9-11-2001: Where were you?

[Mark Arbour]

So we've gotten to the point in 9.11 where the planes have hit the Twin Towers, and that's been bringing back some pretty strong memories for me.  I thought it would be interesting (and cathartic) to start a thread and hear how people reacted to the attacks on that day.  I'll start.

 

I had just started a new job, and was supposed to fly out to Phoenix on September 13 to meet some of the people I'd be working with.  I didn't really have to get up early, but I was trying to get my body to adjust, especially since I'd lose another hour (or two...those old bastards in Arizona can't do daylight savings time! ).  I had just gotten out of the shower and was watching the news when the story began running about the first WTC tower being hit.  I remember I sat down in front of the television, still wet, wearing just a towel, and watched in horror as the north tower burned.  At first I was wondering how bad of a pilot someone would have to be to hit a big fucking building like that.

 

Then as I was watching the television, the second plane hit, and I remember being completely freaked out.  It was obvious then that this was no accident.  I sat there for at least an hour, stunned, watching the news, watching the buildings burn, watching people jump out of them, and then watching them collapse.  I remember being numb, then calling friends who were working and telling them.  I remember that the Pentagon seemed like an afterthought, and so did the plane that crashed in Western PA, at least initially. 

[joann414]

I was at work in my office.  The plant manager called me on my intercom and told me to come to the main office.  I drove over there, and noticed the other seven or eight supervisors going into the office.  Thinking it was something very important, but plant related, I got pretty uptight.  When I walked in the door, the receptioninst told me to go to the conference room.  Our manager had the television on in there.  Needless to say, we all sat down around the conference room table in stunned silence.  Nobody was saying a word.  All I could think when they showed people jumping was their families that probably had their televisions on, watching in helpless horror.  Several of us cried silently, unable to imagine what was going to happen next.

[B1ue]

I was about three weeks into my senior year of high school. My mom was able to drive me to school that morning (usually I walked or caught a ride with a friend), and we heard the news over the radio. My mom already knew thanks to my sisters, but she had not told me anything was amiss until we heard this, and she had to admit it. The full extent of the attack did not become apparent to me until later.

 

Nothing was accomplished at school. We mostly watched the news broadcasts all day that day, or discussed with our teachers what was going on. The commentary got quite vicious. Most of my male classmates, and quite a few female ones, just wanted a target to strike against. Nine months later most of them, including my entire circle of friends except myself, enlisted.

Edited September 10, 2013 by B1ue

[Never Surrender]

i was at primary school, absolutely nothing was said all day about it but i guess thats because we are 5 hours ahead i think?

i remember mom picking me up from school , we went to the petrol station and i remember her just saying that before we went home and i put the TV on, she had to tell me that some bad people had stolen some planes and crashed them into buildings in America, but i shouldnt worry because they wouldnt do it here.

 

A couple of days later dad explained terrorism to me, he did it pretty well because he grew up in Birmingham during the IRA attacks in the UK and stuff, but he also said that terrorism would never happen here. I held on to that belief, perhaps naively, until i was way too close to 7/7 in London 4 years later. It was only at that point that i really understood more about what had happened on 9.11, even though they were different types of attacks.

[Dolores Esteban]

I left work earlier that day because it was my mother's birthday. My mother had already switched on the TV when I arrived at her house. It was afternoon here in Germany. I gazed at the screen in shock. The first tower was burning. More guests arrived and we gathered in front of the TV, my mother's birthday forgotten. The second tower was hit. We watched peopled jumping down, we saw people dying. We saw it all live on TV. We didn't talk, we just kept watching for hours. It was a nightmare, a night of horror. I was certain that World War III had begun.

[K.C.]

That’s a day I would rather forget.  My husband, Robert was working at the Pentagon.  I had just started a brand new job at a new hospital in Northern Virginia that was very very close to Dulles Airport (It wasn’t even open yet) we were setting up the surgery rooms, when we got a page that the building was being evacuated. 

 

At first we were only told that a plane was ‘lost’ from the airport then moments later we were told  about the New York hijacking…seconds later we heard about the Pentagon being hit.  It all happened so fast.  Fear and panic can’t describe the feeling.  Cell Phones didn’t work.  I tried to call him hundreds of times.  I also was trying to call my sister who’s also a government worker…NOTHING!

