Where were you on 9/11/2001?

kshapero

kshapero

South Florida Man
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I was in my office. I went into our training room preparing a powerpoint on a monitor. having no idea that the monitor was also a TV, I turned it on and was witnessing this disaster!!! At first I thought I had picked up a movie channel showing something like "Independence Day". On closer inspection, was I to realize what was happening.
 
I was in school when we were told over the tannoy, I went home immediatly.
Watched the coverage of it all day.
By the end of a week I found out 3people I knew were killed.
And a few of my friends lost family members.
 
MoTR said:
I was in school when we were told over the tannoy, I went home immediatly.
Watched the coverage of it all day.
By the end of a week I found out 3people I knew were killed.
And a few of my friends lost family members.
Click to expand...
That's intense!
 
I was inspecting a building that we had purchased just off the Deegan near the Yonkers/Bronx line. We started to hear what was happening and we went to the roof and watched the NY skyline in amazement, then horror and then just profound sadness.
 
I was in my office in Arlington VA. I could see the smoke from the Pentagon from my office window.
 
I was driving back home on the 401 highway after visiting my father and leaving him, after I chastized him for certain bad personal choices he had made .
I heard the news on the car radio while driving home and it seemed very unreal.
 
kshapero said:
That's intense!
Click to expand...

Yeah its still kida surreal.

I had a lotta family over there(Im Irish)
And I go to American College Dublin so most of my mates were from the states,
so it all added up to knowing a lotta people that were lost.

Tomorrow will be a hard day for a lot of people.
 
Found out in my break time about 2pm or 2:30pm I think (UK time) - someone came into the form room I was hanging out in at school and told everyone. Didnt really get what they were on about til we put the tv on, and then later at home watching all the details.
 
I was watching the Labour party conference with my Mother. Blair was about to make an "important" speech, but that was suddenly cancelled as the cameras cut to the towers. We sat astonished at the tragedy, the crime and the unknown consequences which lay ahead. I remember saying "my God, we're watching Pearl Harbor..."
 
I was visiting St Albans for some business to do with buying the house we live in now. I overheard people talking in the street about a bomb but didn't think it was anything as big as it turned out to be. When I got home and turned on the TV, I couldn't take it in.

I was teaching teenagers at the time, many of whom were Muslims and the college had handle things carefully. Some of the students made some pretty dimwitted remarks but equally they got some abuse.

My sympathies to anyone with bad memories brought back tomorrow.
 
I live in a border town and I was trapped at US-Canadian border station for what seemed to be an eternity that morning with two cousins visiting me from Portugal. We were heading back to Canada that morning from spending some time on Mackinaw Island. On the 45 minute drive up, I was playing some CD and we didn't have any clue what was going on. The timing couldn't have been any worse. As we were held the border guards were confirming that my cousins actually were who they said they were but they didn't tell us anything. Any questions were met by a good dose of yelling telling us to just shut up and wait. I was going crazy about not knowing why we were being held and that my car being searched inside out (and leaving it a mess). After we found out what happened though, we concluded that they treatment we've received given the circumstances was reasonable though it was quite harsh. Mediterranean people can easily pass for North Africans or Middle-Eastern people in terms of the way we look.

Just to clarify, we were handled by Canadian border guards not American ones. However, many American guards were present and there was also plenty of military personnel there.

I still get pulled over at the border crossing quite often for checks and searches. More so than my friends. Perhaps I'm on some list. I have since stopped going over the the US-side of the city unless its for something important. This is not really a big deal... just an annoying inconvenience.

My heart really goes out to the innocent people that really suffered because of the attacks. Both in the US and later in the middle-east.
 
I woke up and turned on the TV. At first I thought what I saw was some dramatization or made-for-tv-movie but it soon became clear that they were actual event. I simply stayed in bed..watching until about noon. Drove in to work and as I walked in I ran into a collegue asking me what I was doing coming in; "many people are just not going to come in today".
 
I was at a job interview and only found out when I got home. At first it was an 'air disaster' before the full horror was known. And then it was disbelief. The next day all over the UK there was a 3-minute silence. My wife, myself and several strangers were just huddled together, sobbing in a shopping mall in Norwich.

I'll be observing any memorial silences we have tomorrow and will be thinking of the lost and their families.

