9/11 Where were you?

[bumblebee]

Coming up to the anniversary of 9/11, hard to believe it is 10 years ago already. Doesn't time fly as one gets older. It certainly was one of the most pivotal historic moments of this century so far, with far reaching consequences. It is also one on those Kennedy moments, for those old enough to remember lol. So with that in mind, where were our fellow FMs at that particular moment when you heard the news?

I was lying on a bed in a remote village on the west coast of France. I was staying with my brother, his girlfriend and her family on holiday. The house did not have any TV, and my brother was listening to the BBC world service on the radio. He came into the room and told me a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center and mentioned the Twin Towers. Having never been in New York I was unsure if they were one and the same. We established they were after a while more listening to the incoming reports.

As an aside I must be one of the last people in the Western world to actually see the footage of the event. After 4 more days in the remote village, I took a bus from Nantes to Barcelona. Somewhere near the Pyrenees we pulled into rest station, and there on the TV was the news showing coverage of the tragedy. It felt strange to be seeing something so important for the first time and it having received blanket media coverage from the moment it had happened.

[Kahuna]

I was in NorCal and I was getting ready to go to work...Turned the TV on to watch the morning news...The first plane had just crashed into the first tower...I can't describe what my feelings and emotions were at the time...I can tell you that it was extremely difficult to believe what I was watching was real...In some ways it still is...The power of television...

And then I watched live coverage as the second plane hit the second tower...I can still recall the broadcasters and their remarks...Yep, it was covered live on national television...And at that one moment it became very real...

I grabbed a small TV I had in my bedroom and took it along with me to work...We didn't do much work that day...

[JaiDee]

woke up like any other normal day at about 9am and prepared to start my day, cereal and milk, etc......I was in New England and not Thailand because it was September, the best month of the year weather-wise.....I had my PC on and back then I had AOL which had a chat feature and one of my buddies from Florida was on and we started chatting....he had seen it first and texted me to turn on the news; I went to CNN and was amazed and transfixed for the whole day, of course.

I guess the 9/11 day is our generations' ''what were you doing when you heard JFK was shot?'' moment.

Good thread, BB

[JaiDee]

And then I watched live coverage as the second plane hit the second tower...I can still recall the broadcasters and their remarks...Yep, it was covered live on national television..

Yups, it sure was.... I turned my TV on at about 915 after both planes had already hit and it was wall-to-wall coverage on every channel and network.

I was out of work that day because I had had an appendectomy in August, ruptured, which kept me out of work for a month....otherwise I would have been working from 8-5 and missed the whole thing.

[Kahuna]

I guess the 9/11 day is our generations' ''what were you doing when you heard JFK was shot?'' moment.

Some of us not suffering from dementia can answer both questions...I missed Pearl Harbor by a couple years though..

[ciobha]

I had just dropped my American cousins off at Dublin airport to get their flight back to Los Angeles and returned home. Switched the TV on as it was all unfolding, but didn't take much head to it. Only when my other cousin phoned from LA, in an inconsolible panic, did it register to me that what was unfolding, was actually a real time disaster.

Anyway, straight back into the car and back to Dublin airport just in time to collect my cousins whose flight had been turned back just after take off.

They got an extra week in Ireland, but not much of a holiday really, as we all spent most of the time on the phone trying to organise another flight back to L.A.

[SiamSam]

It was a warm and pleasant sunny morning in Montreal. I had a blood test scheduled at the Montreal Jewish General for 08h30. After the test I remember walking down to the hospital west wing exit where they had a Second Cup kiosk (Canada's Starbucks). I bought a chocolate chip cookie and latte then walked out into a perfectly idyllic fall morning feeling all was right with the world. The warm early morning sun was in my face and the coffee was sensational. When I got into my car I heard on the radio that a plane had just plowed into one of the World Trade Center towers in New York. I, and the newscasters at the time thought it was a single engine private plane that had accidently hit the tower and it was no big deal. It was almost humorous since none of us at the moment understood the weight of what was unfolding.

