY brothers are a close knit and unionized group and wouldn't have been all that anxious to have an outsider, non-union, non-career volunteer in the thick of things at ground Zero. Plus I was twice the age of these guys- a little too old for hours and days of stressful work.

But the hardest part was watching all day on TV and knowing my cousin, who was a reporter for WCBS radio, was likely right at the the foot of the towers doing interviews. It was a huge relief to hear her voice asking questions at the Mayor's press conference later that afternoon. (A paramedic shoved her under his ambulance when the first tower came down. They found her smashed tape recorder next to the ambulance several days afterward.)

[realitybites]

I was living in Harrisburg, PA at the time and I remember my roommate barging into my room. "Dude, we're being attacked. Wake up."

Knowing my roomie and his penchant for ****** with me, I told him to screw off. It was just the construction crew jackhammering outside, doing road work.

He promised that he wasn't, so I got up, went into the living room and saw both the towers on fire. His parents came over a few minutes later and we just sat there, glued to the TV. News of the Pentagon came, and the numbness started to set in. I remember watching the towers burn and just not being able to comprehend that the NYFD would be able to put them out. 80 stories up. 10 floors on fire.

In the back of my mind, I didn't see how the towers could remain standing, but just figured that there's no way they'd fall. Stuff like that just doesn't happen.

I called my dad. Asked if he was watching the news. He said no. I said you need to turn on your TV. He did, gave me an "Oh my god. Ok, I'll call you later. Love ya'."

Then the south tower fell. We all just sat there, expecting the camera to cut away to a new angle or something and it'd still be there. After that, it only seemed a matter of time till the north tower followed. It did.

I had a job interview that day, and for some reason I went to it. It was just at a Borders, and there were maybe 5 people in the store, walking around in a daze. The interview was one of those "over the phone", press 1 if you have ever stolen something, jobs. I didn't really care.

I drove home and sat on the porch every night that week with a candle lit.

[Graham2001]

I was at home with my sister, watching ( & recording) a cop show called 'Stingers' which means it would have been around about 10pm that the news appeared on the screen about the attack, I cannot remember exactly what I thought at first, but I do remember going to all the channels and seeing exactly the same thing. I watched it to until about midnight. Then I went online and sent emails to various people.

The one I really remember is the one I sent to my parents where quoting a line from the start of WW1 I said that the lights were going out...

Of the messages I read on the various online forums the one that stuck out were several by a witness from an office near what became Ground Zero, both his comment that things looked like 'Twilight 2000' (a WW3 rpg) and his later 'Dunkirk on the Hudson' description of his journey home that I read the next day.

I was badly depressed and scared the next day, I kept looking at the Perth skyline waiting for another aircraft to fly into 'Centre Park' or 'Bondy's Tower' (Tallest buildings in Perth.)

The West Australian ran a free aftenoon editon on the 12th. But I didn't recover my equilibrium for another two to three days.

[Oliver]

Is there anybody in here who feels that "it´s still there" - unquestioned?

[Pardalis]

Is there anybody in here who feels that "it´s still there" - unquestioned?

What do you mean by "it"?

[gumboot]

It was black because it was in the shadow of the tower, but as I saw it approach, for these few seconds, I am convinced I saw Evil (maybe the blackness helped creating that impression). I am agnotisc, but that was as close to Evil as you can get.


I know exactly what you mean. I'm agnostic myself, but there is just something utterly chilling and incredibly visceral about UA175 coming towards the tower. In my mind I always equate it to a shark, moving in towards a kill.

To me, also, it is evil personified.

As for my story...

I was asleep - it was just before 1am on Sept 12 local time when it all began. I was woken up with the most surreal words I will ever hear: "The twin towers have gone". It took about 10 minutes just to get the whole story out of my sister and mother.

Like others, my day ended up being stuck to a TV - for me, at Film School.

I didn't know anyone living in America, so it was all a bit surreal to me.

I think, personally, the true scope and scale of 9/11 didn't truely hit me until I began looking into it, and found my way here a few months ago. I really owe a debt of gratitude for the people here for finally helping me understand the statement "the twin towers have gone" (It took me a moment to even work out what "the twin towers" WAS)

-Andrew

[Carnivore]

I was at work at a hotel in New Zealand, the night porter came into the room where I was working and told me to turn on the TV - that all hell was breaking loose in New York.I spent the whole night there watching as it happened. I remember thinking that if the terrorists could do it once they could do it again - that it could be the end of commercial air travel. The local paper, the Christchurch Press, printed a special edition in the small hours. The headline took half the front page: "America Under Attack". Our hotel was full of American tourists due to fly home who were now stuck for days. I remember one woman crying and saying "But that's home, that's where we live!" like it couldnt be happening there.

[TxLady]

We were living with my mother in law after returning home from a year in Mississippi. I was drinking coffee and doing a crossword puzzle while my sons got dressed for the day. My mother in law called from work to tell me that a plane had hit the wtc and to turn on the news. I stood in the doorway between the kitchen and living room watching the news with my sons. We saw the second plane hit and watched the buildings collapse. It seems like we stood there in one spot all day holding each other and crying. I remember saying "All of those people." over and over again.
My husband was in an airport waiting to board a plane to California. He called me at some point to tell me that his plane hadn't taken off, he was ok and on his way home.

[Gravy]

Thanks for sharing your stories, everyone.

I was in the Italian countryside south of Florence, leading a group of 24 college students on a 3 1/2-month walking trip through Europe.

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/87904507187e5ebb5.jpg

Most of the group, last day of the trip, November, 2001. If nothing else, I was successful in educating them about the dangers of Bud Light and the delights of Leffe Blonde. I'm the hairy dude at top left. In case you're wondering, we were not hippies, and only one of the men normally wears a beard.

We were far from news sources and didn't know what had happened until early evening, when we were camped at the ruins of an old palazzo outside a small village. Some of the students went to a bar in town to watch the news on television. When they came back, they were shaking their heads in disbelief. "It was so unreal, just like a Hollywood movie." The big relief was that they said the towers didn't fall immediately after being hit, but they couldn't say exactly how long they had stood. I knew that there could have been as many as 50,000 people in the towers, and guessed that fatalities might have been 10,000 or more, but I didn't tell the students that. We had very little information about the Pentagon. I was unable to get in touch with anyone in New York (it was a very tense seven days before I could get through by phone). I am always amazed at what synapses in my brain decide to fire whenever I hear shocking news. My first thoughts on hearing about the attacks were, "50,000 people!" and then – I swear this is true – "My television reception is gonna suck." I have no idea where that came from. I don't even watch much TV.

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/879045070706cd3fe.jpg
Photo taken with a wide-angle lens. The view from my apartment was more like this:

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/8790450707a2976fa.jpg

Sometimes I would lie in bed and watch lightning hit the towers. Yes, trees do grow in Brooklyn.


I held a meeting that night to see how everyone was doing, and if anyone had immediate family who might have been in danger (no). I reminded them that first reports from catastrophes are often wildly inaccurate, and to remember that whoever committed the attacks, they were not monsters, but people who in most respects were just like us – a tough lesson in the extremes of human capabilities. The atmosphere around camp was quiet and serious, with not as many tears as I had expected. That may be because 9/11 was not the most difficult issue the group had to deal with that week. We had already had to do much thinking about life and death. It was an eventful week, to say the least, with many journal pages inked.

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/879045070706a2493.jpg


New York can be a stressful place to live, and it helps to get away for a while. I was lucky enough to travel for a third of the year for several consecutive years, with three of those trips being these long walks. Each year before I left home I would spend an hour or more at the observation deck in WTC 2, and, with crossed forearms resting on the handrail at the window and my chin resting on my forearms, watch the hive at work. The incredible view was compensation for the WTC's host of architectural sins.

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/879045070706ec005.jpg

This was sitting on top of some papers on my desk when I returned from Europe.


Adding to an already insane week, the very best one of my students had an unrelated family emergency and I had to jump through some hoops to get her on one of the first flights to the U.S. She was as heartbroken to have to leave her new family as she was to face the situation at home. We had a memorable drive through the night, 11 hours on no sleep, fueled by biscotti and Coca-Cola Light, chasing away her tears by singing at the top of our lungs to terrible American pop songs on the radio and shouting "Porca miseria!" at drivers who didn't immediately pull into the slow lane when I flashed the brights. I wore my FDNY t-shirt, a gift from a firefighter at Engine 24 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2241569.stm). The scene at the Milan airport was surreal. It was nearly empty, except for dozens of military police and a long line at the Saudi Arabian Airlines desk. She was very nervous about getting on the plane, but I told her that there might never in history be a safer time to fly. She planned to return to the trip, but her parents wouldn't allow it, out of fear of terrorism.

The rest of the trip went smoothly, but I couldn't stop thinking about what people were going through at home. It was as if all my friends had been off to war, and I knew I would never understand what they had been through. When I got back to New York, I took a taxi home. The driver was Pakistani. It was fascinating to hear his account of how things had changed. As we pulled up to the curb in front of my building, the music on the radio stopped in mid-song and an announcer broke in: "American Airlines flight 587 (http://www.ntsb.gov/events/2001/AA587/default.htm) has crashed in the Queens neighborhood of Belle Harbor shortly after takeoff from JFK airport.* It was bound for the Dominican Republic, with more than 250 passengers on board. It appears that there are no survivors, and there may be fatalities on the ground. Witnesses described seeing the plane coming apart in flight. It is unknown if the crash was due to mechanical failure or an act of terrorism."

We listened to the reports for five minutes. "Oh, no! Oh, no!" said the cabbie. "This is too much! I bet you wish you were back in Europe!"

"No, it's good to be home."

http://forums.randi.org/imagehosting/8790450717e87bd7d.jpg


*This was not the airliner that crashed two blocks from where I live, which I referred to in another post. Hint: I didn't say I lived here at the time of the crash.

[Outhere]

September 11 used to be Emergency Medical Services day, due to the 9-1-1 emergency number connection. I was working for the state Bureau of Emergency Medical Services on 9/11/01 and couldn't have imagined how emergency services would come to the fore that day.

When I arrived for work just before 8 a.m., (one hour behind Eastern Time) I was unaware that the first plane had already hit the WTC. A co-worker met me in the hall and told me. He was in the Air Force Reserve and a veteran of the Gulf War. He was not so sure it was an accident.

Forgetting about work, the staff began turning on radios, trying to access CNN on computers. The system soon overloaded and no computer access was possible. When we heard by radio about the second plane, another co-worker wondered what it could mean. I said, "I don't know, but I think we're at war with somebody."

After a couple of hours, the director of the Health Department, of which our bureau was a part, said anyone in any bureau who wished to go home could leave, provided a skeleton crew remained on duty. None of us wanted to leave.

Calls began coming in from firefighters, paramedics and EMTS, all around the state, wanting to know how they could volunteer to help. Within about 24 hours, a team was on its way to New York, joining other teams from all over the country. EMS Day, indeed. I don't know if anyone ever collected accounts of their experiences. I only recall one man who, home again, said he'd seen things no one should ever have to see.

That night, I saw the pictures for the first time. Trying to sleep, I kept seeing the plane flying into the tower, every time I closed my eyes.

There's still a sense of unreality about the whole day. I've compared how I felt on 9/11 with how I felt the day Kennedy was assassinated. On November 22, 1963, I was much younger and thought the world was coming to an end. It didn't, and we got on with life. Now I feel that on 9/11 the world we knew has ended, but what will take its place?

[Gravy]

That night, I saw the pictures for the first time. Trying to sleep, I kept seeing the plane flying into the tower, every time I closed my eyes.
Lord.

I talked with several people yesterday who said they still have nightmares about that day, as did Hal Bidlack in his "Open letter to CTs" that was posted here recently. With all the debunking I've been doing in the past few months, looking at thousands of images and hours of video, I forget how powerful those images were the first time I saw them. In fact, I deliberately didn't see any video of the attacks when I was in Europe, because I wanted to be able to focus on other things and not have those images seared into my retinas. It wasn't until December of 2001 that I finally sat in front of my computer, took a deep breath, and said, "Okay, I'm going to do this." How things have changed.

[Dog Town]

December of 2001 that I finally sat in front of my computer, took a deep breath, and said, "Okay, I'm going to do this.

Everyone here thanks you for doing so!

[Mince]

Where were you? What were you doing?


What, exactly, are you trying to accuse me of here?

[Abbyas]

I posted this over on the SLC board a while back:

My day was punctuated with confusion and what seemed like surrealism.

I had been temping a little less than half a mile away from the WTC. I remember vividly thinking, "I wish it was Wednesday," because the online version of The Onion came out on Wednesday and when you're temping, it's an oasis in a desert of boredom. I was at my desk when we heard that the first plane had hit. My callous self had assumed it was a tiny Cessna, "Bah ha, idiot." When the second one hit, that changed.

I remember looking outside at what looked like a ticker tape parade. As if someone had stood on the top of every building in the area and dumbed a thousand file cabinets into the wind. After we evacuated, I thought, "is it snowing? No, that's ash."

I hung around the building wondering if I was going to get in trouble if I went home before I realized it was time to leave. All the trains were down, so I had to hoof it to Brooklyn.

As I was walking up the highway on the east side, I saw a huge cloud of dust coming towards us and people running. "Why are you running??" "It's falling!" The crowd of people got pushed to the very edge of the island and for a few minutes, I thought I was going to have to swim across the East River.

We figured that we had to get up to the other level of the highway up over some concrete barriers. I remember one gentleman who was great. He was extremely generous in helping people get up over this stuff and the whole time had this bored, tired, very New York face. Perfect.

As I was walking up the highway, I turned to look at the North tower as it stood. You could see details in the flames. I think about this every time a CTer talks about the fires dying out.

A couple of years later, the HBO documentary of the event came out and there was about 5 or 6 seconds of me walking across the brooklyn bridge covered in ash with a shirt over my face to breathe.

I remember watching it and noticing that you could hang a swing on my hips they swayed so much and thought, "Jiminey, who am I trying to pick up on the worst day in our nation's history?"

[Blue Mountain]

I had been laid off from a good job about five months before and was revving up to get a job search going again after taking the summer off. Since I'm a night owl, I had the radio set to wake me just before 8:30 Central time. The first thing I remember hearing was a report that all flights in North America had been ordered grounded. I thought, "Something big must be happening."

The next thing I remember was hearing the announcer report the North tower had also collapsed (8:28 my time) "North Tower" coupled with "also collapsed" was enough to get me out of bed and turn on the TV. I could not believe what I thought I had heard: that two towers, one of them known as the North, had come down. It couldn't possibly be that the twin towers of the World Trade Centre had been destroyed while I was enjoying a morning sleep-in.

It was.

I made a really big pot of tea and had two TVs going the rest of the morning. All the news sites on the Internet (CBC, CNN, BBC) were not responding. Slashdot was still up, but running in "static mode", serving up cached pages instead of generating them on the fly. It was my main source of Internet information that day.

I remember tryting to compute how many people might have been killed at the WTC; at one point I figured maybe 14,000. In a way it was a relief to hear it was less than 3,000.

I had some interesting conversations on IRC that evening, given that I live near the top of a tall apartment building.

It took me a month to find a job that turned out to be extremely crappy, and two years to find a good one.

[Blue Mountain]

Weirdest part of the day: Got back to my office, my ex-wife had just sent me an email that contained an audio file of some Canadian singer singing this viciously nasty anti-American song. The chorus went "Burn, burn, burn," in apparent reference to the burning of the White House during the War of 1812. Of all days to get something like that.
The song's called "The War of 1812" by the Canadian comedy troupe Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Dead_Trolls_in_a_Baggie). The song is, to be polite, cheeky. It's an attempt to poke fun at Canadian attitudes towards the States by being deliberately 'over the top'. Personally, I find it too snide for my liking, and I'm Canadian.

Better fare from them include the classic "Internet Help Desk" skit and the song "Toronto Sucks". (They end up concluding that every place in Canada sucks, except for Alberta--but Calgary does. The Trolls are based in Edmonton.)

[Dog Town]

I remember watching it and noticing that you could hang a swing on my hips they swayed so much and thought, "Jiminey, who am I trying to pick up on the worst day in our nation's history?"
Now that's a Kodak moment! I needed that joke bout now. Abby, you have great timing!

[asmodean]

Was at work trying to track down a nasty bug in our server software. Idled at our MUD, when one of the wizzards said something about a plane hitting WTC. Was to busy to really reflect on it all, stoved it away as a tragic accident.

A short while later a co-worker came into my office and told me about a plane hittign WTC. Said I'd already knew about that, to which he replied "Yeah, but this is a second plane". Realised it was far worse than a accident. Work stopped that day as people went to the tv-room and watched the news coverage. All of us were quit stunned.

[Oliver]

Bumping for this years anniversary - and for the people who
signed up at JREF after the memorial in September 2006.

[NYCEMT86]

Lets go back 6 years ago, Sept 10th, 2001.

I was 16 years old, a sophomore in High School. I remember it was the start of the second week of school. My mind was focused on what college I wanted to attend after I graduated and how I wish it was summer still. I wanted to be a graphics designer and create video games. Me and my friends hung out after school, going down to St. Marks looking for some cheap CDs and Movies. I talked to my cousins before they started their tours that night because we were going to go play some paintball out on Long Island the following weekend. I went to bed, never once thinking the next day would be the worst day this nation has ever seen.



Today is September 10th, 2007 (The 11th for our friends down under)

I was down at the South Street Seaport getting some dinner with a couple of my high school friends, I looked over to where the Towers once stood and I can remember that day so vividly and I can remember the Towers still standing just 6 years ago, the day before the attack and how my life has changed.

After that day I gave up my dreams to be a graphics designer. I knew that I wanted to be someone who could try and make a difference. Everyday I go into work wearing my uniform thinking about the sacrifices the people who wore this uniform made that day, everyday. Most of my friends I graduated with are either cops or firefighters now.

I look at that day as a wake up call. Never once I realized the true caring nature of this city until that day. I never once really appreciated the dedication of the first responders before 9/11.

It's so strange how one day can change the rest of your life.

[Thunder]

I was in Hong Kong. My friend told me to come outside cause a plane had hit the WTC. I came outside thinking "what an idiot". We watched on BBC world as the second plane came in. I immediately went to the phone and called my folks who live in downtown Manhattan. I told them "stay inside, do not go out". I think my dad went outside to watch. By the time the first tower came down, I was unable to call NY anymore.

I grew up in the shadow of the WTC. Walking down East Broadway to the F train I would always see the twin towers with the municipal building between them. It was always an awesome sight.

When I finally returned to the USA, 5 days later, the air in Manhattan was yellow. My great aunt told us it reminded her of the smell at Treblinka. I can still remember that smell. Smelled like concrete, wood, dirt, and this faint hint of something else.

That experience has stayed with me for the last 6 years..and it will never ever go away. And to this day, I really can't see how any human being, how an American, can use this tragedy as a springboard for insane conspiracy theories.

All I have to say is....shame. Shame on you and what you are doing.

[Thunder]

On September 10th, my city was whole. On September 11th, my city was a site I never imagined possible. That cloud...I will never forget the images of that cloud.

[Dr Harry Rein]

I am on the west coast, so I was sleeping when the planes hit.

My wife, who gets up earlier than I do, rushed into the bedroom saying "They're attacking us", and switched on the TV. It was showing the north tower burning. Took me a couple of seconds before I noticed, "aren't there supposed to be two of them?"

[NYCEMT86]

I was in Washington Square park with some friends skipping school. It was such as nice day and we wanted to enjoy it. We heard and saw the first plane hit. I remember thinking that someone really ********** up. I remember the all of the fire trucks and police cars flying down Broadway. When the second plane hit, my heart dropped. I just couldn't believe what was going on. I remember hearing the news reports on the radios and everyone screaming and shouting.

You said it best Parky76

On September 10th, my city was whole. On September 11th, my city was a site I never imagined possible. That cloud...I will never forget the images of that cloud.