 

I was hysterical, thinking that he was gone, I was going to be left to raise our 2 year-old daughter alone.  I rushed to her daycare to get her.  When I got there he was on the phone with them.  He was upset and shaken but he was okay.  He had finally reached a land-line and was with dozens of other people all trying to use the phone to let love ones know that they were okay.

 

It still upsets me to think about it.

 

 

[PrivateTim]

I had just started three weeks off from my firm. My bar exam results were not in yet so my work at the firm was busy work so they not going miss me and I was taking the three weeks off because I was flying to Barcelona from JFK on Sept 15 with my family to celebrate my grandparents 50th anniversary. We had flights from LAX to JFK at 6AM on Sept.14.

 

I was up getting ready to head to the pool to work out when I saw on the news that a "small plane" had hit the WTT. I sat down to watch the news because the footage was pretty dramatic. My memory is, and it could be faulty, but it is how I remember it, that the news commentator was talking with the video screen of the burning tower as the second plane struck behind him, he paused, very confused and after a few seconds of silence said, "I don't think this is an accident" (or words to that effect) and I thought 'well no shit Sherlock'.

 

Thankfully later in the day I had to officiate a high school water polo game, one of the few that was not cancelled that day, otherwise I would have been home, glued to the TV being maudlin. The high school kids didn't quite get the import of the day at that time. I've never really asked them now what they thought back then, but I still see a couple of the guys who played that day and they are now coaching themselves so maybe I'll corner them and ask in reflection what they thought.

 

The reactions we got in Europe were interesting and the activity in our hotel at JFK was interesting, but those are stories for another day.

Edited September 10, 2013 by PrivateTim

[Kitt]

     I was at work at a before and after school care program at the local elementary school.  We were just moving from the auxiliary classroom out back where we had the care center set up to the main building for the day. Where we are you could see the towers from higher elevations like upstairs windows etc, but where we were we could not see the skyline. As we waited to go into classes we could smell the smoke ( we lived in the cloud for days on end it seemed).  After the children went into their classes i got home to a ringing phone, my mother telling me to hurry and turn the TV on. We spoke for a while and I split time looking out the window at the real thing and at the TV reports.  I literally watched the second plane hit.  The office from the school called and asked me to come back in about 9:30 to help with the kids while teachers spent time with their cell phones reaching family members of children who had family in the area of the destruction.  The goal was not to tell the kids what was really happening, but with so many parents picking children up it became too difficult. We were instructed to give just the barest of answers - that bad people had hurt a lot of people in the city and thats why mommies and daddies were picking children up early.  

 

     As bad as that day was - the first anniversary was almost as bad here. I had a kindergartner run in to my classroom the afternoon of the anniversary screaming "Mrs G Mrs G they did it again!"  The school had run an assembly to let the children watch the memorial services that day and the little ones didn't understand the images were replays.

[Westie]

I was at our college, by the boating lake, smoking weed.

 

I can honestly say that the event itself didn't immediately hit home until much later.  I remember walking through the library and seeing the pictures and being horrified later... I also remember being in Latin class at the end of the afternoon and there being a heated debate as to whether the exploitative capitalists had finally gotten what they deserved (we had the odd anarchist in the class).  Thankfully the majority disagreed.

[Carlotta]

It was the beginning of the afternoon (6 hours time difference), I just got home from viewing the editing of a concert we shoot several weeks earlier and I put on the TV to have some background noise while I work on some paperwork. Usually at this time of the day we have a soap opera or some lame movies on TV so when I saw the tower in flame I thought it was a catastrophe movie, even when I saw the plane hit the second tower few seconds later I did not think it was real, I could not believe it. It took at least 4 or 5 minutes for me to realize it was really happening and it was not a movie.

 

At that moment I was afraid for few seconds for my brother : few years earlier he was a flight attendant  in Air France from June to October and he was a the plane who took off just behind the TWA which exploded in flight, I was sure when I heard the news at that time he was on that plane. He was doing a Paris New York flight, one way as a passenger (with an other company than AF) and the other as an attendant, I didn't knew on which one was on TWA. I finally remembered he was at his office at La Defence.
I stayed glue to the TV, tears in my eyes, paperwork forgotten until my brother come back home several hours later.

[Bleu]

I lived in London at the time and I was at home that day. I was working on my thesis in the office and I went to get something in the kitchen. On my way there I glanced at the tv in the living-room. It was on, but muted. Day-time tv is notoriously bad everywhere, and what I saw looked at first like an early-afternoon second-rate American made-for-tv drama.

