The ten year anniversary of the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre

[Subotan]

Shall we use this thread to post about where we were when we found out?

[Banquo's Ghost]

Shall we use this thread to post about where we were when we found out?

If you wish.

[Fragony]

So it's 'not yet 9/11' day, don't remember anything specific

[Subotan]

Alrighty then.

I was walking back from school with my mum as a wee nine year old, when my mum said that there'd been a terrible accident in New York. We always got back to the house at 4pm, and we turned on the television just in time to see the second plane hit on live TV. James Kochalka probably captures my thoughts best on it; keep clicking next until 9/11 and the aftermath.

It's strange to think that there are people who were alive at the time who don't remember it because they were so young.

[Lemur]

Impressions:

Day off from work, which means you DO NOT WAKE DADDY UP. Then I get woken. Wife saying, "Somebody had an accident. Flew a little plane into the World Trade Center." Groggy, grumpy, looking at the TV. "That's not a small plane. Look at the scale." Arguing about whether it was an attack. My point: pilots are trained to ditch in water. Rivers on both side, bay to the south, ocean to the east, no way could that be an accident. Then the second plane and an end to argument.

Up on the roof, smoke billowing over the skyline. Everyone's on their roof, nobody's talking, just looking. Then the smoke starts to hit us and everybody retreats indoors. The smell is horrible. Chemical, black smoke. Brooklyn is shrouded. There's some dude rollerblading with a gas mask out there.

Confusion. Phones aren't working. All of the major cell providers were positioned in the Trade Center, and a major phone junction is in there. Nobody can get through. Rumors flying. There were six attacks. The white house is burning. Capitol building? Somebody said that. A plane is down because the passengers rebelled. More planes are coming. Pentagon attacked. Who knows? Cable is still working, so we're all huddled down with windows tight against the smoke, trying to get info. Horrible smell, horrible smoke.

Both towers collapse. Like a fist in your chest. Bridges closed, trains closed, nothing moving.

Later in the day, empty sky. No planes. Silence. Everybody knows somebody who was in WTC. Nobody knows who is alive, who is dead. More survivors than expected. No, that's wrong, everybody died. No, that's wrong, most everybody got out. Impossible to get good info.

Phone service slowly comes back. Loved ones in contact, tearful, glad to know we are okay. Lemur, don't you work in an investment bank? Yes, on the other side of town. I'm okay. We are okay.

Next day call for flags. Flags everywhere. A run on flags, nobody can get one. NYTimes prints a giant newspaper flag so people can have one. Smoke still horrible. I go out to get food with cloth over my face. In bakery, a couple of big Italian dudes are talking about finding some Arabs to beat up. "We gotta show these ************* what it's about, man. Get ours." I am worried; I know the Arab owners of several local businesses.

I hit a memorabilia show. Flags? No. I hit seven shops. No flags. I finally find a toy shop with little American flags, and buy them out. Run to the local Arab businesses; the restaurant, the pet food store, etc. Give them flags. The pet store owner is an eternally angry Palestinian immigrant. "I don't want that," he tells me. "You like your windows?" I ask. "You like not having your store on fire? Put up the ********** flag."

Waiting. Names coming out now. Everybody knows somebody. Shock. Everybody's donating blood; the lines for the local hospital and Red Cross are like trying to get into a rock concert. Volunteer stations swamped. Everybody wants to do something, more hands than there are tasks. Some people are heading to the entrance to the disaster site, just applauding workers as they enter and leave.

Wind shifts, smoke starts blowing up Manhattan instead of over Brooklyn. Suddenly the media notices the smoke (which we've been living with for two or three days). "Is this smoke toxic?" the well-coiffed newspeople ask on air. Idiots. Of course it isn't safe.

Lots more. But that was the first few days.

[InsaneApache]

My turn.

I was sat in my car outside my dentist in Barnsley having a coffin nail whilst my good lady wife was under the drill. Having nowt to do I listened to Mike Parry et al on TalkSport. Suddenly a newsflash that an aeroplane had hit the World Trade Center. The general opinion was that it was a light aircraft and that in the initial confusion, it was supposed that it was a terrible accident.

Pecking the coffin nail I got out of the car. I walked over the road to the dentist and spoke with Jill the nurse and told her what I'd heard. Straight away we went to the waiting room and turned the telly on. After about five minutes watching events unfold we both witnessed live the second plane hitting the tower. We both knew then that this was a terrorist attack.

Driving back up the M1 to Leeds we listened as the towers collapsed. I admit to laughing which seemed highly inappropriate but the whole thing seemed unreal and otherworldly. It was just so hard to take in what was happening. Hysteria I suppose.

We didn't see any footage until we'd finished work but listened all day to the radio.

When I did view the footage I just wept.

