Where were you when you first saw the events on 9/11?
My mother always talks about the day Kennedy was killed and many other memorable events in American history. She lived in florida durring the cuban missile crisis and distinctly remembers the air riad drills they used to have to do at school.
So I was wondering what some other people were doing on 9/11. I had just got up and was dressed to go for a ride. My mother called me and told me to turn on the news. She sounded frantic but would not tell me what was goin on. The first image I saw after flipping on the tube was the second plane hitting. I think we just sat on the phone for a half an hour and didn’t say a word. I skipped all my workouts that morning and was glued to the TV still in just my bike shorts. I had to be at work at 11 and when i got there we just sat and listened to the radio. We didn’t help many people in the store that day and i think all of them just wanted a good pair of shoes to go for a long silent solo run. We closed the shop early because we clearly were in no state of mind to be selling running crap. The rest of the night I sat in front of the TV. After quite a few hours my roomates and I went to rent a movie to get our minds off things. I didn’t sleep much that night.
Fill in with your story of how you viewed the events of 9/11
At a USSOCOM conference on MacDill AFB in Tampa. We ended up driving the rental car home to Ft Bragg cause we certainly weren’t flying home. Thankfully the Gov’t picked up the $300 return fee.
on the steps of 85 broad street. about three blocks away from the towers. thankfully i was turned away at the time of impact. i just dropped everything and ran. i got home hopped on my bike and rode out of town.
Just put over lines to the pier in Puerto Rico. We had to get the ship back underway for force protection reasons, anchor out, and sleep topside since the AC was busted. Didn’t see any video of the crashes until 4 or 5 days later.
I was sitting at my desk in Boston, across from the trading floor. Someone called us over to the floor to see the news, just as the second plane hit.
All I could think about was how we had planned to be at a fixed income conference in one of the towers that morning, and how I knew a lot of people who worked in those buildings.
I really wanted to be at the conference that day. It’s the only time I was glad I work for cheap bastards who don’t send their people to industry conferences.
South Station was filled with thousands upon thousands of people trying to get out of the city. It took me almost three hours to get home that day. It’s the only time I have ever seen F-15’s flying over my house.
I vividly remember walking from the train, how beautiful a day it was. The sky was a gorgeous blue, with not a cloud in the sky. The air was warm and dry. You couldn’t ask for more beautiful weather. Any other day but that one.
Later, watched people walking home, covered in dust. Watched F-16s do patrols over my apartment and heard seemingly endless sirens.
A little later, and for a couple of weeks, could see and smell the fire, as the sunlight diffracted through it.
Tracked how my classmates from grad school were doing through internet lists. Wondered how brown people would be treated by the less-than-bright people of this country. Wondered how long it would take before New York was “normal” again.
I heard the first reports as I was getting out of the pool. I swam at 5:45 PDT, and the 7:00 group was arriving with sketchy reports, but no one had seen it yet. We all thought it was a small private plane that hit the tower by accident.
After that I biked to work. I was working at the Wall Street Journal at the time, and we had just opened up a TV studio in our building for CNBC (If you ever see Corey Johnson doing reports from Silicon Valley, that’s broadcast from the WSJ printing plant on Page Mill Rd in Palo Alto). When I walked in, everyone was in the CNBC studio, watching on a bank of TVs. The second plane hit just about the time I walked in, and several people screamed.
It was a scary day, because Dow Jones headquarters is/was diagonally across the street, and one of the CNBC camera guys who had helped get our studio going lived in an apartment just across the street. He said he had debris (including body parts) on his building’s roof. We spent several says waiting to hear if anyone we knew was among the dead or missing. Miraculously, only a few minor injuries from broken glass.
Later, we got to see pictures of the lobby of Dow Jones. The shock waves from the crash had blown all the glass out of the front of the building, and the inside looked like Pompeii after Vesuvius blew…
Was sitting at my desk in London when I got a call from my friend in our NY office telling me a plane had hit and they were evacuating.