 

The image I saw was the second plane hitting the tower, and I remember thinking "God, this movie is terrible. The special effects are so bad they made smoke come out of the tower before the plane actually hit". And then I realised that there were two towers, and I noticed the headlines.

 

I spent the next hours watching tv and calling my brothers in France. We discussed the options put forward by journalists as to the groups responsible for this (Serbian nationalists, Muslim Brotherhood and some Palestinian militant groups...). It took some time before some specialist suggested Al-Qaida.

Edited September 10, 2013 by Bleu

[TetRefine]

I was in 4th grade at the time, so I was 9 years old or so. I remember the principal walking into our classroom and whispering something in the teacher's ear, and I'll never forget the look of horror that overtook her face. She was visibly shaken for the rest of the day and it was obvious even to a bunch of 4th graders. We were never told anything during school. My grandmother picked me up that day like she always did and told me there had been an attack in New York. We got home and turned on the news and all I kept seeing was the replays of the planes hitting the towers and the buildings collapse. The only other thing I really remember from that day was that night when President Bush gave his address. I was watching it with my dad, and I remember asking him, "So does this mean were going to war?". His reply was "I sure hope so and I hope we kill every last one of them". Those words coming from the man I looked up to most kind of scared me, and then I asked him if he was gonna go back into the Army. He chuckled and told me he had already done his time in the Army and he was too old anyway. Some of my family members who live on Long Island outside NYC could smell the burning smoke from more then 40 miles away from the WTC site if the wind was blowing right.

 

Of course the magnitude and the repercussions of that day I didn't fully understand until years down the road. It really hit home when I saw family members and high school friends getting deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan to fight. 

Edited September 10, 2013 by TetRefine

[JimCarter]

I was working as a consultant and when our client told us a plane had hit the World Trade Center, my first thoughts were some idiot in a small plane screwed up big time.  By the time I got to a phone and was told it was a terrorist attack, I almost couldn't believe it.  

 

Our offices didn't have a TV and it took a few minutes to locate one.  I can still remember the anger and frustration I felt that someone could do something like that to the innocent people just doing their daily duties.  I have to admit I was one of those people that wanted to do something to someone immediately.  It didn't matter if we knew exactly to retaliate against, just do something.  I am ashamed now that I was that angry and thought we should find someone to attack immediately.

[methodwriter85]

    I was about two weeks into my 9th grade year of high school. I remember my biggest concern around that time was whether or not I'd get a part in our school play, Arsenic and Old Lace. Then when I got to my computer applications class, these juniors were talking about how a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I asked them, very innocently, "Did anyone on the plane survive?" I can't even remember the guy's name now, but he just gave me this look, and said something to the effect of, "A jetliner full of fuel just crashed into building at full speed. No, nobody on that plane survived."

 

    We spent the rest of our class period looking things up online. I posted about the event on the I Hate Jen board...the people there didn't believe me at first, then it sunk in. One of the women who posted there said that all the money that was FINALLY about to go towards education (surplus, Dubya campaigned on No Child Left Behind) was all going to wind up going to this new war we were about to fight.

 

    In drama, I wound up borrowing this Good Charlotte cd that I listened to most of the day. People were freaking about phones not working. Then it was announced that school was going to be let out, because Governor Ruth Ann Minner had declared a state of Emergency for Delaware. We were 90 miles from D.C., an hour south of Philadelphia, three hours from New York City, and the Dover Air Force Base was well-known and contained nukes so it was considered a possible target.

 

     As my mother was driving me home, I remember looking up at the beautiful blue sky, and hearing how empty it was. In the Wilmington area, because of being close to the Philly International Airport, as well as the DE Air National Guard and the Air Force Base, you often hear planes. That day there wasn't any.

 

      Then my family just watched at home. I remember that MTV, when it still had some semblance of a soul, actually interrupted all programming to play videos and run ads for the Red Cross. I think they were thinking that they'd have tens of thousands of people to treat for injuries, but unfortunately that wasn't the case. I think maybe 11 people were recovered alive from the World Trade Center rubble.

[Benji]

I was at a doctors office waiting for someone else to get out of hand surgery.  In the waiting room everyone there dropped what they were doing and watched the TV. I saw the 2nd plane crash into the tower, and knew this was a terrorist attack. The people and I were shocked!

