Where were you on September 11, 2001? (death, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Chicago)

[HappyTexan]

I was taking a class for work. Someone came in and told us a plane crashed into the WTC and it was on TV out in the lounge. We all went and watched and thought it was nothing more than a tragic accident....until the second plane and we all became speechless. Class got cancelled and I went home and glued myself to the TV while calling my relatives in NYC to make sure they were all safe. I have a cousin that worked in the WTC..she made it out safe but to this day is highly sensitive to food, odors, lotions, etc. and she has never spoken about that day.

[Mooseketeer]

Originally Posted by monkeywrenching

watching it happen live at home in my living room.

Same here. It was one of the most awful thing I have ever seen. I remember calling my Husband who was working at home that day. We both watched in utter shock and disbelief and transfixed . I started to cry only when the shock had worn a little. I also remember spending at least a week still thinking : "I can't believe it, I simply can't believe it".

American friends of ours were in NY that day and we were frantic , trying to get through. It took us two days to make contact.

We flew out to the US two weeks after the event for our vacation and the airport was so quiet. We went through New York city and it was the quietest I had ever known it , everyone so subdued.

It still fills me with great sadness.

[Jaggy001]

In Switzerland for a business trip. Spent most of the day trying to contact my wife who had flown in from Atlanta to La Guardia that morning. She landed just 15 mins before the first attack and only just made it over the Whitestone Bridge before they closed it. I finally got home on the following Monday.

[Sanderling]

I was at home in NJ with my 4-mo-old baby. After the second plane hit I went over to my neighbor's house, whose husband was in the South Tower. We watched while, we thought, she became a widow.

Her husband got out and was 10 blocks away when the So Tower fell, but we didn't know that until much later in the day. That day was one of unbearable fear and tension as we tried to discover where her husband was and waited for news of others, my best friend included. I didn't cry until my neighbor's husband arrived home covered with dust and dirt. And when my friend called in the evening, I realized I'd been holding my breath all day. Later I discovered a classmate died that day.

Such pain.

[KevK]

Originally Posted by zz4guy

What were you doing when you heard the news? What were you thinking? Who did you call? What were your plans? Let's hear everybody's stories.

I was at work. I was driving to a job in my work truck and the radio came on and said "there is a report out of New York that a plane has apparently struck one of the world trade center buildings in Manhattan and we will have more details shortly". I still remember to this day what they said. And the first thing I thought was that they meant a little plane like a Cessna or Beech and that the pilot was either an idiot or suicidal. But then they came back on and said that it was a big airliner and that the building had a massive hole in it and was burning. At that point I went to a nearby restaurant and watched it on their TV set. It was kind of ironic because I was only working a half day as my wife was scheduled to become a United States citizen that afternoon at the Immigration office. Needless to say that did not happen. This day will forever be in my mind along with a few others.

[KevK]

Originally Posted by LuckyGem

I used to sleep with the talk radio on and listen to Art Bell's overnight show so my radio was on in the 5am pacific time hour when I was kinda half awake/half asleep and noticed that the tone of the news announcers voice had become very metered in speech (that's the only way I can describe it) and I just zoned back out and went back to sleep until my mother called me at 6 and demanded I turn on the t.v. and that's when I watched the second jet United 175 hit the second tower on the news.

I couldn't believe my eyes and as I watched it I kept repeating over and over "how are they going to get the jets out of the building". I knew that they weren't going to.

I really did not think the buildings were going to fall. I thought "OK this is really bad but the firemen will get up there and put the fire out" because the building had taken the hit and were still standing. I thought if they were going to fall, they would have fallen at the time the planes hit them. I did not even think about the fire bringing them down.

[KevK]

BTW MSNBC is playing back 9-11 in real time right now and watching it all over again seems almost as real as that day.

[lifelongMOgal]

In Denver getting ready to leave for the airport to return home after attending the baptisms of my godchildren two days before. I left for the airport immediately after the 2nd plane hit the South Tower and the exit to the Denver airport was already blockaded.

I spent the day listening to the radio on the rental car as I drove the next 10 hrs. home. It was very eerie to drive across the Great Plains of the Midwest and never see a single contrail from an airplane in the sky. At each truck stop people were silent, hushed, walking about in shock, glued to the TV over the cashier's stations, not hurried, not pushing to get in and get out. I had been on the road for over 6 hrs. before I witnessed the beginning of price gouging at the gas pumps near Salina,KS . The exit ramp to Ft. Riley was backed up as national guardsmen tried to return to base. I'll not forget that sight of armed guardsmen on the bridge of the exit ramp making certain that all who exited had legitimate reason to be headed there.

