where were you on 9/11/2001

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15 miles away.

I had been at the World Trade Center area a number of times. A few times for Job Fairs at the Marriot. I had visited the area just a couple of weeks earlier for a day trip on a nice late summer day.

On 9/11 I had arrived early for work and was awaiting people who had a key to open the door. When somebody arrived and opened the door they mentioned something about watching streaming video. I asked why they wanted to do that, they said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. Since it was a clear day my first thought was terrorism. Since America was the biggest target I had expected something, I did not know what it would be but I expected it to be big. I found out most people did not expect anything at all and I received a lot of funny looks when I said I was not surprised. In the other room their was a radio and as you know the news got worse and worse fast. All the news web sites were frozen. The first site that came through was the BBC at 1PM and they had some pictures. All day there was an endless parade of police cars, fire trucks, ambulances using the streets in front of work to go from Long Island into Manhattan. As I turned out my dad was in the hospital so after work I visited him, went out to eat at a diner. I finally got home and saw the infamous videos that everybody else had seen 12 hours earlier.

I had installed some software modifications just a day or so earlier and there were issues(bugs). So besides 9/11 I had one very upset boss. The next week or so I had to concentrate on straightening things out and had no time to do all the processing or grieving or whatever people were doing in the immediate aftermath of the attacks.

I did have a desire to visit the Ground Zero. I had never had a historical event of that magnitude happen within commuting distance of where I lived. I felt September was too soon, I would only be in the way of the people who really needed to be at there. I visited the site at the end of October. The first things I noticed coming out of the subway was the layer of soot on the ground and the burning smell despite the fact it was a very cool and windy day. I am not the type of person who expresses emotion but I fully expected to break down. It did not happen that way. The biggest feeling was discombobulation even though I knew the area, without the towers I did not know where I was. The place was already turning into a tourist trap. Girls were having their pictures taken with the cops. A wedding was going at the chapel down the street.

For months afterward nearly every day on the way to and from work one had to stop for a funeral procession.

My brother came out of the subway just as the second plane hit and saw the towers come down. I knew two firemen who were a half a block away when the towers came down.

I did have some after effects. I live in a flight path of JFK so at first low flying planes were scary at first. If there were a lot of sirens I would get chills wondering if there was another attack. About a month and a half after the attack we had a local power failure at work and my first thought was they had blown up the Indian Point nuclear plant. I would be in Manhatten and say to myself I had better look at that skyscraper it might not be there the next time. I would say New Years Day 2002 was when it started to get noticeably better 9/11 was now last year. Sometimes when a digital clock strikes 9:11 I still freeze for an instant.

Not graphic

I was a couple months shy of 17 years old. I was home-educated at the time. I remember having a lot of difficulty getting to bed the night before. I remember still being up early in the morning, doing a word puzzle around 5-6 am. I finally fell asleep for awhile after that. When the towers were hit, my late mother came into my room to wake me up. I distinctly remember her saying, "America is being attacked!" I was confused; I asked her, how are we being attacked? (The first thing that came to mind was bombs being launched at us or something.) She then explained what was going on. That's when I sat down with her in the living area on the couch and watched the developing news on TV.

She and I were both active on a sports Internet discussion forum where one of the well-known members died in the attack, among the nearly 3,000 killed. He was working in one of the towers at the time. Later, his wife posted a message on the forum with the title, 'Victimized.' They both had an infant daughter. I remember my mother and I feeling so bad for her and the family. That thread ended up getting hundreds of replies. Amazing to think that their daughter would now be the age that I was then. Sometimes the 9/11 attack don't seem all that long ago to me, but it won't be too long before it's twenty years...

I was at work. One of my coworkers was listening to the morning radio in her office. She came out and said a plane hit one of the trade towers. We had no idea at the time what the size of the plane was and all thought that sounded weird but really didn't think much more of it. Then another, the Pentagon, in short order TVs were turned on and people were crying in the office.

It was so confusing to me and bizarre I didn't really know what to think about it other than obviously it was a tragedy. I felt I wanted to or needed to know so many more details about what and why before I felt I could grasp the situation.

I was a young baby.

I don't remember a lot of the details, but I was in 12th grade, in my computer repair class (or whatever it was called). They turned on the TV...heck, just about all of the TVs were tuned to the news, and we probably watched it for most of that week. I remember we didn't get a lot of schooling done that week.

I was still in bed, since I had about another 2 hours before I got up. I had a job interview later that afternoon with a contractor at the Environmental Protection Agency in NE Washington, DC. I get a phone call at 9:00 AMfrom that contractor, telling me the interview was cancelled. When I asked why, he said, turn on your TV. I turned on the local NBC affiliate, saw what was happening both in NYC, Washington and Shenksville, PA. My first thought was “Oh, SH!T!” I got back on the phone with the contractor, and said, “I see what you mean.” He told metro DC was completely shut down. NOTHING was running (DC Metro, MetroRail, MARC rail, NOTHING!). All the roads in and out of DC (I-495, I-395, BW Parkway, US 1) were blocked. Unfortunately, they never rescheduled the interview

Bartending in a hotel that afternoon. Several guests there worked at wtc and were unable to fathom that they were okay only because they were away on business. Not to mention what they felt by seeing all that happen to their colleagues.

