Where were you that day? (9/11/01)

[GEO]

I was in math class watching the Stocck market.. waiting for the opening bell.. when we saw everyone on the screen jsut start running around aand ****. Then, since I live pretty clsoe to NYC. ALl stations got overwirted to the NEWS. It was crazy. Bascially msot of my dads family lives in NEW YORK.. in the 5 boroughs, they got a front row seat to the event. My moms cousins are all fire men in nrothern jersey and were called out.. to help. It was lieka movie as someone stated.

[I Need $$$]

Well I was in my freshman year in college at Mississippi State University. I woke up in hawthorne hall with my roomate at the computer. He said that some planes had hit the World Trade Center and the Pentagon to. At first I thought that I was still asleep but then we turned on the tv and they kept playing it over and over again. For some reason I still went to all of my classes that day which include college algebra with an arab teacher. you could tell that during the whole class she was feeling a little akward because of fear of of students harrassing her. It was an awful day but a part of history nonetheless.

[C-Kwik]

I was on my way to work when I heard it on the radio. I had thought it was some sort of accident until I got to work and most of the 500 people in my office crammed themselves in the cafeteria where the big screen TV was. That was when I discovered it was a terrorlst incident. I was in shock.

I remember many years ago standing at the base of the WTC towers looking up. They were absolutely huge. It seems so unbelievable to me that they were destroyed so quickly.

My boss's(at the time) brother worked at the WTC. Somehow he got called away to pick up or drop off something at a building nearby and saw it happen from there. Just one of those wierd things in life.

But even with the hatred that it took to pull off such a scheme, I will never forget the stories of heroism. Reading the transcripts of telephone calls made from planes to loved ones was absolutely moving. It's hard to fathom the thoughts running through the minds on either end of those calls.

[w1ngzer0]

well i was sleeping. Enjoying life out of my parents house with ok roomates. This was when I still had friends at that point. My friend woke me up to tell me but my reponse? "So what, nothing i can do about it, im sleeping so go away"

[Dano]

i was at school, and the teachers let us watch it pretty much all day as well.

-Dan

[Mr1der]

I was getting ready to go to school.

I believe classes got cancelled for the most part.

"Let's roll."

[base9se]

In bed sleeping, got a phone call from my girlfriend who was at school, she told me to turn on the TV cause a plane just crashed itself into one of the Twin Towers. Turn on the TV and I saw the second plane hit, it was just so surreal. Thinking to myself what the hell is the world coming to. Sad..

[ricebike]

driving outta the holland tunnel that same tuesday morning...goin to SJ to maintain my family's cars... heard it on the radio; didn't wanna drive back into the city. Later I tried to check on wifey (she was working in upper manhattan & knew that she's ok anyways). Phone lines were all busy. Finally contacted her on thursday of that week. Didn't drive back into the city until a week after that.

All transportation were locked down. wifey & her mom had to walk home (good thing she only has to walk a few blocks, but her mom took a good 6 hours or more). I remember the city's attempts @ making it 'feel' secure in the aftermath w/ sporadic checkpoint searches @ toll bridges tunnels.

I also remebered some breathin' problems when in the area months after... thought it was just me, but others had the same. It's weird to think that the dust settling on my car or on my apt window sills may be some remnant of a person.

Then ~2 months later, my beautiful baby girl was born & hope filled back into my hardened heart.
Modified by ricebike at 1:14 AM 9/12/2004

[Jesda]

Ricebike: Absolutely beautiful end to a sad story.

These are chat logs from that day:http://www.ircpolitics.org/911-logs.html

[w1ngzer0]

speaking of IRC i have been baned from IRC a couple times for immitating a girl bwahahahah. But its fun to mess with peoples heads on DALnet :P

[s13sr20chris]

Then ~2 months later, my beautiful baby girl was born & hope filled back into my heardened heart.

yeah, bro. yeah.

i was at work. heard it on the radio while working. we all just went into the customer lounge and watched tv. the customers did not care. some of them sat there all day and watched the news with us while their cars sat up in the air with the oil draining.

[LilGold240sx]

Was getting wisdom teeth pulled out and on the gas. Went to visit cousin and her little baby boy (born the day before) that afternoon.Kinda odd, no one really mentioned a thing about it at work this year....

[Mr1der]

how about how you felt on that day.

I was angry and sad. I wanted vengeance.

