Where were you?
 

So, tomorrow marks the five year anniversary of the horrid event of September 11th. Was wondering where you were/what you were doing when you first heard about the tragedy.

I was at my college town in Nelsonville, Ohio when I heard about it. I didn't have TV at the time because I was a poor college kid. One of my buddies called and woke me up from bed and told me what happened and when the first plane hit. I really didn't think a whole lot about it at first, but I knew my buddy was kinda scared. I heard about the rest of it on the radio. I was pretty floored. Bless the innocent lives that passed that day.

Sitting at my desk, with one shoe on, all day, watching TV.
I was putting on my shoes when the morning show said they had heard a plane had hit the WTC. Then they cut to a rooftop camera but it was too far away to see anything but a little smoke. :(

I was living in DC in Dupont Circle, getting ready for work with the TV news on, when they started coverage after the first plane hit...my fiance and I were watching while the second one hit, then we walked to work.

Of course, nobody was getting any work done. Suddenly, one of the web guys yelled, "They bombed the Pentagon!!" Then, "Everybody stay inside!" I thought, screw that, if I'm going to die today, I want to be with my fiance. So, I walked a couple of blocks (very quickly) to the bar he worked at, and spent the rest of the morning watching the horror on TV, and taking turns trying to use the pay phone to tell my family that I was OK. Went back to work for a little while, then walked home through a deserted Dupont Circle when the state of emergency was called.

I found out later in the afternoon that my cousin had been in the second tower, but had gotten out alive, thank goodness.

I was driving in to work and listening to the local NPR station, 93.9 WNYC. I heard them say that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center, and then suddenly, it went to static. Their link to the broadcast antenna on the North Tower had been severed.
I figured they were talking about a small plane, and didn't think too much of it, untill I got to work and saw the footage on TV.

I worked at the Sheriff Office and across the hall from me was the television the Investigators used to view tapes and watch news reports. They turned on the TV and left it on for anyone/everyone to view.
I continued to do my work and kept an eye/ear on the TV. I saw everything that was shown on TV. I eventually had to close my door as listening/watching was interfering with my work.

My Uncle and his daughter worked near the Towers. They walked out of the city together. Other Uncle worked in DC. He was fine, too...but it was a long time before Mother and myself knew they were okay.
hh

I was at work. As usual, I had the radio on, and heard the first reports of a plane crashing into the WTC. There were no details for a little while, but it slowly became apparent what had occurred. Then the second plane hit, and it was crystal clear that an act of terrorism had taken place.

We had no TV there, so one of our guys ran down to WalMart and bought one so we could follow it. That was the first day I ever had to take a nitro tablet because I was worried about the tension in my chest.

in college. i woke up late that day, about 8:45, an hour later than usual. on the way to class i heard something about wtc ... then something about DC ... so i didn't think much of it until i passed through the PE center and saw the footage on TV. only then (around 10-10:30 am) were people on campus starting to gather around TVs.

i went to the newspaper office and checked on my brother and cousins who live/work in NYC (one cousin worked in one of the smaller WTC buildings). i spent the next three days at the newspaper.

someone criticized me for not immediately reacting when i first started hearing rumors ... yeah, maybe i should have made a phone call or stopped to see what was going on. but, you know, i had places to be, stuff to do. never imagined this would happen. now things are different - terrorism seems to be the first thing that comes to mind (think NYC blackout of 2003).

(sorry, edited to correct time elements)

We'd fallen asleep with the TV on. I woke up in the small hours to see all our local channels had replaced the regular infomercials with live feeds from CNN and other news providers. I think it was not long after the first plane had hit. I can't be sure if we saw the second plane hit live-to-air or not. At first I didn't want to wake my partner up - Everything was genuinely fuzzy and didn't seem real. Later we saw the towers collapse.

I stayed home that day, (my sales rep job is such that I can do that sometimes) really just to watch the news. I did go out briefly to get the newspaper, and wound up having a shocked and amazed conversation with a complete stranger. We had about three days of straight CNN.

