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Neighbor knocked in door and alerted me. Turned on MSNBC just in time to see a reporter with the towers on the BG, one of them smoking, and another plane silently disappear into the second -- which was behind the reporter's back, unremarked upon, But I saw it live and at that point I knew it was a Holy-S story.
At that hour, MSNBC had no-one to send out there but cub-reporter Ashleigh Banfield, newly hired from Winnipeg, and she was gangbusters. She stayed on duty all day, and was one of the must professional, level-headed reporting I've ever seen, and I was a retired TV news reporter myself. She was amazing.
We’re coming up to the 20th anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center. Do you remember what you were doing when you heard about it?
Is at an interesting buddies place at the time. He was born in Canada but went to the USA as a baby. Then he got deported!! Brilliant and worldly. When those planes hit, he said: "Those bas...rds just lost ALL OF US our Rights. In three days CSIS and the RCMP walked over to Parliament Hill in Ottawa and passed the "Security Act". He was right. Usually Congress or Parliament CAN'T PASS anything in less than two or three years. Not this time.
It's called "Schock Doctrine"; you and your buddies wait for a "moment" and then make your play for control. Works most of the time.
Neighbor knocked in door and alerted me. Turned on MSNBC just in time to see a reporter with the towers on the BG, one of them smoking, and another plane silently disappear into the second -- which was behind the reporter's back, unremarked upon, But I saw it live and at that point I knew it was a Holy-S story.
At that hour, MSNBC had no-one to send out there but cub-reporter Ashleigh Banfield, newly hired from Winnipeg, and she was gangbusters. She stayed on duty all day, and was one of the must professional, level-headed reporting I've ever seen, and I was a retired TV news reporter myself. She was amazing.
There was nothing silent about the 2nd plane hitting the building. There was already so much noise what with pieces of T1 falling off and hitting the concrete below, which you don't really see on video so the reporter may not have realized it was a new sound. Plus all TV cameras were blocks away.
It always puzzled me that when the towers collapse, you can barely hear it on video, just sort of a low rumble, but in real life, it was deafening and went right through our bones. News video has its limitations, I guess
There was nothing silent about the 2nd plane hitting the building.
I once sat almost next to the foul pole in Fenway Park, when Oakland's Mitchell Page hit a three-run homer. I was left with an eerie sense of soundlessness when the ball sank behind the Green Monster maybe 20 feet from me in the crowded stadium. Soundlessness is the most commanding impression you get when it associated with a great display of energy. From where I was viewing, an airliner full of people obliterating a building sounded like a fly landing on a cupcake. The audirory effect was memorable to this day.
Another: Aimlessly looking out the plane window at the clouds below, I saw another airliner in the flight path below passing at an apparent speed of 1,200 mph. The soundlessness of it was my most vivid impression. I still feel it viscerally. "Soundless" is an essential element of what I felt. A logical anomaly one experiences only a few times in a lifetime.
Last edited by Mightyqueen801; 09-18-2021 at 08:55 AM..
Reason: Fixed quote tag
There was nothing silent about the 2nd plane hitting the building.
I once sat almost next to the foul pole in Fenway Park, when Oakland's Mitchell Page hit a three-run homer. I was left with an eerie sense of soundlessness when the ball sank behind the Green Monster maybe 20 feet from me in the crowded stadium. Soundlessness is the most commanding impression you get when it associated with a great display of energy. From where I was viewing, an airliner full of people obliterating a building sounded like a fly landing on a cupcake. The auditory effect was memorable to this day.
Another: Aimlessly looking out the plane window at the clouds below, I saw another airliner in the flight path below passing at an apparent speed of 1,200 mph. The soundlessness of it was my most vivid impression. I still feel it viscerally. "Soundless" is an essential element of what I felt. A logical anomaly one experiences only a few times in a lifetime.
Interesting!
My memory of the plane hitting T2 was that I was in a stairwell in T1 checking the floor numbers on the doors as I went down. You have to understand that when we got whacked, it felt as though the building was going over, and it never quite righted itself straight. I could tell my feet weren't landing on the steps right, and the steel was obviously broken and damaged and making horrible groaning sounds very different from what it normally sounded like.* I still thought the building might go over sideways at that point.
