9/11

[YoursSINSerely]

Please continue remembering what you were doing on September 11th and post your memories. Unfortunately, I have to work in the morning and I'm going to bed. I will read in the morning.

 

[StrangeLife]

My daughter and I had just sat down to celebrate the departure of my first wife the day before with a lavish breakfast. The TV was on CNN with sound turned down, and suddenly I saw something big and flammable hit one of the towers of the WTC.

Like many others I feared that I was witnessing the beginning of WW3...

 

[drteetho]

Was working in Toronto at the time, in a high-rise office tower. My desk was right next to and facing a window on the 12th floor. We had TVs in the common area; I didn't see the live footage myself but heard from a lot of people who did. Sometime after the second plane hit, when no one knew whether other cities would be targeted, after a while all I could see was another plane heading right for me. Management sent everyone home soon after that... probably a good thing because I was about ready to say screw it and leave myself. Probably watched the news the whole rest of the day once I got home, as well as talked to family about the whole thing. Didn't have anyone that I love and am close with near New York or Washington DC that day, much to my relief.

Certainly not the close brushes with the event that some people have shared, but it had an impact on me nonetheless.

 

[MSTarot]

I was working on a school here in town but...

The company I work for now had just spent about sixteen months doing a renovation on the Pentagon. Mostly removing stones, putting in water proofing and new blast windows, then resetting the stones.

We were done. Just punch list work going on so we only had two guys at the place and they had left to go to Home Depot (screwing off on the clock mostly) to get some little thing. They were on the way back when our boss called them,

"Are you guys alright?" Boss.

"Yeah, we're fine." worker.

"Did you see the plane?" Boss.

"What plane?" worker.

"Where are you guys at?" Boss

"At the Pentagon. On the job." worker.

Then they rounded the corner and saw the smoke.



Most of the guys I work with spent the next year as part of the "Phoenix Project."

I didn't hire on with them till spring of 2003 but we still had blackened pieces of broken stone in our lay down yard left. I picked one up and was looking at it and one of the guys told me where it was from. It was a very surreal moment.

 

[slyc_willie]

I was in England with my first wife (at the time, we were engaged; I had just moved to London the previous May), and was running her father's bar. There was only one TV in the place, a great big monstrosity somehow suspended on the wall in the corner. During the day, I usually played vintage movies on the VCR (yes, a VCR) for the mostly older crowd of bankers, barristers, and businessmen.

My fiance came running in, telling me to switch to live TV. And there it was, the image of one of the towers trailing smoke, the voice over obviously unsure of what was going on.

And then we watched the second plane approach. It was surreal. It just came into view on the screen, disappeared behind the other tower, and then there was the smoke and fire as the plane hit.

It just suddenly dawned on us that this wasn't an accident.

I remember one of the regulars sayign something to the effect of, "Holy hell, they're blitzin' the Yanks!" without a clue yet of who "they" were.

I got a lot of sympathy from the patrons, being the only known American around, and I felt pretty damn uncomfortable about it. Strange as it sounds, I almost wished that day that I wasn't an American, because it seemed that every damn person who came into the bar wanted to tell me how bad they felt, how much they sympathized with me. I didn't want to be the target of their sympathy.

As the night wore on, I couldn't help but be impressed with how much true sympathy my bar patrons not only expressed to me, but to the USA in general. A lot of them acted almost as if London itself had been attacked. For a country that had to endure half a decade of constant air bombing at the hands of the Nazis more than sixty years before, their expression of grief and outrage was even more poignant.

No, I didn't close the bar that night. But I did have a few drinks. And I considered, very seriously, the idea of going back to the Army. It was almost exactly six years to the day since I had gotten out, and like many a former US serviceman, I gave serious contemplation to going back in. They would have taken me in a heartbeat, I knew.

But I didn't. My obligations to what I hoped then would be my future family overrode my patriotism.

I still wonder how my life may have turned out had I decided to re-enlist.

 

[johneb87]

I remember being woken up well after the first plane hit the towers. I remember coming down and seeing my dad in front of the TV watching the Today show and seeing the North tower on fire. At first I thought nothing more than an accident, I didn't even know it was a jet liner. As I was getting dressed there was a shout from the other end of the house, that was when the second plane hit and it was obvious we were under attack.