I know I'm on the other side of the world, and I didn't know anyone personally involved, but I was (and still am) genuinely shocked by the whole attack. I can't begin to comprehend how I'd have felt if it had happened in my city.

We were doing a large parcel survey near New Milford, PA. The Real Estate guy drove up with his radio on and called us all over. We listened a while then went back to work not knowing what was going on. I remember feeling guilty later in the week when appreciating how beautiful the sky was without any contrails and how quiet the woods were with no air traffic.

I was between real jobs, and was working at the Country Club. Didn't have to be in until 11 and worked split shifts so I was sleeping late. My ex woke me up, turned on the TV in the bedroom and said "you're not going to f***ing believe this." It was after the 2nd plane hit and I remember just looking at him and asking "WHY?"

Still had to work, golfers gotta golf, lunchers gotta eat, rich gotta be rich. Most of the early golf birds didn't know until they came into the clubhouse. One old man kind of laughed and said "who did we piss off now?" I wanted to smack him. The lady golfers came in at the turn, though, and stayed glued to the TV.

What a horrible day.

At my desk at work. The secretary came in and said, "A plane just flew into the world trade center tower." and I said "what?" She said, "You'd better come out here, we've got the TV on"---we watched tv alllllll day--no work was done. I worked in a clinic at the time and no patients came in that day, either. I remember that it was a beautiful sunny and clear morning.

PS I thought peter jennings was an ass. when the towers started to come down he acted like he didn't know what was happening. He seemed rather gleeful to me.

Driving to work, also listening to WNYC, in Ridgewood NJ. They reported about the first plane and I called my wife at her office in midtown to tell her about it. While we were on the phone, the second impact was reported on the radio, and she told me "I've go to go." She didn't make it home that day for another twelve hours owing to the chaos in the city.

When, later on, they announced the impact on the Pentagon, I yelled aloud, thinking "war."

It was kind of nice while we had that, wasn't it?

I was at work, and heard about it by an office e-mail that went around. They set up a TV in the cafeteria, and the place was standing room only as we all watched the towers fall. There were lots of false rumors going around. A bomb at the State Department, one on Metro, Metro being shut down. It was all kind of confusing and pretty scary. A few people were crying. I went around trying to comfort some of the people in my department, and get them thinking clearly. Mostly folks were worried about their loved ones, who they couldn't reach because the phone circuits were overloaded. I think I helped to calm a few people down. Then my firm closed. Nobody was working anyway.

I left a voicemail for my wife at home, letting her know I was OK, and that I was going to walk home, I had heard a rumor that Metro was closed, and even if it wasn't I didn't want to be trapped in the Metro tunnel. I felt like I had options if I was above ground. When I got outside, the place was gridlocked. The intersections weren't moving, which was great if you are a pedestrian. You just walk around all the cars. I made it home much faster than if the traffic was actually moving and I had to wait for lights.

My walk home would have taken me within one block of the White House, but I went a few blocks out of my way to stay away from that potential target. I kept looking up at the sky for planes, and imagined what I might do if I saw one heading towards me, but the sky was empty. After awhile there were a few fighters flying around, but that was it. Lots of sirens all over the place on my walk home.

There was one point where I crossed over a bridge into Georgetown over Rock Creek Park, and I could see the huge cloud of smoke billowing out of the Pentagon. I stopped to watch it for a while and take the whole scene in. Fighter jets flying around overhead, sirens all over the place, oily black smoke filling the sky a mile or two away. It was bad.

Then as I got closer to home, things started to seem more normal. It was a drop dead gorgoeus fall day. I walked into my living room, hugged my family. We turned off the TV, and just enjoyed each other's company. We were happy to be alive and it really was a beautiful day outside. I think we went to the playground for a couple hours.

I was at work in London and one of our van drivers came and and told us what he had heard on the radio. We were trying to access the BBC website but it was so slow because everyone had the same idea.

One of our Directors was out and our Team Manager crept into his office and watched the television, coming back to update us.

