Sitting at my desk at work. The girl who worked in the opposite cube had just come in. Her phone rang. It was another co-worker calling to tell her a plane had hit the World Trade Center and he would be late as he was watching the news coverage.
We went into the lounge and turned on the TV. Got there just in time to see the second plane strike the other tower. The bimbo NBC reporter said “obviously we’re having air traffic control issues”. I immediately thought “no, dimwit, that’s some sort of terrorist attack”.
Things were tense for awhile because we were getting calls from customers in D.C. about the flight that ultimately crashed in Shanksville, PA. They were warning us that it was headed for Pittsburgh. The US Steel Tower in downtown Pittsburgh is one of the tallest in the country so we assumed someone was targeting all tall buildings.
Our boss, who had been on a long conference call since before we got there, finally came out and had NO idea what had been happening. He closed the office and sent us all home.
Patagonia.
Didn’t even know until late afternoon. Walked into a little place for a bite to eat, and the people were very insistent “we have CNN”. Baffled, we were like “ummm ok”. They only had their tv stream a couple of times a day and would not have cnn again for an hour so we ate, then walked into thebackroom with the tv not knowing what to expect, then spent the next hour slack jawed