Remembering 9/11: Your Stories!

What is the best way to remember what happened on September 11, 2001?

I know there will be some who will say, 'what is the point' or 'not another "where were you thread"

However with the time that has passed, and all of the still unsolved, unanswered, and in some cases unraveling conspiracy theories about the attack on the USA, this would be a good opportunity to share where we were, what happened, and how it ultimately affected us.

Please write a concise, honest reply, and try to cover these elements:

Write your account of how you first discovered the news that a plane or planes had crashed into the World Trade Center towers.

Your immediate reaction, thoughts, and emotions when you realized that it was not an accident.

Your account of the first news of an explosion at the Pentagon.

First thoughts, reaction to, and how or why the World Trade Center first tower collapsed.

Your interpretation of how the news media covered the events of that day.

Finally, your thoughts of how the events of that day impacted you on a personal level, those around you, and your thoughts, or theories, as they exist today. and anything you'd like to add in closing.

Please keep your replies as brief as possible, and stay within the topic.



Remember 9/11?

2007 9/11 Tribute Special ATS MIX Show:

Listen to Staff, Owners, and Members tell their stories

www.abovetopsecret.com...


[edit on 10-9-2007 by UM_Gazz]

In September 2001 I had been placed as Project Lead on the largest engineering project of my career at that point. It was a 2 year, $1.7 million project and with the typical red tape that occurs in life (no matter what industry you work in), management decisions had already placed me 2 months in the weeds. My project involved conducting extensive testing, creating algorithms from the empirical data, and then incorporating those findings into a job design software tool. My project team was large, cross-center, cross-discipline and I knew looked to be hard to manage.

I came up with the idea I needed to have a meeting in which I brought all of my project team together, along with sales people who would be selling the product, as well as end-users and for two days hash out exactly what was needed to get the algorithms, and what the end user needed in the final software package (both inputs and outputs). So I rented a conference room in a nearby hotel and had people from around the world in my company's organization flown in for this 2-day meeting.

The first day of the meeting was September 10th, 2001. It was very productive and we all went away basically broke into subteams with deliverables for the next day. The meetings started at 8:00 a.m. each day and I remember I got there about 7:30. Since the people who were from out of town were staying in the same hotel as the meeting was taking place, most everybody was there by about 7:45 (especially considering we had pastries for them to munch on). There was one individual who came in last to the meeting right about 8:00 a.m. CT (9:00 ET).

When he walked in we were still informally chatting a bit, and hadn't really got down to work, so he came in, sat down and started telling one of the people on his team that he had just heard on the radio that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Center towers. I remember us spending maybe 2 or 3 minutes talking about that. I remember I asked "was it a general aviation plane or a commercial plane?" And he responded that they had talked like it was a small general aviation plane. That was all he knew, and we quickly moved on to work.

We did not take our first break that morning until between 9:30 and 10:00 a.m. CT (almost 11:00 ET). We broke and walked out into the lobby area of the hotel where people were gathered around watching a large-screen TV. What we walked out into was a world where:

Both WTC towers had collapsed,
The Pentagon had "been attacked",
a crater smoldered in a pasture,
and CNN was going on about up to "four more planes are missing",
and all air traffic was being diverted to Canada and such.

We walked out into a world that was not the world we had taken recess from.

There are two memorable things I remember (since I had not been able to watch any events real-time) after learning of the situation (as it was being reported at that time):

1. A good percent of the people attending the meeting reconvened briefly in the quietness of the conference room and we prayed and cried together.

2. Springer's daughters had moved to the east coast just weeks before the attacks and I remember calling Springer on the pay phone in the hotel lobby to see if he knew if they were okay. There was a gentleman from my company on the pay phone next to me. I can only describe this dear man has one of the most even-keeled, logical and methodical individuals I have ever met or had the pleasure of working with. In my mind, he is one of the rare true geniuses I have met in my life. As I stood there on the phone with Springer, this man, slow-to react, virtually impossible to excite to any type of less than well-thought-out reaction, was, in his typical calm, monotonic voice telling his wife, "Just pack a few things in some suitcases and as soon as school gets out, we and the kids are just going to get out of the city for a few days until it looks like everything is okay." That hit me so hard.

A third thing that was so surreal was later in the afternoon, I remember stepping out of the east door of the hotel into the parking lot to smoke a cigarrette. This had me relatively close to and facing one of the small airports in the Dallas area. I never will forget how eerily unbelievable it was that there was not ONE SINGLE AIRCRAFT in the Dallas skies. Not a helicopter, not a small plane, not a commercial flight. It would remain that way for days. And it was so hard to believe.