I was in a foul mood that day - probably a row with the Evil Ex who I was still semi detached from at that time -and I was snapping at everyone. I didn't really appreciate the impact until the next day. I had very little empathy at the time as for me it was just another terrorist attack and we'd seen enough in this country. I was annoyed with people suggesting we went home early as Canary Wharf (highest tower in London) might be next. And annoyed that on a very busy day we were one person down because of our Team Leader slacking off and everyone who called wanted to discuss it, slowing down our call rates.

I did change my initial opinion of course and felt regret that I had been so self absorbed by petty concerns as people were dying. When I got home and started watching it on the news it began to hit me - this could have been my office. Those were real human being deciding to jump.

And I had been there. I had Christmas dinner in The Windows on the World Resturant two years before.

I was at work, in South Jersey. One of my coworkers got a call from her husband that a plane hit one of the twin towers. I pointed out that some idiot in a small plane must have really fucked up. Then tne husband brought in a tv. We watch between patients. Someone on the tv said 50,000 people could be in each tower at any given moment. When they collapsed I thought there go 20-25,000 people. I was amazed that so few died. And I agree that the plane-free sky was eerie and beautiful. When air traffic resumed, I caught myself looking up when a plane went overhead.

I was just arriving for work -- at the Sears tower. Before I got to my desk they announced on the PA that they were clearing the building. I went home and made the mistake of turning on the TV. I'm not the sort that slows down at accident sites, but I could not turn the TV off all day.

San Francisco
 

I was with my Brasilan enamorada, Solange, in a small-but-nice hotel in San Francisco. It was our first visit to that beautiful city. I came out of the bathroom after a shower and saw the image of the WTC towers smoking. The sound was off. For a moment, Solange and I thought it was a movie. Then when we realized what was happening, we both cried and held each other.:( We decided to go to SF instead of NYC only a month before.

Brasilians don't always like America or Americans, but at this time I could feel how sorry Solange felt for our country. NYC is like a mecca for many Brasilians.

I was getting ready for work, which at the time was at a wild-game processing business. I was getting coffee, just about to head out the door, and turned on the TV to see what the weather forecast was. They were showing the first tower with smoke coming out of it. While they were replaying some footage, the second tower got hit. I went to work and we didn't do much but sit around and prepare for the end of the world -- nothing like this had ever happened in the US, and EVERYthing changed about our outlook that day.

Guys came down from their hunting trips in the mountains for hte next 2 or 3 days with no idea what had happened, and we must have told the story to 50 people who hadn't turned on a radio or TV yet.

I was at work on the confocal microscope in our lab. My boss came in for the day and asked if I'd heard about the plane that hit a WTT. I said no, and kept on working. After awhile, one of the grad students (from Canada) came in and was all upset about the attack... huh??? I was then glued to the internet and radio all day.

My only personal connection to the whole disaster was my cousin who went to help seach for people and aid in the cleanup. He was/is a volunteer firefighter in his local burb in Conneticut. He won't talk about it. It must have been really REALLY traumatic, because he's not the type to not share things.

My cousin walked down from the 46th floor of one of the towers, then to Jersey, rented a car to get home in South Jersey, his unit of army reserves was called up, and he was beck on the site that night or the next morning.

I was sitting at my computer in the middle of an icq conversation with an American guildmate. In the middle of the conversation he stopped replying for a few minutes then a badly typed message appeared, clearly typed in a hurry "Oh shit, shit, a planes just crashed into the wtc" I haven't included the typos as I can't recall exactly what they were.

That was the first I heard about it. At that point everyone still thought it had crashed. My friend, though not living in NY at the time was by birth a New Yorker and had friends and family working in the trade centre. It was a long morning for him. I kept my ICQ up open and and every so often he'd post me an update. I think it helped him to ground himself in something normal, the kind of thing he usually did when working from home.