I remember being told that I still had to be at school. But instead of my dad taking me, mom drove me in instead. Because she didn't know our usual shortcut, she took the long way in and we were held up by traffic. We listened to the news on the radio the whole way in. We got word that the first tower fell after we left the driveway. We then heard about the Pentagon and even a truck bombing (which turned out to not be related to the events). We even heard the news relay a message to other NYPD officers going on shift to go back to their regular routes.

After finally getting in to school, I rushed into the classroom. Everyone was already watching the TV in class and I walked into the room just as the second tower was falling. For the next two periods, we watched the news as the played the footage loop over and over again. By second period, we learned about the flight 93 crash. Midway through third period, an announcement came over the intercom instructing the teachers to turn off their TVs and return to their normal lesson plan. However every time we were in the computer lab, or in a classroom during lunch, we kept checking up on the news.

If there is one thing about that day that stays in my mind forever, it was how blue the sky was that day. Sunny, cloudless and perfectly blue; a rarity around here.

In 2005, we stopped in New York on our way to Italy and visited Ground Zero. Never before has just standing in a location affected me emotionally. Here is a pic I took, the cones at the base of the ramp outline the twin tower footprints where the memorial is now.

http://sdrv.ms/17sdVSZ

 

[Handley_Page]

Of course, we in England may not have seen it in the same way.
I was at work, collecting techie-bits for service from various places on the site.

I walked into one department, and, somewhat unusually, nobody was in their offices or workshops. Then I heard the chorus of "Oh h s" from the Rest Room and walked in to seeing the whole staff (about 30 people) were watching a big TV.
We all stared in amazement as the plane went into the side of the tower.

It was not a very good time for jokes, I noticed.

 

[AirRichard101]

A bit of trivia: About 20 minutes after the collapse of the second WTC tower, Fox News added an information ticker at the bottom of the screen to scroll information about the attacks. Withing hours, all network news organizations followed suit. They have never stopped since. Eventually, many local stations began using a ticker during news broadcasts.

 

[DeYaKen]

Teaching a group of Arab Soldiers

Yes in Broadstairs UK teaching electronics to a group of soldiers from the UAE. When the first plane struck we thought it was a bizarre accident. Only when the second plane struck did we know it was a terrorist attack.

Now understand I am being brutally honest here. Some of you won't like what I'm about to tell you.

When it became clear that it was a terrorist attack by Al kaida, initially the Arab lads were excited by the fact that there fellow Arabs had been able to strike at the mighty USA. As the enormity of what had happened sank in they became more subdued.

The following day the mood was very subdued. They asked me what I thought would happen. Of course, I didn't know but I quoted a correspondent from the BBC, "From now on evil will have an Arab face." I also said that I had to believe the people who did it would be punished. The class spokesman scoffed at the idea, "You think the Americans will catch them?"

I had to agree it was unlikely. Suddenly his face lit up. "You mean Allah will punish them. Yes, Yes, that is true only Allah can take life." They took about a week to calm down but it caused us a lot of worry, having these lads walking around the town on their own.

 

[4glory6]

The attack wasn't just on the U.S. It wasn't an accident that the attack was on the World Trade Center. Over 350 of the victims were not Americans. This was not an accident. It wasn't just an attack on the U.S. and what IT stands for. The British PM at the time picked up on that and said it was an attack on the UK as well. Has this been forgotten?

 

[SecondCircle]

The attack wasn't just on the U.S. It wasn't an accident that the attack was on the World Trade Center. Over 350 of the victims were not Americans. This was not an accident. It wasn't just an attack on the U.S. and what IT stands for. The British PM at the time picked up on that and said it was an attack on the UK as well. Has this been forgotten?

Well yes the attack affected more that just the U.S. but the top operatives of Al Qaeda made it clear in many of their warnings that they were going to deliver a blow to the United States and to our way of life if we didn't pull out of Muslim countries. They wanted to make a point to Americans in particular, to have us live in fear and show us that we weren't as much of a super power that we think we are.

At least that's what they said in multiple videos. Of course motives and all could be debated, but there were also more targets than the WTC.

 

[DeYaKen]

The attack wasn't just on the U.S. It wasn't an accident that the attack was on the World Trade Center. Over 350 of the victims were not Americans. This was not an accident. It wasn't just an attack on the U.S. and what IT stands for. The British PM at the time picked up on that and said it was an attack on the UK as well. Has this been forgotten?

My point in posting was to let you know how men from a "friendly" Arab state saw it.

