Remembering 9/11

I'm not American but I have many New York friends I'll never forget it. I was driving my son to Brighton for an interview for leaving college when we heard the news on the radio. The Head of school had the TV on during the interview and we all watched in horror. It wasn't much of an interview...
In the last two days I watched two movies and a documentary of that day. My heart goes out to all the victims and their families.

I remember a friend calling me, knowing so much of my family was in the city and a couple working downtown, near Wall Street. When she first told me about a plane and to turn on the news, I said I didn't have time, that it was probably a freak accident. Small planes, etc. . . .She was adamant that it was a big plane.

Once I realized what what happening I immediately called my mother, who miraculously wasn't in the city, but she had friends that were on Wall Street and was worried sick. Thankfully, the rest of my family checked in almost immediately.

I think of all those people in the Towers that day and it still sends a chill through me. I hope they are in a better place. . . .

Now a couple of people I really cherish are working near the Pentagon. It does concern me if I think about it. . . .

What I remember, since I live about 60 miles south of NYC, was the black smoke on the horizon over the ocean that day and for a few days after.

We used to take our sons to the Twin Towers to the restaurant Windows On the World on the top floor of the north tower. A friend's husband was in that restaurant at a meeting that morning. They found his watch and wedding ring a few days later.

i just remember being so angry, so filled with hate. i was at work when word passed about it and everyone went online to watch the video of the first plane hitting. then the second one hit.

it was a feeling i have never felt before or since, just rage that there are people out there that in their minds saw that move as justified. many of my friends went and joined the army shortly after that happened and have been dealing with the fall out of that day ever since.

I was working at directory enquiries (I think the American equivalent is 411) and everything stopped for about half an hour, then the phones went mental. People looking for our Home and Foreign Office, the American Embassy, the numbers for friends and family in America (which we didn't carry) anything at all that might help them find out what was happening. A few very narky people wanting the Prime Minister's direct number, like we had that, journalists, some cranks and pranks and just general dismay. It was a very eerie day.

I was at work when one of my coworkers walked by with a casual "A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center" comment as she passed my desk. I just kind of blinked at her and went back to work because this particular lady often said weird things that only made sense to her. In addition, I'd never heard of the WTC prior to that day. No idea where it was, not even the city. So between her rep and my ignorance, the statement was totally ignorable.

I had one of those temp jobs where as long as I looked busy and was interruptable, I was good to go, so I was in another writer chat at the time. It took about 10 minutes before the news filtered into the chat and we started listing off fellow chatters/members we knew in NYC. There was one--one of my good friends. I knew she worked at Morgan-Stanley in Manhatten and did a quick search. One of their offices was in the WTC.

That's when I started to be concerned.

After a while, we heard that the company was broadcasting CNN down in the main conference room so our little office went down. The first tower had already collapsed and the second plane had already hit. As we're standing there, the auditorium totally silent, we watched the second tower fall.

The reporter says "Something just happened. We don't know what."

Without thinking I said, "The building just imploded, you moron."

People turned to look at me and started nodding in agreement and the whispers started. Took CNN about 10 minutes to confirm that I was right.

I went back to my desk. Work pretty much stopped that day. Everyone was focused on whatever newsource we could get at our desk. I hovered in chat, waiting to get word from the one person I knew in NYC. She finally came on about 6-7 PM. She'd stayed home that day because her hubby was very sick, but their apartment was only about 1/2mile from the towers and she'd watched the entire thing unfold from her bedroom window.

Wonder if I still have the transcript from that chat or if I lost it when that computer died? Hmmmm.

My roommate and I always had CNN on in the morning while we were getting ready for class. So, I was dressing myself when I heard the news. Didn't go into class that morning. When I did go into class that evening and for many days thereafter, the profs didn't lecture. Instead, we watched the news.

Soon afterward, I became very angry with the US response to the attack, and I guess I'll leave it at that. Not like my political views are unknown here.

I was on campus, in class when it happened. I heard the whisperings and eventually found a TV where I learned what was going on. The university set up TVs in the common areas, and turned on any projectors in empty classrooms with TV capability.