He was on the 103rd floor and that was the last time I ever talked to him.
I used to work there too and we had often talked about the posibility of a small plane hitting the building so when he called neither of us thought that he wouldn’t get out. After he hung up the pictures started coming through on the web.
The next 48 hours was a blur as we worked frantically through the night to get all our systems back in time for the market open on Thursday - we made it by 15 minutes.
Sitting at my desk taking phone calls from people calling in as they made it to places of safety was difficult - both elation for the people who were ok and fear for the ones who hadn’t called in yet.
I was living at my parents at the time. 91X, a alt-rock station in San Diego came on as my 6am alarm. I remember the DJ saying something about a plane crashing into the WTC and a caller saying something about the US being under attack. I jumped out of bed and turned on the TV. I called my parents out to the living room and we sat silently until the second plane hit. I was so confused, so scared. I have a friend who goes to NYU, so I thought of him and hoped he was safe. I ended up getting to the office around 10am or so. A couple of us went for a run at lunch and it was creepy quiet. Everyone was glued to radios and the internet and everytime someone heard a new piece of info, it was shared. Left pretty early from work and traffic was really light. Just watched CNN until well after midnight.
For my generation, this is the event that will define us in history books. My parents had JFK, my grandparents had Pearl Harbor and WWII. It’ll be difficult trying to explain this to my children, helping them understand the emotion, the destruction, and more importantly, the strength of the American people during the aftermath.
I work in a hotel 2 blocks south of the WTC site.We had just evacuated our hotel,and were heading south,when I heard the first tower coming down(I probably ran the fastest 200 yds in my life).
Completely covered in dust ,I made it downtown to the Staten Island Ferry,and along with thousands of others,taken to Staten Island.
After spending about 8 hours on Staten Island,I eventually made it over the Verranzano bridge,and was able to take a subway back to my NYC apartment.
I was a cop working patrol on that day and remember how friendly and emotional people were acting towards me. Not many calls for service that day either. I also remember that it only took about 2 weeks or so before we were again regarded as the “mean ole police”.
At work, salesman came in at just before 8 said there’d been an accident, switched on the TV in the conference room and did not leave it for several hours.
Went home later and went for a ride on the lake bike path in Chicago. Started an interval outside the Drake, a guy on a Kestrel was drafting, someone was on my side of the path, I swerved the guy drafting hit him head on at about 27-28 mph, both went down, the drafter with a destroyed collar bone (I think) and a Kestrel that had snapped in 2, the guy he hit was having seizures.
At that point, after 2 miles, decided enough was enough, went home got changed and went over to hang out with friends.
At the Waldorf Astoria attending a technology conference. We were scheduled to be at the World Trade Center later that morning meeting with potential investors…
I was on a training-club ride when a rider filled us in on what happened. He was wearing headphones and relayed what “just happened”. Our moods were instantly ruined and made a turn to head the ride back in. I will never forget the looks on peoples faces at every stop-light… the shock and horror in all of our eyes. Then, a women rolled her window down and told us “that a tower just fell”.
As I was heading home, I was riding by the seal beach navy weapons station main entrance. The military personnel were lining up k-joints and building walls out of sand-bags. It was a scary feeling to see how quick they were going into defense-mode. Nobody was allowed in or out of the base. Later that day, there was so much activity going on at the base. Fighter jets and helicopters were being launched all day.
When I got home, I turned the television on and was in total shock… the images will never be forgotten.
In Australia, I woke up to the morning news show (the events actually transpired late the previous night)…at 6.55am the presenters were already on…the news didn’t normally start until 7am…something must be up…the banner behind them said “America under attack”…hmmm, not sure what they are on about…then they briefly recapped events…I remember saying to my wife “You had better come and have a look at this”…
rushed out of the shower for a ringing phone, the gf at the time called to let me know she had heard something on the car radio. I turned on the tv and while I was still on the phone plane #2 hit. I think I made it to work a few hours later, I couldn’t move from the tv, but only lasted at work for an hour.
