Official "share your 9/11 story" thread

[CrazedClerkthe2nd]

I figured since it's the Tenth anniversary of the attacks we could all share stories about what we were doing when we found out and how we reacted after.

I was 20 years old at the time, two weeks into college (doing journalism studies of all things, boy did 9/11 ever have an impact on that field!). I remember waking up that morning and noting how beautiful the weather was. Clear sunny day, nice temp, not a cloud in the sky. Interestingly when I walked out my front door this morning conditions were a lot like that.

I think it was about 9:00 am when we first knew something was happening. We were taking up an assignment and I heard murmuring in the back but all I could make out was "plane" "crash" and "tower". I assumed there had been an accident at the local airport and a plane had hit the control tower.

A few minutes later our professor told us there was some sort of incident occurring in New York City involving the world trade center.

We were fortunate enough to have an active cable connection in our classroom, so we wheeled a TV in and watched CNN non stop for about 2 hours.

What I saw was absolutely surreal to me. Even watching replays, it still breaks my heart to see the planes hit and the towers falls. Every person in that classroom stayed glued to the TV in absolutely silence for well over an hour. It was quite unusual.

After that, our professor let us off early for the day so I decided to go downtown. At the time I was living in Ottawa, the national capital of Canada. Downtown was eerily quiet. A lot of roads were blocked, government buildings had been shut down and evacuated and there was a ton of activity around the U.S. embassy.

Not much happened beyond that. I went home and watched news for the rest of the day, called my parents and some friends and actually went to bed a little early.

[NateTheChops]

Where I Was

There are two wishes I would take back in a heartbeat if I could. One of them is the wish that I could have a "I remember where I was" moment. To this day there are very few events in my life that still feel like claws gouging at my heart when I remember them. 9/11 is one of those days.

When I woke up that Tuesday morning, I was in my dorm room at Lyndon State College and I didn't have a class until six-thirty. So I decided to get some laundry done while I worked on a journal entry for English class.

In the morning I like to listen to music while I get ready so I had the radio on to the local station. As I threw my laundry into the bag the DJ read of the news articles for the day.

“And in New York, a plane crashed into the World Trade Center…”

It’s very important for me to explain this. The way the DJ read it was very fast pace and nonchalant. It certainly struck me as out of the ordinary, but as neutral as his voice was I figured it was a small plane that maybe lost an engine or had a stick malfunction. I knew there’d be something on TV because that sort of thing just doesn’t happen every day and the radio, for all it’s entertainment value, is basically background noise to keep the room from being too quiet.

I took my laundry to the basement and threw it in the machine. Then I brought my backpack upstairs into the lounge and that’s when something very odd struck me.

Two of the RA’s were milling around the doorway into the lounge. Inside there were a ton of students sitting around the room, glued to the TV. And on the television was the South Tower, smoke billowing from a very large, gaping hole in the side.

“What the hell?” I wondered out loud.

It didn’t take long to find out what was going on. A jetliner had crashed into the north tower.
Wow, I thought. That’s what the DJ was talking about.

I sat there writing in the notebook that served as my “journal” for class.

A plane has just hit the World Trade Center. I don’t know if it was an accident or not. They aren’t sure yet but everyone is frantic.

About fifteen minutes of watching the screen later I had to go downstairs and switch my laundry from the washer to the dryer. In the space of that time the second plane struck the second tower.

Now a second plane has struck, I wrote in the journal entry. All I want to know right now is what the hell is going on?

And I sat there, glued to the screen, watching as people leapt from the towers and wincing as the camera showed their descent into the ground below. In the space of time it took me to do my laundry the towers had been struck and they crumbled to the ground.

That day the news blared from radios and television sets all over the campus. I watched as they replayed the footage of the plane striking the North Tower fifteen times. One of those times the audio was so clear I could hear the impact of the plane into the tower. It’s a sound I will never be able to get from my mind.

The first thing I felt was terror. Because I can’t stop thinking about things, I had to imagine what it was like for the people trapped at the top of the tower, falling all that way, their hearts pounding as they cried out in terror. I felt sadness that I would never get to see the New York skyline from the observation deck.

Worse of all I thought, oh great. My wish is granted.


I now have a moment that I can tell my nephew and nieces, “When that happened I was…”.