I stopped at the gas station in town on my way home and waited in line to fill up my tank because it was almost empty. Because of the hysteria for gasoline, I was afraid the gas station would run out by morning.

The husband and I stayed up all night watching coverage and he was taping it.

This morning, as they have done every year, there were firefighters with a giant flag standing at the overpass that leads to the university.

I was working in London at the time as a tour guide. I'd been at an early meeting that morning and so by the time I got into the city centre to start my shift, the first two planes had already hit. There were a load of police around and the streets were all very quiet - one officer told us they'd had a tip off that there were still planes in the air and they might be headed for London. All flights over our airspace were stopped, and you'd never notice how many planes go overhead in London until there are none. We stopped doing tours and used the buses for ferrying people to hotels, embassies, etc. I took a load of people to the US embassy, to the Canadian high commission and to various airline offices - all flights to the US and then later to Canada were suspended so we had a lot of people stranded. All over the place, colleagues and customers were trying to contact relatives and friends who might have been involved - one woman told me her son worked in the WTC but had a fortnight's holiday, only she couldn't remember if he was back at work yet and so was desperate to try and contact him. I never did find out what happened.

I remember a group of Canadian and Americans were on the bus going back to their hotels and we all just stood by the driver's cab listening to the radio as the news came out that the plane had hit the pentagon. That really hit the people with me hard. They said they couldn't believe it.

Then by the time my shift ended and I got back to Piccadilly Circus it was about 8pm and a girl just collapsed in the middle of the street. She told me she didn't have anyone involved in things, didn't know anyone from NYC, and felt guilty at being upset, but she was just so hit by the whole thing. I didn't know what else to do besides sit with her for a bit then I made sure she got back to her hotel in Waterloo.

Finally got home at 9pm and I saw the news footage for the first time. I will never forget that cold, quiet feeling there had been in the city though. I remember colleagues very seriously discussing what would happen if this meant we were at war, if there would be conscription etc. Seriously discussing it.

Then a while later I was working again and they had a minute's silence for those who'd died. Can't remember when it was but it wasn't long after 9/11, like a few days or something, and by chance our bus happened to be in the City when it came to the time. We pulled over and stopped all the engines, but all around us were bankers and City workers all coming out of their offices to observe the silence, and it struck me that they probably lost colleagues or friends, being in the same business, and how hard it must be for them.

I actually still tear up when I think about it to be honest.

We were staying with friends that day, and when I woke up and took my son in to watch cartoons, they were watching the news. My husband stood with me, just staring at the TV, tears running down our cheeks.

Later that day, we got a phone call that my husband's sister planned on getting married that night because her boyfriend of three months was in the National Guard and could be called up at any moment. So by the end of the day, we were sitting in a chapel watching them get married. I wondered how it would make me feel to have my anniversary be the day of such a tragic event in American history.

I live about ten miles east from where the World Trade Center stood, and used to work on the 105<SUP>th</SUP> floor of the North Tower (late eighties/early nineties).

On September 11<SUP>th</SUP>, 2001 I was walking to meet a friend for breakfast, when I overheard a man telling two women standing at a bus stop, “They blew up the Pentagon.” I didn’t know if it was just a bad joke or what.

After finding out what was happening, I took off to make sure my family was ok. It was just about a fifteen minute run from where I was to my house, but it seemed like it took forever. It was such an eerie, surreal feeling.

A couple of blocks from my house is a bar/restaurant. As I was passing, I heard a man from inside yell out, “The second tower just fell.” He ran out, got in his car, and peeled off. I will never forget the sound in his voice.

Everyone I love was safe (Thank God), but I do have a number of people that I knew (from fairly close friends to casual acquaintances) that were murdered on that day.

I won't get into the politics of it all, but, yes, I have very strong feelings on the subject too.

I was just watching the usual child related shows that were always on in my house when a friend burst through my front door screaming something about being attacked and flipped my TV to the news (which I hardly ever watch).

I was frantic making calls to my family as they work at the Pentagon and it took HOURS to get ahold of them.

Shanksville is just 70 miles away from me.

I was scared to death. Pretty much cried all day(s) for everyone. And now I'm doing it again.

