9/11 where were you?

[bachanon]

there may already be a topic on this. i remember many specifics about this day. anyone want to talk about it?

i was in bed. i had turned the tv on when i woke up before 8am central. i had dozed off and heard katie couric talking about a plane hitting the world trade center. at the time, it didn't register. i looked at the tv and saw the first tower burning. while the reporter was talking about what might have happened, the second plane hit the other tower. the reporter didn't know what i had seen until minutes later. i knew then that it was planned.

my dad was on his way to a job site south of downtown houston. i was supposed to join him by 10am. i called him to tell him what was going on and he dismissed it. when the third plane hit the pentagon, i called dad again. he insisted that he continue on to work and told me to stay home if i wanted to. he wasn't alarmed that people were vacating all the towers in every city in the country.

just as i thought, "i hope it doesn't collapse", the first tower fell. i don't think i've ever felt so disturbed. i immediately thought of my friends who live near chelsea and brooklyn. i couldn't get through for hours. without thinking, i sat on the bed and felt a sense of shock as i watched the tv.

two of my friends who travel were in the air when all this went down. i called to see if they were ok. i prayed that they weren't on the planes that had crashed.

9/11 woke me from a stupor. i had been lulled to a state that i didn't believe this could ever happen. my world view has changed completely.

i've never respected police and firemen as i do now. i love those guys........big time.

it's a shame that something so tragic has to occur for people like me to appreciate things differently.

[Guest Marty]

I was taking a shower when i heard something on the radio about something hitting the World Trade Center. So i finished up and turned on the tv and that's when i saw the second plane hit. That day changed my way of thinking forever.

Edited September 11, 2006 by Marty

[Mark F. Barnes]

On a drilling platform in the Gulf, couldn't believe as I was watching it unfold? I thought JFK in '63 was devistating, this was beyond that! I was with earshot of OK City, we thought it was thunder till the radios lit up with the news.

[MarthaG]

I was at work. The lady sitting next to me (a very good friend) had her radio on and said "a plane just crashed into one of the World Trade Center towers". "What? What are you talking about?" I got up to go around the cubicle to see her...I thought she was seeing something on the net. She grabbed me and we headed down the hall to find a TV. We were the first in the conference room. We figured out how to get the TV on and found a news station. Then people started coming in. We were there just a few minutes before the 2nd plane hit. My heart stopped. I remember her saying..."this is how people must have felt during Pearl Harbor". I was just making the connection that this was deliberate. More people were coming into the conference room. I rememeber asking "where is Terry?" I called his office and no one answered. He is a close friend who was always traveling. About that time, he walked in the door with someone from our London office. We stood there watching together watching. The London guy says somthing about it will be a while before he can fly home. Terry mentions he was just in at the WTC for dinner a few days before. Then we thought on the people we knew that worked in the buildings. We watched both buildings collapse. Several people were in the office by then. I don't really remember much about the other two planes. I had already decided I was leaving and going to pick up my sons from School. Shock was setting in fast.

When I got to the school, I was told they had not told the kids anything. We had permission to take them out of school, but asked not to say anything until we got off the school premises. The kids knew something was going on because parents were starting to show up. I was crying on the way home. The impact was really starting to hit by now. I explained to the boys the best I could and we went home to watch more on TV. My oldest was in 5th grade, my baby in 3rd. Of course they were too young to understand what this meant.

[bachanon]

woe. my nieces and nephew were unaware of what was going on. my nephew, seeing other parents picking up their kids, knew his mom wouldn't come get him. he was at school all day and knew something bad was going on. his mom was too f'ed up to come get him. he describes 9/11 as the day his mom didn't come for him.

had i known............kids don't always understand the big picture. they do remember not being taken care of. take care of those kiddos.

[gonzo1976]

I was a reporter in Corpus Christi.

I usually sleep with the radio tuned to talk radio. About 7:45 a.m. CST, I vaguely heard an announcer say a plane had struck the first tower. I turned on the TV and watched smoke billow from the building.

At the time, many of the commentators thought it was a Cessna. No one really figured it to be a commercial jetliner. People were saying that it was a clear day, and it seemed strange that a plane would fly into the building. I remember thinking, "How are firefighters gonna put THAT out?"

I crawled out of bed. I didn't have to be at work till 9 a.m., so I went to the living room to channel surf among CNN, ABC and the other networks.

All of a sudden, while watching Good Morning America, this plane comes out of nowhere and slams into the second tower. I could hear the people on television gasp in horror. I distinctly remember how I felt at the time, but it's hard to describe. It was akin to helplessly watching an injured person get shot in the head. I think I said some expletive and phoned my parents in Houston to tell them to turn on the TV.

One thing I remember is that no one called attention to the second incoming airplane. I don't recall any news anchor saying, "Look, here comes another one!" It was like the second plane just blindsided America while we watched the first tower burn.

I learned about the other attacks while driving around town. Man, there was so much confusion. There was talk of a fire at the Mall in Washington, D.C. I wondered how long these attacks would continue.

The rest of the day is a blur. I came home a little late, turned on the TV and saw that EVERY SINGLE station, MTV, BET, Comedy Central, whatever, was tuned to a news station.

[houstonmacbro]

i was at work at the time for the dc metropolitan police. funny thing, we had gotten word that 'something' was possibly going to happen that morning.

i worked in public relations and we always had several television channels on. i did not tune in until the 2nd plane struck. a short time later we were ordered to evacuate the building as something was happening down in the foggy bottom area ... that is down where the state department is located. we were standing outside, no cell signals, no way to get any information and the plaza in front of the police station was jammed with people. someone got through to someone later that morning and learned that the towers had collapsed. i found that to be impossible.

we all tried to leave, but washington was stuck in gridlock. trains to baltimore (where i lived) were stuck on the tracks in union station and there was a real somber mood.

it wasn't until much later that afternoon that i was able to view television and see the events after the 2nd plane, and to also let people know that i was okay (afterall, something struck the pentagon, less than 10 miles away from where i was working and the police station could have also been targeted).

[PapillionWyngs]

I was at work downtown for a law firm in One Shell Plaza. We gathered in a conference room and watched as it happened. Before we could really understand what was happening, we were told to immediately vacate the building, because people feared for our safety.

I went to pick up my kids from school (I was a single mother at that time) only to learn that the woman who watched them after school had picked them up. When I got to her house, they were watching it on TV, my kids were seeing those horrible images again and again and again.....

It didn't have to happen.

My heart goes out to all those touched by this senseless, preventable tradegy.

[DJ V Lawrence]

I was throwing live grenades for grenade qualifications in basic training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina that morning. We heard rumors from our chain of command, but being in the field, we only recieved word of mouth. Didn't believe anything we heard. Just kept going with the qualifications with the thought of "what if it's true?" or "if it happened, what kinds of planes were they?", or "if it's true, how would someone be able to control a plane fron the ground into a target?" It didn't register to any of us that the planes were flown in by people inside the plane.

We didn't have any televisions around us. We paid tribute with a silent memorial, but I was first to hear that night that "the World Trade Center no longer exists." The first time I actually saw a picture was when my mom and sister visited me at Fort Jackson for my graduation ceremony on October 5th. She bought the Houston Chronicle on Sept. 11th because she knew we didn't see anything.