What were you doing on 9/11/01?

The Australian ^ | September 09 2003

[laker_dad]

I was at work, and though I normally didn't get on FR back then until lunch time, for some reason I logged in just before 9:00 am. I was reading about the first plane when the second hit. No one else in our office knew what was happening. We eventually found a TV and rigged a makehift antenna (no cable TV in the office) to get the local ABC station. We all sat in stunned silence and watched the towers fall.

[al_c]

I remember leaving work and looking up to see a blue sky devoid of contrails.

That, and the lack of the sound of aircraft, was one of the eeriest things the following days.

[M_Man]

I was fishing on Baja's Gordo Banks out of San Jose del Cabo. When we hit the beach around 1PM MDT, the owner of the panga fleet greeted us: "Wow Dave, the first day of your fishing vacation turns out to be the first day of World War Three!"

What? I asked in shock. Eric began to tell of the day's events while our fish were filleted, as I became chilled from head to toe.

Back at the Condo we watched the news. The satellite was only giving us KOMO/ABC from Seattle, and CNN/Headline. Our trip went from five days to nine. I never saw any Republicans on those two "News" outlets save for Bush, Chaney, and Rumsfeld! The Mexican stations showed the video of the WTC jumpers every half hour for the duration of our stay. Talk about galvanizing images! My chill turned to fire!

When we returned to SFO, it was eerie! A virtual Ghost Town! Never in my life had I seen mostly empty Jetways! Spooky

[holdmuhbeer]

i was working like most americans were at the time

[OrioleFan]

I was at work when the first plane hit. We collected in the conference room to watch the news coverage. Saw the second one hit. We had a recording of a cell phone call to one of our answering machines from one of our managers who saw the plane the Pentagon while he was talking, "Holy sh** the Pentagon just blew up!" After watching some of the TV, I levt to get on Free Republic for a while as I shut down my workstation, then went home to be with my family.

[FeliciaCat]

I was at work, my office is in Chelsea in NYC. Its an old building and most of us were huddled around the TV..I went up on the roof and watched Tower 2 fall down. My Company's main NY office was on the top floors of tower 2...we lost close to 200 people (I believe the final number was 186). I only knew a few of them personally. A friend of mine lost her Father and another friend lost two cousins.
I remember that entire day like it was yesterday.

[Teacher317]

Teaching (administering the state tests, actually)
FReeping (while keeping an eye out for cheating)
Crying (while desperately waiting for the tests to be over to hit CNN)

in that order

[Ol' Sox]

I had broken a small bone in my wrist the night before while playing with my sons and was at my doctor's getting it x-rayed and immobilized. The nurse came into the room and said that a plane had hit the WTC. I thought of the incident when a bomber, lost in the fog, hit the Empire State Building and mentioned it to the doc. Just as I was leaving, someone hollered out that a second plane had hit. I sped to work and spent the morning making video of CNN available over the IP network to our employees' computers and reading Free Republic.

A little after noon, we dismissed everyone - we're only about 40 miles from the city and literally everyone at work knew someone that worked at the WTC. I went home and got my wife, and drove to the beach where we could see the smoke from the fire. We discussed our lack of "defensive" capability other than the dogs. The next day I took the NRA pistol course and have since acquired my carry permit, two excellent handguns and a pump shotgun. I hadn't done any serious shooting for 20 years before this. Free Republic was instrumental in informing my decisions on this.

It turned out that I knew one man from my church who died of a heart attack while assisting in the rescue efforts, another from church who escaped from the 45th floor of Tower 2, and my son's classmate's mother who was with Cantor Fitzgerald and died in the collapse. My wife knew a lot of people at Marsh McClennan from her years in the reinsurance business. Our next door neighbors own and operate a day care center within a few hundred yards of the WTC. Although they and their charges were safe within their building at the time of the collapse, they found body parts right outside the door when they came out. A number of "their" kids lost parents that day.

[Loyolas Mattman]

I was at the hospital with my son, who was born some 10 hours earlier. The hospital is only 20 or so miles from the Pentagon, and probably less than 5 miles from Dulles Airport (Reston, VA). My wife had to be moved from the room she was in to another room because the hospital had to prepare for victims if the situation worsened.

It was truly horrible to have to deal with the reality of seeing your city under attack on little sleep and coming off the emotional high of your first child's birth. As I held him, I thanked him for being born when he was so I didn't have to be downtown that morning. (I commute past the Pentagon twice a day.) At the same time, I couldn't help but wonder what kind of world he was born into.

Making the situation worse, the nurses at the hospital were spreading the worst rumors imaginable. At one point, I thought we had lost the Capitol, the White House, and the State Dept.

That day was an emotional rollercoaster I would never wish on anyone, and have little desire to relive. Thankfully, to date, we have not had to...

[Teacher317]

Wow... you probably have one of the world's only surviving airborne views.

[Petronski]

I woke up pretty late that morning, about quarter to nine, with the television still on FoxNews from the night before. Grogginess mixed with words like 'horrible' and 'incredible' and 'nightmarish' as I pawed the nightstand for my glasses.

Something had crashed into the World Trade Center!

I woke my dad and returned to the television in time to see the footage of the crash and hear dad yelling from another room "Something hit the other tower!"

"No, no," I shot back, "that's just a replay."

He entered the room. "Replay hell. Look!"