A roommate told me to come downstairs to watch the television because someone had flown a plane into the World Trade Center. I did because I wasn't sure if he was joking or not.

Unfortunately it was true. I watched for half an hour, feeling very sad for the victims and their families. I wasn't horrified because I've seen much worse and my heart is a little hard because of it. I wasn't surprised because, well, I'm hard to surprise. Especially when it comes to human beings doing hideous things to one another.

Then I went back to what I was doing.

I was working in a nursing home, getting ready for a meeting.

I took a shortcut through the resident dining room just as one of my friends, a floor nurse, stopped and stared at the dining room tv, her hands over her mouth. I think it was the Today show - smoke was billowing from one of the Towers. I just remember her face and feeling sick to my stomach when the second Tower was hit. I remember the smoke, black against the vivid blue of the sky, the announcer saying something about the blue, and remember that it was the same blue we'd had overhead here just a few days before at my daughter's second birthday party. We had people from the corporate office at work and they were stranded until the airports reopened -- the corporate offices were over 2000 miles away.

Our house is in the flight path to the international airport and to a small plane airport - in the following days, I remember how eerie it was to not hear a single plane and how isolated that felt.

A friend of mine lived in Long Island and worked somewhere in the City, but I didn't know exactly where her store was in relation to the Towers -- I couldn't reach her at home for days. Finally, a week later, she called me. They'd been out of state visiting her family.

I was in high school. I walked into German class just in time to see the second plane hit live on TV.

I was living on Long Island. I had quit my job a few months earlier (at a company which made equipment that goes into elevators), and was half-awake listening to NPR's Morning Edition, when near the end of it, just before 9AM, the WSHU announcer was on and said "An airplane has struck the World Trade Center." He repeated himself, said that same sentence about twice more, and his tone of voice was peculiar. I didn't think much more of it, but I wondered if maybe it was shown on TV. My first thought was gee, that poor pilot, must have had a heart attack and lost control of his small plane or something, and crashed into it. After a few minutes I got up, and turned on the TV just after the second plane hit. From there I was up to the moment on whatever was allegedly happening, supposedly as many as FIVE planes hijacked, etc.

I spent much of the day reading Usenet posts, there were threads that went 400+ posts in a day, a thread named "My favorite city up in flames," and I saw every racially charged epiteth I'd ever heard before (quite a few I have to admit), and some others I'd never heard before.

A year later (I moved back to Georgia - I didn't like the area BEFORE this happened) a guy showed up on a songwriting group with this:
http://soundclick.com/share?songid=803068

I was in college when it happened. I was out doing my independent research (studying the epidemiology of West Nile Virus), and was listening to the radio. The radio was doing prank shows, which were all pretty funny. Then the news of the plane going into the tower came on, and I thought it was a really sick, sick joke. Even though the radio broadcaster said over and over again "we are not kidding, this is very serious..." etc. etc., I didn't believe them.

When I got back to campus, hours later, classes were canceled. That's when it all sunk in.

So I went home to my apartment, and turned on the TV. I watched it for several hours. My best friend came over not long after I returned home, and we embraced in the parking lot, fell to the ground and cried.

It didn't stop there for me, though, as it would have for so many other Americans. During the 2002 Anthrax attacks, I was offered a position in starting up and managing the Anthrax Laboratories in northern Virginia. When I was done with that I finished some more school (certified Johns Hopkins in Tropical and Emerging Infections Diseases) and became an Emergency Planner for the State of Virginia.

Now, 8 years later, I am in charge of training first responders, military, and private industry in how to respond to a Bioterrorism attack. I cover the entire Eastern U.S. (everything east of the Mississippi), and I love my job.

Very few things I can say have really altered the course of my life, but 9-11 was certainly one of them.

Never forget.

I was off that day to get two wisdom teeth removed. My sister called me and told me that a plane had struck the tower. I turned on the TV in time to see the second plane hit live. I was in shock, but I still had to go the the oral surgeon's. Everyone there was in shock. I was effed up on percocet watching the TV as the buildings came down. I was numb, but so deeply moved at the same time. I admit to being grateful to the percocet.