[realitybites]

I was sleeping in that morning as I had a job interview later in the day. My roommate barged into my room and said, "Dude. Get up. We're under attack."

Knowing his penchant to be a funny prankster, I assumed he was referring to the road-work and jack-hammer taking place outside our place, and told him, in no uncertain terms to go eff himself.

"No. Seriously."

I got up, put on my glasses, and saw a replay of Flight 175 slam into the South Tower. When the towers collapsed my mind went numb. His parents came over about an hour later and we all just sat there speechless, enraged, scared.

For some reason, I still went to the job interview. It was just at a Borders, and up until that day I was stressing about being unemployed and needing a steady income. Driving to it however, I couldn't think of a more meaningless and pointless task for me to be doing. The store was all but empty. The manager was anything but focused. And I mindlessly answered questions. It just wasn't important to me.

I spent the rest of that week reading on the porch with a candle lit, feeling as helpless as I ever had in my entire life.

[Pardalis]

I understand how you felt Reality Bites, what else could you do?

I was working on some drawings for some silly commercial that day, everything felt so useless. But what else could I do? I just wanted that day to be finished as soon as possible.

[Policenaut]

I was in New Jersey on September 11th. I sleep with the tv on sometimes and when I woke up I was seeing footage of the first plane hitting the towers. A few minutes later the second plane hit. It was shocking and unbelievable. I remember my first thoughts (which were horrible and I still don't know why but it was an instinct) were that this wasn't going to be the end of planes hitting buildings today and sadly I was correct. Later the other plane hit the pentagon and the last one crashed in Pennsylvania. I tried calling my Uncle and cousin probably fifty times that day. They lived in Manhattan and I know he sometimes has business at the WTC and occasionally brings my cousin but I never got through to them. They were fine but they knew several people who died that day. It was an emotional day but I was filled with joy when I saw other countries supporting all the victims and standing together with the US grieving. It's a somewhat sad commentary that today, just 6 years later, countries are more divided than ever in recent history.

[Hal Bidlack]

My diary from that day...

http://www.hamiltonlives.com/dcpics/ (http://www.hamiltonlives.com/dcpics/)

I post this only as a tribute to those we lost. I shall answer no questions or make any further comments, beyond urging us to remember, with dignity and grace.

[maxpower1227]

Was asleep in my lofted bed in a Purdue University dorm room, freshman year. I woke up around 9:15 AM (I think) when my roommate came back from morning class (I'm an extremely light sleeper), and in my half-awake haze I heard a guy from across the hall tell him "A plane just hit the WTC. You know how there used to be two towers? Now there's one" That immediately got my attention - I sprang out of bed onto the ground without using the ladder, turned on the tv, and proceeded to utter a string of incoherent profanities for the next 5 minutes. Spent the better part of the day watching tv with 5 other guys across the hall - mostly Bloomberg. Skipped all of my classes except for a lab that I couldn't miss. Was eating lunch as one or both of the towers fell... just WTC1 I think. Don't really remember the other one coming down. Some of it was kinda hazy.

[A W Smith]

I was siding a house for another contractor I know. At a site which was directly under (http://maps.google.com/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=40.458069,-74.440243&spn=0.001073,0.001977&t=k&z=19&om=1) the flight 175 flight path (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:911_commission_UA175_path.png) We were listening to the radio and heard reports of a plane hitting the world trade center. The client came out of his house to tell us what he saw on TV. I had just left that site and traveled a couple of blocks to my contractor friends house listening to the truck radio and just as I pulled up and he met me at my truck door. Flight 175 hit. I knew right then it was terrorists and something to do with Bin laden. I went back to the job-site and we watched the Sky's as we worked. I felt an urge to quit the day and head for the jersey city waterfront as it was only about 45 - 50 mins away. But I didn't. It wasn't long that the client came rushing out of the house yelling that the World Trade Center collapsed. 40 mins later the client came out again stunned that the second tower collapsed. I don't remember if i even ate lunch that day. I do remember us watching the sky's and seeing military jets that afternoon. It was not till i got home a little after five that I became glued to the TV and channel surfed from news channel to news channel. That evening I put a flag out off the front porch of our house. It was not until long after the cleanup that i could bear to visit GZ as it was now known. In fact for a long time while traveling up the NJ turnpike across the meadowlands I could not even bear to look east towards the NYC skyline.

[stanleywinthrop]

I can remember it vividly.

I had been up since the wee hours of the morning preparing for a training flight. Of course I was focused on this and nothing else. I caught a quick glimpse of the TV before walking to the jet and thought to myself, "That sucks. Looks like the WTC caught on fire."

About 30-40 minutes later, while airborne, Jax center tells us that they can't let us out of their airspace, would we like to RTB or go to another airport?

Of course not knowing what was going on, we decide to turn around and go home. About this time, over the second radio (tuned to base frequency) we are told that 737s had flown into the two WTC towers.

When we arrived back into Pensacola airspace, we were one of the last aircraft to land. Normally the Pensacola approach frequency is quite busy on a tuesday morning; with two large Navy training bases, a regional airport, and numerous small civilian aircraft transiting. That morning it was eerily, dead quiet with only us and approach talking.

After landing the Plane Captian informed us that the Pentagon had been hit also. My pilot, a Vietnam F-4 pilot with hundreds of combat missions, turned to my instructor and myself and said, "Gentlemen, we are at war."

[Caper]

I was in a black truck outside the pentagon holding about 80 pounds of small plane parts, not having any idea why on earth I was doing this.... I only knew they were paying me alot and was told not to as any questions. Well, at about... oh quarter to 10 I was given the go ahead ran up and down the streets around the pentagon and got rid of my load, then me and one of my co-workers grabbed a lamp post and hurled it out on the street.... geeze we almost hit a guy. Anyway, after we finished that, I heard a massive explosion... I was told by my boss it was just a car backfiring and that I could go home............ Went home and saw it as soon as I turned on the TV. What a day............

[Hans]

I was In Dubai, United Arab Emirates purchasing a washer and dryer when the news came in. (by word of mouth) I remember initially thinking that it was a horrendous accident but the report of the second hit made it clear I was mistaken. I think I got home to see CNN reporting the collaspe of the second tower.

Two of the folks I knew at work lost cousins (or thought they had lost cousins) in one of the Lebanonese businesses in the Tower.

[Unsecured Coins]

was at work getting ready to teach a defensive driving course. We all met at this other unit's motor pool and were in the motor sargent's office. I came in a few minutes after everyone else and they were crowded around this little tv in the office. "hey sarge, a plane hit the world trade center" was my greeting. "Pilot was probably getting a hummer" was my reply, and off we went. The vehicle we were in had a radio, so we all listened to that to see if there was anything new on that plane situation. as soon as we turned it on, they were talking about ANOTHER plane hitting. Right away, we didn't know if it was the same tower or what, so we pulled over to listen some more.

I got a call saying come back to the unit a few minutes after there were reports of a fire at the pentagon. I think I broke every speed limit on the post getting back to the company. On the way back was when the towers fell. We got back to the unit and my CO tells me 8 words - "go home and pack, wait by the phone." I'd been deployed before but this was the first time I couldn't wait to get on a plane.

I got back to my place and my wife is on the couch, looking at me, just knowing I was maybe hours away from getting on a plane. I saw the replays of the towers going down, and more info on the Pentagon, and something about Flight 93. I got about 500 calls from family I never knew I had asking me if I was going anywhere, when was I going, they loved me, and thank you. I couldn't answer anything because I didn't know. I just went to my room and started shoving crap into a duffel bag. Next morning, it took my 4 hours to get on post, and I lived right outside the main gate. Literally. All we did that day was check in, go back home, wait by the phone.

It was like that for about 2 weeks. No calls, and finally we came to the realization that tanks in a mountainous environment weren't the best way to wage war.

MNFSOE9KtPI

[Digest]

I am tired and cant sleep and well I am here in NYC, like my family has been every year since that day. I am glad that people have not forgotten this day- Its odd that now this is what I associate with NYC - a memorial service. I guess i can share my memory also

In 2001 I was on leave in the US actually had flown into DC on Sept 10 from NYC to meet with the embassy people about a job position. I was new to DC and spent some time walking around the neighborhood seeing the sites my phone rang sometime after the first plane hit - it was my mother who was in NYC- my first thought was what a horrible accident - my mother told me that luckily it was not my cousin Kel's tower that had been hit-- she had just started working in the WTC this year - i was thinking in my mind what a crazy story she would have to tell when i saw her next week- - she said she was going to try and keep getting in touch with Kel so I told her to keep me up to date and hung up the phone.

I still had a few hours and wandered into a cafe that happened to have a tv on that many people were huddled around, It was about that time that the second plane hit - several people inthe diner screamed - and many stumbled in shock. I looked at the tv and thought "i am back in the West Bank." I knew it was a attack - all to familar. My hands shook as i tried desperately to get through on the phone to my mom but nothing was conecting to NYC from the cell lines. I took a deep breath and calmed myself - I ran (really sprinted) from the diner towards the embassy to try and find another way to make contact with friends and family - i found a payphone on the way but was still unable to get through to my mother. About the time i made it to the embassy and was usherd in through the heavy security I called the hotel and checked my messages- I got a message from our liason giving us 48 hours to report in but there was nothing from anyone else-I picked up a land phone and and tried several calls to friends and family with no luck- I then called the SO Liason checked in and found out we were being recalled although they were having trouble contacting everyone - I had to report to Ft Myers in the morning to catch a ride from aircav down to MacDill AFB in tampa flordia. my second clear thought of the day "i am going back to war"

So far I had let myself methodically control my reaction to the events of the day - not really letting anything sink in - at last my thoughts of my cousin sank in and i frantically tried to recall what area of the south tower she worked in. I went to the toilet and just sat in one of the stalls with the door closed - i cried as the events of the day replayed themselves i prayed that those i loved were safe and alive.

I went back out after composing myself and huddled in a office where a TV was - about that time the Pentagon was hit and I honestly didnt think the attacks were going to end anytime soon. I remember checking and chambering my sidearm - why i really dont know - but i distincly remember doing it - my cell rang and I finally was able to talk to my mother who was remarkably calm though i could hear the sadness in her voice - she told me she had been unable to contact my cousin and that she felt so empty - she kept asking how can the world be this dark - we continued to talk and i went out on the roof to look with others at the dark smoke rising on the horizon from the pentagon- my mother was reciting a prayer and it took me back to my childhood - at some point my mother cried out and i looked to the others nowing that something else had happened - someone ran out of the access and yelled that the towers were collapsing. From then on i really have a hard time recalling much most of it is very hazy and dreamlike - I was on base and active within the next week - sometime later I learned that indeed Kel had perished in the collapse of the south tower.

Every year we return and lay lilies for every year of her life. we eat at her favorite resturant and we remember.

I am still sad - I am still scared - I am still mad.

[PhantomWolf]

I was on the computer playing a MU* game, thinking about heading to bed when someone came on the Public channel with a message that was basically "OMG, turn on your TV." Went I goit the message that what was on was big enough that this wasn't just going to be on US TV, I turned on the BBC World and my mouth nearly hit the floor. It did when about 2 minutes later the second plane hit live. I couldn't go to bed after that, the vision of the burning towers and people jumping just too much... but then even worse the South Tower went. I'm not going to say I wasn't surprised, I was, but I wasn't shocked either. I'm not an engineer, but I have enough knowledge to realise that the damage and fire did it even back then, I aslo knew that the North Tower was going to fall as well as of that point. I didn't sleep very much that night, despite the fact I had a course the next morning, a course that was rather somber. I had been the only one that had seen it live, the others were just coming to terms with it.

Incidently I wasn't the only one in town awake on the computer that night. My local paper was the only one in New Zealand to carry the story and pictures in it's morning edition. The local editor had been playing online poker when he had recieved a similar message and turned on his TV. He instantly rang the printing room and did the good old "Hold the Press." Within 4 hours they had rewritten the front pages of the paper and gone to print with the story. It's probably just as well that the CT didn't know that our paper had pictures and was printed in just 4 hours from the event, or they would have been conspiracy over that too.

[PhantomWolf]

Every year we return and lay lilies for every year of her life. we eat at her favorite resturant and we remember.

It's hard to lose someone close, and harder when it is in such a way. I can't imagine the pain that you and your family go through with this, and that it is make worse by fools and ignorants. Though it's not worth a lot, you have my sympathy and best wishes for this time and that you will only get stronger through tradgety.

[Hokulele]

We were asleep when the attacks happened, but I had a webcast at 4:30 am, so was in the office early, but somehow hadn't seen or heard the news. When I logged into the webcast, everyone was very subdued and talking about the tragedy. I cluelessly asked what they were talking about, and I can still remember the silence as they tried to figure out 1) why I didn't already know about it and 2) how best to tell me. No one could bring themselves to talk about the actual topic of the webcast, so I logged off and drove back home. My husband was watching the news when I got back, and both of us took the rest of the day off.

Strangely enough, I had ordered a new mountain bike a few weeks before, and the store called asking me if I wanted to pick it up that day. Picking up the bike, I experienced the weirdest sense of guilt I have ever felt.

[ref]

I was on a bus, when I heard some small plane had hit the WTC from the bus driver's radio. I went to a department store, and found lots and lots of people in front of TV sets. I went to find out, what was going on. That's how it started for me.

(It's already 11th here, so I only speak about the 11th)

[Oliver]

On 9/11 I had to work night shift here in Germany - so the first
I did was to sleep for some hours. In the afternoon I stood up
and surfed for a while before I turned on the Television at about
3 pm Berlin time.

There was a burning Skyscraper and I remember that I wasn't
interested in bad news, so I switched to another channel - which
showed nearly the same thing. So I switched again - same thing.
That's when I turned the volume up and learned that both WTC
towers were hit by planes and had collapsed.

First I didn't understand what happened since I completely missed
the whole incidents - and then it hit me like a train when I realized
what happened. I didn't felt sad at this time - I was just shocked
and thinking about what consequences this might have and who
the Attackers were.

I don't even remember what I did the rest of the day, who called
me up, who I called or mailed - or if I left the house. What I re-
member is how silent people were at work the next day. They
rarely talked to each other. It was completely surreal - and I felt
like being in trance for 2 or three days.

[ref]

Oops. Didn't notice this thread, posted this in another one. Anyway.

I was on a bus, when I heard some small plane had hit the WTC from the bus driver's radio. I went to a department store, and found lots and lots of people in front of TV sets. I went to find out, what was going on. That's how it started for me.

[Kryptos]

Grew up in the DC area, but recently had moved to western Canada. 9/11 was one week after I started grad school there. Always had set my alarm for odd times, that morning for 6:46 a.m. (8:46 a.m. ET) The radio was normal for less than a minute, when they announced a plane hit the WTC. I remembered some years before when a small Cessna crashed on the South Lawn of the White House. I was expecting something similar this time, but immediately turned the television on anyway. Shocked. That was no small Cessna. Then, the second plane. Alarmed that terrorists struck at home (in the U.S.) like that. Then the Pentagon, which made this all very local for me. Then the fourth plane, heading for Washington. Obviously deeply concerned for friends and family back home. Immediate family was okay, but my mom worked for a financial services company that had offices in the WTC, and someone from her office was on Flight 77.

Being thousands of miles away, there was little I could really do to help. Sucks. Had I not yet started school, surely I would have helped, and likely picked somewhere else for school. Turns out my employer for the previous three summers was called on to help in the recovery effort. Had I not been thousands of miles away, I would have been with them for sure in NYC. Then we had the DC sniper attacks a year later. They hit specific places I buy gas and have shopped countless times. And knew one of the victims and the family. Remember the day just as vividly. Again frustrated that there was nothing I could do to help, being so far away. It was difficult to maintain interest in grad school and my topic. Not long after, I came back to DC.

Now my work involves law enforcement. And, suppose debunking and educating about 9/11 is a way to help out now and do something.

[CptColumbo]

I was still working on my Bachelor's Degree at Minnesota State University/Mankato. I had a performance project due that day in Acting Techniques, and was waiting for the rehearsal space to open up so I could practice, passing the time reading the bulletin board for my call time that week for "The Philadelphia Story" rehearsal. A friend, Oliver Thrun, walked up to me and told me that two planes had hit the World Trade Center towers.

"Two?" I asked him.

"Two." He answered, knowing what that implied.

I went to the cafeteria to watch the TV, and got there in time for the report of the Pentagon being hit. It was unusually quiet in the caf that day.

Theatre Dept. classes were not cancelled, so I had to still do my performance. It went well and took my mind off the days events. My journal entry that night was one of my longest in 10 years (8 written pages).

[CFLarsen]

NYC.

[Matt32]

To the TC: Funny thing, I was also a sophomore in high school and in the New York metro area (Nassau County of LI here). Those like ourselves who experienced 9/11 through proximity will always "get it" in a certain way.

I think it's great that you found your calling after that day. I'm guessing from your handle you're an EMT? One of my best friends from college used to be an EMT/ambulance driver as well as a funeral home employee (IDK, he juggled a lot) in Westchester County. Without getting too detailed or anything, I know for a fact that some of his work called for him to be involved with the aftermath of 9/11. It's freaky stuff but it was our backyard that this happened in.

Let's see... well, our school dropped its usual strictness about cellphones, wandering the hallways, etc, and let students roam free. This was so they could do whatever needed to contact family and friends that might've been effected by the attacks. A few kids, after making phone calls, had to check out early and left in tears.

On a lighter note. A (somewhat devotedly Jewish) friend of mine noted that this should make people more aware of the Israel/Palestine conflict, and then joked - wouldn't it be funny if Israel was behind the whole thing, trying to rally up popular sentiment in America? Apparently a 15 year old's exaggerated sense of humor has a lot in common with the intellectual approach of an entire wave of conspiracy theorists.

I don't have any specific memories of 9/10/01, but I do recall those "prior" days very clearly. I was (and sometimes continue to be) rather late in waking up to the world around me. So I experienced two things for the first time just a few weeks before, when my dad drove a friend and me into Manhattan to see the beefed-up re-release of Apocalypse Now. The first new thing being the aforementioned movie and the second being the music of Jim Morrison and the Doors.

On the other hand, I was already very familiar with the city. The Twin Towers were my "favorite" buildings (also the only ones I could recognize besides Empire State and Chrysler) so I was quick to point them out on the drive in. That was probably the last time I'd see them.

In the following days I listened to "The End" a lot (as any good teenager ought to). Not to sound spaced-out, but that song did a lot to open my own personal "doors of perception." No doubt thanks to its being tied in with A) this crazy movie that roped together war, depravity, insanity, bloodshed, sex, and surfing and B) the catastrophe that'd follow on 9/11. Plus it's got Jim Morrison wailing about all things Freudian. So all these new and mature things really overloaded the frail and inexperienced sensibilities of a 15-year old. The end result was definitely a jump-start of the coming-of-age process for me.

Those are my memoirs, I guess. Hope they haven't bored anyone. It was something really unique and terrifying to be so close to 9/11 when it happened and I've done my best to try and relate an experience that's still really nebulous.

When you look at history though, six years is still a short time to digest something so massive, no matter your age...

[Brainster]

I woke a few minutes before 6:00 AM Pacific, took a shower and then surfed to a political website for news and looked in the comments section of an interesting story and found that nobody was talking about the interesting story, they were talking about the World Trade Center being hit by two planes. I must have turned the TV only a couple minutes after the second strike, because the announcers were still talking in terms of "if this is a terrorist attack," although this quickly changed as reality sunk home.

I was transfixed for an hour or two before realizing I had family back in the NY area. Of course the phones were busy but my sister must have been on the computer because I got an email back that everybody was okay within about 10 minutes.

The collapses were stunning. I grew up within about 20 miles of NYC. I couldn't quite see the towers from my parent's house but my friend Kevin a quarter mile away could see them plainly. I worked in NYC for three years but only once or twice found myself that far downtown. The buildings were dizzyingly tall.