It took me 15 minutes to get to work, park the car and get up to my office. When I entered, I found people hovered around a television watching footage of the event I had just heard about on the radio. We learned it was not a simple little private plane but a commercial jet liner and we were stunned and transfixed on the television hence forth. No one understood what had occurred and as we discussed and watched the moment on television we witnessed first hand the live footage of the second jet slamming into the second tower. Needless to say all jaws dropped and became heavily cemented to the floor as we tried to understand and compute exactly was was happening. Once we and the world "got it" and came to the realization we were under attack most people in the room with family quickly disbursed. This included me. .

My daughter was 8 years old and was on a school field trip 120 miles out of town. She was not scheduled to return for 2 days. I drove to her school and told the administration they had to repatriate the students immediately, which they did. Within 3 hours my daughter was back safely in Montreal and we returned home together trying to sort out what the hell was happening to us all.

Out of worry, a day later we decided to fly from Montreal to Nova Scotia to see my mother and extended family. The trip was eery to say the least. Nobody was flying anywhere. The Montreal airport was empty and the people who were traveling were looking at everyone else suspiciously. When we landed in Halifax I looked out the window and noticed the air field was jammed packed and filled with 100s of planes from all over the world. They were parked, not knowing their fate forward. An extraordinary amount of airplanes from all over the globe were ordered to land at the next possible safe airport and Halifax was saturated with US and European airliners. It was like a Walmart parking lot on a Friday night. A sight to be behold for sure.

Prior to disembarking the Captain came on the PA to tell us that the airport was currently having a moment of silence and when we entered the terminal we should be quiet and respectful. I remember leaving the plane, walking down the tunnel towards the terminal and the silent was defeating. Upon entering the terminal I saw hundreds of people from all over the world holding hands, praying, crying, and embracing in silence. It was truly an unique moment in one's life. It was an absolute unprecedented moment of spirituality for me and I will never ever forget it. The entire world came together in one place at one time. It was truly religious and shall not be matched in my life again. It changed me.

This was 9/11 for me. It was my Pearl Harbor; D-Day; the Kennedy assassination; et cetera.

As satisfying as it was, it is interesting to note that the day Obama got Osama will not be as indelible or memorable as the day those towers collapsed our lives forever more.

[kelly2]

Hong Kong.

I got back to my flat after work, late in the evening, and switched on the telly (there were only 2 English channels then)to be faced with the flaming towers on screen. I thought it must be a movie, but it kept cutting back to the HK studio's anchorman, who was visably shaken, and it dawned on me that this was real.

The anchor was an American Chinese guy, and he really struggled with his emotions as he provided commentry to the events unfolding on screen.

[BigTel]

I was living in Pattaya at that time, can remember strolling down Walking St and looking at a small crowd gathering outside the P72 Hotel viewing what I thought must be a action movie on the huge screen TV they had towards the rear of the Bar.

On closer inspection and from the comments from the crowd I realized this was no Movie but real life unfolding before me, very hard to take in the gravity of the situation, it was a surreal moment in time, one that I will never forget.

[Lefty]

All those exact details that some of you remember...amazing. I do not recall what the weather was or anything. It was my day off work, it was still kind of early, as we are 3 hrs behind NYC time wise. I was on a Miami Dolphins football forum, and someone posted about it. As I recall the idiot that posted about it, was often making political comments in some of his posts, and I knew he was a hardcore Rep and he said something about people were really going to support Bush and the Reps now. That really pissed me off, but instead of replying I turned my TV on and as I recall, it wasn't long after the 2nd plane hit. So, spent the rest of the day watching the news.

I honestly remember more details, even though I was a 8 yr old in the 3rd Grade, about the JFK assassination. The principal walked into our class, whispered something to our teacher who was a really old lady in her early 60s and the look on her face I'll never forget. It was an expression of real horror, as if she witnessed it herself. Though why she looked so extremely upset we did not know quite yet. Then she had to compose herself and relay the message to the class..."boys and girls, I've just been informed that President Kennedy has been shot and killed...President Kennedy is no more.", as tears formed in her eyes, and her face looked more sad than anyone I'd ever seen before. Us kids didn't say anything, just looked at each other wide eyed and not sure what to say or do. So we all just sat there, kind of quiet for quite a few minutes. It isn't something 3rd graders know much about, evil people killing our president.

Never been a better man in the WH, and probably never be another his equal ever again.

[SiamSam]

Great recollection and excellently articulated Lefty. I miss you.