[W_L]

The more details I remember, the more I want forget that day:

 

I was in high school, just starting out 9th grade. I had morning Gym class and our gym teacher liked to turn on his old short wave radio, while we just messed around playing basketball and whatever. He brought the thing out around the end of the period and it seemed weird. I have really good hearing, so I caught a few words here and there like a plane crash, world trade center, and building burning.

 

It was not until another class, which was World History of all things, that the history teacher brought in a TV set. We watched on CBS as they replayed the two planes hitting the tower, casualty counts coming in. It was surreal. The teacher kept mentioning Challenger and JFK almost like he was trying to comfort us, like this stuff happens all the time. 9/11 is a touchstone of my generation, we grew up with it, we fought wars for it, and to this day we stare in awe of it.

 

Then we had the stories about firefighters, people afraid of planes coming down, and the Anthrax attacks (which no one has identified the perpetrator yet conclusively, despite the assertion of the FBI on a dead suspect, who committed suicide).

 

Late 2001 is definitely memorable.

[apjordan]

I was four weeks into my first real faculty job, for which we had moved across the country. A friend of ours from Chicago (where we had moved from) called to tell us to turn on the television. At that point, the second plane had just struck. I then left to go to school. By the time I arrived on campus and sought an update, the towers had collapsed. The university eventually closed and canceled all classes for the remainder of the day. We had CNN on a large projection screen in one of the classrooms, and students, faculty, and staff gathered throughout the day to watch the coverage and simply take comfort in each others' presence during a time of great emotion and uncertainty. We were geographically far enough away not to be in any probable danger; but almost everyone in our building had friends or family in New York or Washington.

 

I eventually reached the point that I had to stop watching. The constant replaying of the planes crashing, of the people jumping, and of the towers collapsing was just too much.

[centexhairysub]

I want to take a moment and thank everyone that is posting their memories of that day on here.  I know how hard it can be to relive them for some of you; but you just don't ever know when something you say will help someone else when dealing with something like this...

 

 

I had an early morning meeting in Austin, Texas that day and was on my way to the office when the first plane struck.  I had been listening to a transcript from a patient's session and so I did not have the radio on.  Just as I walked into the office, the guard at the front desk had the TV going and was just yelling at it telling people to get out.  He was so upset that it was as if he was really there and was yelling for the people in the building to get out while they could.  I stopped to find out what was going on just in time to see the second plane hit Tower 2.  I think like many people, my first reaction was horror for the lives that were lost or being lost; but part of me immediately went into planning mode knowing that this was going to be a trigger for some patients and that we needed to make sure we had everyone there to help those that reached out. 

 

 

I remember that I had no appointments that morning because of a scheduled meeting but that was soon cancelled and I had a patient in my office by 10:30 a.m. with issues relating to the planes hitting the building.  It was after 8:00 p.m. before we had the offices shut down that night and we ran with extended hours for the next few days.

 

 

I left for New York City the next week as part of a group that was called in to help with counseling of those that survived and well as those that lost someone in the tragedy.  I hope I never have to go through something like that again...

[Kitt]

Centex has an excellent point ladies and gentlemen. Not just the story will be bringing back memories for millions of people today, the anniversary.  The news media will be broadcasting memorial services and all manors of reminders, and that is not going to be easy for a lot of people.  Lets all try and keep that in mind today and be what help we can to the people around us. You never know when a little gesture will make a huge difference.

[samjones1]

I was a junior in college and it was our first full week of classes. I had a 10:00 class so I was watching the Today Show and ironing my clothes so I could prepare to drive to campus. My brother, who was usually gone by 7:45, came out to the kitchen where I was and we talked a little until the news flipped over to coverage of the first plane hitting. It was confusing, since it was a big plane hitting a big building head on. I kept saying "that couldn't have been an accident..." Then the second plane hit while we watched the news coverage, and of course we knew that it wasn't an accident at all.

 

I remember the chaos of the day. I'm from Rhode Island, so we aren't far from Boston. I had a summer job at a law firm in the Financial District, I'm fact. There was concern, at least locally, that Boston was going to be next...maybe One Financial Center or the Prudential Building. People were frantically trying to leave Boston or find a telephone to contact their loved ones.