So, I remember that around the 4th floor, there was the sound of a huge explosion and the line of people stopped moving and everyone held their breath and waited, and then began to proceed again. Of course, we were in a building anchored in the same concrete and bedrock as the building that just had gotten hit, so much of that sound was vibration coming up from the ground, I suppose.
*If that doesn't make sense, you were never in the WTC. The building was designed with a "sway factor" in the steel, and when you were out of an area where there was everyday office noise, such as the stairwells or a washroom or, the tower steel made a constant back-and-forth creaking, sort of like a ship sound in the movies. On very windy days, they swayed harder, and then you could hear it in the offices.
On 9/11, the steel was groaning/screaming one way and not coming back. It was obvious that the building was terribly damaged just from the sound. Not to mention the water pouring down the stairs from broken pipes or the smell of jet fuel...
Location: New Albany, Indiana (Greater Louisville)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mightyqueen801
I didn't hear about it.
I was on the 43rd floor of One WTC when American Airlines 11 slammed into the building.
One of the more inane things I said to my escape-mate after we got out and were on the street looking up was, "I wonder if anyone outside the city knows this is going on."
I am always interested in other people's stories of That Day.
I've watched some other WTC survivor videos and many said they knew less about what was happening than people in the rest of the world seeing it on the news. Would be interested to know when did you know it was a plane hitting the building, did you immediately feel the need to evacuate? As someone who grew up far from high end targets like the WTC I can't fathom all the stories of people who didn't feel the urgent need to run down the nearest stairway once something seemed to be happening. Since 1993 it was known the WTC was the number one target of international terror groups.
For me personally living in Kentucky... the day before I had a great college campus tour and went to bed that night feeling so happy. The decision about what to do for college had been very stressful. Then the next day it seemed as society was falling apart. I truly feared I'd be drafted into the military and die in a foreign land. At the time we didn't know large terror attacks wouldn't become the new norm. I worried about getting blown up by suicide bombers while at the grocery store. Would every large skyscraper in USA be taken out with suitcase nukes? Had we known in hindsight those things wouldn't come true it would have simply been a matter of mourning the lost on that day. But at the time fear of a new era of terror was very real.
How did this get in the Canada forum? I was in Montreal when JFK was shot -- does that count?
As MQ stated, the OP must have wanted a Canadian perspective.
Canadians also have thousands of stories that day, since we were the country that let all US bound planes land, so our perspective will be slightly different.
Around 239 flights with over 33,000 passengers arrived quite suddenly, and there was fear that some of these planes may be hijacked as well. People were a bit on edge here. I remember it well.
My memory of the plane hitting T2 was that I was in a stairwell in T1 checking the floor numbers on the doors as I went down. You have to understand that when we got whacked, it felt as though the building was going over, and it never quite righted itself straight. I could tell my feet weren't landing on the steps right, and the steel was obviously broken and damaged and making horrible groaning sounds very different from what it normally sounded like.* I still thought the building might go over sideways at that point.
So, I remember that around the 4th floor, there was the sound of a huge explosion and the line of people stopped moving and everyone held their breath and waited, and then began to proceed again. Of course, we were in a building anchored in the same concrete and bedrock as the building that just had gotten hit, so much of that sound was vibration coming up from the ground, I suppose.
*If that doesn't make sense, you were never in the WTC. The building was designed with a "sway factor" in the steel, and when you were out of an area where there was everyday office noise, such as the stairwells or a washroom or, the tower steel made a constant back-and-forth creaking, sort of like a ship sound in the movies. On very windy days, they swayed harder, and then you could hear it in the offices.
On 9/11, the steel was groaning/screaming one way and not coming back. It was obvious that the building was terribly damaged just from the sound. Not to mention the water pouring down the stairs from broken pipes or the smell of jet fuel...
Your stories about that day are fascinating. Have you written them down so you can pass them on to your descendants? You were part of a historical event that will be read about for many years.
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"there goes ALL our Rights".............
The building was designed with a "sway factor" in the steel, and when you were out of an area where there was everyday office noise, such as the stairwells or a washroom or, the tower steel made a constant back-and-forth creaking, sort of like a ship sound in the movies. On very windy days, they swayed harder, and then you could hear it in the offices. 