[MG1962]

I guess I just wanna why after all this time, why it still hurts so much. And I dont just mean those who lost loved ones, or played intergral parts in events that day.

Can any of us watch Men In Black, and not go quiet and reflective when we see the Towers that are no more

[MarcoPolo]

I was on my way to work when I heard that a small commuter plane hit the WTC.

I ignored that news and got to work. My work is a software security company and I did tech support then. My first call of the day was from the Pentagon. While we were on the phone troubleshooting an issue he was having, I heard the alarms going off in the background. The guy told me to hold on, and about 30 seconds later came back and said he would have to call back. The alarms were going off and he didn't know why. I gave him his case number and said we would wait for him to call back.

So we hung up and then the news started going around the office about what was going on.

Our building was located in the same vicinity as another government building, so they told us to go home.

I watched the news non-stop for the next 2 days. Literally. I ran the emotional roller coaster from anger to sadness. I just about joined the army after that.

I'll never forget it.

[asmodean]

Was working away in my office. Heard some talk about a flight accident in NY, a crash in WTC. Horrible, but deadlines must be met so I kept on working. A little while later a colleague came into my office and asked if I heard about WTC.

I replied that, "Yes, I heard: Awful tragedy. Horrible accident" and my colleague replied that a second plane had hit. At that moment I realised what was happening. All work stopped at the office then, and we sat in stunned silence in the coffee room watching CSN. Got in touch with some of my friends in the US via IM, email, anything.

Took some time before the full horror of what had happened really sunk in. All that death, and suffering. The people stuck in the building, facing the choice of jumping to their death or stay and suffocate, or burn to death. I still shudder to think of it.

[Firestone]

On 9/11, I was supposed to work at home, a rare occurence.

While sitting at my PC, working (really), I heard the 3pm (local time, 6 hours ahead of NY-time) news on the radio, mentioning that a plane had crashed into one of the WTC-towers.
My thoughts then: "wow, there must be quite some casualties there". And I continued my work. I didn't think of a deliberate crash at that time.

Some 10 minutes later the radio had a newsflash, announcing that another plane had crashed into one of the WTC-towers.
Of course now I knew it was no accident, so I left my PC and ran to the TV.

When I saw the towers on fire, my first thought was: "how lucky that the towers resisted the impact and didn't collapse".
I watched the horror for hours. I saw the towers collapse (negating my initial "common sense" feeling), saw the pictures of the burning Pentagon, heard the reports about flight 93, heard the reports about a car bomb at the State Department, heard the reports about the Salomon building that was in danger of collapsing.

On Belgian TV there were already discussions about who may be behind the attacks. Of course Al Qaeda was the main suspect.

The following day I had to be in a highrise building (by Antwerp standards that is). It looked so strong, so stable, I tried to imagine it collapsing, but couldn't.

[timhau]

I got home from work (we're 7 hours ahead of NYC here in Finland) and, as usual, opened the TV to catch the latest news on teletext. The program that was on was a live broadcast from our parliament, where they were debating this or that as usual, but there was a news ticker running on top of the screen saying that two planes have hit the WTC skyscrapers in New York. I switched to BBC World instantly, and they were showing a live shot of the southern tip of Manhattan. I had to remind myself that this wasn't special effects.

[leftysergeant]

I'm not sure what time I got out of bed. I was not scheduled to be at work at the Ft. Lewis commissary until about 1400. Both towers were already burning when I turned on the tv. My wife kept asking me questions I could not answer. She could not follow the commentary on the tv because she does not speak English especially well.

Nor could I speak enough Korean to immediately convey the enormity of what we were watching.

I watched the towers fall, then tried my best to explain to her what was going on, the significance of the towers and the numbers of people involved and probably destroyed before our eyes.

I gave myself an extra hour to drive to Ft Lewis. Turned out that that was not enough. There was a five-mile back-up at the gate. They were only letting people on active duty, or their on-post families through. By the time I knew this, I was stuck in the back-up on a third street in the Tillicum neighborhood. Hard to just turn around there on a normal day. Several cars, including mine, over-heated. There were people carrying water from houses to the steaming cars, people exchanging tips on how to deal with the problem, all trying to reassure each other that we were a strong enough nation to withstand this.

I finally got turned around and limped home just in time to see WTC 7 coming down in real time.

[The Shank]

I was in the QMC in Nottingham with my then pregnant girlfriend who was having an ultrasound scan. The baby was being awkward and wouldn't lie down correctly. The nurse told my (ex)girlfriend to go for a walk around to see if the baby would settle down, so we went back into the waiting room where the news was on the telly, my first thought when i saw the plane going into WTC was along the lines of "How the **** did the pilot manage to crash into a tower that big, did he not see it or something?", and then they showed the second plane crashing, and my thoughts changed.

[uk_dave]

I got home from work (we're 7 hours ahead of NYC here in Finland) ...

So why didn't you warn them?

[timhau]

So why didn't you warn them?

Do you have any idea what the costs of an overseas phone call were those days?

[njslim]

Was working at Bayway oil refinery in Linden NJ. Just after 9AM boss came
down stairs to tech room (we were in basement) and said two aircraft had
hit the World Trade Center and both building were on fire. My partner and me
told him that it was pretty sick thing to do. No told us it was true - the
people on the upper floors had heard on the radio about first plane into the
WTC North Tower and were watching out the windows as United 175 hit
the South Tower. Went upstairs to the roof (5th floor) to watch the
buildings burn until first tower came down at 10AM and scene obscured by
the dust and smoke. Sent us home at 2PM - by that time cranes were
positioning huge concrete blocks around the entrances and all off duty
cops in the area were at the gates. At home listened in to radio traffic
from scene, went to firehouse - chief had placed us on standby in case
needed. Also backing up adjacent city of Paterson as entire shift was in
New York fighting the fires at World Financial Center. Bayway is only mile
from runway at Newark airport, constant noise of jets was always there.
For next week there was dead silence - it was eerie. Also when wind blew
in from New York could smell the acrid burnt ordor from WTC site. Can still
remember the smell....

[maxpower1227]

I was in a black truck outside the pentagon holding about 80 pounds of small plane parts, not having any idea why on earth I was doing this.... I only knew they were paying me alot and was told not to as any questions. Well, at about... oh quarter to 10 I was given the go ahead ran up and down the streets around the pentagon and got rid of my load, then me and one of my co-workers grabbed a lamp post and hurled it out on the street.... geeze we almost hit a guy. Anyway, after we finished that, I heard a massive explosion... I was told by my boss it was just a car backfiring and that I could go home............ Went home and saw it as soon as I turned on the TV. What a day............

Ok, I admit it. I laughed...

[Bell]

I got home about 15:20 (9:20 NY time) and started to read my e-mail. A friend mailed that he saw a plane hit the WTC, and attached a screencap from BBC World, showing both towers with smoke coming from them. I first thought it was some joke mail, and thought that the picture was terrible faked. However, the tone of his mail somehow made me doubt, and I tried to go to CNN.com... which failed to load. That's when I realized it was real. I turned on the TV and watch everything from there on.

About a year ago I signed up here (must have missed this topic back then) but after a few months it all became to depressing for me, being constantly reminded of what happened that day. I couldn't handle it anymore, so decided to stay away from JREF & 9/11 stuff.

I have dealt with that now, and on this anniversary day I thought let's see what JREF is up to these days.

[SpaceMonkeyZero]

I was in my car driving to Corning, NY for a meeting. I was listening to the Howard Stern show on the radio from a distant radio station and it cut out seconds before they announced the first plane hitting. Since I was only 10 miles to Corning, I just switched over to listen to a CD in my stereo.

I get to the office, where I have a desk setup since I was there about 3 times a week, start up my laptop and go to check the news sites, being a news junkie that I was, and still am.

I noticed that it was hard to get cnn.com to come up for some reason, and I kept refreshing, and checking other news sites, and they were all slow. Finally I think it was CNN (I could be wrong) changed their homepage to just the picture of one tower smoking and a quick blurb of a "small plane hit the WTC".

I think "God, that sucks." Someone in the office started mentioning about a "Single engine Cesna hit the WTC"

Then the news reports start coming in... someone in a nearby office turned on their radio to the local AM news channel, I lost track of time listening to the radio and checking websites (along with everyone else in the office), and heard about the 2nd jet hitting.

Now I was worried. My girlfriend at the time (now my wife) was from Brooklyn and had just moved from NYC to be with me a few weeks before. I knew her uncle worked at the WTC, but not sure which building, I tried calling her, no answer. She was still unemployed and has a habit of sleeping in when she doesnt' need to get up. I started worrying about *my* uncle who worked as a manager for ConEd in the city, luckily he didn't work in Manhattan, and had that day off because.

Then I hear that the Pentagon was attacked. I tell the manager I'm there to meet with that I'm heading back to check up on my gf because she has a lot of family in NYC. She said "I hope everyone's ok... Go" and I got into my car and tried making another phone call to my wife from my cell. The local cell towers in Corning were jammed with people making cell phone calls. It was weird. I got back on the highway, listening to the news, dreading the 100 mile drive I had to do to get home. I heard news reports that they thought 50,000 people might die. I then heard about the collapse, I'm not sure which one I heard about on the radio it was all a blur.

I finally wake up my girlfriend and she's her cheery usual self... which is comforting but also odd considering I just spent the past hour hearing panic in people's voices on the radio and at the office. I ask her if she's turned on the TV yet. "No... why?" I tell her there was a really bad attack in NYC, and she gets quiet, and says "oh my god... I have to make some calls."

I get home. She tells me that her brother was walking to his office when he heard the first plane hit, and he went to their grandmother's place in chinatown. My wife's aunt worked in WTC7 and was 8 1/2 months pregnant. She left after the 2nd plane hit. My wife's uncle also worked at one of the WTC buildings, but not 7. I forget which. He met up with his wife (my wife's aunt) at her mother's in Chinatown... Even though they worked close by, because of the chaos they didn't find each other until they got to Chinatown. This became the hub for my wife's family to meet up at that day.

When I got home, my wife said that everyone is ok, but they can't find her grandmother. Turns out she (being 80 and slightly senile) started walking towards GZ to see what was going on. She made her way back to her apartment 10 minutes after the collapse. Luckily she didn't make it very far and headed back when a policeman told her to "turn back"

That night we heard of 3 of our mutual friends from college were "missing". 2 of which we later found out were ok and made it out. 1 of which died stuck in an elevator where she had finally called her sister, 10 minutes before 2nd tower collapse. My brother in law lost, IIRC, 3 friends that day. Luckily no one in my wife's family was hurt.

My wife's uncle still has nightmares about people jumping. He won't talk about it much, but says he can still see them when he closes his eyes at night.

[MikeW]

I was visiting a company near Liverpool, training a bunch of people in the latest version of some software I'd helped write. It was a long process, so basically we spent the entire day in a conference room, not even going out for lunch (they had food brought it).

So we finished at around 1 pm New York time, then, and left the room with no idea that anything had happened. At which point a passing employee told us planes had flown into the WTC, they'd collapsed killing 50,000 people, some large number of planes were still unaccounted for, and World War III would be declared imminently.

This was, ah, something of a shock, obviously. So I drove home (about a 3 hour trip) listening to news radio all the way, in just a daze of disbelief. Then turned on the TV, and the visuals were even worse.

[SpaceMonkeyZero]

Also. I remember the first time I went to NYC after 9/11. My wife had flown down twice before I took the train down in mid-October. I remember being on the Amtrak and coming into the city and chatting with a few native new yorkers who were also coming into the city for the first time since 9/11. I remember getting off the train at Grand Central station and the air smelled of burnt plastic. The only way I could describe it was the smell of a new CRT computer monitor... But more burnt. A month later.

[Graham2001]

I was watching (& recording) a cop show called 'Stingers', the news broke in part way through the program. My first reaction was "It's a movie promo' (I was thinking of 'Independence Day', then I checked the other channels and realised they were all showing the same thing...

After watching it for some time I sent a number of emails to various people including my parents. On the 12th I spent a lot of time looking nervously at the skyscrapers of Perth, for some reason I kept expecting to see a plane come flying at them as well.

[Rolfe]

I was at work in Sussex. I'd spent lunchtime mucking around with a printer that wouldn't work, because I wanted to print some schematics for a new lab we were planning. Just after 2pm, at the end of lunch, I clicked on the BBC News web site, but it was down (my first click got a page but no pictures, and when I tried to refresh I got nothing - I still wonder what the words that I didn't read said).

I went on dementing about the printer. I heard a colleague say to a secretary, "they think it's the Taliban", but I thought he was talking about an assassination that had been reported that morning in Afghanistan, though I did think it was uncharacteristic of him to be interested in Afghan politics.

I went on dementing about the printer. Finally the same colleague said to me, "why are you going on about that when we're all talking about what's happening in America?" I remarked that if he told me what was happening in America I'd be better informed.

He'd been to the garage just after lunch to pick up his car which had been serviced, and the garage had a TV in the waiting room. He reported that the news cameras had been filming the burning North Tower when the second plane had hit right in front of their eyes. He said one tower had fallen but the other was still standing.

I tried the BBC web site again but it was still down. (I gather CNN was the only web site accessible because they took down everything but one hand-knitted html page, but I didn't think to try there.) I remembered that a part-time worker kept a radio in her cubby-hole, and went to get it. I think we got Radio 5. By the time we got the station, they were reporting that the second tower had also fallen. They were also saying that there were other planes still in the air, and other strikes were expected. The Pentagon had happened by then, but we heard the news of the United 97 crash come in live. We were very scared there might be a dozen or more incidents, and in a way it was a relief when it became clear that we'd seen the worst of it.

Outside, I kept looking up into the clear blue sky, thinking how surreal it was that all this was happening so many thoiusands of miles away. But I didn't know what these "towers" were. I was imagining some sort of, oh, I don't know, minarets or something. It was only when I got home and turned on the TV that I realised - oh my God, they're huge great office buildings full of PEOPLE!

I left home and went to the gym. But there, all the TVs above the exercise equipment were showing the same thing. Still, nobody could quite believe it. I didn't go back to the gym for several years (lousy excuse, I know).

Later that week my godson told me he'd been shopping in Debenham's in Bradford when he passed the TV department and saw the images on the screens, but with no sound. He thought it was some sort of realistic fiction/film, like "War of the Worlds", until the woman next to him started to cry. He'd been at the top of the North Tower with a school party just a few months earlier.

On the Friday evening we went outside and lit candles at the time arranged for the worldwide show of support. But I still can't understand the heartfelt cry of an American friend I phoned the day after, to offer my sympathy. "Why did they do that to us? Why do they hate us? We only want to do good in the world!" She honestly didn't know.

She voted for Bush, too.

Rolfe.

[JonnyFive]

I was a new college student at NYU. On 9/11/01, I was sleeping a little bit late, and was probably going to miss my first class that morning. I got a call on the phone from my roommate's parents, who were looking for him. They told me a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. As I'd just woken up, that didn't make a damn bit of sense. I thought they were joking.

I went out into our common room and we saw what had happened on the TV. We were watching the live feed on the news when the towers collapsed. Once they both came down, I went out and headed towards the site. I don't know exactly why - I thought I might be able to do something to help, but by the time that I was on my way, all the streets were blocked off by the cops and I couldn't get anywhere close.

My family were all trying to get in touch, since none of them knew exactly what was going on, and the NYU dorms are fairly close to the towers (relatively, they're a couple miles away). I stuck around for most of the day, then decided to head out to Queens to spend the night at my wife's (she was just my girlfriend back then) place, as she was pretty worried about me.

It was a very surreal day. I had just arrived in the city a couple months before, and I had visited the Trade Center for the first time (we just walked around, didn't go in) something like the month before. One of the people in my suite at NYU actually saw one of the planes hit from Washington Square Park, and we all watched the buildings come down live on the news.

[timhau]

On the 12th I spent a lot of time looking nervously at the skyscrapers of Perth, for some reason I kept expecting to see a plane come flying at them as well.

I live three blocks from the central police station and maybe 4 blocks from the downtown fire department, and I work right next door to the biggest hospital in town. The wailing of emergency vehicles is such a common noise that I unconsciously block it from my mind when at home or in the office. However, on Sept. 12th, 2001, and a few days afterwards, I was aware of every single one.

If the event did that to someone living 7 time zones away who had, at that point, never even been to New York City, I can't imagine what it had to be like for New Yorkers.

[Lurker]

I was at work and heard the news from a secretary. Didn't think too much of it, sounded like an accident. When Iheard about the 2nd plane I knew otherwise and then rumors were rampant about other planes.

Someone set up a TV in a conference room and a few of us watched the live feed. Watched the towers fall and then I decided I had had enough and I belonged at home with my family so I drove home and spent the rest of the day there.

[Sabrina]

I was 22 years old and literally two and a half months from graduation from college and an eight year contract in the military when 9/11 happened. I was in Radford, Virginia at the time. I can recall so vividly what I was doing; I didn't have any classes that day until around two PM and so I was futzing around on my computer, surfing the net, and decided to turn my TV on to see if there was anything good on. I started channel surfing, and literally clicked right past a picture of the North Tower burning and was about five to ten channels further on when it registered what I had seen. I immediately clicked back and just stared in consternation; I remember thinking, "is this a movie?" because I felt it couldn't be real. I sat there for at least an hour watching, up until the first reports that the Pentagon had been hit, until I scrambled up to get dressed and head over to the ROTC office; in some disjointed way I thought perhaps the military people might have more information, although I don't know WHY I thought that. I arrived over there and immediately had to comfort someone who's family worked at or near the Pentagon (I can't recall which and she couldn't reach her family to be sure they were okay) before sitting there for the remainder of the morning watching. I was there when the towers fell; I remember thinking that at least the South Tower would fall, because it was so assymmetrically damaged in comparison to the North Tower, so I wasn't surprised when it did. Horrified, yes; shocked, no. After that I knew things would never be the same.

Six years on, I look back at that event as one of the main ones that shaped my current career path. I had had very little thought of what I would do once my Army contract was up, but being given the opportunity while on active duty to be an intelligence officer and attending an anti-terrorism/force protection course made me realize that this was what I wanted to do with my life. I actively pursued a career in the intelligence community and have every intention of lending my skills to the prevention of another 9/11 in any way I can. It's a wonderful feeling to know that in some small way, I am contributing to the safety and security of the American people, even the ones who aren't grateful for it.

[flameowl]

I was still in University at the time, outside of major Canadian cities (we used to joke that the world could dissapear and we wouldn't hear about it for a week... after 9/11 we knew better), and had gotten up a little late and decided to hit the gym before class. I hadn't turned on my computer or TV before leaving. I was on the treadmill cursing the fact that I had forgotten my headphones when I realized that there was something very important happening on the two tvs tuned to CNN.

Myself and another lady got the front desk to pipe the sound for that tv over the building's speakers and I got mack to the workoutroom just as the tvs were reporting that a plane had hit the Pentagon. Slowly all the sounds at the gym stopped, no more clanging metal as weights were lifted, no more whirring treadmills and stationary bikes. All the tvs were turned to CNN and other news channels.

It was another 2 hours before I went home, and I didn't get to class that day. I called my parents immediately and heard that they had all been evacuated from the downtown core in Toronto. My sister's building had been cleared first as it was positioned right beside the US embassy. My best friend's mother had been visiting NY and it took her family nearly 12 hours to get in touch with her and make sure she was ok. She had gone up the towers on 9/10 sightseeing. She still hasn't developed that roll of film.

A year later I was working in downtown Toronto on Bay street and there were visitors from NY at the office, the airshow practices and performs out of the island airport only a few kilometers away, and we had to take two of the ladies to the underground concourses while the military jets were practicing because they fly so close to the core that you hear the thundering noise and it was just too much for people who had been on Wall Street 9/11/2001.