Stay strong people.
 
I was sleeping when the first plane hit, watched the second hit. As much as I dislike how some groups are using 9-11 to spread propaganda, I do also believe that we should never forget. I don't think these movies that are coming out are ethical. Or at least I don't think anyone should be making money off this.
 
I have lived in and around NYC for my entire 45 years.

My then-employer had flown me to Michigan for training the Sunday before.
No one in class could believe it when we heard the news.
Half the class was from New York and we all started drifting away,
back to our rooms to find a TV set and try to phone home.

"Hey, where are all you people going?" the instructor asked.

It took me hours before I could get a call through.
First I called my daughter's elementary school.
When I reached my wife she knew nothing about the attacks. Typical.
Later I confirmed both of my brothers working near Wall St. were safe.

From the first, I felt an overwhelming need to return to New York.
Though I knew I could do nothing to help, I just wanted to be back.

We were scheduled to fly home after class on Sept. 12th, but all
flights were grounded. There were no seats available on Amtrak or
Greyhound, so we drove the rental car home 800+ miles to New York.

Coming into NYC, catching our first glimpse of the now changed skyline,
a huge plume of smoke coming from where those two ugly towers
had once stood, was truly a terrible and wondrous sight to behold.

Chris
 
i walked into the library a little while after the first plane hit, and i saw the second plane hit on a tv in the foyer.
 
I was working at the Pentagon watching the situation in NYC on the TV in a conference room with several coworkers. I had just said to nobody in particular, well I'll bet they are going to ramp up the security around here now. There was an unfamiliar low frequency sensation or noise that we felt as much as heard. The conference room doors opened on their own. Some people ignored it and others, including me, got up from the conference room table and said what the hell was that? (We later learned it was an air pressure wave from the airplane's impact quite a few corridors away.) A lot of people were rushing down the hall toward the exit and my group joined the general exodus. Someone said a bomb had gone off. I imagined it could only have been a trash can bomb or something small as someone's political act of solidarity with the NYC terrorists. My biggest concern was that there were other small bombs yet to detonate. But when we got outside into the south parking lot, it was clear that something bigger was happening. The air was full of black flakes and you could smell something like kerosene. Everyone assumed it had to be from a fuel + fertilizer truck bomb, since the reference point for this kind of stuff was still Oklahoma City. There was thick black smoke starting to cover the whole sky, and flames were just jumping over the roofline of the next wedge of the Pentagon. On the way out of the building, I had ducked into my office in order to turn off my computer (!). Then I realized how stupid that was. But on my desk I saw my brand new 1-megapixel Fuji digital camera that was a gift from my wife (who was fed up with my film processing costs). I grabbed that and in the next 10 minutes filled up the little 64 MB card with whatever I saw. I just put up some of those pictures for the first time on my Flickr site, http://flickr.com/photos/clarkj/ That started me on the habit that most of you have, i.e., carrying a camera with me to work every day.
 
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I was at work in SW London. A colleague came to me and said a light plane had just crashed into a skyscraper....so we logged onto CNN though the back door and watched the events unfold, our first impression was that it wasn't a light plane but something larger... we then saw the second plane hit and immediately knew it was a terrorist attack....

Our thought were with a colleague who was on honeymoon in NYC - it took us 8 hours to find out that she was OK.

I flew on an internal flight the next day to Glasgow - there were six people on a flight that normally held 120 - we all sat together with the Crew in first class and discussed the previous days' events.

Although, thankfully I knew no-one who lost or was injured in the 9/11 events. I knew that I wanted to go to NY and pay my respects. I saved up and went about 9 months later. The enormity of the devastation really brought it home to me - but I'll never forget the messages from families and friends of those that were lost that were pinned up. I'm not an emotional guy, but I just read those and wept.
 
I was presenting that morning at a conference in Jamaica, Montego Bay. Few people showed up, it was hard to talk, most everyone was stunned and not sure what would happen next. I got stuck at the Wyndham there for about 10 extra days after that. Visited the airport every day to check on flights. Once AA started to fly again, the security at the airport was a joke, then in Miami nearly the same. Girlfriend refused to board a plain again. Rented a car and drove cross-country from Miami, FL to Phoenix, AZ.
 
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