[Ree]

It was a Tuesday morning, and I was waiting to go to work at noon.
I had turned on the TV and wasn't really paying much attention, as I was making coffee and going to start flipping channels to find something interesting.
The morning news show was on one of the CBS channels, and they were talking about a plane hitting the World Trade Center.
At first, I thought it was a private plane or something, and was thinking, "How odd and how stupid do you have to be to fly into that?"
Then I thought it must have been a deliberate suicide.
This was all in seconds of thought as I switched to the ABC channel and Diane Sawyer was talking about it as well.
For some reason, I paid attention, and then watched in horror as the second plane hit.
I still remember Diane gasping as it happened.
It just seemed so bizarre.

I called my husband at work to tell him about it.
At the time, I had no idea the scope of what had happened.
I remember him saying, "Holy shit! You're kidding."

I watched as the towers crumbled, and I could only imagine the horror going on inside that building.
I knew there had to be a tremendous loss of life.

I was so shaken when I got to work.
I wasn't even there. I didn't know anyone in the towers. This was happening hundreds of miles away in another country, even, and yet I was still affected in a way that I think changed me, because I knew I had witnessed the deaths of thousands of people, even if I didn't actually see the bodies.

Even today, when I think about that day, my body tenses and my heart races.

My adrenaline was pumping when I got to work that day.
They had all heard about it and had turned on the display TV's to the news coverage. The floor staff and customers kept stopping to look at the news coverage, and it was all anyone could talk about.

It was a truck delivery day, and I was working in the stockroom to get the freight out.
I still remember that I was just going through the motions, and I'm sure I made a few mistakes that day.

The rest of that day is actually a blur, but until the day I die, I know I will recall those moments and early hours on that Tuesday morning in 2001 as if they were yesterday.

[Frantic Freddie]

I had just woken up & turned on the news as usual,my wife had gotten up earlier & was reading a book in the den but didn't have the big TV on.I saw the North Tower on fire & the reports that a plane had hit it & thought to myself "What,they're lettin' blind people fly planes now? It's a clear day & who could miss that huge building?"
I also flashed back to the B-25 that hit the Empire State Building in 1945,but I knew that was in heavy fog.

Then the 2nd plane hit.

I practically levitated out of bed,yelled at my wife to turn on the TV & sat there in horror for the next few hours.I was the 1st in our neighborhood to put up a flag.

I had to go to the office later that day,not that we had any business but I really didn't know what else to do.In a totally useless gesture I wore my .45 & later saw other people walking around armed (open carry being legal here),it showed me I wasn't the only one feeling helpless.

[BookstoreEscapee]

I was at work in Philadelphia. My coworker (and former college roommate) came down from her end of the office with a printout of the first plane hitting the tower from CNN. By that point you couldn't even get the major news sites to load. Someone near me with a window cubicle had her radio on, so we were listening to that. No TV in the office anywhere.

My parents were in South Jersey on vacation; they managed to get through on the cell phone to ask if I had heard what was going on. I told them I was fine and I might be leaving early and would call when I left and when I got home. By the time I left I couldn't get through to their cell phone, so I called my brother at work so someone would know I was heading home.

Another coworker's husband called to tell her that they said on the news that 30th Street Station would be closing at 2pm, so we left at noon to catch the train home. Outside there were a lot of people who wouldn't normally be out there in the middle of the day, but it was strangely quiet at the same time. We got out of the subway across the street from the train station only to learn it was already closed and we were not even allowed to cross the street to the sidewalk around it.

We headed to the next station where they said we could get information on buses, or catch trains going south. Neither my nor my coworker's trains were running, since we both had to go back through 30th Street, and the bus route to the station where my car was parked was a bit complicated, so my coworker asked me if I wanted to go to her house for a while, and if necessary they would drive me to my car later. We took a bus to a stop a few blocks from her house and walked from there. Her husband was home already with the news on, and that was the first actual video of it that I saw. We stayed glued to the TV for the next few hours. They had the local transit news on a crawl across the bottom of the screen, and it said they were reopening 30th Street Station a little after 4, so my coworker and her husband drove me back there and I caught my regular train home. Normally I would have to cross my fingers to get a seat, but of the four cars, only 2 were open and they were nearly empty.

I got home to my empty apartment, called my parents to let them know I was home safe, turned on the news, and cried.

ETA: The following January I was in New York to see a play, and we went to Ground Zero while we were in the city. By then it pretty much just looked like a construction site, and we couldn't stay on the viewing platform very long (it was really cold and windy up there), but the plywood walls along the path leading up to it were just covered with messages from people from all over the world.