[fuelair]

I missed the first plane in, but school turned on the news so everyone could see what was happening. As bell was about to ring for first period classes (I was in media center) 2nd plane hit. I said something approximating "This isn't accident, this is war" and headed up to my class - where I explained what was going on to my TV production students as we watched the news. I also explained how the bomb my name here comes from worked to them. The day after, I was fielding questions on the possibility that Bushco was involved (to which I explained why that was extremely unlikely.) (That's why I know the conspiracy ideas started almost immediately.)

[JimBenArm]

I had a day off from work. I woke up, strolled out to the living room, when a friend of my wife called and told me to turn on the TV. The first plane had hit, was watching the news and trying to make sense of it, when the second plane hit. Spent the entire day glued to the news, switching to all the channels to get different perspectives. After hearing of the Pentagon and Shanksville, I was filled with rage and horror at all that had happened. Only time I ever wished I could go back on active duty.

[Graham2001]

I live three blocks from the central police station and maybe 4 blocks from the downtown fire department, and I work right next door to the biggest hospital in town. The wailing of emergency vehicles is such a common noise that I unconsciously block it from my mind when at home or in the office. However, on Sept. 12th, 2001, and a few days afterwards, I was aware of every single one.

If the event did that to someone living 7 time zones away who had, at that point, never even been to New York City, I can't imagine what it had to be like for New Yorkers.

Neither can I, but I was really 'down' for a few days following the 11th, and when Channel 9 repeated the episode of 'Stingers' that was interrupted by those events (one week later) I felt increasingly nervous as the program got closer and closer to the point it had stopped.

[Disinfo Agent]

I was 18 at the time and english lessons were cancelled that day, so I have been home earlier from school than usual. At about 3:15pm I was watching some crappy tv show (one of those where they stage trials - don't know if you have these in the US), waiting for Star Trek TNG to begin, when after the commercials a reporter said, that "an airplane has flown into the World Trade Centre", without showing any pictures. The Program continued as scheduled. I was thinking about the Empire State Building Incident in the 40s(?), and I thought that maybe a pilot of a chessna or something wanted to comit suicide. I switched to a newschannel and saw a close-up of both Impact-zones of the WTC Towers raging in fire.

While I saw the towers burning, I thought about how long it would take to repair that damage. I already had pictures of renovation works in my mind. I would never have suspected, that one of the towers was in danger to collapse. Then I saw the North Tower and a huge cloud billowing under it and though "what is THAT!?!" until I realized, that one of the towers just collapsed. I knew that tens of thousands worked inside the WTC Buildings on a normal day...

I had been to the WTC two years earlier. That was so surreal to see...

[Minadin]

I was still a student in college when the disaster of 9/11 happened. I recall the morning very vividly, as I had fallen alseep in my apartment with the TV on, and woke just prior to the 2nd plane hitting the WTC. I had to go to class later that morning, and instead of learning about HVAC design, those of us who bothered to go, spent most of our time discussing the events of that day. Which, consequently, was pretty much the status quo for the next few weeks. Our structures professor in particular went into an in-depth analysis of how the towers were built, and how they failed.

[Sabrina]

Yeah, pretty much all my time in classes that day was spent discussing what had happened. I remember less than two days later I pointed out to my religion professor that they had deliberately chosen symbols to attack and even carefully chosen the airlines (United and American) as a way of attacking our way of life. My professor had thought about the symbology of the buildings, but he hadn't considered the symbology of the names of the airlines.

[BillyRayValentine]

My wife left for work first, called me from the street outside our building and said "There's a hole in the trade center. I think a plane just hit it. Get out here."

I watched the next few hours unfold from Greenwich St., close enough to see and hear much that I'll never forget.

Which is why I despise truthers and their ridiculous nonsense with such passion.

[uruk]

I was teaching an electronics class when a studnet came back to class after going to the bathroom. He told me that a plane had crashed in to a building in New York. (we have a big screen TV in the student lounge area).
I had the class take a break while we looked at the news.

I thought it was an accident untill the second plane hit the towers. After that I knew it was a terrorist attack.

We watched the report untill the building collpased. By that time the class period was over. And I dismmissed the students. But we stayed watching the news reports.

A student asked me what I thought about the whole situation What I thought was going to happen. I remember saying something like "some country was going to get bombed back to the stone age in retaliation for the attack".

I guess I was angry and had not realized it. I was still in shock.

The college closed down early to send the student home.

The trip home was eerie because of the lack of airplanes in the air. (The college is near a airport). That's the thing that struck me the most. I guess something that insignificant stayed with me because it was something I was directly experiancing from an event that took place hundreds of miles away from me.

[Hyperviolet]

I was on a bus on my way home. The radio was on, broadcasting the most unbelievable news. Everyone was completely shocked.

"America has been attacked! They say it's worse than Pearl Harbour."

It was surreal. I was always under the impression that America is the one country you don't engage in an act of war.
But here it was, happening.

I arrived home and switched on the television. Only minutes later, the south tower collapsed. By now, i was certain this was the start of the next World War.
It was really scary, the news media was scattered and unreliable.
Nobody knew what was going on, only that thousands were dead and it might not be over yet.

It's one of the most vivid days in my life. Everyone i know can remember what they were doing when they heard the news.
A unique day, indeed.

I can't imagine what it must have been like for New Yorkers.

[Miss Anthrope]

I was getting my daughter, then 4, dressed for gymnastics that morning. I heard something on the radio and came in. I said something totally stupid out of shock. Then I ran into the bedroom and turned on the TV...we don't watch TV but that set picked up the local stations.

I sat riveted, first shocked, then crying, holding my daughter. I didn't know if I should even take her to the class. I went, at my husband's prodding, because my daughter was getting scared. When I walked in there, the instructors just came up and started hugging us and crying.

I lived on the flight path of Seatac, Renton Airport and Boeing Field. It was silent for days. Eerily so. I remember being frightened a month later going to downtown Seattle on my birthday...we were eating in a high rise, and I was so nervous about it all.

This stuff terrified and hurt us on the opposite coast greatly.

[Arkan_Wolfshade]

Bumping for this years anniversary - and for the people who
signed up at JREF after the memorial in September 2006.
Thank you for doing this Oliver.

[SDC]

I was in Michigan, on a 5-year professional exile from New York, and not too happy about it but what the heck. When I got into the office and logged on, I soon heard office neighbors muttering. I went to the NY Times web site and followed that through the morning, till we were all told to go home. I felt even more in exile and spent much of the day trying to call NYC friends, widening the circle till I reached one out in New Jersey who still had phone service and, miraculously, knew that friends who worked in and around the WTC were OK.

Then I started hearing, from email lists, that a couple were missing; eventually confirmed, one who had just started working at Windows on the World, the other on one of the planes from Boston. They actually were closer friends to each other than I was to either; fortunately (?) the Boston guy was not on the plane that hit Windows. I don't know why I say fortunately. Within a couple of weeks the Times was running a series of short pieces on victims, and a Times writer got all excited about their case. It was a fair story, it was news, but I'm sorry, her enthusiasm made my stomach turn. Now something for the English: I knew them from the world of folk dancing; they were Massachusetts morris dancers. Most people won't get the reference but I expect the English will, a strange and silly hobby and they were two of life's relative innocents and plain nice guys.

That night I told my daughter (even in Michigan, 600 miles away, the schools were quickly locked down) about the Windows on the World guy, because she had, as a 2 year old, been at his wedding. I didn't want to scare her; my reasoning was that I wanted her to be aware that we were all connected to this.

[Twilek]

I was working all alone in a makeshift warehouse on the Plattsburgh NY AFB. I had just finished having my coffee and was walking out of my little office to go inventory some pallets when CJAD interrupted their chatter with the breaking news story that a plane had hit the WTC. I'm thinking a little airplane, no biggie, and turned back to my desk to go post the news in a little internet bulletin board I hang out on from time to time where I found that someone had beat me to it. Within a couple posts, someone posted a picture of the first hit, with the big gaping smoking hole, and I realized it was much bigger news than I had anticipated.

At the time I was not very internet savvy. Seriously, I didn't know it was even possible to get streaming live news and never read news web sites online, so I saw few pictures and no video or or newscasts until I got home that night. I spent the day with my radio and internet bb friends, feeling completely cut off from the rest of the world. The posts in the thread were actually ahead of the radio accounts, as they were watching it live on TV, so the info came to me post after post: "Another one just hit the other tower!" .... "There's a fire at the Pentagon!!"... "More planes are missing!" ... "OMG, the tower just FELL!!!!"... "What in the world is happening???!!??" It was absolutely surreal. When I think 9/11, I am immediately transported back into that little dingy office, staring at a computer screen watching it all unfold in a single thread simply titled: "Dude".

[jhunter1163]

When I think 9/11, I am immediately transported back into that little dingy office, staring at a computer screen watching it all unfold in a single thread simply titled: "Dude".

I have similar flashbacks every time someone asks me "How did you meet your wife?" Instantly I'm back in the office, and all the feelings come back, the anxiety, the uncertainty, the helplessness, and the calm that she brought to me just by typing a few words.

9/11 was a defining day in my life, as it was in so many people's; but in my case, it was the best as well as the worst of times. (See my post #25 in this thread for background.)

Cheers, John

[gumboot]

The day itself was actually pretty uneventful for me. I was woken at about 6.00am on the morning of the 12th, about 2pm in New York, so the attacks were well and truly over by this time.

I was awoken by the strangest remark from my mother "The Twin Towers have gone". My first thought was what are the twin towers? And once that was determined (those two big buildings in New York) I learned they had been hit by an aircraft. My next thought was how did a light aircraft manage to make TWO buildings totally disappear? Even when I was told it was two airliners, I still couldn't fathom it.

When I got upstairs to the TV it was showing repeats from CNN and I saw the towers collapse. Finally I understood. I was vaguely aware that they had hit the Pentagon too, and that another had crashed in some state. I figured it was probably shot down.

I went to film school as normal that day, although we did little work, mostly standing around talking. The talk was all about what the response to the attacks would be, rather than about the attacks itself.

That was it, for me. I didn't know anyone in New York, or even in the USA. I didn't really delve into the event at all. I was vaguely aware of controversy, like when the errors in the NORAD timeline were revealed. Like I say, it barely registered.

It was not until years and years later that I actually took any interest in the attacks. It began when someone said I should watch "9/11 In Plane Site". I did. Most of it could be refuted simply with my knowledge of photographic interpretation, so these theories were quickly shrugged aside. I found it stupid, but not surprising. Little interest was raised. Later I was researching a backstory for a TV series I was writing, and the backstory was for a character involved with Islamic Terrorists. That led me, by a roundabout route, to Paul Thompson's 9/11 Timeline (I was researching the connections between Nazi Germany and Radical Islamic Terrorism). I read the entire thing, which took months and months, and then decided to look for confirmation for some of his remarks and claims. That led to a Google Search that brought up the Loose Change thread at JREF. I think it was part way through number two. Anyway, I read the entire two threads, by which time it was three, and decided I'd join the forum and get "stuck in". The rest, as they say, is history.

I'm hooked now. It fascinates me that there can be so much information about a single event. It fascinates me that conspiracy theorists can bend reality so well. The horror, the heroism, the reality of that day, I find moving in ways that words struggle to convey. Six years ago, the 9/11 attacks meant nothing to me. Today they mean a great deal. Through this site, I do have friends in New York. I know people who were there that day. I have exchanged words with people who were active participants in this moment in human history. I can safely say that the amount of knowledge I myself have about that one day staggers me. And others have even greater knowledge. That itself stuns me. Not to mention the vast array of other subjects and areas I have learned about.

-Gumboot

[Matt32]

To the TC: ...


Just as a collective FYI this was to NYCEMT86, he started a separate thread that was merged into this one.

Reading all these stories has been a powerful experience. Thanks to everyone who's been sharing. Brings me right back to the day.

[ConspiRaider]

I was writing software code when the first plane hit. I finished up, then hit the sack before the second plane hit. But I never knew it - no radio or TV on.

I'd programmed straight through the night of September 10th right up until six o'clock in the morning on the 11th. Out here in California. I awoke at eleven o'clock in the morning, turned on the computer, went to my all-news favorite page like I always do, first thing. I thought it was some kind of a joke - World Trade Center Collapsed. Pentagon Attacked. Way too unreal. But I grabbed the remote and on came the TeeVee and then I knew.

[Matt32]

But the hardest part was watching all day on TV and knowing my cousin, who was a reporter for WCBS radio, was likely right at the the foot of the towers doing interviews. It was a huge relief to hear her voice asking questions at the Mayor's press conference later that afternoon. (A paramedic shoved her under his ambulance when the first tower came down. They found her smashed tape recorder next to the ambulance several days afterward.)

:eye-poppi

I don't know if Hamradioguy is still here. But if so, I think I spent a good chunk of 9/11 listening to your cousin over the radio. I was in European history class when the towers started to fall and since we didn't have any TVs we put the radio on. At one point, after the towers were down, the radio host had grabbed another reporter who was on-site at the collapse and told that very same story, about sheltering herself underneath an ambulance.

Seriously - ask anyone from my high school what they remember about 9/11 and this would probably come up. Weird.

[Lensman]

I was at work, planning on calling a computer parts supplier where I had a trade account, the tv was on in the customers lounge tuned to Sky News.

When the first plane struck, my first thought (like so many others here) was that it was a movie trailer, then that it was an accident. Then we saw the second plane hit live & I knew that it was a terrorist attack.

My first assumption of the attacker was that it was ol' Madass Insane (just my nickname for the late Saddam Hussein). I didn't know much if anything about ObL, Al Qaida & the Taliban then.

At about 11:30 I called my supplier for the parts I wanted & asked the clerk if he had heard about the attack, his reply was that America had what it deserved (his name was Ahmed), after a few seconds of stunned silence on my part I asked to speak to his supervisor & I told him what Ahmed had said, he said basically the same (he was Ahmeds cousin or something), so I wrote a letter to the Managing Director of the company & told him that neither I nor anyone else that I knew would deal with them ever again - & we never have. Not that I think that the withdrawal of my business hurt them in any way - I was strictly small potatos.

[LibraryLady]

I was on the phone, getting ready for work, and watching TV with the mute on. I saw the image of the WTC on fire, and told my friend I had to hang up. As I turned on the sound, I saw the second plane hit and knew this wasn't an accident.

I had errands to do for my Mother, and she had a little b&w tv, so after I went to the bank, I stopped by to give her her cash and asked to borrow the little tv for my department. I looked at her tv screen and said, "Where's the other tower?" And she told me it had come down. The second one fell after I got to work.

One of my co-workers lost 3 first cousins in the towers.

Another co-worker was terrified because her father worked at the Pentagon. He was fine, but his sister, her aunt, was on Flight 11.

[Mr. Skinny]

I was at work picking up the results of an analytical chemistry analysis of some unknown liquid. I was BS'ing with one of the chemists when the lab supervisor told us that a plane had hit the WTC. We continued BS'ing then got the news that another plane had hit the other tower.

I got up, figuring I better get back to my office in another building, thinking we might go Threatcon Delta, in which case I'd be locked out. Made it back in time, went to the lab auditorium to watch the events on the big screen TV.

After both towers collapsed, I went to my office. Soon after that, we were told we were going to begin evacuating the base in stages. I was in the third stage, and it took me 45 minutes to creep along in traffic with my 22,000 fellow employees for about half a mile to reach an exit gate.

Arriving home, I later went out in the street to explain to my younger neighbors that no, that wasn't an explosion you just heard, it was a sonic boom. (some F-16 jockey got excited).

[Par]

I was single-handedly manning the office (which required much less effort and responsibility than it sounds like it might have) when I saw someone on IRC saying “Something’s happening at the World Trade Center”. (I still have the IRC logs for that day, but they’re on a hard disk in an attic in another country, unfortunately.) I managed to find a good quality and reliable news stream and sat watching that for the rest of the working day. (Obviously, from then on, work-related phones calls etc. were practically non-existent.) Later, I went home and watched BBC News 24 all evening and most of the night whilst ineptly discussing the potential culprits and potential implications online. It was all quite surreal, especially given that I don’t think I had any human contact the entire day.

[slyjoe]

I had just gotten up and to my home office. I also first went to CNN.com, and saw a picture of the second plane heading in.

My first thought was - Someone hacked CNN!

Then, not believing it could be real, I turned CNN on the television. My second thought was it had to be Osama Bin Laden. I wasn't into following terrorist threats, but he was the one guy I remembered who had a hard on for the WTC.

No work. At our local bar that night, all of us sat around mesmerized by the images and the unbelieveable sadness. Mixed with anger. Mixed with bewilderment. And fear.

[Graham2001]

I just discovered that I had saved the email that I sent to various people I knew on the 12th of September 2001.

I thought I might share it here to close off the thread:

This isn't very neat, but I had to get this down, history is being made and I still can't accept it, not fully.

I'm writing this some 8 hours after the event, I didn't get to sleep until 2am and woke up at 6:30, but I just have to get this down, when I saw the ticker tape at the bottom of the screen I thought a bomb had exploded, then they cut to the ABC(US) and I saw it.

I couldn't believe it, I thought it was a bad movie & I couldn't stop thinking of the first episode of "Lone Gunmen", then they showed the footage of the second impact, and what happened to the Pentagon, and the people in Israel dancing in the streets, how could they, this will not help them, this doesn't help anyone.

Then I thought, if it had been Perth, I would have been passing near both of the most likely targets here on my way to TAFE(*)

To paraphrase someone famous, the lights have been blown out worldwide, we may never see them lit again.

Yours in disbelief

*. In Australia TAFE referrers to Govt sponsored tertiary institutions offering night-school courses in a variety of subjects.

[manofthesea]

I had the day off. I woke up really early, about 3:30 or so, with a really bad headache. I came downstairs, took a couple of aspirin, and slowly drank a cup of coffee. I did not turn on the television. Nor was I online yet. After about a half hour or so, I went back upstairs and fell asleep. When I came back down around 9:30 (hawaii times) or so, my wife was just sitting there staring at the t.v.. I finally noticed that they were showing the same scene over and over. The plane hitting the tower. I asked her what kind of movie she was watching. She said "this isn't a movie"...

[SpitfireIX]

Last year at this time I was working on a rush project (more on that later) and didn't have time to post in this thread until after the anniversary had passed, though I read through it on my lunch and dinner breaks.

I think I may have been one of the last adults in Fort Wayne to hear about the attacks; at the time I was unemployed, and I was on my computer doing research for a novel I was writing (the events of that day soured me on continuing it). But I never went to any web site that had breaking news. I considered turning on ESPN to see whether Barry Bonds had hit any home runs the night before, but I decided against it.

Around 11:30 EST (Indiana didn't observe Daylight Savings Time in 2001) my mother called me. She said, in a mildly cheerful voice, "I know you're watching TV." She has some emotional problems, and sometimes her reactions to disturbing situations can seem somewhat inappropriate.

I was rather annoyed by her assumption, so I said, "No, I'm not; why would you think that?"

Then she told me that the World Trade Center had been hit by hijacked planes and had collapsed. I immediately went into my living room and turned on the TV. I don't remember which channel I had on but it was one of the cable news networks, I think, and one of the anchors was talking about a plane crash in Pennsylvania, "which, on an ordinary day, would be our lead story," or words to that effect.

I changed channels to ABC, as that network's news was my favorite at the time. The screen had a graphic listing the four flights, along with their origins and destinations. I remember immediately thinking that the terrorists must have chosen transcontinental flights because those would have the most fuel on board. Peter Jennings was commenting in a voice-over.

Then the scene switched to pictures of both World Trade Center towers burning. For some reason I assumed the picture was live, and that my mother had been wrong about the collapse. At this point I sank onto the couch, staring in disbelief at what I was seeing. I hadn't said anything for a couple of minutes, so my mother started asking, "Doug? Doug? Are you all right?"

"No, I'm not all right!" After I composed myself a bit I told my mother that I'd talk to her later.

Next ABC replayed footage of the towers collapsing. As I watched in horror, I said out loud, "Jesus Christ." That's the only time in my entire life I've ever used that particular expletive.