I had been planning to move to NYC and did so that October. I ended up getting a job downtown when the streets reopened. It was still eerie there months later.

I taught for a while in the school that the wing landed on. The teachers and former students from then had some crazy stories about running away through that.

I was in the library at Uni, post-grad, working for a prof. People were speaking in a frenzy but I didn't understand what was going on. Someone said a plane hit the WTC and I didn't understand the severity. I thought they meant a small private jet or something. A big TV was rolled in on a cart to watch the coverage. You could have heard a pin drop among all the students. My ears / hearing shut down completely because I couldn't tolerate or comprehend the horror of the information, but likewise I couldn't shut my eyes or stop looking. I saw the second plane hit and I think it was live. I still have a lot of sensory flashbacks from things in my environment that day while watching.

I was very worried about my relatives across the US (particularly Philadelphia - plane 4) and my family in Montréal, not knowing the geographic scope of the problem. I had just flown back from LA the week before and that seemed eerie as if it could have been me, since the planes were going to California. A good friend of mine died unexpectedly three days later, on the Friday the 14th. It was brutal, as I'm sure it was for all of you.

Rest in peace to all the souls lost and godspeed to the trauma victims.

For the younger folks who didn't see it as it was happening, here are three minutes from a cameraman who was very close to the second tower when it fell. You can imagine how the people of Pompeii were buried in something similar.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gCN7pIX3Es

Was living at home.

Was downstairs fooling around with Deejay equipment. Mom came down the stairs and announced that there is something strange on the TV news. That "an airplane had crashed into the WTC". Her word choice was air PLANE, and not air LINER. Was engrossed in what I was doing. It occurred to me that some young jackass in a little Cessna private plane had recently got himself arrested for landing his plane on the White House grounds. So I made a snap decision. Figured it must some second jackass doing the same sorta thing. Picture a little private plane crashing into the WTC. Thought "who cares" and kept on doing whatever I was doing.

Finnally I came upstairs. And was shocked like everyone elseby the burning building on TV. By that time Flight 93 had crashed. I was certain that neither thing was an accident. Then we saw the second plane hit. Later the building collapsed. It was like watching a fictional movie. I turned to mom and said "do you realize that we just witnessed the deaths of like....." then I realized that I was no expert on city planning and no idea how many people would be in a skyscraper at any given time so I didnt know whether to finish the sentence with "several hundred people?", or with "several thousand people?", or ...what.

I was sleeping when the 1st plane hit, my ex called me and told me to turn the TV on.

I grew up in upstate NY, when I was 12, my sister went to college out on long island, and I had my chance to see NYC, 1st thing I did was visit those towers. I loved tall building as an aspie kid. I wanted to be an architect, my hero was frank lloyd wright. Those towers were the biggest, they meant something to me. I miss them, they were "New York City", gone now

I visited ground zero in 2004. The memorial was not built yet. Just a big hole in the ground. It was quite somber to me. Almost like you could feel those 3000+people calling out. quite strange.

In the past 17 years this has all overshadowed the JFK assassination in the 'conspiracy' world. Lots of people ask "why" when something tragic happens. And yes, maybe powerful people conspire to maintain said power, those things we never know for certain, and if you did know, still can't change the past, you can't bring those towers back, you can't bring all those people back.

And you can't restore how we all see the world now as a result. 9/11 changed a lot.

I too thought it was a scene from a movie at first

" a lot of funny looks when I said I was not surprised"

I too expected terror in Norway for yrs before July 22 , only thing that surprised me was that it wasnt muslim extremists.

coincidentally there is an anniversary thing on the local PBS station about 9/11 as i type this.

Their names were Bernard C. Brown II, Asia S. Cottom, and Rodney Dickens. They were all eleven years old. They were in sixth grade. They were headed for a special field trip to California with their teachers, which was being put on by National Geographic. And they all died aboard Flight 77 when it slammed into the Pentagon on September 11th.

Bernard was remembered as “clever, a quick wit, the kind of boy who kept his teachers on their toes” who loved basketball. Asia was called “kindhearted” and helpful, who loved school and Tweety Bird. Rodney “loved reading, playing computer games, and playing with his siblings” as well as being a huge fan of professional wrestling. All three were good students, which is why they were chosen to take this special field trip. Teachers Sara Clark, Hilda Taylor, and James Debeuneure were going along as chaperones. National Geographic employees Ann Judge and Joe Ferguson were also on board Flight 77, accompanying the students and teachers to California.

https://victorygirlsblog.com/september1 ... flight-77/