[rajpoot]

As someone who'd already lost family to terrorists before 9/11, I understood the magnitude of what had happened half way around the world that day. Back then though I was younger and wasn't really interested in world politics as much as I was in things closer home.....the only thing I knew amidst all the rumours and stories flying around, was that what had happened was very very wrong and tragic.
Since then for ten years USA has led the fight against terrorism....and Bin Laden is hopefully dead. I understand however if that is small condolence to the relatives of those who'd died that day though. For I know that as a citizen of a country which is nearly as badly bothered by terrorists, I won't feel safe or satisfied until every single radical has been dealt with.
What I want to say is, that, while I don't know what the idiots sitting at the top over here (in India I mean) might think, but I personally respect and admire every soldier who's out there fighting. And I support USA's fight on terror whole-heartedly, for someone had to take the initiative and you guys did that.

My wishes go out to everyone over there who lost someone that day.

[Noncommunist]

I was 10 at the time in the first few days of middle school and in first period, I remember someone saying that there were some attacks somewhere but not to panic. For some reason, I thought it was somehow related to some little leaguer who was actually too old. Later in the day, I started hearing wackier stories like the terrorists letting themselves out along with the planes before they crashed and that some big important museum had been taken out. And as a ten year old, I remember hearing that there was some sort of recession going on and I thought I was being sophisticated in thinking that parents were taking kids out of school because of that. And shortly before we got out of school, I heard that there was attack in Somerset which is where flight 93 crashed. I didn't know exactly what happened but since Somerset is only a county away, it seemed a lot scarier. Eventually, we got out of school early and I heard the real story from my parents who were watching the TV. Later that day, we went over to some friends of theirs who were watching it as well.

[Viking]

Well, I was only 10 at the time, nearing 11. I was at a friend's place, and we were playing Settlers III. During a break, we went into the living room, where the father was watching the burning tower(s?) on TV. I think the impression we were given at the time, was that it had been an attack. But we did not dwell much on it at the time, and returned to play more Settlers.

I do though remember looking at pictures in the regional news paper of people that had chosen to jump from the highest floors, rather than getting caught up by the fire - that made an impression.

As for the political perspective of this, I guess it has led to one war that, on the surface at least, appears just; and one not much so. There are countries in the world when terrorist attacks are an annual/monthly occurence, so there's a long road to go when it comes to this form of terrorism. Lone wolfs may be hard to stop, but the ideological kind that we see so much of, should be more realistic to defeat.

[Seamus Fermanagh]

I was preparing for a session of my morning class, a class on -- I **** you not -- conflict management. Both towers had been hit and were burning by the time class started. Almost all of my students, many of them a little stunned, showed up. During class the attack on the Pentagon was announced and the first tower collapsed.

One student's mother was scheduled in the Pentagon for a meeting that day. Her daughter was nervous bordering on hysterical. I excused her and closed down class a bit early. The girl's mother turned out to have been caught in traffic and got to watch the Pentagon attack as it hit. Later learned that her meeting was scheduled for that fifth of the building.

Still remember a cascade of feelings: anger, numbness, need to be with family.

My son's school was closed early with his "jane corporate 50-hour-a-week mom meeting him at the bus stop. He realized it was something scary then.

All of our area affected at one or three removes -- too many military families, too many government families and Defense contractors for that not to be true.

I remember crying, oddly enough with a sense of pride, when I heard the story of the FDNY chaplain.

He and 80 other of my brother knights died that day.

We had all been focused on such trivial things before. A silly blue dress; hanging chads; and then having enjoyed only a few years of relative peace after the end of the endless war/non=war that dominated my entire childhood we were plunged into a further war that seems nearly as amorphous and unending.

My daughter was born 119 days later.

[Brenus]

I was in Serbia, Novisad.
I was having a chat with my team when my secretary (Sanja) told us that some planes were hijacked in the US.
I remember saying oops, usual staff. She said no, more than one, so I told her that it will be a new Black September thing, negotiation and so one. She said no, it looks like an attack on New York.
We had no TV and Serbia will still under in the aftermath the NATO bombing campaign (Cruise Missiles), so I can’t say they were crying about this.
Then, the story started to spread within my Serbian Colleagues and friends, so I decided to pay attention. I went to my flat to put the French Channel (thanks to satellite) TV on, around 10h00-11h00. Then I saw, the plane hitting the first towers, then the second, then the French journalist telling about the Pentagon, and other possible plane(s).He looked absolutely overwhelmed. He even said something like “my God”, normally not mentioned in French news… The working day was over.
I went to a pub with my staff, and the comment about it was around “they finally know what it is to be under attack ” until the image of the people jumping and the tower collapsing stunned everybody in the Kafana… It was only then than the reality of the event hit the people.