After I'd watched for a bit longer, Peter Jennings announced that there were (mistaken) reports that a car bomb had exploded in front of the State Department in Washingon. I immediately though, "My God, Jeff!" My best friend works in downtown D.C. I called his home number and learned that he was already safely at home; his office had closed for the day as soon as the Pentagon had been hit. Later I felt slightly foolish and thought that I might have overreacted; then I learned that 30% of all Americans called relatives or friends on the East Coast to make sure that they were all right.

I called a friend of mine who worked at a gas station and asked her to save me a newspaper; later I went over to her apartment for dinner because I didn't want to be alone. She asked me if I would explain to her first-grader what had happened while she made dinner, as the school staff had decided not to tell the younger children about the attacks. Brittany asked me if the pictures on TV were from Fort Wayne, and I assured her that the attacks had happened hundreds of miles away, and that we were safe.

When I went to bed that night, I left the news on; I'd wake up every couple of hours and listen for a few minutes; I did that until ABC discontinued 24-hour coverage.

The next evening I had choir practice; we talked for a bit about the attacks at the beginning during prayer/concern time; one woman suggested that everyone to take time to look at the night sky with no airplanes in it. As the director was about to dismiss us, I raised my hand and asked him, "Can we sing 'God Bless America' before we go?" So we sang, and it cheered me more than I can put into words. A couple of people thanked me afterwards for having suggested it.

About a month after the attacks my father's cousin (who's considerably older than he) came for a visit, and we all went out to dinner. After we were done eating the conversation turned to the attacks, and I asked her, "Anna Mae, you were an adult in 1941. Which was more shocking to you: Pearl Harbor or September 11?"

She replied, "Definitely September 11, because they kept showing those terrible pictures over and over again on TV."

Finally, back to the rush project I was working on. I'm a mechanical designer, and my company manufactures aircraft service pits for fuel, electrical, and other utilities, plus access covers for valve vaults and fuel storage tanks. My boss has a policy that we generally don't date drawings on weekends or holidays, so that people don't think we had to work overtime because we screwed something up or didn't plan ahead. I suggested to him that we might want to add September 11 to that, as it might trigger unpleasant memories for some people. So I dated the drawings I finished a year ago today "09-12-07". Only afterward did I realize what a good idea that had been, because the project I was working on was installation and maintenance instructions for a valve vault access cover that was being installed at Dulles International Airport.

[Shalamar]

I was at home in Seattle, sleeping. I was in-between jobs at that time, so I was enjoying the chance to sleep in longer than usual. My wife however had to get up to get to work, and often watched the news on TV before she left.

In my sleep fog, I realized that something was wrong. It was lkate for her, and she kept walking in and out of the bedroom. I asked her if anything was wrong, and all she said was 'The world trade towers fell down'. I jumped out of bed and ran to the TV to see, just as the news was showing the footage of the second plane flying into one of the buildings. I was pretty much in shock all day.

I called my father a couple days later when things had calmed down, to ask his view and take on all of this. He was at work in Toronto when the towers were hit when he heard that an airplane had hit the towers. He thought it was a terrible accident, and walked into the break room to see the news.. just in time to see the second tower get hit. At that point he knew that things were VERY bad, and that work was going to be stressful for him for a few days. He's a member of the RCMP, and they were VERY busy with the news of the attcks, and dealing with the diverted American flights.

I still remember for the following few nights how eerily quiet it was without planes flying overhead.

[nicepants]

I was on my way to work, or about to leave for work when it actually happened. The radio station we were listening to relayed the news...it was during their morning show and if I remember right, they just re-broadcasted the feed from their news station...or we tuned to the news station. Our commute was long enough that both towers had collapsed by the time I got to the office. As we pulled up I could see circular trails from jets that had turned around to return land at the airport. As others reported, all the internet news sites were getting hammered so we watched the local TV channels. I worked for an internet company at the time, and we re-streamed video news coverage throughout the day.

[ktesibios]

At the time I was working a 6PM-2AM shift and it was rare that I would be up and about earlier than around noon Pacific time. I also don't own a TV, so I spent my first couple of hours of wakefulness in complete ignorance of what had happened.

There was a special election in my district that day, to replace a legislator who had gone on to higher office, so about noon I pulled my act together and headed out to go vote.

The polling place was in a luxury apartment complex about a block from where I live. As I was walking there, some guy approached me and asked if I knew what the national emergency was all about. I knew nothing, but he pointed out a notice on a door saying something to the effect that due to the national emergency, the gym would not be opening that day.

It was with great relief that I discovered the poll was open. I noticed that they had a TV on (veryunusual for a poll) and that it was saying something about the President addressing the nation later.

So, when I handed in my ballot I asked the kindly old geezers who run the poll if they knew what was going on. They told me something about hijacked planes being rammed into buildings and that "the World Trade Center is trashed".

Headed straight home, fired up the computer and started checking news sites- and found out what the K.O.G. had meant by "trashed".

Needless to say, even though we were open, no work got done at the studio that evening. Everyone was simply glued to the satellite TV in a stunned state of mind, waiting to see if the news channels would give us one new scrap of information. Instead we saw the clip of UA 175 hitting the South Tower repeated so many times that it's permanently burned into my brain.

[laodoggie]

My office was 10 blocks north of WTC.
On a clear day I could see people standing on the roof observation deck of WTC2.
I saw WTC2 collapse when I was on Fifth Avenue.
When I got to my office I went to the roof and watched as Tower1 burned and collapsed.
I lost a best friend who was in the Windows on the World restaurant.
I will never forget.

[ElMondoHummus]

What was I doing... nothing much. I just spent the day in bad shock.

I had just sat down in our call center (I work in computing support for a university) and had just started browsing some of my normal "kill time" websites (as geeky as this sounds, Nature, Scientific American, and some computing news sites) while waiting for the phone consultants to start getting calls. One of the phone analysts started talking about a plane hitting the Twin Towers. I remember thinking "that sucks", believing it had been nothing more remarkable than a poor pilot being off course, or maybe having plane problems, or worse case scenario, being involved in a miscommunication with the ATC center. I'd been thinking it was a small private plane, even though looking back no one had said anything about what kind of plane hit. Anyway, I had that thought - "that sucks" - then my mind went to other things.

It was then that I noticed that one of my normal "kill time" sites - CNN - wasn't coming up. Neither was the NYTimes.

Anyway, work got my attention after that, and that went on until that same analyst spoke up and said that a second plane hit. At this point, we started giving him crap, telling him to quit making stuff up for attention. It was just joshing; none of us actually believed a second plane hit, and we thought he was just trying to play a weird joke on us.

He never wavered. And he stayed dead-serious. That's when I remembered that CNN, NYTimes, and MSNBC were slashdotted. So I tried them again, then I tried every news site I could. All failed. Tried CNN one more time, and it actually loaded. And I saw the first image they had of what I know now was the North Tower burning. Nearly all the other links on the page were gone. Just that image, and a few surrouding links. I just sat there in shock; that fire was way bigger than a small private plane. And I found more news out about the South Tower, and what I eventually learned was Fl175 hitting it.

I wondered at the time if this were terrorism, or just some terrible mistake by air traffic controllers (Sorry CheapShot! I didn't know a damn thing about ATC's back then). I remember thinking "how in God's name could two mistakes like that happen"? And soon after that, we heard about the Pentagon.

There was no doubt in my mind after that; we were looking at terrorism.

I remember someone running out to Radio Shack to get some "Rabbit Ears" antennas for our TV. That set was just there for videoconferencing, and it was hooked up to a device that did that over the network; it had no real broadcast or cable connection. So we hooked that up, and once word got out, people from other departments drifted in.

I remember one poor lady, a really gentle soul, just rush out of the room after seeing the fuzzy but all too recognizable images. She had her hand over her mouth and looked like she was about to break out sobbing.

I remember that our calls virtually disappeared. We did have a few, and oddly enough, some from people who knew what happened (they had work to do regardless of world events), but the calls were thin.

I remember finding a bunch of streaming sites, including one that did the live MSNBC feed, but wasn't from NBC or MS themselves (it was shut down about a year later). I had that thing just playing for the rest of the day, and every day for weeks afterwards.

I remember emails from my family all around the world just started flying about our New York relatives (they lived on Staten Island, a fair distance from Manhattan, but still... New York. Relatives were worried). Some had to be reminded that one of them was no longer working at the WTC, and had not been for a few years already. But no one had heard out of them, and couldn't call into New York to find out anything. I remember everyone being relieved when one of the "prodigal" relatives - a cousin - finally emailed in, saying that she'd actually been walking in Manhattan when it happened, no one else was even remotely close, and that she'd walked through a near snowstorm of fluttering paper. But she'd missed the impact of the jets itself; she had to find out from TV, just like the rest of us, even though she was basically there for the event.

I don't remember anything else I did at work that day. It was a mundane, totally standard day. If I got anything done that day, it was on complete autopilot. What I do remember was going to a friends house after work, and seeing him just sitting on the couch just staring at the news. It was yet another image of the towers burning, although by that time they all had fallen. I just remember him shaking his head and just muttering epithets about the people that had committed this. This from a guy who considers himself a pacifist. He was just as angry as everyone else.

I remember feeling anger. Not just some "pissed off" state; I mean serious anger. And intermingled with that, sadness. People who just showed up to work or took flights to continue living their regular, ordinary lives just became part of history unwillingly. And many of them, posthumously.

I remember going fishing later that week, just to get away from the news. Get miles out of town and away from the net. I remember thinking that the peace and quiet out at the lake was comforting.

I really think differently about safety and terrorism differently than I did before that day. I believe it's less that I "changed" and more that I grew and intellectually developed along lines affected by 9/11. But I'm certainly not the same person that I was on the 10th.

[Thunder]

how is "what were u doing on 9-11" a conspiracy theory?

[Bobert]

I had worked on a double shift on Monday so wasn't due back to duty until 2pm that Tuesday.
I was at home with my wife and our son who was 4 at the time.
We were/are here on the west so by the time we woke up that morning the planes had already struck.
I remember talking to my mom and dad who at the time time lived in TN and my mom saw the 2nd plane hit "live".
I remember thinking that I was glad I didn't see it live.
I really never that that deeply about 9-11 until I had to work side by side with a 9-11 nutbar.
I guess in a sense I should thank this person because he really prompted me to think more about 9-11.
I certainly at the time didn't believe a word that oozed from his mouth.
My politics changed somewhat after 9-11 and I think I began to think about world events and my beliefs more.

[Piggy]

I was over the Atlantic ocean.

The Delta flight was half full. Mostly older folks on an alumni trip to Spain. I was the youngest one on board, I think. There were no children at all, oddly enough.

All the window blinds had been pulled down for the movie. Several people were sleeping.

When we began descending, I stood, and several of the old guys -- including a few retired Army and Air Force pilots -- had their heads up, too, and we didn't say anything but we looked around at each other.

Just as we started opening our blinds, the stewardesses came back and told us we were landing.

"On land or on water?"

They didn't know. All they had been told is we were landing. But they didn't prep us for water.

My mother was with me and she was frightened, but her husband was there, too, and he tended to her as best he could.

As the blinds went up we noticed we were heading back east. The plane had done a slow loop without anyone noticing.

We continued to lose altitude without a speck of land in sight. The stewardesses only said they hadn't been told anything and so had nothing to tell us either.

What we didn't know then was that the pilot had been radioed that there had been terrorist attacks stateside and the air traffic was ceasing and radio communication too, so find a place to land, we'll talk to you when we talk to you.

They had a trainee in the cockpit so he was put on the other side of the door and they secured it by jamming a fire ax through the handle.

The pilot considered ditching in the Bahamas, but that would have put the landing time synchronous with our ETA in New York, so if there were a bomb on board, it might be timed to go off then and he wanted to get on the ground earlier. So we headed to the Azores.

There was a landing strip there, built during the war, where a plane that size could land, and we did. We all got off right onto the tarmac and went into the tiny little terminal.

They had no gear large enough to retrieve our bags.

In a scene right out of Kafka we went through customs, had our passports stamped, and filed into the waiting area and the adjoining snack bar and small shop.

That's when the pilot told us there had been 2 attacks in New York. That's all he knew. And then, we became a lot less inconvenienced. My mother began crying.

No one on board spoke Portuguese -- or Spanish, for that matter, except me -- but I had taken some Portuguese and could make myself understood with some effort. The phone lines into Atlanta were jammed, but I managed to get a call in to my father in a tiny town in the North Georgia hills and he got a call through to the alumni office in Atlanta and phoned me back to say so, which made people a little less anxious for their families.

We went into the snack bar to get some food. They opened it up for us. There were 2 small TVs on brackets about 8 feet up the wall in each corner, which they turned on.

And there is where we first saw the footage of the planes, and the buildings, and the fires, and the people.

We sat there with our sandwiches still wrapped in plastic on the formica tables, and everything was perfectly quiet except for the stream of patter from the newscasters. Every now and then someone would come up and ask me what they were saying, and I told them what I could gather from what I was hearing.

Soon, there was the matter of figuring out how to feed everyone that night, and finding beds, and finding medications because they couldn't retrieve the luggage, and I didn't have time to think about anything because I was being pulled everywhere to try to translate.

It was a few hours before all the arrangements had been made and we were all going to be bused to a local restaurant and then put up in houses and a small hotel, 3 or 4 to a room, and the pharmacy would help us out with what we needed.

We all went through the line again so that we could leave the terminal and go out into the parking lot where the buses would be along to take us off to the restaurant.

And when that was over, I could relax, and stop thinking about things.

I stepped out into the parking lot. I just had to move away from all the people, before we got onto the bus and then to the crowded restaurant, and the room.

There was a breeze. It was warm. Nothing was unusual. The salt and a hint of recent rain in the air. A few stars, and the yellow lights from the small terminal building. And finally quiet again.

I looked out toward the island. A few lights from houses. An ordinary evening.

I turned toward the terminal, to watch the people -- these people I'd come to know -- standing, talking, waiting. Over to one side, there were 3 floodlights. They pointed upward at a set of flagpoles. And as I followed their beams, they way you do, with my eyes, I saw that the flags were all at half mast.

And that is when I cried.

I hadn't had time to cry. There had been things to do and people to take care of.

But now, alone and apart, in the sheltering darkness beyond the halo of the terminal lights, looking at these strange flags, lowered by people who were not from my country, who didn't have to care about what had happened to people so far away, but who did anyway, I cried like a baby.

When the buses came, I dried my eyes and focused on what was coming. And I wasn't ashamed that I had been crying. It was something that no one would notice, or try not to notice.

[TK0001]

how is "what were u doing on 9-11" a conspiracy theory?

Read the original post. Sometimes it's good to refresh our memories so that we understand how these absurd conspiracies are no joke.

[Björn Toulouse]

I was at home in Seattle, sleeping. I was in-between jobs at that time, so I was enjoying the chance to sleep in longer than usual. My wife however had to get up to get to work, and often watched the news on TV before she left.

In my sleep fog, I realized that something was wrong. It was lkate for her, and she kept walking in and out of the bedroom. I asked her if anything was wrong, and all she said was 'The world trade towers fell down'. I jumped out of bed and ran to the TV to see, just as the news was showing the footage of the second plane flying into one of the buildings. I was pretty much in shock all day.

I called my father a couple days later when things had calmed down, to ask his view and take on all of this. He was at work in Toronto when the towers were hit when he heard that an airplane had hit the towers. He thought it was a terrible accident, and walked into the break room to see the news.. just in time to see the second tower get hit. At that point he knew that things were VERY bad, and that work was going to be stressful for him for a few days. He's a member of the RCMP, and they were VERY busy with the news of the attcks, and dealing with the diverted American flights.

I still remember for the following few nights how eerily quiet it was without planes flying overhead.


Almost the same experience. I had just spent my last night of 6 weeks troubleshooting on the 3rd shift. I had gotten home about 0730 EST and had the day off, crashed about 0830. My wife woke me up after the 2nd tower collapsed. I was in a stupor as she told me that "a plane flew into one of the towers and it fell down and then another plane flew into the other tower and it fell down". I was trying to imagine the towers "falling down" in the sense that they "fell over" like a big tree. Quickly I saw videos of what had actually occurred.

We live near an air traffic pattern of the Atlanta Airport. Every day until the flights resumed I sat outside looking at the quiet sky. Once a couple of fighter jets flew over in tandem. I actually saw the first outgoing flight from Atlanta through my binoculars when normalcy resumed and it was such a relief.

[Piggy]

Btw, I just realized that my post might give the impression that I was directly involved in making all the arrangements for everyone, and I wasn't. Our pilot did that, and he was amazing. He was just about to retire. He even got us back to Madrid in 2 days, when no Delta planes were officially flying. My part was doing little stuff like helping folks with the phones, telling the people in the shop that someone needed socks, reading menus, relaying the news, asking people about medications, and the like. And everyone was helping out in whatever way they could. There was plenty of that piddling stuff to do, but our hero was our pilot. I still have the stickers from that day on my suitcases and I'll never remove them.

[Mercutio]

MSNBC is presenting "as it happened" right now. I thought I would post this before I start crying.

That anyone could take this tragedy and make some sort of lie, some huge elaborate lie, is patently offensive.

The sounds, the sights...

My University lost faculty. My students lost relatives. I am fortunate; I lost no one.

Bastards...

[Piggy]

MSNBC is presenting "as it happened" right now. I thought I would post this before I start crying.

That anyone could take this tragedy and make some sort of lie, some huge elaborate lie, is patently offensive.

The sounds, the sights...

My University lost faculty. My students lost relatives. I am fortunate; I lost no one.

Bastards...

My friend Susana was late to work and was spared.

She is now the mother of a beautiful baby girl.

[Mercutio]

Seven ****** years, and it still tears me up inside to read Piggy's posts, or to watch the NBC coverage...

I hate it.

[Mercutio]

On MSNBC, the second plane just hit.

I may have to turn it off. (eta: it is complete idiocy, but I want to turn it off before the towers fall...)

[Grizzly Bear]

I had actually just started my freshman year in highschool when this happened. I was in my 1st period class towrd the end when they brought it up on the TV screen in the class room. Shortly after we we on break to change to next class at which time I stopped in the cafeteria where the faculty as well as some of the student body were watching things unfold. At that point I was shocked they were even standing with such damage, it was beyond anything I had ever seen before at the time. I was in my second class by the time the first tower collapsed. The rest of the day we were in class but most everybody was focused so much on the news coverage that we barely got anything done.

Probably one of the things I personally remember was riding the Metro-Rail through downtown Miami seeing it full of police cars because they placed many of the big cities on virtual lock down. I think that's about all I can remember clearly about what I was doing that day :\

Needless to say I wasn't a happy camper, seeing archive footage and even discussing it here still disturbs me.

[fitzgibbon]

I was taking in the Toronto International Film Festival that year. At about 8:30, I had gone in to see a very funny film, "Monsoon Wedding" and came out about 10:30. A small group of people were crowded around a television set in the candy concession and some of them were weeping. Curious at this odd sight, I walked over to see what the commotion was about and was greeted by the sight of a replay of the second tower falling. I tried to take in what I was seeing and process that there'd been 2 plane crashes into the towers plus the one into the Pentagon. But I just couldn't; it just didn't make sense.

I was sort of on autopilot and found myself walking to the next cinema where, of course, everything was shut down. A man walked past me on Yorkville saying that there was a plane headed for downtown and all I could do was look into that achingly blue sky for an answer.

[Redtail]

I was driving on my way to voice and dialect class and I had the radio off because I was doing an exercise. I find a space on the other side of campus and start walking and about halfway through I realized that I was alone... I hadn't seen one person. Just as I was going into my building I saw a lone figure walking up a hill wearing a gas mask and the American flag as a cape. I walk in and the halls and offices are empty so I start walking toward class and I hear some one crying and I look in one of the classrooms that had a projection TV and everybody is there. My roommate John looks up as I walk in and says "We're under attack". I start watching and a few minutes later, the South Tower collapses.