I wished I had actually joined the USMC outta high school so I could go crack someone's damn head open.

honestly, I still feel that way. It's like someone coming in my backyard and threatening my family.

I'm gonna hit 'em, I'm gonna kill 'em.

[Icepik240]

September 11th, 2001 was my day off. I was at home, asleep, when the planes hit the towers. It bothers me to this day that I was asleep, comfortable, oblivious when hell was being unleashed thousands of others.

My wife (girlfriend at the time) called me from work and told me to turn on the TV. She didn't say why, just to turn on the TV. She told me that planes hit the World Trade Center; I didn't believe her untill I put on CNN.

Watching the first tower colapse was the only thing that has ever made me scream "NO!".

After that, I was just numb.

My wife and I took a drive to ground zero tonight, the memorial lights were on. It's such a surreal place to know what happened there. It was strange though, it almost had an air of hope. There were people out and around, music, firefighters waving from engines....it was by no means a party, but different than I thought it would be...very defiant, very proud.

Took this while I was down there.

http://www.imagestation.com/my...F0039

[Mr1der]

That makes me smile.

they can hit us, kill us, destroy us, but they'll never break our spirit.

[rousie13]

I was at class and our professor came in and said class was cancelled because a plane just crashed into the WTC and he said that was more important to witness than class that day. So I went home and watched it on TV until I had to go back to high school in the afternoon.

[szh]

I was in Montreal, Canada on a business trip attending a conference. My wife called me and said that a plane had hit one of the towers - she had been woken up by a cousin of mine calling from Pakistan (he saw it on CNN). I initially thought it was an accident, but went over to the hotel lounge and was watching CNN when we all saw the second plane hit. Then, it became pretty clear that this was not any accident. The conference was cancelled as we all tried to figure out how to get back to the US.

My wife and son were in San Jose, CA and here I was stuck in Montreal. No planes flying and the borders "shut down." You do not know how stressed and fearful that can make anybody - when you do not know what else may happen, and you are thousands of miles away from the closest people in one's life, and no way to get home in time to help them with any problems they may encounter!

It took me days to get home! First, four of us rented literally the last Hertz car available in Montreal, drove to the border, where understanding US Customs officials let us cross into the US (including me with my name - fortunately, being a US citizen helped!). Two of us got off at Albany, NY and took trains (Amtrak was running ... sort of). I arrived in Chicago on Friday that week and was able to catch a American Airlines flight to San Francisco - only a few flights were available. It was weird to drive to O'Hare in a cab and only see an occasional flight take off (from the highway leading to the airport!)

Z

[hannibal]

I was living at my parents house in ATL. My Dad was in his office working, and came downstairs to wake me up. He said something happened at the WTC and went back to work.I turned on the TV and was shouting the unfolding news to him when the second plane hit. My dad says I just stopped answering him so he came down to see what had happened. And we sat there together and watched the towers fall.My Dad grew up in NY and had his first job down on Wall St. He told me how he used to walk by there at lunchtime and watch them building the towers. It didnt really sink in until I was in NYC the following summer and saw this empty space in the middle of Manhattan.Imagine living 15mins from the busiest airport in the world and not seeing or hearing a single plane for a week. Thats creepy.

[MainEvent212]

i feel ya man, if you do indeed live in DC or close enough to say so truthfully (alot of MD and VA people do that when they really dotn live close)

but live in Arlington, and i live very close to spout run PKWY so u can understand how close i liev to the airport (not to mention IN the flight path of most planes)

it was eerie not to hear them...peaceful but sad just knowing why they werent flying

[hannibal]

I live in MD, but I know where youre talking about.Do you remember the feeling after planes started flying again? You always noticed if a plane was flying over, especially around tall buildings. we still werent sure what happened or if it would happen again.

[IvoryJ30t]

i was at home sleeping.

the messed up part, is that two weeks earlier, i was helping my father change the brushes in the motors for elevators [hes an elevator mechanic] in a federal building [290 broadway].

i was standing on the roof of the federal building, smoking a cigarette, looking at the WTC buildings that were only about 15 blocks away, imagining the destruction that would be caused if one of those buildings were to come down.

that was august 25, 2001.

i only live 15 minutes from the city. on september 11, i could see the smoke from the buildings from my town when standing on the metro-north bridge [train that runs into the city].

i have footage on my video camera from november 2001 when my girlfriend and i went down to see ground zero. some buildings were still smoldering.