We Brits have our fair share of people that hate us. Judging by the amount of money given to NorAID and the safe haven offered to IRA bombers and murderers, many of them are in the US.

Just because an number of the people killed by the bombings were not British didn't change the fact that we were the targets. As I recall a couple from the USA were the only people killed in the Harrods bombing.

The world trade Centre was chosen, not because It was the WORLD trade centre but because the twin towers dominated the New York skyline. they were an Icon. If you remember Al Qaeda tried to take them down before with bombs in the basement.

I have to admit that I looked at the TV in disbelief when the first tower came down that was followed by feeling physically sick at the realisation of the huge loss of life. I didn't much care where they came from. They were just ordinary people who went to work that day expecting a day like any other. They didn't put themselves in the firing line.

It took my Arab students a bit longer to get that, but they did get it.

Thank you second circle for correcting my spelling Just couldn't remember it at the time. Too old I guess.

 

[Saxon_Hart]

I was working graveyards. I came home from work and sat down to watch the Denver Broncos game from the night before. They had played the New York Giants on Monday Night Football. I was rewinding the VHS and tuned into Fox and Friends to play my favorite morning game, "What is E. D. wearing. E.D. being E.D. Donhae (if I remember her last name correctly). As the show came on they broke the news of a plane crashing into one of the towers. As the news folk talked about why it may have crashed, one anchor asked the guy he was talking to from the FAA if terrorism had been ruled out. One of my kids asked me if I thought it was terrorists. I was just about to say "It is probably some asshole that couldn't fly," the second plane hit.
I stayed up most of that day watching the whole thing unfold. I finally fell asleep some time after the second tower collapsed, actually it was more succumbing to exhaustion.
I remember all of the gas stations having panic lines at every pump,and the eerie feeling of seeing the Air Guard planes patrolling the skies.

 

[TE999]

I was having a morning swim in the pool and my wife was watching morning TV. Suddenly she throws the slider open and hollers "A plane's crashed into the World Trade Center and the buildings on fire", then ducked back into the house. When I got inside it was total chaos on the TV then we saw the second plane hit the second tower and then it came down that the Pentagon had been hit. My wife was really shook because she and her sister had been in NYC and had gone up in the tower two years prior. They'd sat in the observation area for a while to see the city and then had lunch in the restaurant on top.

I was convinced at the time we were under attack and we were. It was the equivalent of Pearl Harbor in the ongoing War on Terror.

I've flown the Stars and Stripes on September 11th ever since.

 

[Pedagogy]

sorry for the length

I was on the bus going to work. I lived in Brooklyn and worked in mid town Manhattan. We exited the Brooklyn Battery tunnel (which is located about 3 blocks from the WTC) and traffic was at a stand still. I remembered being pissed that I was going to be late for work. We heard alot of sirens fire trucks and police. Some one on the left side of the bus said there was smoke coming from the WTC. Of course a lot of people looked out the window. We saw smoke and what was to be the second plane. We didn't know what was going on at the time.

I got to work about 45 minutes later,by then there was no traffic because they had shut down most streets. When I got to work I was shocked to hear what was really going on, I was scared and was having panic attacks.I worked on Madison ave and it was a ghost town. No traffic no people. All you heard and saw was a lot of jets flying.

When we heard the WTC was in danger of collapsing, most of us went downstairs to see. You could look straight down Madison ave and see the WTC. I remember wondering if the WTC would topple over in our direction(not knowing it was made to crumble.) By then a lot of people had came out of their offices to see.
I actually saw when it fell.The dust from the collapse came all the way up to mid town.Everyone was in shock and couldn't believe their eyes.Some people were crying, it was devastating.
I don't remember how I got home that day.It was in the evening as all transportation was shut down. I have never seen midtown Manhattan that quiet ever. There's usually thousands of people out and traffic. It was surreal nothing but jets and sirens.I think you could feel the devastation in the air(if that makes any sense). It was a sad sad day.

I found out two days later my uncle,who worked in the WTC had a heart attack and died on the way down the stairs.He worked on the 72nd floor.

In 2002 or 2003 I played the number 911 on 9/11. I put nine dollars on it and won 4,500.

 

[Torinona]

I was working on Madison Ave and 24th St in those days. Got to work a little after 8:45am. Jjust gotten off the elevator and was passing the hallway windows facing South - I always looked over at the WTC, because I'd worked there in the 1980's and it was always a slightly less typical, but preferable NYC sky-scraper view than the Empire State or Chrysler Buildings, for me.