I had just gotten a cell phone and I wasn't used to it yet so I was confused as to why my bag was buzzing until I remembered the phone. I pick it up and go outside and it's Dad. I was slightly amused because Storrs CT was so far from NYC and when I answered with "I'm ok." he just said "Vonnie". My cousin who worked in the WTC. Of course no calls were going through and my aunt was nearing absolute panic. Then I remembered that none of that generation of my family delt with the internet so I got the idea of trying to contact her using the comp and as soon as I signed into my e-mail I had about 12 from her asking her to contact her mom and tell her she was ok. She wasn't at work that day.

Much needed comedy came from my trying to explain to my aunt how I was able to communicate with Vonnie. I don't remeber what I said, but it was in a very rual NC dialect, using a lot of slang to get her to understand.

[AJM8125]

I had to report to work as the attacks were unfolding. At the time, I was employed at a San Francisco landmark building that was very much considered to be a west coast target. Just as anyone else who worked in a high rise building, I was terrified. When I arrived at the building, the scene was utter chaos; Much of the building staff had either bugged out or refused to show up for work and in hindsight, I can't blame them.

My position at the time was in the property management office and my responsibilities were mostly dealing with tenant related issues. But on September 11th, I found myself performing a wide variety of tasks including security, stationary engineering and building management functions. This was not because I was trying to single handedly run a building in some kind of heroic display. I was really trying to keep my mind off the fact that I could be killed in an instant or worse, finding myself trapped in an inferno with no hope of escape. On that day, my activities took me from the 3rd sub-basement to the roof and most points between. I was rarely on the ground floor, where escape would have been the easiest.

Some of the things in my experience that I'll never forget of that day are some of the Senior Executives of a financial firm bringing parachutes and sledge hammers up to their offices. Their plan was to smash the windows and sky dive from their offices if need be. As they were only on the 18th floor I had to tell them that their chutes wouldn't likely deploy in time, their consensus was they'd rather die trying. Still another executive brought his hang glider and demanded to be allowed to bring it to the roof and be given unrestricted access to the roof in the event of an attack.

The thing that still gets me was when I thought everything was over, I ran into a group of ladies in the lobby. There was five of them and they were crying and holding each other. At first I thought they had received bad news of the loss of a loved on. When I checked to see if there was anything I could do, they told me they work on the 35th floor and they were terrified to get on the elevator because they didn't know how to get off their floor in an emergency. These ladies then allowed me to show them down one of stairwells, not realizing I was just as terrified as they. I'm a pretty good sized man and in decent shape and have come completely down from the top of stairs (floor 52) in six minutes for bragging rights. When I took these ladies into the stairs and began my run down, I was amazed that they stayed right on my heels the whole way down. Just goes to show what people are capable of when survival is the sole motivation.

These ladies immediately felt better about their situation and in turn told their colleges about the stairwell run and soon it spread to the entire building. For the rest of September and well into October I was leading groups of interested parties down the stairwells. I think I dropped 20 pounds easy.

My .02

[Bobert]

MSNBC is presenting "as it happened" right now. I thought I would post this before I start crying.

That anyone could take this tragedy and make some sort of lie, some huge elaborate lie, is patently offensive.

The sounds, the sights...

My University lost faculty. My students lost relatives. I am fortunate; I lost no one.

Bastards...
One of the stories I will not forget from that day was the owner of a business who went into work (he worked in one of the towers) late due to taking his daughter to her first day of school.
He eneded up surviving because of this but IIRC a large number if not all of his employees were killed.
Very sad indeed.

[Jonnyclueless]

I was on my way into the city but never made it out of NJ because they had closed off all the bridges. By the time I saw it, both planes had hit because I wasn't really paying much attention and don't really turn on the TV in the morning. Though it's more than likely that the events hadn't unfolded until after I left the house. We ended up watching it from across the river.

But what was more notable to me were the days after. As they were working on the site, they brought in these huge flood lights. Every night you could see the NY skyline with the big gap from where the towers used to be and highlighted by the work lights which could be seen from NJ. It was so haunting, especially when you're used to seeing those towers every day. The other notable thing was all the missing persons signs around town. You couldn't go 2 feet in Manhattan without seen walls of signs made by people looking for missing loved ones. I mean just everywhere and not an inch of all uncovered. That's when things really hit home. Seeing it from afar, or even just on TV ( I assume for most people) was very surreal. But when you saw the 1000s or pictures of missing people, it starts becoming a lot more real.

Tonight MSNBC played the broadcast unedited as it unfolded that day. It was kind of interesting to watch. Since I was there, I didn't really get to see the TV coverage until well after everything was over. So it was a chance to see it form a perspective that most people got to see. And that provided a lot more information than people who were there had.

[quixotecoyote]

I think I was in my last year of high school. I was in woodshop and the shop teacher pulled out this ancient radio that looked like it was from the 30's or 40's and we listened in on that.

I got a call later that day from a friend in college in Tenton, NJ who could see the smoke across the water.

Only real unique memorable thing was the shop teacher shutting down the kids who were making a big deal about being scared. "Terrorists hitting this high school? You gotta be kidding me. The only way that'll happen is if they head for washington and run out of gas over our heads, so quiet down and listen."

[Myriad]

I was doing a marketing survey of falafel consumption by office tower workers. For some reason (my boss never explained why), this involved aiming a 500 kilowatt laser at particular "ignition points" on the outside walls of tall buildings. The management called it an "ambiguity-reducing laser" so I guess it reduced the ambiguity of how much falafel was being consumed, somehow.

Anyhow, I'd been working the laser for several weeks, on different office tower buildings in Philly, Boston, and New York, and I had gotten really good at it. In good visibility conditions I could line up and hit a hundred target points within three minutes. We had spent all weekend on overtime, setting up the laser in Manhattan to start what the management called "the biggest contract yet" which was the World Trade Center complex. They eat a lot of falafel there, I guess.

So there I was, getting ready to survey the Towers, when out of nowhere a plane flew in and crashed. I thought the marketing survey would be scrapped, because who would be eating any falafel with the fires and all, but my boss told me to sit tight. He didn't seem surprised at all, not even when the second plane crashed. He just says, "Okay Joe make sure the laser's ready, we're going to start the dem- um - the survey soon," and I figure maybe he sees a chance to get extra data on how much falafel people eat during an emergency situation. So I power up the laser, and I sit tight for a while, hell if they want to pay me for sitting there on my ass I'm not going to complain, and then 45 minutes later the boss says, "Now!" And I start earning my pay, hitting all the ignition points in record time, and there sure were a lot of them on that huge wall, and the smoke wasn't making things any easier, but I was the best and that's why they wanted me on the rig that day. And good thing too, because not half a minute after I finished all the ignition points, the thing collapsed!

And darned if the same thing didn't happen with the other tower. I don't mean to brag, but if I wasn't the fastest trainee they had, I wouldn't have had time to finish.

By then there's dust everywhere and I figure it's time to pack it in, but the management had other ideas. They're cursing and yelling into cell phones about airplane schedules and lines of sight and the next thing you know they're telling me and the crew that we have to pack up the laser and relocate, all in the next few hours. Well, normally that takes a couple days, what with the generators and the giant cooling system and all, so we really had to jump to it. We get everything loaded into the survey company's big unmarked black trucks, and head off to the new site. There are police and firemen and soldiers and roadblocks everywhere, but the lead driver just shows them his employee ID and they all stand at attention and wave us on through. Those guys must really like falafel.

So, we got the laser set up by the end of the day, and did that one more survey, and just in time too, because you'll never guess but half a minute after I hit all the targets that building came down too. By then we were on overtime again so I wasn't surprised when they told us all to go on home. The managers were all heading out too, they said something about another crew coming in to pack up the laser, but they didn't stick around to supervise. They just ran out of there like they'd done something wrong. I asked if they were moving the laser where should I show up the next morning for the next job, but nobody answered. Come Wednesday morning their phone numbers were all disconnected and I was out of a job. I never did see any of those guys ever again.

But anyhow, that's where I was and what I was doing on 9/11. Really it was just another work day, because marketing surveys are too important to shut down just because of declared states of emergency or evacuation zones. We kept our cool and got the job done, and that's what makes this country great.

Respectfully,
Myriad

[Hammer_of_Thor]

My wife woke me up and told me that the twin towers got hit by airplanes. I watched as one of the towers collapsed. I remember saying (very matter-of-factly) "There it goes".

I went to school that day and remember everyone was gathered around tvs.

I also remember one guy looking at the tv and saying

And I quote "Is this stuff still on? It is so boring." I was speechless.

[Piggy]

But anyhow, that's where I was and what I was doing on 9/11. Really it was just another work day, because marketing surveys are too important to shut down just because of declared states of emergency or evacuation zones. We kept our cool and got the job done, and that's what makes this country great.

Respectfully,
Myriad

Respectfully, Myriad... what the hell was that?

[KJC]

I was working in a restraunt kitchen alone. Barely any customers came in that day at all... so I just spent my time cleaning the kitchen for the last few hours. This was until 4pm UK time which would be 11am US Eastern.

The waitress kept coming into the kitchen to relay information about what was going on, that planes hit the Pentagon and the WTC and another plane was heading to Washington.

Except, I didn't know she was talking about hijacked 757s! It wasn't till I finished my shift and walked through the bar and the place was crowded all looking at the tv and then I saw a replay of the plane hit the South tower and I was just shocked.

[Lanzy]

The day started normally, coffee and bagel from Starbucks, yep its in the Pentagon too. Went to my office powered up my PC and put my earphones in to listen to Howard Stern. They were talking about a plane just hitting the wtc and wondering if it was some sick joke. Then the other one hit. I went to my office mates and turned on a radio and we started to listen to the news.

Then a load explosion happened, the building shook and our windows all blew in to the office. Black smoke was everywhere, people were running out, we were trying to make sure everyone was accounted for. My wife worked in the same office as me and we found each other and took (I know, stupid) a few minutes to secure our classified hard drives, lock the safes and grab our laptops.

Following the emergency exit maps brought us directly into the fire, security guards were just arriving and setting up a perimeter and yelling at us as to which corridor to go to. At this point the speculation as to what had happened was definitely ended as we knew we were under attack.

We got outside, found the group we were supposed to link up with and started helping out. Carrying stretchers, pushing wheelchairs, in one case I just picked a woman up and carried her away from the building. My wife had once been an EMT and was directing CPR, tying bandages, treating people for shock, whatever she could do; she sucumbed from the smoke not once but 3 times before I could get her to get away as the fire departments and ambulances started to arrive. She spent ONE day in the hospital before returning to work because there was work that needed doing. She always was and always will be my hero.

We performed in a state of numbness for a few weeks. Mourning the fallen at our keyboards and workstations. A lot of talk, no time off, just prepare for what had to come next.

We stayed another year, but then moved to sunny Orlando FL where we live now. We were lucky.

The site of the crash was my office, the hole in the wall was at my desk, but I had left that office due to the renovations and was in my new office when it all happened.

People making jokes are really getting to me.

[SpitfireIX]

how is "what were u doing on 9-11" a conspiracy theory?


This has been discussed in regard to other threads that relate to the September 11 attacks but aren't specifically conspiracy-related. Paraphrasing one of the mods, this is where most of the people on the JREF forums who are interested in the September 11 attacks hang out, and therefore it's appropriate to allow the occasional thread on the general subject. I personally don't even have time to read the CT forum very much anymore; I certainly don't have time to read the Forum Community more often than once in a great while.

[Ranb]

I was on a scuba diving trip with my girlfriend (wife now) on Koh Tao Thailand. I woke up during the night for a drink then turned on the TV. None of the programming at the hotel was in English, but I saw a Thai newscast that had video of the WTC collapsing along with captions in English. I went to the internet center on the island and it was crowded with tourists watching CNN. I waited for a phone then tried to call my parents and the Naval Base I worked at. I had to settle for e-mail as the phones lines were all busy. There was a young man with tears in his eyes who was unable to contact family in NYC that worked at the WTC. I'll never forget the look on his face.

In the morning I went scuba diving as there was nothing else to do. A couple of Israeli men on the dive boat heard my accent and asked if I was American. When I told them I was, they replied with their condolences and told me this was a taste of what they had to deal with often back home. I did not really have a reply to that.

After I managed to get through to work, I was told there was no recall and that I should come home when my leave expired. I returned a day after flights resumed.

Ranb

[SpitfireIX]

One of the stories I will not forget from that day was the owner of a business who went into work (he worked in one of the towers) late due to taking his daughter to her first day of school.
He eneded up surviving because of this but IIRC a large number if not all of his employees were killed.
Very sad indeed.


You're talking about Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, and he was late because he took his son to his first day of kindergarten. Cantor lost 657 of its 1000 employees in the attacks; no one who was actually in the office at the time survived. :( Here is an article (http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/sept11/features/5486/) from New York magazine about Lutnick's survival and the rebuilding of the company.

ETA: Cantor Fitzgerald had approximately 2000 employees worldwide; about 1000 of them worked in New York.

[SpitfireIX]

Respectfully, Myriad... what the hell was that?


Myriad is mocking the Truthers.

[DGM]

I was working as usual and my customer called me in to watch the news with her. When we heard that the Pentagon was attacked I remember saying to her " We're at war now".

It wasn't until I picked up my son (Preschool at the time) and the teacher asked me what I planned to tell him (as if to say don't say anything at all) about all this did I think about how big this event was. I told her I planned to tell him the whole story and allow him to be exposed to all the the media hype. I explained to her that I thought that in an event so important to history there is no sense trying to hide it from those involved (at 3 years old it would effect his life). She agreed and though most of his friends don't have as much knowledge of what happened that day I don't think I made the wrong decision. He now has come to understand and have a deeper understanding of the world and I have heard other kids asking him about what happened.

He also has been exposed to "truther" logic (all internet, there are no visible "truthers" around us) and at age 10 he now at least has the smarts to question (and be skeptical) about what he hears.

[Bobert]

You're talking about Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald, and he was late because he took his son to his first day of kindergarten. Cantor lost 657 of its 1000 employees in the attacks; no one who was actually in the office at the time survived. :( Here is an article (http://nymag.com/nymetro/news/sept11/features/5486/) from New York magazine about Lutnick's survival and the rebuilding of the company.

ETA: Cantor Fitzgerald had approximately 2000 employees worldwide; about 1000 of them worked in New York.
Thanks!
That is a very very moving story.
I remeber the interview with Howard.
Very sad indeed.

[njslim]

Cantor lost 657 of its 1000 employees in the attacks; no one who was actually in the office at the time survived

My neighbor who lives in apartment across hall from me lost her two sons who worked
for Cantor Fitzgerald - has special license plate on car. Number 2 followed by name
indicating her 2 lost sons....

[Piggy]

I was just looking through my photos and such from the trip.

This scrap of paper -- given to us by a flight attendant -- is among the mementos....

[Hanwdritten:]

12 Sept 2001: En route to Madrid, after emergency landing on Sta. Maria Island in the Acores the day after the collapse of the World Trade Centers in New York on 11 Sept. 2001. According to our Captain, Bob Craft, we are the only U.S. international flight in the air.

[Printout, partly illegible due to staining:]

DISPATCHER
** NO ACK REQ **
YOU ARE THE ONLY DL FLT AIRBORNE

PRETTY EERY

Z34

.N177DN 9576 12 LPAZ/LEMD [??]:39
---------------------------------------------

[Piggy]

Just thinking about all this....

Thinking about men who want to establish a theocracy in the Middle East so they can have power. Men willing to mass murder thousands of innocent people for that.

Thinking about men half a world away naive enough to invade another nation with dreams of spreading democracy like flower petals at a wedding, but using bombs and tanks.

Thinking about the CIA propping up the Shah, manufacturing a revolution. Thinking about Churchill's gunboats.

Thinking about the Hebrews conquesting Canaan, and Nebuchadnezzar enslaving the Hebrews, and Cyrus sending them back home, and the Edomites who had moved into Judah now having war on their hands.

Thinking about some Christians who believe our men and women fighting Al Qaida are not our men and women fighting Al Qaida but are Jesus fighting Satan. Thinking about some Muslims who believe what amounts to the same thing.

But mostly thinking about little boys on the streets of Baghdad. You see them in every news clip of a bombing. You know what I mean, there are the bodies, and the inevitable circle of onlookers, and always the little boys, who are never crying or wailing, but just looking, with their mouths open.

These little boys who see this. That's their world. And oil and land and God and hate and money and water and race and history and power all come down to a little boy looking at a body on a street.

Those little boys become men.

And that's why the 21st century, in too many ways, looks like the Book of Joshua.

[TobiasTheViking]

Respectfully, Myriad... what the hell was that?

Extremely inappropriate, and rather amusing...

[SpitfireIX]

Bumping for those who haven't had a chance to read this or post yet.

[TK0001]

Bumping for those who haven't had a chance to read this or post yet.

Thanks, I came here to do the same.

Weird how things have changed since that day, yet the day itself is a vivid memory. Since that day, I got laid off, helped start a new business unit in another company, got laid off from that, and started my own company.

Since that day, my wife and I have had two more children, and one is in her second year of school already.

Since that day, I've probably added about 15 pounds and my bald spot grew exponentially.

Since that day I've probably flown 30 times. Each time I have to take my shoes off and pass through the detectors, I get somber, thinking of that day.

I wish that day never happened. But then I'm glad for the pride we all felt just after that day for just being Americans. I miss all the flags waving from everywhere, the way we were actually nice to one another on the streets instead of viewing each other as mortal enemies, and the support we felt for our elected leaders (right or wrong). Sad that it takes a tragedy for these things to occur. Sadder yet that these things are so easily wiped away as we return to the every day grind.

Immediately after that day, I cried when listening to God Bless America, The Star Spangled Banner, and even I'm Proud To Be An American. Now I roll my eyes when I have to stand up and sing the national anthem before a demolition derby, of all things.

It's sad, but life has moved on. I'll never forget 9/11. The problem is I'm starting to forget 9/12.

[TK0001]

Also, I realized that last post sounds a bit like Glenn Beck wrote it. This also saddens me.

[ferd burfle]

Bumping for those who haven't had a chance to read this or post yet.


Thanks for the bump, SpitfireIX, this is the first I've seen this thread. I read it from the beginning and several of the posts had me choking up.

I heard about it at work. We didn't have a TV and most of what we got was from spouses calling in and the radio. I was not internet savvy and might have tried to access the new sites but don't remember too much. We worked the whole day in my small engineering office. What I remember most was that it was an absolutely perfect, brilliant bluebird New England day.

I didn't have TV at home or an internet connection. I did buy a copy of the NY Times the next day and read the whole coverage. I thought I understood. The following Saturday I drove 90 miles to my friends who own the obligatory oversize American television. Only then did I see replays of the second plane hitting the tower and only then did I feel the naked ugliness of the act.

We were shooting a fireworks show for a wedding that evening. I'm not sure how wise it was but we went ahead and shot the show. Fortunately we warned the local police and fire dispatcher as they got a number of calls from people alarmed by the exploding shells. Four days later, out in the bucolic Vermont countryside, people were still understandably spooked and on edge.

ferd

[CaptainHair]

I was in a required meeting from 8:45 to 10:00(drug / alcohol education) and most of us in the meeting were kind of bored. The phone ouside the meeting room kept ringing and the secretary kept stepping out to answer it. When we got out of the meeting she just casually mentioned to us that a plane hit a building in New York. We only had 2 TVs in the entire building and they weren't out yet. Around 11:30 they finally got the TVs out, but by then everything had happened. A lot of management was at a conference in Atlanta and they let us know that they were on the way back.

The next two days were like a fog to me. I remember how nice everyone was to everyone else. I saw many cars with the little plastic flags flying on their windows.