That night I lay on the couch, running fever from a nasty cold I was coming down with, and watching the replays of the day's footage - and crying. The most notable things I remember were the the "demon faces" in the collapse clouds of the WTC towers. I remember when WTC 7 collapsed. I remember a really doinky female reporter asking an FAA guy how the plane could have gotten into the Washington restricted airspace, and he told her "well, the space is restricted, but if you have some one hell bent on violating it the restriction doesn't slow them down much"...so she repeats the question "yeah, but HOW could they have gotten in a restricted airspace!?" and he finally said, "Lady, there aren't any fences up there." LOL And then I remember an interview with Tom Clancy some time in the evening when the interviewer said, this is like something out of one of your novels, and he said (I paraphrase), "I never would have written this plot. The publishers would have told me it was too unbelievable." That statement really got me.

Six days after the attacks I had to make the first trans-Atlantic flight I had ever made. It was a business trip for my company. That was the day that I realized 9/11 had been "the end of the world as we know it". I walked into the front doors of Love Field airport and there stood two national guardsmen, automatic rifles hanging from their shoulders, and (contrary to some people's claims) BANANA CLIPS IN. I stopped for like half a second, and then walked straight into the first bathroom I could find...and I sat down in a stall and cried for a long time. It was so "unAmerican" feeling...it looked like scenes I had seen in Mexico during a couple of visits, but nothing like America.

Our flight from Detroit to Amsterdam was delayed 30 minutes on the tarmac as they escorted a middle-eastern man from the 747 I was on. I sat in my seat thinking - gee, what a mass of humanity this plane represents, and then I thought to myself - I HOPE THEY GOT HIS LUGGAGE!

And then finally, that year would have been my first chance to go to the Texas State Fair in October, but I just couldn't do it. I remember telling my daughter, we'll go next year - when I feel safe again. And though I feel ashamed to have felt that way, I'm proud to say, the next year my daughter and I went to the State Fair - and had a blast...the good kind.

[edit on 9-3-2006 by Valhall]

I was living in midtown manhattan at the time, and I remember the day clearly. I slept in late, and woke up to hear my mother crashing through the apartment, crying her eyes out. She had been working in the Amex building, a stone's throw from the WTC complex.

Her boss evacuated their office before the collapse started, despite the calls for people to remain at work. She was lucky enough to get on one of the last trains uptown before all Hell broke loose.

She couldn't stop crying, and I turned on the television just in time to see the second collapse live. At that point I was already convinced something unusual had happened, because it looked like a controlled demolition, but there wasn't any time to dwell on that. They were already saying 'we're under attack' at that point, I guess it started after the second plane hit. I was angry. I wanted someone to pay for what had happened.

I wasn't in 'conspiracy mode' until much, much later - my first reaction was (shared by everyone on the street that I happened to talk to, maybe half a dozen people in midtown, and a few by the barriers erected by the FDNY/NYPD) we're gonna bomb the crap outta these assholes. We're gonna show them what happens when you poke a sleeping giant in the eye. I was pissed. I wanted vengeance. I knew I had probably lost a friend or two from the police department, and I had almost lost my mom - the way I saw it, we would bury our dead and then it would be payback time.

I got dressed - heavy boots, two pairs of pants, a couple of work shirts, a pair of bandannas and a baseball cap. At that point I didn't know what I was going to do, but I knew I had to do something. I wasn't going to sit in my apartment all day and watch them replay the incident a few hundred thousand more times. (I remember being disgusted by that..'back, and to the left. Show it again. Back, and to the left. Show it again' - enough already! I thought.)

I will never forget what I saw, coming out of the lobby of my building. There were troops with rifles everywhere. On the streets of New York, troops..with rifles. I thought to myself, what the Hell are they gonna do, shoot their little bullets at the next plane that flies in to smack us? They're useless, what are they doing there? Then I realized they were there to send a message..not to the terrorists, but to the people. I'm sure it was initially intended to reassure us, but it had the opposite effect...

I had to walk downtown because there wasn't any public transport. Besides the numbers of people standing still on the street, everything looked fairly normal in midtown (except on Broadway, or Park, I can't remember which, I had an unobstructed view of the pillar of smoke rising). It wasn't until I'd walked about 30 blocks that I started to see the ash covering everything. It was raining from the sky, blowing around - totally surreal. I felt like Manhattan had been transformed into Pompei.