Did a double-take when I saw something black. Must've just missed the first plane hitting by seconds, because the fireball was gone but the wind hadn't begun to shift the smoke around. Tried to figure out what floor it was, thinking of the electrical closets and all the HVAC stuff from my workdays there. Had my breakfast in my hand and decided to head to my desk, drop my things and come back and gawk a bit.

Minutes later, I'm back at the windows and there's now a handful of other staffers too, all muttering about "a plane" - I'm thinking a tiny Cessna, like what JFK Jr. crashed in. Then someone says "jet" - I'm now thinking, no way a military jet would hit a building, those pilots are trained to move away from populated areas if they are in distress. Co-worker B gets off the elevator says she heard it was an "airliner". We are now watching helicopters approaching and hovering, whether news or NYPD or FDNY.

B says "What's that plane doing flying so low?" As I start saying "That's a helico-" I catch the plane banking slightly and in it went. That was when it was obvious it was no accident.

Next second, I come to the realization, holy fuck, my husband works at the NY Stock Exchange and I ran back to my desk to call him to see if he had heard or seen anything. He couldn't leave the Exchange because he couldn't see 12 inches in front of him. He'd felt the building shake and everyone thought a transformer had blown. My kid bro called me, wanting to come drive in and pick us up, I told him to stay in the Bronx where it was relatively safer since we were still clueless at that moment of more potential targerts in NYC. Hubby was adamant that he wanted me out of the office and told me to meet him at a friend's apartment in midtown, promising he'd see me soon. The bosses told us all to leave, but tons of us were stranded as the subways were coming to a standstill and the city's infrastructure was shutting down, both intentionally and not.

That 25 block walk to our friends' apartment - was surreal. Everyone was making eye contact which NEVER seems to happen in NY - men and women crying, lines for pay phones [remember those?!] because cell towers were knocked out. People sharing cabs. Vendors and store owners handing out water. People sitting on the curbs, heads in their hands.

I knocked on the apt door and when it opened, I walked into the arms of my friend D. He hugged me, handed me a glass of straight vodka and a Valium - the look on his face I will never forget, he worked with my husband but had had a meeting elsewhere that morning. His wife L. walks in from the kitchen, on the phone - their babysitter and infant son are MIA, as they often go to a park near the United Nations and D&L could not reach the sitter on her cell and were terrified that the UN could be next.

Sitter turned up shortly, thankfully, she and the toddler were fine. But when the doorbell rang some time close to 1pm and there stood my husband with his black sneakers whitened by dust, dress shirt and slacks rumbled and dusty, a filthy bandana around his face, I never saw such beautiful fucking sight in my life.

A few other displaced friends made their way to us. We watched the tv for hours. We tried to wrap our heads around the hit at the Pentagon and the crash in PA. We tried for a sense of normalcy by having dinner together before we tried to make it to the Bronx where we lived. Since there was zero public transit by then, 8 or 9PM at night, D loaned us his car.

We stayed home the next two days, fielding calls and making calls trying to track and account for all our friends and family, alternating between crying and silence whenever the news regarding someone's whereabout wasn't promising. 6 of our peoples among the nearly 3,000, went to work on September 11th and never came home, including Lt. Charlie Garbarini, who like so many of NY's Bravest and Finest and Port Authority law enforcement... went running into the mouth of Hell and never came back out.

Tori

 

[prettyserpentine]

I remember I came home after just passing my driving test. I called my best friend to tell him the news, and got his answer phone. He called me back ten minutes later, congratulating me, and telling me his dog had just got out of the vets after a successful operation.

I was 19 at the time, and after I hung up the phone, I remember it rang again. All he said was "Oh, and turn on the TV." When I asked why, he just said I would know when I saw it. I was standing in the middle of the living room and when I saw it, the second plane hadn't gone in yet, I thought it was a film. I stood there for about an hour, just blank. I called my mum in, and we just couldn't believe it.

Now, I'm not American. I feel I should point that out. What happened that day was a downright tragedy. But what came out of it, all the heroism and the positivity, well it really changed my opinion on the American people. The people. Not the government. I haven't ever seen solidarity like that, brotherhood, the way the rescue services reacted was just amazing. The stories that came out of that tragedy were so inspirational.