 

At school, all of our classes were funneled to a black box theatre in the building so we could just talk and be together. We watched hours of news that day. Our professors were even more rattled. Some of us had been out to NYC two weeks prior for a concert...it seemed surreal. One professor had a husband in Boston that it took her all day to reach because of switchboard issues routing through their NYC headquarters. Another had a son 10(ish) blocks from Ground Zero on Canal St.

I was worried about my brother because he had informed us all that, even though he was being discharged from the Reserve, he hasn't received his paperwork yet and they might be able to revoke his discharge and send him off. Waiting for those papers was a pretty tough week, but thankfully he finally got them.

[Ron]

I live in Boston and I was in Ohio visiting and staying at the family home that day. My mother, stepfather and I were sitting at the kitchen drinking coffee and reading the newspaper together. It was a nice very typical morning back home during a visit that I enjoy each year because I don't have to worry about anything. My mother went into the living room to watch the day-time talk shows and had only been there shortly before a news-break came on showing the first tower after it had been hit. She called out to us that something strange was going on and to come join her. We were not in the room for too long when we saw the second tower get hit.

 

Of course it was an awful and extremely strange day filled with watching the aftermath of the crashes and taking peaks at the sky outside. My partner whom was still in Boston kept calling me, almost begging me to come home. We had many long conversations where I seemed to be holding his hand over the phone. I didn't have a car rental because I went to relax and all of the rental places sold out their fleets quickly and of course all the planes were grounded that day. In the end, my partner managed to connect me to someone in the Cleveland area through a co-worker that was in Ohio for the same reason I was. He had a rental and we shared driving duties back to Boston the next day.

Edited September 11, 2013 by Ron

[Slytherin]

It was early afternoon in Sweden and I was on my way home from the dentist ( had got root canal work done  and was pretty upset that it was so expensive) and when I got home I turned on the TV and the first Tower was burning and not long after that I saw the second plane crash into the second Tower. I was so chocked and couldn't believe what I saw - it looked like a very surreal Movie or something.. And then  I saw  people that jumped off the building    that is something I will never ever forget - awful  

[GLH]

It was a beautiful September day and I was at work escorting construction crews when a coworker told us of the WTC being hit by a plane.  He had no more than told us of the first impact when he was back telling of the second.  I remember getting a painfully sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that seemed to never go away.  Everyone was so dumbstruck by the news that there was far more contemplation than conversation going on.  After work and a limited access to any information, I went home and changed, then drove to my parents.  After catching up on the latest news, Dad and I went outside to enjoy the weather and just talk.  We marveled at the silence due to the lack of aircraft in the sky.  I think I was fortunate not witnessing it firsthand as it played out on TV, since my entire summer had been such that I'm not sure I could have handled the trauma.

[Daddydavek]

I worked for the federal government and in our office we had flex-time and the people that were among the later arrivals all asked if we heard the news.  Every TV in the building was turned on and the computers in the building with outside internet access were soon all on MSNBC or CNN.com.   When the national security council determined we were under attack, all planes were ordered grounded and all federal workers except mission essential emergency providers were told to go home as federal buildings and offices were considered to be targets.  

 

I went home and turned on the TV and it was on well into the evening of the next day.  

 

Americans lost a lot that day, including some freedoms, especially privacy and much innocence.   

[KevinD]

I woke up to my radio alarm and remember laying there for a couple of minutes and it dawned on me that the radio announcer was jabbering about some plane hitting the World Trade Center.   At the time I thought it was just a silly joke because sometimes they were prone to doing things like that, so I just got up and got into the shower. It wasn't till after I came out of the shower and having shaved that I went into the family room and turned on the TV, only to see it there.  Later as I was getting ready to walk out the door for work is when the second plane hit.  I just sat down and really could not believe what I was seeing.  It probably was about 15 minutes before I had to leave as I had meetings that day that had to take place.  

 

The office of course was just a buzz of confusion and constant utterings of disbelief being heard all around.  Many clients canceled calls that day for obvious reasons and I just remember that the entire day was just so surreal.  By the time I got home early evening the news channels were replaying maps of the radar images showing the airspace being cleared.  I had also heard of the plane hitting the Pentagon and of course then we knew of the plane crash in the field in Pennsylvania.  I'm sure like everyone else I was wondering what was going to happen next.  As bad as all of that was, one of the things that struck me the most in the aftermath were the televised images of people in the Middle East.  To see them out in the streets cheering and dancing and shouting and carrying on...