[xaenon]

I was working in my li'l computer shop in SE Indiana. The shop was in a spot where radio reception was next to impossible and although there was a television, I seldom had it on. it had been really, REALLY quiet all morning - no phone calls, no customers, nothing, so I worked on the backlog of machines, including one that had modem issues. I'd just installed a new modem and had it working - it would dial out and connect, but I couldn't figure out why no web pages would load. I would later figure out it was because every single server at that li'l rinky-dink ISP was pegged wide-open, and WHY.

It wasn't until 1 o'clock that I heard ANYTHING of what had transpired that morning. Although I normally ran the shop alone, I had only recently hired on a girl to help out with cleaning and running the front room while I worked in the back. She worked in the afternoons until the place closed at five. When she arrived, I noticed she'd been crying and at first I thought her worthless sh*t of a husband had hit her again.

That's when I got the story. We switched on the television and watched the replays of those planes crashing into the towers, of people falling and jumping to escape the flames. And the terrible, terrible images of those magnificent towers crumbling to dust, taking thousands of innocent lives with them.

I was numb. There's no other word for it. I wanted so desperately to turn off the television, but I couldn't. News bite after news bite, replay after replay, commentary on commentary, and I couldn't move. And amongst these, the announcements that all commercial and private air traffic had been suspended.

I wanted to close, but frankly, I'd have been just as worthless at home. In retrospect, I should have, because right around 4, a customer came in wanting to send an OVERNIGHT package to Los Angeles, early morning delivery.

An overnight package that would require AIR SERVICE to reach Los Angeles. And all commercial and private aircraft were grounded by Federal order. I had NO WAY to send her package.

We went round and round about how there was NO WAY her packet would reach LA by morning. I told her I could accept it as an overnight, I would charge her for it, but it still wouldn't happen. It would either sit until air service resumed, or it would get placed on a truck for ground shipment. I couldn't make her understand that in order for her package to reach LA in the time frame she wanted, it would require a Thing With Wings - and there effectively WEREN'T any.

If I live to be a million, I'll never forget the end of this conversation.

HER: "I don't understand why this is so difficult. You're a FedEx agent. You should be able to get this to LA."

Me: "Lady, are you even AWARE of what happened this morning?"

HER: "I don't give a shit about that. Get this to LA by morning!"

Me: "You know what? There's the door. LEAVE."

I didn't post this in the Customers Suck forum because, frankly, EVERYTHING about that day just sucked.

[SteverinoNY]

I distinctly recall being a Junior in High School at La Salle Institute in Troy, NY (about 2.5 hrs north of Manhattan) and sitting in 2nd period Spanish class at the time. The first period ended at approximately 8:40 and students had about 5 minutes to get from class to class. By the time we sat down and became settled, the school's chaplain (it is a Catholic school) came over the PA and said there's been a horrible tragedy and accident in New York and I would like everyone to pray for all the parties involved. My teacher decided to turn on the television and try to get an understanding of what was going on. We were all watching it in horror seeing the massive North Tower burning when the 2nd plane struck the South Tower. We initially thought that we were watching a replay of the first tower being struck, but there's no way that could be possible looking back on it because the first tower was already smoking and burning. Being a strict school, I was afraid I would get in trouble because I yelled out "holy f*ck" when the 2nd plane hit the tower (stupid teenage narcissism), but on that day there were bigger problems than one teenager cussing in Spanish class. Class was supposed to be over by 9:20 AM, but no one moved for the entire day. The thing that still sticks with me the most is seeing my Spanish teacher hear "The Pentagon has been struck by a plane," freaking out and immediately and grabbing for her cell phone to try to get a hold of her son in law who worked in the Pentagon (he survived, but shortly after retired from active duty military service). After lunch, the whole school was brought together and we had an assembly in the gym to be together and also try and understand what the hell happened. I do not recall exactly where I was when the towers fell because I think I blocked out the horrid scenes of those buildings coming down and knowing people were killed in them. I'll certainly never forget the day and what has happened since those attacks ten years ago. I know I was fortunate to have lived in Manhattan for two years and went to the World Trade Center twice in 2008 and 2009 on 9/11. It's really a calming place. I know a great deal of evil was committed there, but being there helps the healing process and was something that I needed to do.

