Where were you on this date 5 years ago?

I had just gotten to work, and some co-workers came over and told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center, and that we were under attack.  I didn't believe them.  Like many other people, I thought it must have been an accident.  There was a TV in our office, and almost everyone that worked there was glued to it for the entire day.  I can't believe it's been 5 years...

Note: *Since I'm on the West coast, everything that happened, happened while I was sleeping.


I was asleep, when my mom called me. She said we were under attack. I was like "what???" She said turn on the news. So I did , and I was glued to the set all day watching in disbelief. I couldn't believe the images on the screen, it seemed like I was watching a movie. When I saw people actually jumping out of buildings, I totally lost it.

I was coming out of a lab meeting when a student in the next lab told us that a plane had crashed into the Pentagon.  Apparently it was a breaking news item, because he didn't know that other planes had just smacked the WTC towers.  I called my mom on the West Coast to make sure nothing happened on that side (it didn't).  Then I went home and watched news all night.  Pretty sad day :(

My husband was at a meeting in Paris (I think).  At the time I generally didn't watch much tv when he was away.  With two small children and working full-time I was too tired in the evenings to want intelligent tv.  However it is my dad's birthday so I went over to see him and they had the news report on.  Apparently they sat down after lunch to watch some soap or other when it was interrupted with a newsflash.  The proper programmes never started again that day.

I'd just come back from school, I'm sure, and my sister was watching the TV, and she pointed, and I remember thinking that I'd see thick smoke coming down the road, even though England's the other side of the world to America. I was at school for the most part. I was 8.

I work in staten island with full window views directly across from down town manhattan.
When i drive to work, i come along the shore and every day we mention how different it is.

we still alll cringe at the sound of a low flying plane.  it's wierd to see people like that.

I was here with Carlos' youngest. He was at work. We were talking when the phone rang. It was a friend (who was at work) telling me about it and then she said, "Can I come over?" I hung up the phone and told the "kid" (who was 17 at the time) "Come on! Sh!t is happening" and ran into the livingroom and turned on the t.v. By that time, there was only one tower standing and I thought it was a dream (nightmare)-that it was fake, or anything else but it just wasn't real. My friend came over and the three of us were glued to the t.v. all day. I went to call my mother and as I walked out of the room, my step-daughter told me that other tower fell. Of course I ran back in. Then I called my mother and told her about it. She didn't know. I told her that there was no such thing as the World Trade Center anymore. She throught that I was kidding and asked me what channel. I said, "All of them". (She was watching a movie on either AMC or TCM and they didn't interrup their programming). We started thinking about Carlos' son and my dad who both lived in D.C. at the time. I told my step-daughter to call her brother. She couldn't get through. I called my dad and couldn't get through, either. At lunchtime, the two of them went out to get a pizza but I stayed and watched.

When Carlos got home, he told me that he had a t.v. on his classroom. The were watching after the first plane hit. They thought it was a small plane that hit and thought it was an accident. They were watching for a bit and he said to the class that they were just showing the same stuff over and over and decided to go on with class. He turned of the t.v. probably minutes before the second plane hit.

That evening, we finally got through to Carlos' son but I still couldn't get through to my dad. We had Carlos' son call my dad to tell him that I couldn't get through. Shortly afterwards, my dad called me. He said that he was going to go downtown for a dentist appointment and just as he walking out the door, his dentist called and told him not to come-because of all of it. He was safe at home. But, we were really worried about Carlos' son's then girlfriend. She worked only blocks from the White House. But she was safe, too.




Cat

Because of the time difference between the East Coast and Hawaii, I was in bed sleeping when it all happened.  I remember getting a phonecall from my mom at 5:00am saying, 'Turn on the news!  We're under attack!!'...