[Lefty]

Great recollection and excellently articulated Lefty. I miss you.

Thank you SS, how sweet of you to say. I'm getting a little verklempt over here now. I miss you too my cuddly little pooh bear.

[Hefe]

NYC

Anyone in the city that day always begins the same way I'm going to begin.... it was a picture perfect day: clear blue sky, slight breeze, no humidity, the heat of summer was gone & a crisp feeling was in the air. I remember vividly standing on the elevated train platform looking at the city skyline, at around 8:15 a.m. & thinking how clean & fresh everything looked.

It's spoiled perfect weather in the future for many of us.... someone will always say on a beautiful day here now "Y'know, it's just like...."

The previous day, Monday 9/10, my schedule changed in the late afternoon: my Tuesday 9/11 8:30 a.m. appointment at the Marriott WTC Hotel was cancelled. So I went to mid-town a bit late. I arrived at the office to hear the WTC was "on fire" & was looking at the live tv feed only a couple of minutes when the second tower seemingly "exploded" to my eyes. One of my office mates, a single mom who lived 2 blocks from WTC was going ballistic trying to find out where her 8 year old daughter who went to school down there was.

There was a special event at my firm that morning at 10 a.m. that involved a number of people from Wall Street.... they were all on phones now, sometimes 2-3 phones at once, calling their offices to see what was happening.

Although not first responders or emergency workers, my coworkers & I are intimately involved in dispatching people to the scene & worked pretty much around the clock for several days. Several of them return to the office covered in that awful soot after being caught in the "cloud".

One of my old friends for over 30 years who does the same work as me for a different company also gets caught in "the cloud". Last year I realized we hadn't gotten together for quite a while & so I googled him to get his phone # to grab a beer sometime & came up with his obituary.... his wife says it was due to the respiratory issues he had developed probably from that toxic soup, I know he had been in the dead center of it, died last Christmas Eve 56 y.o.

I didn't even get down there for almost 2 days since we were so busy at the office just to keep up with developments. From 14th St down we had to walk, only emergency vehicles allowed on the streets from there. Besides the eerieness of walking for a mile in the streets of NYC in midday with no vehicles moving & a graveyard quiet, what I remember was the random nature of the flotsam from the towers that covered downtown: shoes, business cards, plastic strips, checks, window blinds, letterhead stationary, brochures & the mundane items of offices all over. It was only much later when I thought about it that I realized that these were from the initial impact of the planes blowing out several stories worth of offices into the air. Almost nothing from the actual towers collapse survived pulverization except the steel.

Once I got close to it I realized the scale of the site: a 16 story pile of debris covering acres with large chunks of WTC jammed into neighboring office buildings, smoke rising from every crevice. It was like the cathedral of Satan.

The smoke & the smell, that awful chemical, benzine & burning plastic odor stayed for months, you couldn't forget for a moment what had happened even if one wanted to because that smell was always in the air.

I occasionally consider what would've happened if my WTC appointment hadn't been cancelled that morning & I was there. The nature of my job is one that would have compelled me to stay & work around the towers for at least a while. For how long & to what end is only speculation that is useless for me to dwell on. For the longest time, for years, I fully expected the second phase of the attack to commence: truck bombs, dirty nuke. Almost right after 9/11 another jet crashed into a NYC neighborhood & there were anthrax packages delivered to various places..... my building was evacuated & the FBI & NYPD searched for anthrax after a threat. Not Moslem terrorists for either.

I do know I was very, very angry for a long time, years with a chip on my shoulder, that's passed.

I'm glad to be alive, near where I work is a fire station where the entire morning shift was killed. There are lots of guys getting sick now & my country is in 2 long wars. I'm just glad to be here.

[SiamSam]

Well put Hefe. Terriifc story.

[pdogg]

I worked at 7 WTC, the third building to go down.

Just like Hefe, in a stroke of good luck, our company moved out of there around Memorial Day of that year.

What a beautiful day, stopped at a coffee truck to buy a couple dozen donuts to bring to work as I had won a football pool that week.

Then went underground. When i came back up a bunch of people were looking up at the sky. Looked up and saw smoke pour out of one of the towers. Somehow the seriousness of the situation did not register.