One of the true heroes of the 9/11 attacks was a relative of my aunt, Gerard Dewan. He was born and raised in Boston and was destined to be a firefighter. Trying to become a 4th generation member of the Boston FD, he could not get into the department, so he relocated to New York, eventually becoming a member of Ladder 3, Battalion 6. On that day, he was just coming off shift when the call came in to go to the WTC. He jumped on the back of a truck, made it to the World Trade Center and did his part in helping thousands of people make their way out of the towers. He unfortunately did not make it out before the tower collapsed. A month later, his memorial service in Boston was attended by 5,000 police, firefighters, and other rescue workers from all across the United States. The world is missing a great guy and a true hero, but without people like him, many thousands more would have perished.

May God Bless America and Never Forget the events of that horrific day

[Lyse]

I was on duty that day and just sitting in the office and balancing my checkbook since the admiral wasn't due in for a while yet.

At the time, I was part of a few SMS based groups - kinda a precursor to Twitter, I suppose. When the first text came through about a plane hitting the towers I remember thinking that it was as awful thing, but not much else. A few minutes later, a second text came through. My first thought was that it was a duplicate - until I actually processed the word "another" enough to realize the truth.

I spent most of the rest of the morning in either the admiral's office or one of the conference rooms since they had cable.

[telecom_goddess]

I was at home getting ready for work at a call center for a dsl provider I was working for at the time. I was reading news online and saw the report of the first plane hitting the WTC. I remember thinking...what kind of idiot would hit a building instead of missing it? I thought it was an accident. Then I read about the second one and realized this was no accident. I didn't watch the news on tv...that would have been too much. But I had the radio on all day at work and didn't get shit done. No one did.

A few days later I was in a local mall when these huge sirens went off...they sounded like air raid sirens. I got the hell out of there freaked like you wouldn't believe Turns out it was a fire alarm or something...but damn they could pick a better sound.

[dendawg]

It's not a day I'll ever forget, that's for damn sure.

I woke up right at the time the first plane hit, give or take a minute, and noticed the coverage. Like many other people I thought that a small plane had hit it, and this was a minor event at worst. I was logging on to check my email when I heard my ex scream because of the second plane hitting. I said "To hell with this," and spent most of the morning spreading the word and checking whatever sites I could.

Now here's the scary part: (to me at any rate) At the time I was a contract worker as a janitor at the Michigan state house of representatives, and in spite of attempting to get in touch with my boss, had received no notice not to come in, so I dreaded coming to work that day. I went in as normal only to be told to go home. So I did, and spent the rest of the day watching everything unfold.

[Sunsetsky]

I was 16 and a junior in high school when it happened. I remember it being a very beautiful day outside here in Colorado as well. I was actually getting into my car to go to school when the first tower was hit. Nothing was said on the radio though and I carried on like usual. My first period class was band and we played like usual but at the end of class our band teacher made a comment about something big going on and that he should have just turned on the TV instead of having us play.

My friend and I (we had band together) arrived to our second period class to find only one other student in there at the time and the TV was on. We saw the skyline of New York basically on fire and we asked what had happened and the other student told us that a plane hit one of the towers. I thought it was a small aircraft at first but I found out not long afterwards the second tower and the pentagon had been hit. While we were watching they announced that there was another plane that was hijacked and had crashed in Pennsylvania. Most of my family lives in Pennsylvania so I was concerned but later found out that everyone was okay if not a bit shaken up (my aunt worked about 30 min from the crash site). I also remember watching the collapse of the towers. It was surreal.

My mom called me during second period and told me to leave school. My friend came with me (I was her ride and her mom told her to leave as well) and we went to pick up my sister from her school and went back to my place. I live in a very heavy military town. We have one army base, three Air Force bases, and Norad in my city. My dad worked in Norad and happened to be at work that day so I was very worried about him and the mountain was on lockdown. I believe he had to spend the night there. I never heard so many jets fly overhead in my life. It was a bit unnerving at first to hear the jets flying around the city but it was also comforting to know we were being looked out after.

[Victory Sabre]

Here's my story. There will be a little background, though.

I've lived in my town since shortly before general election day in 1999. City elections, at the time, were held in odd years. Primary day in Minnesota, in 2001, was September 11th.

End background.