We stared for a few moments, speechless, before I muttered "Dad, this is war."

[PonyTailGuy]

Watching Fox and Friends. They came out of the 8:48 break with a live shot of smoke billowing out of the World Trade Center. E.D. Donahae took the lead, commenting that obviously something was wrong at the WTC, reports indicated a small aircraft. Steve Doocey sounded the most somber of the three, and he noted with a tone of understatement that this was going to be a very major story throughout the day.

At 9:00 I switched to MSNBC, as they seemed to have a better camera angle. I saw the huge explosion at 9:03, but the camera angle made it unclear what its source was. I thought it was an explosion inside the WTC. The MSNBC anchor couldn't tell either, saying it appeared that the fire from the first building had somehow caused an explosion in the second building. He sort of rhetorically asked his live guest "is that even possible?" or something. A minute later, MSNBC re-racked the video and replayed it, this time noticing the plane coming in from the right hand side of the screen.

I stayed on the MSNBC bulletin boards posting minute-by-minute updates to the cubicle-bound all morning. Unfortunately, in between updates, I was battling leftists who, as the buildings burned, were already blaming America.

[capydick]

Went to work early that morning, expecting investment bankers from New York to arrive at 9:00 am as we were looking for some funding. They arrived a bit early and mentioned that a plane had hit one of the towers right before they walked into our building. My first reaction was to ask "intentionally"? They both said it was too early to tell but, one of our (extremely liberal)Directors (trying to impress) makes a remark like "Why would someone intentionally hit a Twin Tower with an airplane? And, looking at the bankers says "He's one of the VRWC".

After the bankers left to try and get back to the city, our upstate New York office had set up a video camera in front of a TV and they streamed Fox News to one of our video conferencing system's using ISDN for the remainder of the work day, which was 2:00 pm.

My next door neighbor worked in WTC7 and arrived home safely by 3:00 pm that day because he was there in '93 and learned to get down to the docks ASAP. The brothers of two friends were slaughtered that morning:

Paul Hanlon Keating, 38, New York, N.Y., USA firefighter, New York Fire Department Confirmed dead, World Trade Center, at/in building and

Thomas F. Hughes, 46, Spring Lake Heights, N.J., USA owner, Colonial Art Decorators Confirmed dead, World Trade Center, at/in building.

Here in Monmouth County, you can hit a golf ball in any direction and hit somebody who has been affected by 9/11. 99.999% of the people I know support President Bush in this war on terror and are nothing like the vermin witnessed in lastnight's debate, both on stage and in the audience.

Oh and, the Director is no longer with our company.

[ratzoe]

I was at work in southwest DC when my son called and asked if we had a TV because a plane had just hit the WTC. I immediately pulled up FR and started reading, watching the guesswork of many users as to what type of plane it was and one user, within minutes, said it was a terrorist attack. When the second plane hit, each refresh of FR brought 20 new posts and all the news you needed to know. When news of the Pentagon being hit, I went outside to look(Pentagon is directly across the Potomac from my office). Hearing the sirens, helicopters, fighter jets and the looks on folks' faces is something that I won't forget. While outside, a very loud explosion was heard and I'll never forget seeing a dozen or more people hit the ground thinking it was close. When I came back into my office, alot was made of that explosion on FR and there were some that thought the state department had been bombed. Turned out it was a propane tank(or so I was told) at the Pentagon.

[gdani]

Making the situation worse, the nurses at the hospital were spreading the worst rumors imaginable. At one point, I thought we had lost the Capitol, the White House, and the State Dept.

Many people in Manhattan were huddled around cars listening to the radio.

As I walked to work, I specifically remember hearing news reports that both the State Dept & the Supreme Court buildings were hit by what were believed to be bombs.

[rageaholic]

Wish I never saw it.

[Only1choice____Freedom]

I was driving to attend the Networld + Interop trade show in Atlanta when I heard the news on the radio. I went home to tell my wife where she stayed in front of the TV the rest of the day. I finally made it to the Expo where a media center was set up with a huge screen picture of the towers burning with a CNN feed and behind all that was the air traffic control system showing the planes being grounded.

The mood was very somber and nobody was talking about computers or networking. There was supposed to be a major announcement at the end of the day but all displays were shut down by 2:00. Everybody was staring at the monitors and when the towers crashed, sadness turned to horror. I saw everything and I can't get it out of my head now.

I can only imagine what it was like to be there. My heart goes out to all those who lost their lives and loved ones there. With all we have learned since then, it staggers me still. 3000 lost in just a few hours! The horror, the honor of the heros dead.

The networks should show it again and again to prevent us from forgetting.

WE MUST NEVER FORGET!!!!!

I will always remember.

We shoud collect all the missing persons posters that were stuck on every telephone pole, wall, and door in NYC should be reprinted and posted in Berkerly and every other place where people have acquired selective memories.

[kjam22]

All of the employees of the company I work for were in an offsite meeting being informed that another company had bought us. We were told to keep doing our jobs and see what the future would hold because no one knew right now. We all left and as we returned to our offices many of us heard of the bombing on the radio. We huddled around a television just in time to watch the first building collapse.

[facedown]

I remember it was eerily quiet.

We live near O'Hare airport. The silence was deafening.

[semaj]

"This is what Amelika gets for sticking their noses in other peoples business all the time."

My question... What did you get after (hopefully) you stuck your foot up his @$$?