That woke me up instantly!  :o

I was getting ready for work , when I turned on the t.v and heard the news. It was on every channnel by then.  I couldn't believe my eyes, I was in shock. I know I left for work in a very somber mood, and left early. I just couldn't focus on anything else. :\'(

actually, i was at work in long island.  the secretary was on the phone with someone and said to me "some idiot in a plane just hit the trade center" and we laughed about it...klike one guy in a little ultra light or something.

boy were we wrong.  we had to cancel classes and talk to all the students...and there i was, about 60 miles from home.  it's took 7 hours to get back to staten island. i was the only car on the verrazano  bridge at the time and i drove about 80 miles an hour...

then the bridge was clesed and i was home for a week. 

it was scary.

I was at work.
The guy who sat next to me was on the internet checking the news before he was to clock in. He told us about the
first plane and like many other people, we though it was a small turbo prop and it was an accident.

It went downhill from there.
Our phones stopped ringing and out internet and intranet went down. Our building went to high security and everyone just sat there in silence.
There was a tv in our lunchroom so we kept getting updates from those who decided to go down and check. I was too stunned to even try and get up.
Eventually, our internet came back and we got the full scope of the situation.

When I got home that night all I could do was sit in front of the tv.

Due to the time difference between the East Coast and the West Coast...I was in bed sleeping while the attacks happened. I only heard about it when I got up and went downstairs.

Being that it was Tuesday, I had an afternoon class scheduled...but when I got to the university, I found out that all afternoon classes were cancelled for the day so I had to go home.

That morning I had to take my daughter to the Dr. for her 9 month check-up so I did do my usual routine of drinking coffee and watching the news.  After her appointment I decided to visit the people I used to work with, and that's where I first learned about the Twin Towers.  I rushed home because I wanted to try to call my family (who live on Staten Island and work in the City).  I couldn't get through to them.  So at that point the only thing I could think to do was go out onto to my front porch, look at my flag and say The Pledge of Allegiance.

That event is truly in my mind for today, for I sat through the whole event as it unrolled on television.

Here is the view out the window of Manhattan now...taken with my phone..
http://usera.imagecave.com/kgilmartin/window.bmp.jpg

I woke up early that day to make sure my sister was up for school. I clicked on the news and thought they were f*cking joking. I caught the second tower falling, and at that point, I ran to the bathroom door to bang on it and scream to my sister that America was being attacked. She opened the door and looked at me like I was freak. Then she saw it on television.

I called my mom, who was at work, and she was in total disbelief. After all that, I took my dog for a walk, although I was pretty much in a state of shock. I remember it being deadly quiet: no traffic on the roads, no planes overhead, nothing. Then I came home and cried.

To this day, I can't watch the footage from what happened. I just can't. It has disturbed me to the point that I have nightmares every anniversary. I don't know why that happened. I certainly had no ties to any of the victims or to New York itself. I lived across the country. Yet it still hurts. I can only imagine what the families of the victims feel like.

Dammit...I'm getting all emotional now. I dread going to sleep tonight.

I was at home sick in bed. Ian came in from work at lunchtime and called me downstairs as he'd heard something was going on. We sat infront of the T.V the rest of the afternoon.

I was at home sick in bed as well. I'm also on the West Coast, so everything had already happened by the time I was told. I turned on the t.v and watched  the second plane hit the tower. I remember seeing people on the streets just staring up at the towers and one image of a guy falling in the sky, which made it sink in, that something was wrong. Then the dust storm started and everyone was running thru the streets in horror.

I remember it being eerily quiet at my complex. No planes were flying in the sky that day. I only lived a mile from Ontario airport, so not to see or hear planes going over head was odd. I think most of us were in a daze for a few days after, then the anger set in.

As I live close to the flight path for Heathrow Airport and can hear the planes at the best of times, but on that day everytime I hear a plane fly overhead my heart would give a shudder.

I was in school. I didn't find out until around 9:40 AM, just after the Pentagon was hit. A few minutes later they had put a tv on and the first coverage I saw on TV was of the Pentagon in flames.