I got up that morning, and decided to go vote. I had the radio on, listening to the local morning talk show, but left around 7:40 to walk to the polling place, several blocks away. I take my time. It's a beautiful morning out (just like this morning). I get there, and find out that for city elections in my town, there is no primary election. Since there wasn't any school board primaries that day, either, there was no voting going on.

Feeling silly for walking there, I walk home, and take my time.

I get home around quarter after 8. Before I turn on the talk show, I decided to see if there's anything good on the boob tube. So I turn on the TV. It was set to ch-4 (CBS) from the night before. I see the image of the towers on fire. I comment to myself "wow, what amazing special effects. It almost looks real". I decide to go up. I turn it to ch-5 (ABC). When I see the same image on the screen I say "OH SHIT!!!!!!!" I quickly turn it to FOX News, and turn my radio back on. So I can find out what happened. I watch in numb horror and the towers fell, the news of the Pentagon being hit, and the plane crashing in PA.

When the Pentagon got hit, I really got sick to my stomach. See, my cousin was, and is, a civilian employee who works there. I know it's huge, but I was really worried about her. I was worried that her (then) very young kids would grow up without their mom.

I found out a few days later that she was ok. At the time she wasn't in the building. She, and an Army officer were traveling to Andrews AFB. When they found out the Pentagon was hit, he drove to the nearest Metro station, dropped her off, and told her to go home.

When I got to work, the people there knew about the planes hitting, but that's all. I had the terrible "honor" to tell them that the towers had collapsed, the Pentagon was hit, and the plane crashing in PA. One of the openers had been to the WTC in 1997, and had gone to the top, and seen the city from the top.

I'll never forget this as long as I live.

[taurinejunkie]

It was the day of the "get to know people" activity, my first year in high school. We were on a camp just outside of Quebec City. Probably a few minutes after the second tower had collapsed, one of the teachers got a call on her cellphone. I don't think I've ever seen someone's expression change so quickly, and then she repeated the news for everyone to hear. Being rather young and unaware of the importance of the WTC I didn't have much of an immediate reaction, but after the initial announcement came the explanation and that's when it hit me.

[TheSHAD0W]

I woke up to the phone ringing, and blearily answered; a friend was saying something about a plane hitting the WTC, but I was too fuzzy to understand much. He got off the phone quickly and I turned on the TV.

The news was showing the view from a helicopter circling a burning skyscraper. Wasn't paying that much attention to the audio, just newscasters gabbling. It was a tall building, but it couldn't have been the World Trade Center since there was no twin to it. Still trying to wake up, trying to understand the audio... That is the WTC? Where's the other tower? Trying to get my bearings on the view as the chopper flew around.

It wasn't very long until the 2nd tower collapsed. I watched in fascinated horror as the floors pancaked and the outer shell unzipped. I wouldn't have thought a building could collapse that way, straight down; it obviously wasn't an "implosion", as it happened from the top down, but I would've thought it would fall over sideways rather than pancake like that.

The rest of the day was surreal. I called to check on my family and read the stories of the plane that hit the Pentagon and Flight 93.

[tropicsgoddess]

I was 17 and it was my Senior year of high school (My family and I were living in south Florida at the time). I just walked into my 3rd hour Spanish III class (after coming from my 2nd hour Informal Geometry class) and saw the TV on. Typically my Spanish teacher Mrs. G didn't have on the TV unless it was the school news or something educational but that day was the exception. When I walked in, the TV showed the first plane lodged in the north tower of the WTC. I thought that it was a freak accident at first until I saw the second plane hit the south tower. Everybody was glued to the TV and the classroom was quiet until we saw the towers collapse and everybody groaned when it happened. We were all talking about how we feared that they could possibly hit us next and the entire time we had the news on in class about the attacks. Even the next 4 classes I had all had the TV on and everybody (pretty much the whole school) was glued to the TV and parents were pulling their kids out of class early. Me and my sisters were pulled out early too. My mom came and got me and my kid sis L (she was a sophomore at the time) and our dad picked up our baby sis D, who was in 7th grade. We all turned on the news and my dad (after so many tries) was finally able to get a hold of our uncle E who was working in the Holland tunnel at the time. Thankfully our family in NY turned out okay. Not one TV station had on their regular programming because of the attacks and I still remember when Dan Rather said that this would be a day of infamy on the news (along with my principal over the intercom the next day at school). Though I didn't know anybody that died in the attacks, I still get sad from it because of how somebody can heinously attack our country and kill so many innocent people with no remorse.