It smelled horrible, absolutely disgusting, and the ash was everywhere. I saw a couple of people heading uptown, covered in the stuff, head to toe. By the time I made it to the barriers I was pretty well-covered too, my eyes were stinging and my throat felt like it was on fire - I think the wind had just shifted a bit. I wanted to keep going though, to see if I could help at ground zero.

The firemen told me it was too hot, that they wouldn't be letting anyone through. I bumped into a reporter who was looking for a way to get downtown. I was slightly disgusted with how excited this lady was, in the midst of all this destruction, but I decided to tag along with her in the hopes she would get us in. We walked up and down the barriers, for maybe three quarters of an hour, looking for a section that wasn't buttoned up, hoping to find an unguarded intersection so we could proceed farther downtown.

We didn't find any openings. Some firemen told me they were taking volunteers by the river, but then five minutes later, I heard from someone else that they had all they needed, and were turning people away. I was hungry, and thirsty, and decided to start back uptown - feeling pretty dejected, impotent and useless. I found a car that was covered in a thick layer of ash and collected some of it in my hat, I don't know exactly why...

I eventually made it back to midtown and my mom was glued to the television, so we watched it together for a few more hours as it got dark. She went to bed and told me I should turn it off. I was still awake and watching it when she got up the next morning, if memory serves. The more I watched it, the more I became suspicious of the official story. It just didn't seem plausible.

I guess that's it... I went back to ground zero a couple of months later, and there were all these tourists taking picture, grinning like morons. I couldn't stand it, so I left - rather than break a bunch of heads and get locked up.

Being a writer, I always figured I'd tell the story in a more extended, careful fashion. I've never managed to get it right though. I guess it's just beyond my ability at this point, to do the truth of that day justice.



[edit on 3-9-2006 by WyrdeOne]

Though not American this affected me as well. I was at work in a chicken processing plant and someone was listening to the radio in the office and brought the news out to the plant. My first reaction was "BS". But the news kept coming. I couldn't wait to get home to check it out myself. I had to wait 3 hours for the shift to be over.

So, I'm sitting in front of the TV and seeing planes hit the towers and I was still like "This has got to be some kind of a joke, computer generated imagery." But continued watching of the impacts, the collapsing of the towers and the people running from the debris made it clear that this WASN'T a joke. It was litterally bone chilling. I don't even recall my first reaction to the Pentagon, too much to absorb at one time. The same can be said of what I though of the news coverage.

I think that this event has impacted damn near everyone on the planet. It seems to me that this was the seed that American foriegn policy has grown from in the last 5 years. Let's just say, I'm not happy with that direction.

I was working as a musician on a cruise ship in Alaska. The first thing I knew was that the captain woke us all up with a message through the PA system suggesting that US citizens might want to turn on their televisions. It was way early in the morning, but I turned it on anyway.

The first plane had hit, and one of the towers was on fire. I was pretty stunned, and kept listening as CNN tried to tell us a whole bunch of nothing. Then, within five minutes or so of my turning on the tv, the second plane hit. At this point, the idea of it being an "accident" suddenly was out of the question. I remember the tenor player in the band coming into my cabin and we sat and watched it together. We were both British and working in a very US environment... and we both quietly agreed that it was probably "chickens coming home to roost" in terms of US foreign policy, not that we were going to discuss that with our US colleagues.

Then the first collapse occurred and we were both in shock, pretty much. But right from the first, I was thinking... that's so NEAT and TIDY. It didn't look right at all. And I remember how quickly Osama's name came into discussion, and how quickly the names of the hijackers were discovered. Of course when the second tower came down, we were almost ready. My bandmate couldn't believe that the towers were brought down deliberately, but I was suspicious at the very least, right from the first.

I paid a lot of attention to the news after that, and the anthrax attacks made me even more suspicious. I kept hearing the words "anthrax" and "foreign terrorists" in close proximity to each other, but without a shred of evidence to connect them...

It was the start of the darkest days I've yet known.

I remember coming home from school it would have been about 3:30 in the afternoon here. The phone rang, it was my dad phoning from work to ask if we had seen the news. I turned on the to see atleast the first tower smoking, i don't remember if the 2nd one had been hit by then or not but if it hadn't it was hit not long after i switched on the tv. I watched the tv for the whole rest of the day just amazed at what i was seeing. i was only 14 and didn't fully understand what was going on but i knew it couldn't be a good thing.

I remember clearly the 1st tower coming down, and being totaly amazed. i wondered how many people were still inside and just felt shocked at what i had just seen. It just struck home that this wasn't some hollywood movie with an over-the-top special effects budget, thsi was real life. People were loseing their lives as i watched live on tv. When the 2nd tower came down i just couldn't believe it happned. After that i don't really remember much.