A few people have stated how strange it was a few days after without planes flying overhead. Here we had the oposite. We don't normally have planes flying overhead but for days after, the AF was constantly flying overhead. Everytime I heard them, it would make me nervous.




Cat

I actually live on the West Coast, but I was up early for my third week in College. The night before I had stayed up late reading for a quiz I was going to take in art class. We had just moved to a new house on September 9th, and to be honest it was a long weekend to begin with! I was trying to study and move all in the same week. I remember how lonely I felt in my room that was in total disaray those first few nights. And, especially not having cable or a phone line to work with. That night, I fell asleep with channel 7 on my TV and it was fuzzy due to not having cable. I set my alarm for 6am. I awoke to seeing the first tower already burning. I turned up the volume on my TV and listened to Peter Jennings saying he wasn't sure what had happened. They thought it was an accident. I went downstairs to wake my mom and I told her what was happening. I was obviously the first to be awake since it was so early. I then told her I was going back upstairs to see what was going on or if I missed anything. By that time, the second plane had hit and then my heart sunk. I knew this was no longer an accident. I went back downstairs and spoke with her again and said a second plane had hit the second tower.

I got ready for school, but it was a blur and I still can't remember much about those first two or three hours. I went to class and endured the hour and a half of torture of not knowing what was going on. As soon as I got out, I met my friends in the cafeteria and we watched the events unfold on TV. I think we saw the Towers fall around that time, being replayed on TV.

It was a really sad day and I just remember feeling so awful. I will never forget it.

I was at my program/workshop at the time when the 2 towers fell and this workshop I had attended was in the city but it was far away from The World Trade Center but actually some of the co-workers could smell the debris that spread most of Manhattan.It was definitely chaos that day. :(

At home, here in Georgia.  My mom called me at about 8:30am, just I was going upstairs to get dressed.....she told me to turn on the TV and as I did, I saw the second plane hit live on TV.  I was on the phone with her the rest of the afternoon......telling her what was going on, and then she'd relay it to her co-workers.  Both her and my dad came home early that day.  I remember us sitting around the TV just stunned. 

I was at work on the Big Dig on a crane.  A friend of mine who lives in Manhattan called me on my cel to tell me what happened, I told the people I was working with.  Then she called about Pennsylvania, we all stopped work at that point and went to the lunch room.  At noontime all work was shut down and we were sent home, speechless.

I was in the street with some friends, when this kid from up the street came running down shouting "America's been bombed!!!". We all ran in to see what was going on, and EVERY SINGLE TV CHANNEL was showing images of the Towers flaming/collapsing. It was a wierd thing to witness, not a nice feeling.

I was watching a programme on the TV tonight actually, when I came in from work called 'The Man Who Predicted 9/11'. It was about a man who worked in the Twin Towers who risked his life to save his 2,700 employees - he managed to save all but 6 of them.

Was fast asleep for it was 12:45am on Wednesday morning here. Only heard about it later that morning getting ready for school, and even then I didn't fully believe it. Not much was done at school that day as most people were either talking about the event, or watching the aftermath on TV.

i was stoned. i totally freaked out, cuz that stuff makes you sorta paranoid anyway. and then buildings started collapsing on live t.v.? are you f***ing kidding me? that was a weird weird horrible day, man.

i didn't think to do this on that day but on the days following i popped a tape in SLP and just recorded all the news coverage. i've got like 30 hours of taped coverage. it's easy to forget that sense of siege you got from the constant panicky reporting and the rolling headlines on the bottom and the total preempting of commercials. i remember worrying that wall street was going to crash when they got it up and running again. felt like the end of the world, man. i guess that was the idea.

I was at school. We changed classes at about 9:00 so by the time I got to my 2nd peroid class the teacher was watching the coverage on CNN. We actually saw the second plane hit sitting right there in the classroom.