I was sitting in class at my high school when someone came over the PA and made a breif concise announcement of what happened (around 10 AM). From there we finished class and all the students started wandering aimlessly around the halls trying to find friends and a ride home.. almost everyone just went home. when I got back to my house my mother was just turning off the TV and said she couldn't watch any more. All I could think was "man the airlines are gonna have to pay people to fly"

it was a strange day - 2 weeks before my wedding. I was working in a 30 story-tower in Vienna, Austria at that time. I felt ill and went home. (I have no telepathy-abilities or something like that)

After 20 min lying in my bed at home I recieved an SMS (text message): "terror attack on USA, watch TV, no joke! ". I turned on Austrian "public" broadcast and they were reporting all day - just as probably every station in the world.

it was very impressive and depressing. one kind of knew that things change right now...

I was doing some welding at a friends shop, when one of his bright young hands came in and told me. I said yeah right ya been listening? to war of worlds.

I was notified by IM. It was my sophomore year at Boston University, and it was probably about 10 or 11am when I found out. I was getting ready for classes, and a friend who I really never talked to IMed me through AIM and told me the news.

I honestly didn't know that much about the New York City skyline at the time, so I really didn't understand the impact of all this. But looking at the pictures and videos online, you just knew.

They didn't cancel classes, but I don't think I went anyway. I remember walking around aimlessly for a while. It was a gorgeous day for September. The skies were clear and bright. But it was miserable. And you could see in everyone's eyes that they felt it too.

I was at work at my realty company's corporate office. Someone came in to my office and said, 'A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center!!'. I changed my radio from music to news but it was very vague as it had only happened about 10 minutes prior. I tried to log on to CNN's online site but it was jammed. We had a TV in our conference room for taped presentations, but we couldn't get a television channel to tune in. Someone ran out and bought an antenna and we all clustered in the conference room watching the news for the rest of the day. I remember standing in the doorway (all the seats were taken) watching when the towers fell. A lot of people were crying and many had gone home to try to contact relatives who lived in NYC or worked in the towers.

My (now ex) husband's family is from NYC and his brother worked on Wall Street. We were very worried about him. Turns out he was dropping his kids off at daycare a couple of blocks away when it happened. He grabbed them and headed for his parent's home in Jersey. Several of my co-workers lost family or friends who were in the towers.

I was glued to the TV for days.

Stormie

I was sitting in school, in Spanish class. I guess they didn't want to disturb the children, so they just said that "some planes have crashed into some buildings in New York". That was at roughly 1:30. When school let out an hour later, my mom rushed me and my brothers home and turned on the TV. We just stood there, not saying a word.

Just waking up when I heard about the first plane hitting on NPR. At first I thought it was probably some knucklehead in a Cessna lost in the fog -- like the bomber that hit the Empire State Building. But, I decided to turn on the TV and here's a bright sunny day and a huge hole in the WTC. Two minutes later, the second plane hit.

I was driving to work, listening to NPR or PBS or CSPAN - something news-related with a weak signal. Suddenly they cut in with the news that the WTC had been hit. Just as that happened, I went under an overpass and lost the station. As I emerged, on the horizon I saw a huge plume of black smoke on the horizon. It was only later that I figure it was the Pentagon.

Timeline-wise, this is odd, because the first plane hit at 8:45, the second at 9:03, and the Pentagon at 9:43. I would have expected a radio station to be on full-time coverage of the WTC long before I could have seen the smoke. I guess it took a while for whatever station I was listening to to get the news.

I was late for work because I stopped that morning to vote. It was a perfect Sept day. Our small office of 20 was gathered at the front desk listening to NPR online unbelieving. I called my spouse then a friend who I knew was home with tv access for confirmation. I called my parents.
I got home from work, It was still beautiful out, and the construction workers we had been waiting for for weeks had finally showed up to demolish our old garage. Mr. Warch and I sat on lawn chairs, drinking beer and pondering the huge stupid hole. Lots of neighbors wandered by looking dazed and just for human contact and to not look at the Tv.

I was at work...I suppose the office manager had news on her radio because we had not been there very long before she told us a plane had hit one of the towers, and we thought like a lot of people that it was just a horrible accident. We turned on the tv in the conference room and stayed tuned all day through a staticky, crappy signal.