When I dropped off my rental car at the airport in my hometown they were thankful to have it and no fees incurred but a free day. They were out of rentals and people who had been stranded at my local airport were waiting for each return so that they could in turn drive home to their loved ones.

I can still feel the heavy feeling in the pit of my gut that I had on 9/11/2001 as reality set in. So, nine years later I ask myself how we honor those who lost their lives on that day or as a result of those terrorist attacks, either directly or indirectly?

Most of the terrorists were in our country on expired visas. Yet our government, as policy, continues to refuse to enforce our immigration laws letting terrorists come across our borders. They fail to deport those here on expired visas. They continue to issue visas to those from predominately Muslim countries. Why? Did we learn nothing from the past? Why do we continue to enable more attacks like a habitually abused woman believing her violent husband will change if she is only good enough? How does this honor those killed by terrorists on US soil and wearing the uniform of the US military and those of our allies abroad fighting terrorism? How are we honoring them by leaving our front and back doors open for terrorists to walk right in?

[Count David]

I was 17, had just started college, but had no classes that day and was asleep on the couch in the living room at our apartment in Southern CA.

My mom woke me up and said, "Look at the TV, where is this?" and the first thing that came to my mind was "some foreign country", until I realized it was New York.

I thought, "so a skyscraper is on fire, big deal", until I watched and found out what had happened. Saw the second tower get hit. Was glued to the TV the rest of the day. I will never forget it.

I worked at Denny's at the time, and it was unusually busy that night. We had a 13" TV (with rabbit ears) posted on the pie case, and people would gather around it, in shock and awe of what happened, even several hours afterward.

9/11 was the talk of the town for weeks. People started putting little American flags on their cars, in an unexpected public show of patriotism. I wonder if the united people we were then would be ashamed of the polarized folks we have become.

[Mightyqueen801]

Thank you for this thread. I am endlessly fascinated by other people's perspectives from where they were and what they were doing that day.

I worked on the 72nd floor of the north tower. I got to work at 8:15. Two of my coworkers used to go down early to the cafeteria together, but one called in and said she was going to be late that day so the other asked me if I wanted to go get breakfast with her. The caf was on the 43rd floor.

I bought coffee, oatmeal, and a banana. I wanted blueberries for my oatmeal, which they usually had but didn't have that day, and I was annoyed that they didn't have any blueberries. (The things that were important!) I put the food in the little cardboard boxes that were available to carry your food, left the cafeteria and was walking toward the escalator that took you up to 44 where you caught the elevators to your floor.

All of a sudden for some reason I was losing my balance and I didn't know why. My friend was screaming about a man on fire and that we were going to die. I turned toward her, she was pointing toward an elevator area and smoke and flames were shooting out of it. In my memory it is all in slow motion but I remember seeing the frame of the dropped ceiling bending and the ceiling tiles crumbling and falling. I was there in 1993 and knew immediately that whatever had happened was much, much worse. My friend is 15 years younger and had not been there in 1993, and she was frozen and screaming so that sort of helped me get it together because I had felt I had to take control and help her. Threw my food, told her we were being bombed again, grabbed her hand and told her we had to get in the stairs and get out and I more or less dragged her into the staircase. In my memory, for about the first ten flights or so, we are FLYING down the stairs with our feet barely touching the steps, then other people started to enter the staircase and we slowed down.

I got out of the building just after the second plane hit the other tower (figured that out later--there was a huge sound of an explosion and the building shook when I was around the 4th floor). First thing I saw was a dying bird lying on the ground quivering. Then my friend said, Oh my God, look at the Plaza, and I looked, and there was the remains of a burning plane surrounded by torn fabric and other stuff that I told myself to stop looking at before I realized what it was I was looking at. Then a cop was in my face pointing at the north pedestrian bridge and telling me to run over the bridge and not to look up (I was directly under the gash in the north tower). I looked up, saw all this debris coming at me, some it on fire, and then I became aware that there was this BANG BANG BANG going on around me and that this debris was landing all around me and I might get hit. I grabbed my friend's hand again and we ran over that bridge.

This is the abbreviated version. There's not enough room in a post to cover everything I saw and heard and experienced that day. I lost more than 80 of my coworkers that day, some of whom I knew for decades. My breakfast partner and I are the closest of friends now and bound for life by our experience. We both work on the WTC rebuilding project, though we are in two different work locations now. We had lunch yesterday, and she called me at 8:46 this morning.

Thanks to KevK for posting the MSNBC info. It was only last year that I began to watch programs on the events of that day, and I have always been curious as to what people saw on TV as it was actually happening.