I was in college. I'll never forget the look on my professors face or the shakiness in his voice as he talked about this.

It had all just happened, and everyone in class was saying things like " Did you guys see what happened this morning...wow that sucks." Or "I think we might be being attacked, but who knows." We were teen-agers in Missouri, so the extent of our understanding was narrow.

Our professor was very shaken to say the least. He came in and told us what had happened, although everyone knew. He explained that because of our youth we might not understand the ramifications that this event will have on our lives, but they would be far reaching. At that moment he predicted that our lives and the climate of the country would change. He was right.

He dismissed us with the direction to call our families, friends, and loved ones to check on safety and say a prayer for the country.

September 11, 2001

I was still on active duty that day, assigned to OPNAV N6 (the admiral's office spaces were in the Pentagon, on the E-ring, forth deck, just to the left of the impact point). Because the Pentagon was undergoing renovation, the rest of our staff had been relocated to nearby leased office space in Crystal City (about 1.5 miles as the terrorist plane flies) from the Pentagon, and three streets to the west of National Airport. The admiral was in our building for meetings, and only his Flag Writer was in the Pentagon Office (he made it out, after being thrown around by the impact, it took us a while to figure that out).

We'd heard the reports about the WTC, and when the second plane hit, the consensus was that this was a terrorist attack. The job of the N6 is Communications, so we were expecting to have to provide additional manning of the command spaces at the Pentagon to help handle the expected surge in communications traffic.

Back then I was still a smoker, and I was out on the building's loading dock when I heard (and felt) the explosion as Flight 77 impacted. Just a few seconds later, I saw the cloud of black smoke start rising into the sky.

We were evacuated from our building, and our muster point was a vacant lot diagonally across the street. I remember the eerie quiet. We were outside, under a clear blue sky, and only about 3,000 feet from National's main runway. There were NO planes flying, and none with their engines spooled up. National is a fairly busy airport, and we had all gotten used to the background noise. With the airport shut down, we could easily hear the F-16's from Andrews AFB flying CAP overhead. (Combat Air Patrol)

I lost friends and co-workers that day. As chance would have it, the impact point was almost exactly where the Navy Communications Center had been relocated to. Just about everyone agreed that the Pentagon was a valid target.

I was too stunned and terrified to think properly, I think.

I spent the day trying to get through to someone in my family to make sure my uncle who worked in the Pentagon was okay. (He was. He broke his collarbone during the rescue efforts but wasn't in the impact zone of the building. My uncle passed away a few months ago from brain cancer--he died, as he lived, a hero and a teacher.) Then I stayed glued to the TV all day.

That night, I had to go into work. The restaurant was dead. There were only three tables. During the President's address to the nation, one of my co-workers (a Jehovah's Witness who refused to sing the birthday song on religious grounds) tried to get us to sing the birthday song for his table. I told him to go jump in a lake. Euphemistically.

The next day, I got a written reprimand from my manager for 'refusing to cooperate with a co-worker.'

Whenever I hear people talk about 9/11, I always say a little prayer to the powers-that-be:
(1) that those affected might be comforted, then
(2) thanks that my daughter didn't accept the waiter job at the top of one of the towers.

Does that sound selflish? I'm sorry but I am grateful.

I was in Boston on the conference call with some knobs in Singapore when I got the word. After the second plane hit, I dismissed my staff and then headed back to Connecticut, as I couldn't verify if my father had gone to the city that day (back then, he worked a block away from the WTC). The Mass Pike was pretty much deserted, just three speeding MA state troopers and myself--I was doing 120+ and they passed me doing at least 130. I would imagine that my out-of-state license plates told them all they needed to know, so they didn't bother pulling me over.

My dad was fine--he'd stepped out of the subway just in time to see the first plane hit, then turned around and went back home.

I tried to get back into the service after that, but was politely declined the opportunity, as I'd been out for 7 years already and my skills were too degraded (seven years does make for a very stale attack helicopter pilot). I knew two people who died in the WTC, and one who died at the Pentagon. It was not a great day.

Remembering 9/11 is not new for me, as I work a block away from the WTC site. I see it each and every day I'm in the city.