The events of 9/11 will always be with those who watched the live on tv that day, like the moon landings, all we can hope for is their are no more of these events for us all to remember .

September 2001.

I remember the day well, though im in the UK the day touched us and affected us allot,

It was afternoon here in London, and a sunny day, I was having a nice afternoon shopping after a long week,
As I walked in to the mall there was a TV shop and as we walked in there were maybe 50 people standing outside the shop looking shocked at the TV's,

We stopped to try and figure out what was going on, I asked a man next to me what was happening and he said "A plane has just hit the World trade centre"
I then just stared in horror with everyone else; Tears welled up in my eyes as I began to think about the people stuck in there,

I remember saying a quick prayer in hope they could all get out quick... then the 2nd plane I wanted to get home, calling my family as saying
*put on the news now!* then it hit me …. My friend and fellow dancer was meant to be there, As news got around our dance teacher wanted all of us to call each other if
We heard from her,


Once home the news just kept on coming, another plane another plane, it was a day I just sat there staring at the TV, and I don't think I stopped crying to be honest,
Even thinking now, the tears just come to my eyes,
My friend was fine, her flight had be 4 hours late and there plane had been turned around and landed,

My reaction to the day was one of pure shock, I was scared I admit, I could not believe the evil of such an event, after the 2nd plane hit I knew then this was no accident,
I knew then that this was a day that would change the world that we lived in,

When I heard about the Pentagon again utter shock, I wondered if this day would ever end, my thoughts turned again to the men and women in the buildings and
There family's,

When the trade centre collapsed I think I had my head in my hands and I shouted no! I could not believe what I was seeing
I swear I felt so helpless sitting there knowing that many people was in that building, I even looked up and said *How the hell could this be happening*
Utter shock and I felt numb,

The news that day was something I had never in my life seen before, news reporters barely able to speak, footage of people coming out from the dust,
It was shocking,

How this affected me, I will never forget the images on the TV, I have read the names of the people who died, and I stood with the rest of the UK people to pay respect on the Anniversary of Sept 11th,

I admit I fear to fly due to this, But it will not stop me from flying, that to me would be letting terrorism win, From that day I started to open my eyes and see that there was evil around us, and I no longer wanted to be someone who just stood there, I wanted to learn,

If anything its learned me to love my family that bit more, to hug them just one extra hug, and to tell them everyday that I love them,

We never know what each day will bring, never know what's waiting there in the shadows, but 1 thing I know is that through Evil good has come,
It just made us realize how much more precious people around us we love are,

On The Road Again

On the morning of September 11, 2001, my wife and I were driving south on Interstate 5, having just finished a wonderful extended-weekend trip to Seattle (one of the most awesome cities in the world, in my opinion).

We were listening to various albums as we drove. She was driving and I was singing along with the music, as was our custom.

At some point during the trip we decided we needed a new surround sound system, and on the morning of 9/11 we stopped off at Fry's Electronics in Wilsonville, Oregon to pick one up on our way back to our home in Reno, Nevada.

When we walked into the store, it was unusually quiet for a Fry's. Usually any Fry's store you go into is hustling and bustling no matter what time of day, but for some reason, the store was almost dead quiet.

We walked back to the TV and Home Stereo section and started talking to a salesman about sound systems. We probably talked for about five minutes before he made an off-hand comment about "what happened in New York". This was around maybe 9:00 AM Pacific time, so the attacks had occurred about three hours earlier.

Neither my wife nor I had heard about what had happened yet, and the salesman seemed surprised. Without elaborating, he took us to one of the big-screen TVs among the huge rows of them all displaying some sort of nature show -- demo programming -- and changed the channel to CNN Headline News.

And that's when my wife and I saw what had happened for the first time, standing there in a Fry's, watching the footage of a jetliner crashing into the towers, then watching the towers collapse.

Some of the other salesmen gathered around and watched the news with us on that one big screen while the dozens of other screens showed calm footage of animals and nature.

For maybe three or four minutes, no one said a single word. We just watched.

I will never forget those moments.

On the morning of 9/11, I was at work, having started my day by the usual 6:30 AM.

www.brucepower.com...

By 9AM, I wandered up to the cafeteria, which is located at the South side of the building, for the normal coffee break where I would meet the crowd which I always sat with. I can't remember the topic of discussion, but I imagine it was all fairly mundane. The routine of the facility was, by that time, 'old hat' and I was 'long in the tooth', meaning I had almost 30 years experience in that place.