Sleeping in, on vacation, on the West coast.  Goes without saying that everything was over by the time I was awake.  What doesn't go without saying is that I got the entire 9/11 experience in the first 5 minutes.  (Worse than getting it in real time?  Damned if I can tell, and I've read the 'blog threads from that day.  Even tried to do it in real-time, only paging-down until the timestamps permitted.  Far as I can tell, both options sucked.)

I woke up to Bloomberg from the hotel TV.  Play lazy, skp the opening, sleep in 'til 7-8 in the morning PST (10-11 EST), and get my morning qoutes ghetto-style, yo.  No real-time.  No feeds.  Just television.  Meh?  Sidebar quotes for gold and oil are wrong. "WTeff?  That can't be right. Wherezarealtime for SPX?  Goddamnimhungover..."

Then noticed the guy *on* Bloomberg (the video/interview part of the screen) was wronger.  "Dude, what's with the talcum powder on your hair and your suit?  You don't look mature, you look like hell.  Someone in makeup's gonna get fired."

Next video clip was NYC, live, shortly after towerfall, with all of lower Manhattan obscured by dust.

I'm told by my travelling companion that I  started screaming about whereTF "they" got tac-nukes and punctuating each clause with a word favored by Samuel L. Jackson.  And about the one F*ahem*king day I decide to sleep in through the opening bell - market in crappy technical position as we moved towards recession anyways, figured I could get away with one f*anothercough*king weekend before the sh*morenaughtwords*t hit the fan, and of course, not that it mattered, there was no trading that day anyways.  Or the next day... or the next... but that's post-9/11.

Back to the moment, I started wondering, aloud, whyTF the news was doing showing pictures of a building that was obviously the Pentagon when the moth*samueljackson*ing nuke had gone off in Manhattan.  Whew.  Only conventional weapons.

On the upside, I was one of the few people relieved to see the planes hitting the towers, and the replays of the collapses a few seconds later. 

On the downside, I'm still stuck in this novel written by the bastard spawn of Dale Brown and George Orwell.

On the upside, I've since made half a lifetime's retirement off the war.

On the downside, I'd trade it for the country my grandparents left me post-WW2 and post-Cold-War.

On the upside, in the 5 years it took them to simultaneously defeat both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, my generation has the 9/11 Memorial Hole to show for it.

Wait a minute.  Let's admit it.  That's a sucky upside.  That's an upside so sucky I can't tell it from the downside.

So sorry, Gramps.  We screwed the pooch.  I hope there's no God and no afterlife, because if there isn't, I won't have to answer to you -- and more importantly, you got to go out on a high note, never having to see  how badly my generation screwed the pooch. 

/typing with one hand,
//because I accidentally crushed a wine glass in frustration a few hours ago,
///no need for an ER visit, just basic first aid, probably won't even leave a scar,
////unlike Gramps.

I actually live on the West Coast, but I was up early for my third week in College.

For me...it was my third week at Cal State Northridge! I had been in community colleges the previous three years.


It was a really sad day and I just remember feeling so awful. I will never forget it.

Yes it was. :( The good part is that my family and I were far away from it, and that we were all okay.

For me...it was my third week at Cal State Northridge! I had been in community colleges the previous three years.
Yes it was. :( The good part is that my family and I were far away from it, and that we were all okay.


Fortunately most of my intermediate family were away from the East coast except for my mom's brother who works in Washington, D.C. and walks daily to the Pentagon for business. Luckily, he had the day off and wasn't working that day.

Fortunately most of my intermediate family were away from the East coast except for my mom's brother who works in Washington, D.C. and walks daily to the Pentagon for business. Luckily, he had the day off and wasn't working that day.

So even if there were no attacks, he still wouldn't have worked that day?

So even if there were no attacks, he still wouldn't have worked that day?


Nope. He luckily had the day off. But, of all days, you know?  ;D

After 5 years,I still remember what happened where I was that day :o

After 5 years,I still remember what happened where I was that day :o




So do most people.  It was our generation's Pearl Harbor or Kennedy assassination.