Went up to my office and lots of people looking at the fire as we had an excellent view from a high floor. After a minute, went to send out a short email saying "the donuts have arrived".

About a minute later one woman was going hysterical and I held her and told her to try to relax and breathe. I went to the window and people were saying a plane crashed into the second tower.

A few minutes later we evacuated the building but the train wasn't running so about 10 of us went to a nearby coworker's apartment and watched the news for a few hours.

One way over a buddy said, look how strong those buildings are, they may be burning but nothing can bring them down, not the finest prediction.

In the late afternoon, went back to my office as I couldn't yet get back across the river. Office was deserted except for one other friend and we were hanging out watching 7 WTC, our old home, as we heard it may be going down but after a while got tired of staring at the static scene and was reading news on the net.

We left the building in the evening when the train was running again. I asked her if she wanted to stay with me that night. She declined. I was never in danger but a day I will never forget.

[JaiDee]

It's easy if you try

[pdogg]

Today is Tuesday, September 11th.

A day no New Yorker will ever forget.

[ArchieBunker]

Weatherwise it is EAXCTLY lke it was 11 years ago. It is sunny, crsip and dry. Its a picture perfect mid September day....

[4:17]

I wasn't in New York that day, but was scheduled to fly through JFK the next day, Sept. 12, on my way to Europe for a holiday and an ensuing work-related trip. I worked remotely at the time from my home in Northern California and rarely went to the office down in Sillycon Valley; that morning the first inkling I had that something was wrong was logging into my corporate email account and seeing a notice that all corporate travel was suspended until further notice.

"Bullshit on that," I thought, "I'm still going on vacation." Then the emails came flying fast and furious asking that if anyone who knew the whereabouts of one of our colleagues that worked out an east coast office, to call his wife, as he was scheduled to be on one of the "planes that hit the towers this morning."

"What the fuck?" About that time I realized something bad must have happened, but I couldn't get to any of the usual news websites, as by this time, about 11 a.m. East Coast time, those sites were crashing with all of the 'net traffic coming at them. So I did the old fashioned thing and turned on the television; the rest you know. ... Turns out I lost two colleagues that day, one on each of the planes that hit the towers. They weren't close friends or anything; I had only met one of them, and then only once. But still, when you can put a name and a face to something like that, it personalizes it in a way that doesn't otherwise happen.

For me the biggest thing I remember from that time happened a few weeks later, however. I pulled into a gas station/convenience store to see a horrific site; someone had beaten and killed a gas station employee. I arrived literally less than a minute before the first police officers and rescue personnel were on the scene. There was nothing to be done for the guy; his head was an unrecognizable bloody pulp -- not even recognizable as human, really, just random mashed-up flesh and bone.

The perpetrator(s) had ostensibly taken out their anger over 9/11 on this guy because he was from the Middle East, and herein lies the tragedy -- he wasn't even Muslim, or even Middle Eastern: he was a Sikh -- but then to the ignorant fuckwit who doesn't know any better, any turban-wearing guy must be a bad guy. I remember getting so angry, thinking I wanted to do to these ignorant fucks what they had done to this innocent man who had only done what their -- and my -- white ancestors had done, come here looking for a better life. Of course they had fled the scene and soon the police were sending everybody on their way, once they had a statement.

Still makes me angry to this day, when I think about it. It was then I knew that the world had indeed changed, that nothing would ever be the same -- that the terrorists had done far more damage to my country on 9/11 than anyone realized -- damage that's still going on today, more than a decade later.

The only other thing I can compare it to was the first space shuttle explosion in January, 1986. While not as bad or as tragic as 9/11, certainly, it made a huge impression on my young self. After all, Generation X, we grew up with the space program; I was a baby when Armstrong walked on the moon, and barely remember watching news footage of Apollo 17 as a toddler. Like every kid back then I dreamed of being an astronaut; I followed the ensuing Skylab missions and the beginning of the shuttle program with the keen fanaticism of youth. Space travel was a given, almost routine -- but not so much that I used to fake illnesses to get out of school so I could watch shuttle launches on T.V.