I wish they would make September 11th some kind of international victims' holiday. What happened at WTC was horrific, but a lot of people seem to forget about terrorism in other parts of the world.

Growing up in Northern Ireland, for example, with both parents in security services. I've lost a best friend to terrorism when we were 11 year old girls. And more family friends than I care to count. Terrorism comes in many forms, but the amazing thing that rises from the ashes it leaves behind is the human spirit. People make remarks about the frailty of the human spirit, but it isn't frail at all. It's the brightest light of them all.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I was driving to work, my car radio tuned to a robo-music station. I came in to an empty building, and found my cowokers in the boss's office, huddled around his little TV.
I was going to josh them about getting to work, but... the white knuckles, the hunched body language, theblank faces...

I came around just in time to see the second plane adjust its course and hit the building. I felt-- I bet a lot of people felt-- as if we should have been able to reach in, pinch that tiny image right out of the screen and avert the catastrophe.

And then in the weeks that followed, watching our leaders show their real colors, and if only I could have reached into the TV screen and slapped Bush's mouth off his face before he told the world that we were going to go to invade a country for false reasons...

The sense of helplessness as a citizen has impelled many of us. I went one way, others went the other way, but I think, we all started with the same motive.

 

[SandraMustard]

(All content of this post is poignant but removed for brevity - SM)

We stayed home the next two days, fielding calls and making calls trying to track and account for all our friends and family, alternating between crying and silence whenever the news regarding someone's whereabout wasn't promising. 6 of our peoples among the nearly 3,000, went to work on September 11th and never came home, including Lt. Charlie Garbarini, who like so many of NY's Bravest and Finest and Port Authority law enforcement... went running into the mouth of Hell and never came back out.

Tori

This made me cry. You have spoken of your friend with great honor.

 

[SandraMustard]

...But when the doorbell rang some time close to 1pm and there stood my husband with his black sneakers whitened by dust, dress shirt and slacks rumbled and dusty, a filthy bandana around his face, I never saw such beautiful fucking sight in my life.

Tori

I bet it was.

 

[Handley_Page]

I wish they would make September 11th some kind of international victims' holiday. What happened at WTC was horrific, but a lot of people seem to forget about terrorism in other parts of the world.

Growing up in Northern Ireland, for example, with both parents in security services. I've lost a best friend to terrorism when we were 11 year old girls. And more family friends than I care to count. Terrorism comes in many forms, but the amazing thing that rises from the ashes it leaves behind is the human spirit. People make remarks about the frailty of the human spirit, but it isn't frail at all. It's the brightest light of them all.

I'm not sure about Sept 11 being a 'good day for a 'victims holiday'. we could equally have 7/7 or 21/11 as our guides.
But Northern Ireland was/ is no stranger to terror.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'm not sure about Sept 11 being a 'good day for a 'victims holiday'. we could equally have 7/7 or 21/11 as our guides.
But Northern Ireland was/ is no stranger to terror.

Or October 12, for Australia.

(Or every bloody day of the year, if you're Iraqi :-/ )

 

[YoursSINSerely]

I am just, now, sitting down to read everyone's stories of what they remembered of that day. I'm not posting on this thread to keep it going . . . just wanted to stop and thank everyone who posted and to thank those who read their posts and felt their feelings of that horrible day.

For me, it felt good to put my story in writing. I hope someone else was helped by doing the same.

 

[WifeWatchman]

I worked at Ft. McPherson in Atlanta, across from FORSCOM, the highest military headquarters at the Pentagon. With the ATL airport just 8 miles away, we didn't know if a plane would come for us. Also, my brother lived in Brooklyn at the time. I called him and got through; he was on the roof of his brownstone, watching across the river. No one else in my family got through to him that day, but I emailed or phoned them all and told them I'd talked to him and he was okay.

 

[mikoli5763]

At Work

I was at work like almost every commenter I've read when they remember that day. I was working as an electrician and the building had no TV's but there where a couple of radios an the site so every person on the site knew what had happened from the news reports. It is the only time I can remember that all the radio stations we could pick up abandoned the normal routine and did a running commentary on what was happening in New York, Washington, and Pennsylvania that day.
Not much work got done that day as we stood around listening to the radio. I felt angry, confused, sad, and betrayed at some point during the day. When I got home and saw the replay on CNN, I broke down and cried in my living room floor while my wife held me and tried to ease my pain. I still get teary eyed whenever I remember that day even after twelve years.