I didn't really break down until I saw the Star Spangled Banner being played at Buckingham Palace, with all our British friends comforting the Americans who were there, then a week or so later when some American music was played on the last night of the proms with Leonard Slatkin conducting.

I wish our country could pull together now like it did right after 9/11. I think it will. I love my country, my state, and my town. I believe in God, and I think my faith helped pull me through that time.

Mike

[buka001]

I was in Lecture Theatre 2 in the Snape Building at the University of Cape Town, listening to a lecture on structural engineering. At the precise moment (14:46 South African time) the collison occured we were listening to a lecture on structural steel, dealing specifically with beam to column connections.

Left the lecture at 15:30 and followed my friend to the gym, when we entered at about 15:45, I saw all the tv's in the gym were on. Another friend came up to me and said have you seen what's happening in New York?

I looked up and saw the towers and saw the headline on CNN. Immediatley I thought I wondered when something like this was going to happen. Said to my friend here comes a war!

[BigAl]

Thanks.

I worked in Manhattan at the time and my morning commute took me up Church St. by bus. Church St. runs along the East side of the WTC plaza. I passed the towers at about 8:00AM I got to my desk and prepared for a 9AM teleconference call with work mates all over the US. My back was to a window with a view of the towers about 3 miles away. At some point the guy in Boston said, "Al, can you see the WTC out your window"? He had CNN on in his office. Oh. Sh*t.

I'm the "inside guy" for about 20 IT consultants that worked outside on a loose schedule. We had clients in the towers. Any of our people could have been in the towers or been caught passing through the plaza on their commute. We agreed that our first task was to do everything to contact these people, our friends to make sure they were OK. Given the state of the phones, that took most of the morning. They were all OK. Some were pleased that the first check call they got from anyone was from us at the home office. People straggled in. At some point the wife and kid of a work matet made it to our office for shelter.

Later I found that a workmate was on Flight 93. I really didn't know him. Over time I found that a work mate from a prior job and several people that I knew from professional relationships died in the towers. Another was as someone I knew as a kid on my street. He was a VP in Marsh. His brother had joined FDNY and died a hero circa 1980.

I knew my family was OK. I had established that all my close friends were OK. I thought I got off easy considering the alternatives. For me there were some delayed effects.

I work with a bunch of sales people for expensive software ($80k a pop) sold to Wall street corporations, many in WTC. The sales people were tramatized becuase all the people they dealt with were either dead or tramautized themselves and the calls to find out had to be made. I knew these sales people well and saw their pain. The company brought in counseling. I'm not big on that but these people deserved it.

My normal job had me calling other employees all over the country and there is always social chat. For weeks after 9/11 a call to someone would reveal that I was the first person this person spoke to that witnessed WTC. They would asked how I was and I would wind up telling the entire story, especially as it related to the people we know in the company.

Telling that story many times began to have it's effect on me.

JREF is one therapy outlet.

[lapman]

I was on my way to work when I heard about the first plane on the radio. However, at the time, they said it was a small plane. My first thought was, "Did the pilot have a heart attack?" I had just pulled up my home page on the internet just after the second plane hit and it was streaming the second crash and I found out that the first one was an airliner. My first reaction was, "Oh ****, that was deliberate." Later that day it hit me hard that parts that we make were on those planes and were used as weapons. It still brings tears to my eyes whenever I think about that.

[Cheap Shot]

I walked through the entrance at Boston ARTCC, and was told that an American Airlines jet was hijacked, I went upstairs to my office and called the operational floor and was advised to come down stairs and help work the hijack, I then went to work for quite along time....

Today I went to work as well, as usual, and I will do what I normally do sometime during this day, when I get home, pop open a beer and drink it by myself, relfect and never forget about this day in history....

This specific blog is a good read.

[George152]

I heard it on radio first very early in the morning and turned on the TV to watch it on the news.
I didn't go to work that day.

[Piggy]

Update: My very dear friend Susana, who was late for work on 9/11 and so was not in the towers that morning, is now the proud mom of a beautiful 2-year-old girl.

[DGM]

I walked through the entrance at Boston ARTCC, and was told that an American Airlines jet was hijacked, I went upstairs to my office and called the operational floor and was advised to come down stairs and help work the hijack, I then went to work for quite along time....

Today I went to work as well, as usual, and I will do what I normally do sometime during this day, when I get home, pop open a beer and drink it by myself, relfect and never forget about this day in history....

This specific blog is a good read.
And be it known: You guy's did all you could that day. Thanks

PS I can't go by ATC in Nashua (I go to Harvey Industries a lot) with out thinking about what you went through.

[Perfume V]

Update: My very dear friend Susana, who was late for work on 9/11 and so was not in the towers that morning, is now the proud mom of a beautiful 2-year-old girl.

Gosh. I mean, all of us have probably thought about how our lives would have been different if so-and-so had never have happened, but that particular instance is so damn real it just makes my brain sputter out just thinking about it.

Myself, I was on summer break, having just passed my A-Levels, ready to start university in a week or so's time. I was listening to Mark and Lard on Radio 1 when they went to rolling music because of some sort of plane crash in America. Well, that sounds tragic, I thought, but it's just an aviation accident, we've had lots of those and not reacted like this.

And then I turned the TV on to see what it was.

I can still feel the kick in the gut I felt on seeing that news broadcast. Something about the images - even before I listened to what the newsreaders were saying - made it horrifyingly clear that this was no accident.

And I remember feeling completely alone, because I didn't know what would happen next. Maybe in the world I was familiar with, this situation would have panned out in a way I could have predicted, but as soon as I saw the first images of the World Trade Center collapsing I knew I was in a very different world, where the old rules didn't apply.

[08lightning]

I was 17 walking home from college in the uk, down the high street(main street?), there were a crowd of people standing outside an electrical goods store, i presumed watching tv throught the shop window, why i wasnt curious to find out what was going on i dont know, not that i could concieve something like 9/11 happening so i kept myself to myself still oblivious until i got home.

My mum was watching TV clearly had been crying saying she had been waiting for someone to get home, im a little thrown and look at the tv to see a report about the london financial district cordened off, the tickerline mentioning a terrorist attack, im kinda thinking "so what some sort of bomb scare?", then it was barely a few seconds till they showed a replay of the planes hitting. I remember not being horrified or appalled but just completely unable to process what was happening.

By this time the first tower had fallen and i was catching up with all the information, i remember my first coherent thoughts were "they had an hour to evacuate the tower so they got everyone out right?" and then leaping to "will america retaliate with nuclear weapons?". spent the next couple days watching 24hour news channels.

cant imagine any event since will have such an impact on my life.

Just like to say ive been forever touched by the many human stories and heros that came to light that day.

[Brainster]

I've mentioned this before many times, but one of the reasons I agreed to do SLC with James was because of Flight 93. In the days after 9-11 I found myself severely depressed. I remember like a day or two after, as I was driving home from work, Hugh Hewitt was reading the Salon piece on the hero flight while in the background his producer was playing God Bless the USA by Lee Greenwood. I had to pull over to the side of the road for about ten minutes.

I'd hoped that the depression would lift by the weekend, but on Saturday I watched the services at the National Cathedral, with tears streaming down my cheeks. So Sunday morning I got up and decided to read everything I could about Flight 93, the one uplifting moment of that dark day (of course there are others that I know about now, but at that point people like Betty Ong and Frank De Martini were unknown to me). And I found lots of little things that made me feel a little connected to the folks who fought back. Todd Beamer was variously listed as living in Hightstown, Cranbury or Plainsboro; as it happens my dad lives in Hightstown, and my sister lives in Plainsboro but has a Cranbury mailing address. Jeremy Glick grew up in Upper Saddle River, which shared our high school. I wondered if he'd actually graduated from Northern Highlands, as I had, so I sent off an email to my sister, asking if she knew. She wrote back fairly quickly saying that no, her husband had worked with Glick's dad and she remembered that at a company picnic the Upper Saddle River connection had come up but all the Glicks went to private school. Okay, so he didn't graduate from my school, but my sister knew his family! Glick was a big fan of comic books as a kid; so was I. Lou Nacke had a Superman tattoo on his arm; I have a Superman street number sign painted on the curb outside my house.

I'm certainly not trying to claim any of their heroism for myself. But for some reason these connections consoled me, and I found my depression lifting. So over the years I've considered myself something of a Flight 93 buff. I have a "Let's Roll" tee shirt (authorized by the Todd Beamer foundation). I read Among the Heroes and watched the A&E movie, Flight 93. So when United 93 was coming out, I was curious to see the reactions. Some of the posters at the Huffington Post had gotten invites to the Tribeca premiere and raved about the film. But in the comments section were all these kids saying 'You've gotta watch Loose Change if you want to find out what really happened to Flight 93, you can't watch United 93, it's a bunch of government propaganda.' It was a Friday afternoon and I didn't have any appointments so I watched it on Google video. I'd heard of the conspiracy theories before, and I probably wouldn't have gotten pissed except for the "voice-morphing" claim. So I wrote a quick post on Brainster's panning the flick, and would have done nothing more had James B not sent me an email suggesting we collaborate on a blog debunking the film.

[triforcharity]

I will try to make this as short as possible, and sorry for the delay. I just found this today.

Anyway, I was still kinda new to FDNY, but was not considered a Rook or Rookie.
I had gooten off that morning somewhat late, and was heading home. I was one of the few people who were brave (read: DUMB) enough to drive their own vehicle into NYC. But, I lived accross the river, and it took less time to drive there than take the train. I drove in fairly early, so the traffic wasn't that bad at that time. Plus, I loved my truck.
So, I had gotten off late that morning, as someone was late coming in. It was OK, because I knew he would be late, and that he had a doctor's appt. with his son. I was driving home, pissed that the traffic was horrible, when I actually saw the plane flying low. It struck me funny, but figured he was circling going to Newark. Not unusual, but odd none the less. Then, I heard the BOOM that literally shook my car, as I wasn't even 10 blocks from my station. I looked in the rear-view, and saw the WTC on fire. I knew right away, today was going to be a long day.

So, I turned my truck around, and headed BACK to the station. I immeadiatly called my wife, and told her I most likely wouldn't be coming home today, that I would be at the WTC all day. She said fine, but why?? I explained to her what had happened, and she knew right away, terrorists!!

So, there I was, headed back down to 10 house, and I saw the guys pull out of the station. I knew them all very well. If I had known that morning that most of them would be dead by the end of the day, I would'nt have let them go up. But, they saved lives while giving their own. I have no doubt that those guys' actions that day saved countless lives.

I don't like to go into alot of detail, but I will tell you that I nearly lost my life 2 times that day, as both of the towers collapsed when I was no more than 100 feet from their bases. I thank God that I did not perish that day, as I cannot imagine my life without my youngest daughter. Her birthday?? Yepo-9/11/04

Anyway, here is something my good friend wrote. He escaped the tower that morning, as he only worked on the 40th? floor.

By Dan D.

On that fateful day, I saw people coming out of the towers yelling, crying and screaming. Some just had a confused look on their face, some had the look of panic, and some just had the stoic look of death on their face.
But, I noticed something. Amid all the chaos and confusion, the screaming and yelling, the crying and sobbing, I saw something that changed my life forever. I saw firefighters heading into the towers. None of them had the look of fear on their face. Not one. They all had a cool, calm, and collected aire about them. And I had to think for a minute what was going through their minds. Well, I think it would have gone something like this......

Dear God,

Let me save one life today. These people need my help, please protect me from any harm.

Amen



And you know what, even and the building was burning, and people were running from the building, I saw fireman still heading into the building. To save one more life.

And as the minutes past, I wondered what was going throguh the minds of the fireman. And maybe it was something like this.....

"Just one more."

Even after the towers fell, I still saw firefighters heading to the pile of rubble. None panicked, and all had the look of determination written across their faces. Dirty and battered, they went right back to work, still trying to save other lives, no matter be its age. And I thought " What are they thinking?" And I would be willing to bet it was something like.....

" Lord God,

Please help me save ONE more life, just one more PLEASE."


Sorry for the rant. If you want, I will speak to you in private to offer more details. I do not mind. Sometimes, its good therapy.

[triforcharity]

A Fireman's Prayer
When I am called to duty, God,

Whenever flames may rage;

Give me strength to save some life,

Whatever be its age.


Help me embrace a little child

Before it is too late

Or save an older person

From the horror of that fate.


Enable me to be alert

And hear the weakest shout,

And quickly and efficiently

To put the fire out.


I want to fill my calling

And to give the best in me

To guard my every neighbor

And protect his property.


And if, according to my fate,

I am to lose my life,

Please bless with your protecting

My children and my wife.

[SpitfireIX]

Bump for the anniversary.

[Scott Jurgenson]

I was in my dorm at Western Michigan University as a freshman and I was about to walk to my 9:30 class and my roomate pulled me in just as the second plane hit. I didn't see it live but it had happened about a minute or two before I came in. I remember a voice came over an intercom that I have yet to hear at WMU and told us that class was cancelled for the day. There was about 1 minute of rejoicing, and then the seriousness of what actually happened sank in. Everyone was gloom and depressed. I think about 15 of us from the dorm sat and watched aTV in our room for about half the day. My parents were in New York and I couldn't get ahold of them for almost 5 hours. Finally I got a call from my mom saying they're ok and that everyone is scared ******** of more attacks. People there were convinced that there were car bombs all over the place. She said every so often people would start running away from something yelling bomb or buildings gonna blow.

Outside of that it was a pretty regular day, I even ********** my roomates sister who was visiting that weekend. Fun times. Sorry Bob.

[BigAl]

My morning commute took me up Church St., right by the towers and since I was self-scheduled, on a normal day my bus might have put me right in the middle of the traffic jam when the first plane hit. But on 9/11 I had a conference call and had to be at my desk at 8:30. I had a window with a view of WTC but my back was to it. I had to be told by someone in Boston to look out my window.

In memory of the three people I knew well that died on 9/11.

Tom Celic (Marsh). Tom's brother, Marty, was NYFD and died a hero's death in 1977. I suspect that family pressure made Tom go into banking instead of joining NYFD. The Celic family was neighbors.

Tom Sgroi. (Marsh) A workmate up to 1990. His uncle, Manny Badillo is a wheel in the NY twoofer scene as a family member of a victim. That's his right but I wonder what the rest of the family thinks. I like to think that Tom doesn't agree.

The oft-mentioned Ed Felt. (BEA)

R.I.P.

[Sabretooth]

I was 27 at the time and, pitifully, I was living with my parents at the time and had the alarm set for 8:45am to get up for work...but I hit the snooze. About 8:50am, my dad started yelling up the stairs for me to get up…I kinda grunted acknowledgment of his yelling, thinking that he was just insuring that I was at least attempting to get out of bed for work. Then he yells up, “Get your ass up! A plane just flew into the World Trade Center!”

I remember snapping to full awake at that point and I sat up. As I rummaged for clothes, I was thinking out loud to myself saying, “How the hell does a pilot not see a building that size?” Was it some small sight-seeing plane that lost control? I kind of discounted the severity of the situation…thinking that this is probably another Empire State Building type accident where poor visibility had caused a pilot to lose his bearings. The thought of terrorism never, ever crossed my mind.

I made my way downstairs…that feeling…I will never forget that feeling of when I turned the corner and saw WTC1 on the TV and the giant gaping hole with that monstrous amount of smoke pouring out. At this point I knew only that this was no small plane. I know how big those buildings were. No small plane could ever do that much damage.

I stood there staring at the television, running scenarios in my head. I knew there were several airports nearby. Maybe an airliner got in trouble and was trying to ditch? Or lost control? Or engine failure and the pilot couldn’t get enough glide to a runway? Or maybe…O. M. G!...that plane just flew into the SECOND TOWER!

Watching FL175 deliberately crash into WTC2 on live TV hit me like a brick. I sat down as a wave of shock took over. I couldn’t believe I just witnessed hundreds of people die on live TV. It was then I knew it was a terrorist attack. My dad and I sat there in complete silence and stared at the TV. I remember seeing tears roll down his face…MY father…who was always the “tough guy”. I couldn’t help but join him.

After what had seemed like a couple hours (but was really only about 25-30 minutes), I realized that I had not called into work and I ran upstairs to find that my cell phone had been blown up from the boss. I called back expecting the worst. But all I got was a sound of empathy from him…he was closing the shop for the day and he told me to stay home with my family. A small sense of relief on an otherwise hellish morning. Before heading back downstairs, I disconnected my little 13 inch TV and carried it down. We set up the little TV on top of the family TV and my father and I watched different coverage’s of the days events…neither of us moving other than to get some more coffee (the coffee maker of which my dad had also brought into the living room).

Then, on the small TV, a new report. We see smoke billowing from the area of the Pentagon. My dad, almost breathless, says, “Holy ****, we’re at war.” I know we exchanged words during the rest of the day, but hell if I can remember any of them after he made that statement.

The rest of that day and evening was a blur. I don’t remember leaving the living room. I don’t remember eating. That evening, I fell asleep in the same chair that I had sat in all day. I remember waking up in the wee hours of 9/12 to my dad still sitting in his chair, staring at the two TV’s.

9/11 is a day I will NEVER forget.

[alienentity]

About to board a flight from Mexico City to Vancouver on JAL. Somebody said that one of the World Trade Center buildings had been destroyed... I said 'No way, you've got to be joking' so I went over to the bar next to our gate to watch CNN. Sure enough they were showing footage of the destruction of WTC 2 or 1, I can't remember which.
Somebody said 'Who would do something like this?' and I remember replying 'America has pissed off a lot of people, this isn't entirely unexpected'. Remember we had already seen the earlier bombing of the WTC and Russia had suffered attacks in its heartland from Chechnyan terrorists.

Our flight was canceled so we spent the next 3 days in the Hotel Nikko. Thanks to JAL for taking care of us the whole time...I felt kind of guilty staying in a nice hotel while people in NYC suffered like that.

[9/11 Chewy Defense]

I woke up, turned on the "boob tube" & clicked through the channels. Turned on the News & saw that both towers were on fire. Figuring that whoever done this would have hell to pay. Got my morning tea & took a sip then news about the Pentagon was hit. I thought in my mind: "Oh ****! We're at war!" Then I heard what seemed like a low flying jet (I lived near the Johnstown Airport at the time) & figured it was some pilot in trouble while coming in to land. But it went South, my thoughts were: "That's really odd." Then about 10 to 15 minutes later I heard sirens going on South Rt. 219 then I heard the news say that there had been a plane crash in Shanksville & that it was Flight 93.

Funny thing though, I never heard a jet following it, which tells me that it wasn't "shot down", as some idiotic Truthers might believe.

[Oystein]

I was 33 years old then. Working at the headquarters of an insurance company in Cologne, Germany. Our time zone is 6 hours ahead of New York, so the attacks started at 2:46 p.m. local time. We did not have a TV anywhere, and I think there was no radio in the open office space where I worked with my project team. Our project assistant sent a short e-mail to all project members: "World Trade Center hit by small plane. Big fire! Breaking news...".

I had been to NYC 4 years earlier, and I have also flown Cessnas on Flight Simulator in the NYC scenery. I could not imagine that a "small plane" would cause damage so severe that it would give rise to such urgent news, so I feared right away that something larger was amiss.

10 minutes later, she e-mailed: "Second plane hits Trade Center, large plane"
I think we must have stopped work then, discussed it, and determined that chance could be ruled out, that an attack was underway. We went on the usual news sites on the internet and saw first pictures. No more work was done that afternoon. Everbody was on the internet, which came to nearly a standstill (I don't know if the public internet maxed out, or if the company resources were to blame).

Then the Pentagon attack.

I am not sure when exactly, but I left work as early as I could. Maybe 4p.m. or a little after that. Drove straight to my mum's house. She lived alone, a widow of 73 at the time, and I knew she would be watching the images, by herself, memories of the war she lived through in her youth coming up. She'd need someone to talk to, and maybe explain thing or two. She had been to the top of the World Trade Center once in the 70s, a thing that I failed to do when I had been there.