[elbles]

I was in my third class of the day, which happened to be a HTML design class (something I was familar with, and as such, my teacher kind of let me do whatever). I was reading my e-mail, when a message popped in from my dad, telling me that a single plane had hit one of the Twin Towers, and that no one was sure what had happened. I went to CNN.com, and within a few minutes, I was learning of it all, all while everyone around me was gathering around my computer to learn what had happened . . . my teacher got curious too, so he came over too . . . the whole class found out from there on out, we got it going on the projector. My next class was run by the English teacher from hell (Bosnian hell, to be exact), who didn't seem to believe in things as emotion or personality, so we did work in that class, but from there on out, there was much talk of the incident . . . we were all trying to comprehend exactly what was happening, being relatively young, and obviously feeling a bit angered (I forgot to mention this was my sophomore year of HS). The first reactions among most of us was "let's nuke the entire f'ing middle east", but logic perservered, and within a few hours, we realized that the world that we had grown up in was changed forever. 3 years later, daily life is still not all that different than it was 3 years and 2 days ago (today being the 12th), but in the back of probably most of our minds, we have recognized the fact that the United States is not a country above any of the world's problems. Rough thing to think about, really . . .

[gabossie]

I forgot that my mom was in Houston on a business trip when it happened and the conference was canceled of course. She had to rent a car with a bunch of other people to drive back to san jose because I was supposed to move into the dorms only a few days after it happened and she was taking me. She drove all the way home which took like a day and a half and about 8 hours after she got home, we got in the car and drove another 6 hours to socal to move me in.

[ilovedrifting]

my parents were in mexico and had to go to tiajuana, and walk across the border into San Diego, where they stayed with my grandpa until flights ressumed.

[driverdriver]

That year I took my summer vacation in September. I was at home sleeping when my wife called me from work and told me to turn on the TV that it looked like the "apocalpyse" was happening. I turned on the TV and watched the first tower smoking, my brother came back from his shift (he's a cop) and joined me in the family room. He wasn't aware of what was going on. Together we watched in horror as the second airplane flew into the other tower. I remember calling my mom right afterwards in Chicago (she was with my dad who was temporarily on assignment for his company in Illnois and wasn't aware of what was going on.

I remember that all employers sent their employees home early. I also remember my brother's squad supervisor ordered him back to another shift. I think my brother worked like 3 days straight. I remember seeing him briefly for supper later that night, it was the only time I saw him and his partner in heavy body armor, and sub machine guns. There was so much uncertainty and anxiety, especially with all the planes diverted to Canada. Nobody knew what was going to happen next.

[silkk]

i was in my bowling class.. bowling a 172 :o

[Altiman94]

I'm just a singer of simple songs. I'm not a real political man. I watch CNN, but I'm not sure I could tell you the difference in Iraq and Iran.

[s13EastTN]

I was in spanish class, some dumb jock came in laughing about it, saying a plane full of "A rabs" flew into one of the twin towers. We all knew it was bad, but not a single teacher in my school allowed us to watch tv or listen to the radio. We had to wait until we got home.

[driftaholic]

my friend was coming back from japan and i was supposed to pick her up at the airport in seattle on friday the 7th. then she called and said she had to stay for her grandma's birthday so she'd come on monday the 10th (which happened to be my dad's birthday). then she called and said there was a typhoon so she couldn't get to seattle til the morning of the 11th. so on the 10th, we had a party for my dad and went to bed. my mom had apparently eaten something her stomach didn't agree with, so she woke up sick on tuesday morning. whenever she wakes up she watches tv. i was just plannin on getting up and going to the airport. i'm glad she turned on the news though, cuz that saved me a trip to the airport.

it was so frustrating trying to figure out where my friend's plane had gone. first all the asia planes were gonna land in anchorage or fairbanks, then to their scheduled destinations, then vancouver, then as scheduled. finally i found out that my friend's plane had gone to yellowknife, in the northwest territories. she was stuck there til thursday night and i had to wait by the phone until then so i wouldn't miss her call... yeah it sucked. my friend said she had a good time though. met some interesting people.

[szh]

I forgot to mention in my previous post that the event almost hit very close to home in one sense (clearly, it was a lot closer for others.)

I had two relatives (sons of two first cousins) working in the WTC. Fortunately, one of them was on vacation visiting his family in London that day - the rest of his company did not make it, as I recall. The other had just quit his company and was not in the towers!

... Shudder ...

Z