Where were you on 9/11/2001?

[Marc-A.]

I was in Newcastle (UK), walking around in the centre with friends, when I passed by TV shop (can't remember the name) and saw the first plane crashing. What a shock!!! I stayed there, and saw the second plane in live ... I can remember that we went in a pub after that ... there was a big wall screen, and then we saw all the drama, with the collapsing ... you know....
I can remember also that the morrow I had to go back to Paris and thought that I would be stuck UK and couln't go back to France before at least a week. Fortunately, the Eurostar was running. End of the nightmare.
Marc

 

[Scarpia]

From 1973 to 1986 I worked in the south tower of the trade center. Then we moved to Brooklyn in the shadow of the bridge and I was able to see the towers from my ofice window, including the 1993 attack with its resulting smoke and emergency vehicles going over both the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges. In 1997 we moved to a building about a mile and a quarter north of the WTC. On 9/11 I came to work an hour earlier than usual as I was filling in for a colleague in running a meeting and had to be in early to make some preparations. As I entered the building I heard and then saw an airliner flying very low over the building toward the south. I thought that was unusual but passed it from my mind. I went to the conference room and after waiting some time for some people to arrive by train from Albany, NY went to my office to see if there were any phone calls or e-mails explaning the delays. One of my employees said she had heard rhat a small plane had crashed into the WTC. I went to my desk and turned on the radio and WCBS AM an all news station was reporting the same thing. I continued to listen and as the news progressed it became apparent that it was more than a small plane. I went into the next office which had a window facing south and could see the disaster unfolding. I returned to the conference room and told the people there what was happening. We realized that all but one of the people coming in from Albany would have been on stopped trains. The one guy who made it came in on a very early train. We watched from another window and saw the south tower come down. I returned to my office to get instructions from Albany (the State capitol) as to what to do I was instructed to evacuate all our employees from the building. As I move from office to office I was told that the north tower had come down. I saw to it that our employees were evacuated including several handicapped employees. I then heard that public transportation had been suspended- I needed the subway to go home to Queens. So, I remained in the building with several other emplyees until 3 PM when subway service resumed. I took the subway home looking at the stunned faces of my fellow passengers. I should add that we could see hundreds, perhaps thousands of people who had gotten out of the Trade Center or were nearby marching north on the West Side Highway. They were orderly and not panicked . Also I had to make many tries to get my wife on the phone, but finally reached her on my cell phone to tell her I was alright. A day I will never forget.
Kurt M.

 

[darkkavenger]

I was sick at home with influenza after my frist trip from Czech Republic (and my first love experiences), at my parents home in Sospel, southeast France, playing an online text-mode roleplaying game when people on the main comm channel started to say "turn CNN on, turn CNN on" and there we were at home, shocked and crying. A day I remember so well...

 

[rxmd]

I was installing a TV card at a friend's. When I got it working, it was tuned to some news channel and they showed footage of planes crashing into the WTC. I thought, "now even NTV is showing crappy unrealistic action movies in the afternoon". I didn't find out it had really happened until a couple of hours later.

The next morning was a lot of work. I used to work in the institute of Near Eastern Studies where I was studying, and we got about two hundred phonecalls that morning.

 

[rover]

At work, originally not believing the news I had heard, then down playing the effect on the building that it would have, then shocked and terrified at the result. Some how, in a building with no TV access, a set was set up in a training room so that the coverage could be seen.

I was scheduled to play golf with a customer that afternoon. Before noon I had decided I was going home. My sales exec who had scheduled the afternoon's outing called the customer to advise them that we would reschedule to a more appropriate day. The customer insisted on playing. I did not join the group, and my friend in shock satisfied the customer's wish. Unbelievable that they insisted on playing that day.

I did leave work, picked up my 1 yo son and spent the rest of the day with him.

 

[OldNick]

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.

I worked in USAF facilities for most of my 40+ yr working career, all requiring a security clearance, and all had rules forbidding employees from bringing personal cameras into the gate or facilities. Do you imply that the Pentagon does not have a similar rule?

 

[kbg32]

I was three blocks away....

 

[shaaktiman]

I had just returned from a long trip abroad and spent the previous evening at my folks' place on long island to try and get in a last great beach day. (Remember the weather that day?) My father worked as a schoolteacher a few blocks from ground zero so I spent the time until he got home trying to contact him which (as everyone who tried to make a cell phone call remembers) was impossible.

 

[furcafe]

I had just arrived late for work @ my office in the Reagan Bldg. in Washington, DC when I noticed people in the public areas watching the 1st crash into the WTC on CNN through the windows of 1 of the consultant firms in the building. I 1st thought it was just a horrible airplane accident so I went up to my office & began working. A few minutes later, the news came that another plane had hit the WTC & we all knew this was no accident. Still later, when word got out that the Pentagon had been hit & rumors began flying of planes crashing on the Mall & heading for the White House, etc., I knew it was time to go home. Unbelievably, many of my co-workers were still busy w/their normal work & I had the hardest time getting them to evacuate (& people think that gov't workers have no dedication!). Because of the chaos on the Metro system, me & 2 of my colleagues decided to retreat on foot to my co-op in Kalorama Heights (I had leftover stuffed crust pizza & plenty of beer for provisions), & we watched the beginning of a new era from my roofdeck, where I took these photos of the smoke rising from the Pentagon:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/furcafe/sets/1807356/

Funny thing is that what I remember most was how nice the weather was. Fortunately, none of my friends in lower Manhattan (nor any of our work colleagues near the WTC) were physically hurt that day.

 

[RdEoSg]

I was asleep when both plans hit, but my dad came running in and told me to get up we were being bombed or something. I was going to the local university at the time and was photo editor of the paper that day. I jumped up and watched for a few minutes, long enough to see the first tower come down. I then realized I had to get to the news room so I got ready quick and grabbed my gear and headed off. Once we got there, there was only two or three of us. One of the reporters father was in the Pentagon so he had a satelite phone everyone was using to call loved ones. Even here in LA area my cell phone wasn't working because so many people were using them. We got word that they were going to shut the school down but the dean of the communications department got permission for us to stay there and put out an issue. We went across to interview as many as we could before everything was shut down. Most had no idea what had happened.

I spent the rest of the day and night working on the issue. Everyone came in that day, even the people not assigned to be there. We took turns sitting at the tv taking notes of what was going on and so forth and had meetings with all of the journalism professors through out the day to keep up with what was going on.

We got the issue out and it was the first one we ever ran out of. We were chosen to be included in a book by the Poynter Institute of Front Page's from newspapers all over the world. We were one of only 9 Universities to be included.

Here it is: http://www.poynterextra.org/extra/gallery/Extra2.htm

Half way down the page, The Daily Titan, Cal State Fullerton University.