At the time I worked in a new building that was part of an area being developed, on the northwest side of Dallas into Las Colinas, close to the airport but still separated by fields and vacant land. You could see the airport tower from our parking lot. When all the planes were grounded, it was eerie to go outside and hear the silence coming from the empty sky.

On vacation, which has become a tradition for us.

Took this pic this morning, right before we found higher ground for the Jeep as the tide was still coming in...
Still flooded here due to Ernesto, but its all good...

http://pic7.picturetrail.com/VOL205/.../186499403.jpg

the previous day....just arrived. the jeep has not moved.

My wife and I were dozing that morning with the clock-alarm radio on, and I began swimming up from sleep to dreaming the strike on the Pentagon as the announcer described it, with the aircraft coming in low enough over the Pentagon's southeastern parking lot (the place is mostly surrounded by parking) to clip the light poles. I came fully awake to the words, "The World Trade Center is gone." We looked at each other, got up, went to the living room and turned CNN on.

The wife's workplace told her to just come in a couple hours late -- business all that day was very slack. I spent a good part of the day seeing if anyone was accepting blood donors, as we were figuring upwards of 25,000 casualties that day and the actual figure, or something near it, wasn't known until later in the week -- there were no extraordinary blood drives being set up, and few facilities available to do so in any event.

I ended up staying awake twenty-four hours straight, too furious to rest. I'm still angry.

I was at home, asleep. Someone called and woke me up because they knew I'd miss it otherwise.

I learned about the first WTC bombing because a patient told us. She was usually pretty psychotic and we didn't believe her until we turned on the radio.

I was at home, trying to put together something suitable to wear to my good friend's David H.'s funeral. I spent that part of that day at the funeral home and then I went to David's favorite bar and had a couple of beers.
I remember thinking that at least David had been in heaven a couple days before the Towers were hit and he would be helpful with all the new souls. He would help them.

I was at home, working, in the UK (for us, it hapenned at lunch-time)

The Wicked-StepDaughter poked her head around the door ' Some airplane has just crashed into some tower in New York' she says....

Oh, really, thinking some Cessna has done a King Kong into the Empire State....

Finishes off the proggie, saves it to SourceSafe (not my choice - corporate policy) and decides to check out the Beeb news-site.....

times out..... as does CNN, Reuters, Annanova....

wow! something big is going down......

dashes to front room and turns on TV to the beeb......


Christ, did the World change that day........

There's an interesting article on "Forbidden Thoughts about 9/11" at salon.com. The thoughts some of us were thinking, but couldn't really share.
It doesn't mention the lack of contrails and the silence, but I certainly did (guiltily) appreciate them at the time.

That was really great. I enjoyed it thoroughly.

When I saw that the towers had fallen, it was a full 10-15 minutes before I even thought to try and contact my brother. I wasn't worried about him. THat's probably because I knew he works uptown (on 15th st) and really wouldn't have any reason to be close to WTC. And at that hour, if he wasn't at the office, he'd be dead asleep in his apartment, which is also far from the site.

My first thought was "holy shit," followed very quickly by, "how are we going to put out the next day's newspaper?" I remember getting to the office and seeing some people crying, some flustered, some just quietly watching the TV. One of the executive editors came out of the ed-in-chief's office yelling, "there's NO way I'm doing production. NO way." I reacted by keeping a cool head and doing whatever was necessary to make sure the day's job still got done: talking to staff who just wanted to chat, pitching in ideas when I saw reporters struggling, letting my assistants out when they wanted to go. We were just students, but we still had a responsibility to the campus community, a large part of which was from the NJ/NY/CT area.

I shed no tears, despite growing up with NYC in my backyard. Thinking about the towers makes me solemn, but I still view it the same way I view the Iraq war - at a distance, with very few direct connections.

Working about a mile from the end of the Philly airport runways, the quiet was deafening. Then when they started again, every plane was startling for a couple days.