Thus, when I learned of the Challenger disaster -- I was in physics class and we were, in fact, talking about space travel as the teacher had used it to demonstrate one of the finer but more esoteric aspects of physics -- to say it shook me to the core would not be an understatement. It sounds cliché, but I grew up a bit that day, learning the lesson that heroes -- and every astronaut to me was (and is) a hero, naturally -- didn't always come home.

I suppose that was a lesson 9/11 reinforced all to well. I remember flying shortly after air traffic resumed in the continental U.S.; naturally it was impossible not to think of New York, Pennsylvania and DC, back then. I'll never forget going through security that first time after 9/11; this was when National Guardsmen in full combat gear with automatic weapons were stationed at every checkpoint -- not a site one was used to seeing in the United States. I'm assuming many people back then like me used to wonder, if faced with the situation, if they would have the guts to do what the heroic folks of Flight 93 did: fight back.

I've flown often since then, and while I don't dwell on it like I used to, I don't think I've stepped on a plane since then that the specter of 9/11 didn't at least momentarily tease my thoughts at some point. I like to think I'd have the guts to fight back; I've always been one to go down swinging. Of course I also hope I never have the opportunity to put it to the test.

[JaiDee]

Woke up around 930am......wasn't working that day because I had had an appendectomy in August which had almost killed me and I was home recovering......went to the PC per usual to check the news and in those days when you logged on to AOL anyone else who had AOL could see you log on......my buddy in Florida instantly sent me a PM saying "did you see what happened"?

By then it was all over the internet, both planes had struck already......and I turned the tube to CNN right away and left it there all day. That whole day was like slow motion, like you couldn't believe what you were seeing; and yet it was so real.

RIP to all who died that day -except the scumbag terrorists grrrrrrrrrr

[KenW]

I went in to work at the university as usual. In my office checking emails etc., when a colleague from two offices down the corridor came to the door of another colleague next door to me and told him. They both came immediately into my office. The first colleague suggested a website she had just been on. I went to it and the 3 of us, agog, me sitting at keyboard, them standing at each of my shoulders, watched the clip of the planes going in to the towers.

Like everybody else, our day was spent in disbelief and amazement. All the corridors and everywhere else were full of gossip. I suspect the TV monitor in our main teaching room stayed on all day as folks drifted in and out between other commitments to gape at the constant replays of that footage we had seen in the morning. But I can't remember.

Now, I can add some personal snippets to all this. In July (less than 2 months before the day) I was in NYC briefly on business. At conclusion I had to fly from Kennedy to LA (afternoon flight) to catch my connecting American Airlines flight down to Sydney (16 hours overnight). That route tracks down the Cali and mesoAmerican coast then somewhere over the Galapagos or so turns right to Australia. Some hundreds of km from LA ground control goes silent after wishing the pilots goodnight and a good flight. There is no further radio traffic until ground control Sydney greets the flight crew at about 6 am the following morning.

OK, no drama there.

But, when they tracked down the terrorists and busted their apartments etc., they found documents of various plots to be hatched by the group. Twin Towers, etc. But one of the plans was to put time bombs aboard night flights going from LA to Sydney, as with the 14 or so hours without traffic control contact the planes would just disappear into smoke and sea. They thought this would maximize terror among the population of air travellers across the Pacific.

No, I was never in danger and my aim is not to dramatise. BUT, had things gone slightly differently, and those nutters had a chance to activate that plan, many innocent folks would have perished over the Pacific at 3 am or so one morning aboard American Airlines flight whatever.

[SiamSam]

We are happy it did not go the other way Mr. Ken. Otherwise there would be no "Life in the Village".

[KenW]

We are happy it did not go the other way Mr. Ken. Otherwise there would be no "Life in the Village".

Yes Sam, without sounding precious, I'm glad it worked out this way as well.

[Hefe]

Well, I already answered this on some detail last year. The important thing is that I had a 8:30 am appointment at the WTC that day.... which was cancelled 4 pm the day before.

One never knows what tomorrow will bring....

[williethepimp]

I was in France that day....didnt know anything about it until i switched the tv on that night.....first thing i saw was one of the towers collapsing-i thought it was a controlled demolition thing....the commentary being in french didnt help much...then they kept showing the planes flying into the twin towers...i knew something really big had happened...drove back to the UK the day after,and got stopped and questioned by the Special Branch.....