[Sam.I.Am]

No work that morning (regardless of that I would've been asleep anyway being on the pacific coast). Woke up just before 9 and turned on the TV to see the whole thing being replayed over and over again. My kid was with her mom outside DC and it took me awhile to get ahold of her to see if she was upset over the whole thing (she was 10 at the time). She seemed ok but her mom is a pretty level headed person in a crisis type situation so I wasn't all that worried.

I had to take the wife v2.0 to a Dr's appointment and then a bit later we had a pool league match to play in, I was surprised that it was still scheduled but the league didn't do that for whatever reasons. Nobody was into the match. It was probably the least focused match I've ever been a part of. I recall saying something along the lines of the butchers bill was going to be pretty high for whoever did it or supported those who did it.

[SezMe]

We were vacationing the the western Sierras and staying at a place that disallowed radios and TVs (which is why we picked the place). So we - and others - had a sunny breakfast and went out for our adventures for the day. When we got back late in the afternoon, a TV had been jury-rigged into the commons area and was showing the endless looping and coverage.

While we were sitting there watching the coverage a woman came in after being in the back country for 2-3 days. She sat down next to me and I gave her a quick update. It took some emphatic explaining to get her to believe it was not computer graphics she was seeing. She literally could not believe her eyes.

We were in mid-vacation and had a hard time trying to decide whether to cancel and head home. Finally, we decided there was nothing we could do at home so we continued on, but it was not the same. My eyes could not see the beauty anymore.

[grandmastershek]

I was building a dock on the Manasquan River on the Jersey Shore. The tide was very low so we decided to take our morning break early(9:30ish). Our equipment operator turned on his radio. While washing my hands he yelled "Hey...a plane crashed into the WTC". I asked what kind of plane. He said he didn't know. I replied that some idiot probably didn't know how to fly his Cessna. After listening to the radio we learned what had happened and noticed the highway nearby (which would later get a new bridge dedicated to 9/11 victims oddly enough...just made that connection) as well as the sky were oddly quiet. We have regular air traffic through this area from Newark & NYC airports.

We went back to the company office where my great uncle, grandmother, & sister were watching TV (family owned business). By that point at least 1 tower had collapsed. My crew then went to the beach just a mile east of the office. We could make out a very faint dark line to the north over the Atlantic Ocean which we reasoned was smoke from the fires.

Over the next few years I made many friends who lost someone in the towers, as well as know a retired FDNY Capt through jiu-jitsu who lost brothers. I later became a teacher and began working in northern jersey where many of the victims resided. 5 days a week I drive up the NJ Turnpike by Newark Airport and further passed the Meadowlands. During this stretch I look over lower Manhattan and imagine what it must have been like for the commuters that morning.

[Piggy]

Last month, I took a vacation.

My luggage, which I'd had for 25 years, was now beyond hope. The zippers were sprung, the corners blown out, seams in tatters.

So I bought a new set of suitcases.

The old ones were good for nothing but the heap.

Still....

There were these stickers on the small valise. They had been on the larger one, too, but in a trip to Mexico last year, for a friend's wedding, they had been removed by some functionary along the way.

These were the stickers from 9/11. When I was flying that day. When we all saw it happen on a tiny television, in Portuguese, in a little airport cafeteria.

I couldn't apportion that to the landfill.

Irrational, yes, I know. But hey, I'm a human being. I have a right to be irrational.

The small suitcase with its stickers went into the attic.

When I go up there sometimes, I touch it. Just put my fingers on it for a moment. And then I get on with whatever I'm doing, because things have to be done.

One day, after I'm gone, someone will clean out my attic and wonder why in God's name Piggy had this useless suitcase stashed up here.


Grass
by Carl Sandburg

Pile the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo,
Shovel them under and let me work--
I am the grass; I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.

[danrush]

I was assigned to AIMD NAS Whidbey Island in Washington State as an NDI technician 1st class. My brother Steven was working with CDI demolitions ten blocks from the WTC.

I worked nights at that time and came home at 2am. Usually I was back up around 5:30 to have some coffee, cereal and cruise the net for an hour. The time in Washington was 5:57am when I logged onto Yahoo.com and this was flashed across the middle of the screen...

AIRLINER SLAMS INTO WORLD TRADE CENTER!

I shook my head, said to myself.."What...the....****?" and walked into the living room to turn on KING5/NBC TV and there was the North Tower burning.

Meanwhile, Steven and his crew were standing in the street after one of them came running down the old building they were working in saying he saw a plane hit the North Tower. They all stood there calling him a ********ter and that the smoke was part of the filming for the new Spiderman movie.

I ran into my bedroom and shook my wife awake. "Babe...a plane just hit the World Trade Center."

She looked at me like I was smoking pot. "Go back to bed."

"I'm serious!" I said. I ran back into the living room and threw a video tape into the VCR. Man she was upset..."I'm going to ****en kill you if this is a joke Danny!"

Just as she came into the living room...tower 2 got hit.

We didn't move, we didn't say anything for like a minute. She then asked me, "Shouldn't you do something?"

"Huh?" I was in shock.

"We're being attacked! Shouldn't you do something?!" She said again.

So I called Whidbey. I got my supervisor as he was just coming into the office. "Joe? Do you need me to come in?"

He didn't know yet..."What? Why are you still awake Dan?"

"Joe? We're being attacked...do you need me to come in?" I asked again.

"Are you drunk? What the hell is wrong with you?" Joe replied. Just then his 2nd class came running in.

"Joe! We're under attack! Who's that?" Pat asked Joe.

"What the hell is wrong with you guys? What attack? This joke's not funny."

Pat turned on the office television and I could hear Joe's mouth drop.

"What...the.....****!"

Yeah...."WTF was the universal response that day.

[djlunacee]

September 10th was not a good day for me personally. My girlfriend and I had one humdinger of a fight. I did not sleep well that night, I fell asleep around 4AM. So when she came barging into the bedroom, I knew something was wrong, but nowhere near the scale of what I was about to witness.

Without saying a word she turned on the television, and we watched as the smoke billowed out of the tower from the first strike. I casually started calling some old friends who lived in NY to see if they were okay and if there was anymore information than what we were hearing.

The next thing I heard was a scream, and I am not talking about a startled scream, this was a blood curdling, peel the paint off of the wall scream. I felt as though someone had shoved a vacuum down my throat as I stood in shock and stared at the second hit. It wasn't until later that I was told the scream came from me.

Then 9/11 became real to me, all to real, as the announcement came through the television that a plane had struck the Pentagon, it hit home. That is where my mother's office is(was). Panic and fear rushed through my body like a lightening bolt. I tried to call, all phone lines were down, redial, could not get through, not to her office, home, or cell. Panic and fear were now replaced by anger and rage. I was in my truck so fast that I literally forgot my shoes. I was living in Raleigh, NC. I was on my way home to DC to find my mom. About four hours later, and 2 warnings for speed, I was 30 minutes from home when my brother called from California, he asked where I was, and told him I was on the way to find mom, and that I could not raise her on the phone. Suddenly relief flushed my body as my brother told me she was working offsite in Germantown, MD.

I got to my mom's house she arrived a few minutes after I did.


It was this day, September 11th, 2001, I learned to never take anyone or anything for granted ever again.

[Titanic Explorer]

I was in Boston- I woke up when it was already underway- i heard a news blurb on the local radio that the WTC was on fire, then turned on CNN.
Then I turned on Howard Stern's radio show- and I have to say, his coverage of that day and the day that followed was spectacular...

[Sabretooth]

Seeing that the ten year anniversary is little over a month away, I thought it pertinent to bump the thread....

[NoahFence]

Working - my brother called to tell me a small plane hit the WTC. Then I noticed our company televisions being wheeled into the cafe, went to take a peek and didn't get much else done that day. Every so often I (well, pretty much everybody) had to leave the room because we were getting too pissed off.

[sylvan8798]

I had been up late Monday night grading some papers, so decided to get some more sleep once the kids and husband were off to school and work. Around 10:30 the house phone rang, then when I didn't answer, my cell phone. I rolled over and ignored it, then the house phone rang again. Knowing only my husband would persist like that, I picked up the phone and (for the only time in my life) stupidly shouted "Where's the fire!"

He filled me in, I ran to turn on every tv in the house, and spent most of the day flipping stations hoping some sane talking head would appear and say it was all a joke. When I went to pick up the kids from school the other parents were all pouring in, but no one could even speak. It seemed like everyone was just fighting to keep from bursting into tears on the spot.

On the way home, my 8-year-old son asked if the hijackers would go to hell if they thought they were doing what God wanted them to do. I said I figured they hadn't understood God correctly but that we had to leave those matters up to God to decide.

[erwinl]

I came home that day from work and put CNN on before I got the kids from school.

There were visuals of the first tower burning. I remember feeling miserable about the ordeal of the New Yorkers when this was their second accident with an airplane and a skyscraper (The B-25 in the Empire State Building being the first).
After I got the kids from school and came home with them after their swimming lessons, I put CNN back on again.
Only one tower was then still standing and burning. It was at that moment I knew it couldn't possibly be an accident and that it had to be an terrorist attack. And I knew it had to be Al Qaida who did this.

Just as I got this notion they replayed the images of the second plane entering the tower. After a minute or ten, possibly less, I saw the second tower coming down. As they were talking about the amount of people that usually were in the towers (I believe 25.000 were mentioned) I got scared about the possible reaction of america. What would their reaction be when possibly 25.000 of their people just got killed?
Nucleair attack on Afghanistan? And could I even fault them if they did something like that?

[uke2se]

I had the day of from University but had some frat work to do with the new inductees in the afternoon. Think I was playing computer games or something when my mother called and told me to turn the tv on and then she promptly hung up. I was more or less petrified in front of the tv until I realized I was late for the fraternity work and had to rush off. I spent the rest of the day watching the skies.

[Blaupunkt69]

I was getting up to drive 4 hours to Vancouver to visit relatives before I was to fly on September 12th (my first time flying). My mom woke me up to start getting ready and told me I should see whats happening on the news. I was half asleep and saw the first building was on fire. I was tired and wanted to sleep in some more. I was woken up again by my mom screaming as she watched the second impact. I was wide awake after that, saw the buildings fall. I was 20 years old and at wondering if in no short time we would be involved in a full scale war and I would be drafted.

My flight on the 12th didn't happen and was pushed back to the 19th. I started an 8 month long government youth travel/volunteer program (ages 17-21) where we had little access to the internet and no TV for much of the program. I missed much of the world's reactions to the attacks in the months following. I remember, in the months after 9/11, hearing songs like No Doubt's Hey Baby on the radio and thinking it was such an inappropriate song given the the situation.

When I returned home in late April 2002, I was somewhat surprised at how everyone had moved on while I had been in this media blackout for 8 months

[Wolrab]

I got up and was called into the living room. At that point, the first tower had been hit. I was saying something about how clear the skies were and how could this be an accident. Soon enough, the second plane hit and I realized this was no accident.

The rest of the morning I spent watching the tv (virtually all channels were preempted) listening to the talking heads who had nothing to say and a lot of time to fill. Many things were said that turned out to be erroneous, yet they kept talking.

In the afternoon, I was helping my brother put siding on his house and we were both astonished at how crystal clear the sky was(I live near Rochester, NY). No contrails anywhere. It was kind of eerie.

I did call to see where my infant son was (this was before I got sole custody). I was worried that his POS mother might be at some federal office trying to fleece the taxpayers. I obviously had no idea as to the scope of the attack. All sorts of terrible scenarios played out in my head. It is bad enough thinking of all the bad things that can happen to an infant without throwing terrorists into the mix!

[Skeletor]

I was working as a building security officer in downtown Portland, Oregon on September 11th. Usually in my carpool on the way to work, we'd listen to the morning radio news, and they mentioned there was an airplane crashed into the World Trade Center. Initially, I figured I'd see some footage of a Cessna sticking out of the building when I got home from work, but when I got to work I decided to go online to see if there were any news reports. I saw none, so I headed to Starbucks to get my usual morning coffee. On the way back, I spoke to some of the employees and they said ANOTHER plane had hit the other tower, and they were big airliners.

Needless to say, as I was a security officer in an office building, we had tightened security to the nth degree. News kept pouring in about the attacks at the Pentagon, and how another plane crashed outside of Pittsburgh. Then the towers started to collapse. I didn't get a glimpse of footage until after 2 PM Pacific time, and I don't think I believed anything anyone told me until I saw it with my own eyes.

[BStrong]

Preparing for a BOD meeting.

My girlfriend called me and informed me that a plane had hit a "skyscraper" in NYC.

I thought it must have been a private aircraft, went on line and got caught up when the second plane hit.

At the BOD meeting, the President called for a moment of silence for the victims, and for the first time we unfurled the flag and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. We've done so at every meeting since.

I knew we were at war, we were going to war, and my only thought was how I was going to re-enlist.

[DC]

I was sleeping on the train from Bejing to Shanghai. when we arived in Shanghai, the tourist guide informed us about the atakcs on the WTC. No further information was avaible to us and speculations run wild on the way to the Hotel, once in the Hotel we went to the newspaper store and got newspapers and went to our rooms and watched News.
and only then we realized what a huge atack it was. It changed our vacation pretty much.

[OCaptain]

I was at work, on my first week at a new job, still an unknown face among strangers to me. Somehow, the notion got spread that New York was under some kind of attack, by 10am we were all glued to the TV to watch the videos play over and over, hearing NPR playing on radios with their normally-staid announcers at a loss for words.

We, like most, thought that a commuter plane clipped a tower, at most, not two fully-loaded jetliners. That reality sank in slowly.

Living in Charlotte, and at the time working downtown, on 9/11 we didn't know what was the motivation for the attack, and once we heard that other planes had been hijacked, a more real fear set in, because we wondered if it was financing centers that were being targeted, because of who some of the tenants of the Twin Towers were.

BofA was, and is, headquartered in Charlotte, and we half-expected an attack here. Their corporate center was 5 blocks away from where I worked. We were numb, shocked, and paranoid about what might happen next.

[Sabretooth]

*bump*

[jhunter1163]

These anniversaries are always hard for me. I lost three friends, but met my now-wife that day in a chat room (see post #25). We remember in the morning and celebrate in the afternoon; the worst of times, and yet the best.

[SpitfireIX]

I thought of not bumping this thread this year, now that it's been more than a decade, but I decided I will bump it and see how many new responses there are.

[Mudcat]

I was in Basic Training when my drill sergeant came to us in the field to pull us out in a hurry back to the barracks. When briefed us on what had happened, thought he had been watching too many crappy action flicks (he was a fan of Bruce Willis films, as I recall, so it wasn't a stretch).

It had to be a mistake, things like that didn't happen outside of badly written screenplays.

When I learned just how real it was I still found it hard to believe. I still do, even 12 years latter.

I don't think I ever apologized to that drill sergeant, though.

[Ts4EVER]

Interesting thread. I was only ten at the time, but I actually remember it. I was just walking through my parent's kitchen. We have a really old radio in there, from the 50s I think, but it still works. On 9 11 the news were on and I remember the dj saying that there had been a terrorist attack in New York, that informations were scarce and confused but that it looked pretty bad.
Now I have to admit that my first reaction was pretty callous. I didn't really follow the news back then, being 10 and all, but I had already noticed that from time to time there would be some terrorist attack or war and I was never really concerned with it. I filed it under "stupid foreigners killing each other", shrugged and went about my business.
Then later I watched the footage on TV and it became clear that this was bigger than the usual stuff. But I can't say that it affected me on an emotional level, I certainly found it horrible, but I never had sleepless nights about it or anything like that. I remember thinking if there was going to be a third world war and who would win it.

[thedopefishlives]

I was in high school - a senior in high school, 12th grade for those who don't use Americans' class enumerations. I had just finished my first period class and was switching between classes when I heard a buzz in the hallway about the WTC. My mind flashed back to the '93 bombing, and I wondered if there was a documentary on in one of the classrooms. Then my second period teacher came out of his room and remarked to the teacher next door, "Did you see that? Another one just hit!" With a sinking feeling I slammed my locker closed and dashed across the hall into the classroom, just in time to see the replay of the second impact. I don't know how long I stared, numb, at the screen before finding my way to my desk. I don't remember which channel we had it on, but they had a reporter at the Pentagon at the time it was hit, and you could see the worry on the anchor's face as he listened to reporter giving the account of the blow - and this guy was about 1/4 of the way around the building from the impact point.

When I got home that afternoon, I was accosted by my dad before I even got in the door. "Grab your keys," he said, "we're going down to the gas station to fill up." Unfortunately, by the time we got there, the line was already 1/4 mile long, so we abandoned that idea and he went home while I went to work. I watched the President's speech and the other proceedings from the small Radio Shack display we had in our store while people randomly drifted in asking for American flags or if we had candles for the candlelight vigil they were holding in town.

[gabeygoat]

I was getting ready for work. I didn't see the first tower go down. I did see the second. There was a reporter who found some payroll records in the ashes, and that made me cry as my girlfriend at the time was an accountant.

[cjnewson88]

NZ is 17 hours in front of New York, so it was around 2am when 9/11 happened. I didn't find out until 4 hours later when I got up for school. I was 13. My older brother told both me and my mum that the radio is saying terrorists crashed planes into the Pentagon and Twin Towers. Being 13, I only barely knew what the Twin Towers were. It wasn't until an hour later when I was talking to my bus driver on the way to school that I heard for the first time that both buildings had collapsed. I was shocked. As little as I knew about those buildings, I knew they were dam big, with a lot of people inside them. From then on we watched it all on the TV in our classroom with our teacher for most the day. He briefly explained to us about terrorism and why they do acts of mass violence like that, although I cannot remember much of what he said. I vaguely remember the collapse of Building 7.

Excluding the next couple of days, it was a non-topic. I and others never really thought about it much until 2006 when conspiracy theories made their rounds. Even then, and even now, it's a non-topic, except for the anniversary every year, no one even talks about it. Strange.

[Bell]

I stood on top of WTC2 just three months before the attacks. Before going up there, I visited FDNY's Ladder Eight (see my avatar) and talked to a firefighter there. We talked, among other things, about the 1993 bombing and how terrible it would have been had the tower (or both) collapsed. I also imagined that it would have been visible from all over the five boroughs. This experience made the 9/11 attacks more personal to me and for a very long time I found it difficult dealing with, especially all the poor people trapped on the upper floors of the towers.

[LSSBB]

I was at work, at my desk. I'm not sure what I was working on at the time, when I overheard one of my co-workers, a junior engineer, talking to a friend. He said something about a plane hitting the world trade center. I went over and talked to him, the friend had emailed him about it. I then went back to my desk and after scrambling around I was able to pull up a news stream from WGN at my desk top. Other engineers and factory line supervisors in that office came to my desk and there was a crowd watching it. Then they opened up the customer support center across the hall, which had live TV in it, and folks migrated over there to watch. The only thing I remember saying was that I was pretty sure the pilots were killed by the hijackers, because knowing many pilots through Navy Reserves I couldn't see them piloting planes into the skyscrapers, even under duress. I was upset and shocked when the buildings collapsed but not too surprised considering the damage. I was hopefull a lot of people escaped by the time they collapsed.

After the attacks I was pretty busy. The Navy bases all went into lockdown, and since my reserve unit supported Great Lakes, all of our junior enlisted got called up to guard the gates and patrol the beach. The unit was actually supposed to support the boot camp, but since they had no reserve plans for Navy School base security for terrorist threats they used the closest thing they could get. I helped my CO execute the recall. I did not get recalled, nor any of the other officers. One cheif got recalled, because his civilian job was running security for the Museum Campus in downtown Chicago so they figured he would be a great resource. The unit was recalled for about a year or so

I was 36 at the time. A little over a year after the attack my ex started going nuts and I ended up moving out. I often wonder if the attacks added strain to the marriage, and a lot of other families too, beyond the immediate victims. Plus, my ex is middle-eastern