The whole WTC scene was so surreal it was almost like watching a movie that just kept going and going. I think a lot of people had a hard time figuring out how it would affect them...... their lives in Podunk, Elsewhere. Kind of like it's terrible but it's there, not here, and I have to go to work and pick up the kids and do laundry and, and, and.

I remember a debate going on, when could comedians mention the WTC? What was too soon? Laughter/humor helps us through rough times but the pros don't want to be seen as insensitive like Bill Maher. :headshake

I remember my parents going to give blood after the Kings Cross fire in 1987. I did exactly the same after the Kings Cross bombing last year.

Well, not exactly the same as we were all successful in giving (not sure if we have the same system in the UK - you can sign up to give blood free of charge quarterly, but they issue appeals for extra blood after emergencies)

They charge you to donate blood?!? :eek:

i was laying in bed holding my 3 month old son watching CNN talk about the plane that hit the tower... when i saw the 2nd plane hit i was overwhelmed with sorrow because i realized the world had just changed. we were at war, but we didn't yet know who it was with.

i went to work a couple hours later (car dealership) the sales manager was all excited trying to get us to start cold calling past customers because "everybody is at home in front of the tv - you should be able to get ahold of a lot of people today!" the owner sent him home after realizing that a couple of sales people weren't joking about the death threats sent his way.

I thought all the emergency blood drives were ridiculous. I know it helped people feel charitable from a distance ... but most of the 9/11 victims died, there were relatively few critically injured patients to give blood to.

This outpouring of generosity put the Red Cross in the spotlight until one of the news outlets made this point. If I remember correctly, donor blood can only be kept for something like 60 days; while there was a slight shortage pre-sept. 11, apparently much of the blood donated in the days following went unused.

Sorry, that was grim. Anyway, everyone who can should donate blood. Seeing blood drives all over the place post-9/11 just made me feel like time/money/effort wasn't being put in the right place.

Not any grimmer than the thread subject.
You're spot on about the blood drives.... just a feel good program But, it might have been a big help to the donors, feeling they could do something, anything, when they were feeling helpless. What is needed is a steady supply of donors.
Can't they separate out the plasma to keep longer than fresh blood? Considering the blood is donated, and the hospital charges the patient a fortune, who's making the profit, the Red Cross or the hospital? Or is that for postage and handling? :confused:

...all this talk of blood donation reminded me, I too went to give blood the day after the attacks. I'm a semi regular donor normally, but was way overdue when it all happened. I realise that this action was completely irrational in relation to 9/11, but there was just this feeling like you HAD to do something. I guess it was out of a feeling of helplessness.

That in itself troubles me a bit. I didn't really have any right to be feeling as bad as I did (do) about the attacks; like I said, I wasn't personally affected in any way. The feeling was there nonetheless. I guess it was that all our way-of-lives had been attacked, and that things wouldn't be the same again.

I think it was those feelings in congress that allowed the patriot act and Iraq war to be approved.

(Just an FYI)
It actually depends on the product that they are talking about - there are three different products that can be gotten out of a Whole Blood donation (There are 3 other kinds of donation):

Shelf-life
Red Cells – 42 days
Platelets – 5 days
Plasma – 1 year

I was still in the Navy at that time. I had been out inspecting the docks and came in between the first and second planes. I remember thinking that it was a horrible accident the first time but when I saw the second plane hit, I knew it was deliberate and was ready to get back aboard my ship and go kick ass on whoever it was that did it.

At some point (it wasn't immediately after, but not a long time) I called up to donate blood. I usually go a couple times a year. They said they had too many donors and not to bother.

Two days later I got a letter in the mail beseeching me to donate because they were so short.

Anyway. On the day itself I came straight into my office and booked airline tickets for two trips I needed to take. After I was done my boss stuck his head in my door and asked me if I had heard anything about an airplane accident in New York City.

I guess it was a symbolic bloodletting for the rest of us, to let us somehow share in the carnage.

OK, this time it was some knucklehead in a Cessna... I think.

hmmm... make that a knuckleballer...