My day to day was getting fairly boring and I was already beginning to look forward to my retirement (just a few years away by then).

And then one of the crew came up to our table, all wild eyed and anxious.

He said; "Somebody flew a plane into the World trade Center!!!"

Dead silence.

We all kind of looked at each other and then back to the grim-faced bearer of the news, as if we were waiting for him to say something else or whatever...we all thought he was nuts and I even told him that.

But he pushed it and said that he wasn't kidding about something like that, looking all serious, because everyone knew what kind of a joker he usually was. But then he told us about hearing it on the radio in the office.

We were all shocked, of course, and we cut our break short and split back to our respective offices. Once I got back to mine, the first thing I did was turn on the radio and start listening to the CBC broadcasts.

It was surreal...as the events started to develop, I was sitting in my nice soft chair and I imagine the blood was draining from my face. It was hard to comprehend how something like this could have happened in what I considered such a 'safe environment' where the USAF held sway in the skies. And yet they completely failed to stop those jets from hitting the towers.

I was incredulous...barely believing what I was hearing.

By noon, the entire staff, more than 1000 people, knew what had happened and the talk at lunch was hushed. People weren't laughing and playing cards, no-one was smiling and a lot of eyes looked out of those cafeteria windows into the clear blue skies. I know what they were thinking...we all knew that the station was built to withstand a direct hit by a 747, but that cafeteria was dead center of the station. We were all looking for that growing silver sliver in the sky, heading right for us.

Some went home early that day, not being able to handle the perceived threat. I even know of some that quit their jobs right then and there. But, anyone who did stay, whenever they could, went outside or stared out of those windows until quitting time. I hung on until 7PM when my 12 hour shift ended and went home to watch the video on CNN for the first time.

Unbelievable. A nightmare which will haunt me for the rest of my life, I'm sure... watching those towers collapse over and over again like some advertisement from Hell.

The intervening years brought much change to the power plant. Security doubled, tripled and quadrupled...machine gun toting guards were everywhere. New security fencing, new proceedures and a new understanding of how easily all can go up in flames. Nothing was ever the same again nor will it ever be.

My heart goes out to all the families who lost relatives on that horrible day. I also feel bad for the children all across North America and the world beyond who saw that horror...it will be a permanent scar for them, I'm sure.

But most of all, I feel anger...a deep-seated hatred for who-ever orchestrated such a monstous plot. The truth will come out. I'm very sure of that.

9/11 was the defining moment for all of the people living in North America. It was the moment when our safety was no longer assured, and, I'm sure that was exactly the purpose of the attack.

To make us afraid.

Now I think it has produced the opposite effect...it has hardened us all.


[edit on 3-9-2006 by masqua]

i remember it pretty well my mom and i were watching good moring america before i had to go to school and they were talking bout the first plane that hit and i was like wut wait no there lyin and then all of a sudden the second plane and then i new it wasnt a joke so i thought well maybe it was a helicopter or maybe the planes didnt see the top of the tower, when i finally found out it was terrorist i was stunned i mean a nine yr old kid doesnt really no about terrorist

September 9.11.01

I don't want to get para-normal, but had one of those feelings.
On 9.11, I shot straight up in bed and began to weep. I then recall meeking through my morning routine of cigarettes, coffee, bathe. When I came out of the shower my sister was screaming that we had been bombed. I asked by who, and she responded Iraq (there was a lot of mis-information at this point).

I remember setting in front of the TV, watching all these reporters saying This can't happen. Seeing video of CNNs prominent in eerie fashion. A shot from people in a park that seemed to be going through some breathing excercise before the planes hit.

It's strange, but I had gotten a call while drinking coffee from an 'ole buddie that asked if I was OK, for some strange reason.

Then the hate built (it exists to this day). Everyone's fault. The excuses offered by the Pro-militant gov't at the time that it couldn't be prevented was inexcuseable. I hate. The slurry that followed about how everyone was safe, and protection plans had been put into action should never have been bought and paid for by the populace (everyone don there do all gas mask now, please).

I feel no more less threatened this day than I have for many years. I've been to New York (back in '96). I've seen the turbo-powered turbaneers. I've discussed issues with them, and been threatened.

Was there a conspiracy? Something happened. Clearly not as intended. Someone, somewhere, somehow (besides the one currently expressing) should have had just cause. To ignore blatant threats and obvious signs is just down right ignorant.


---Please excuse if this posting seems hostile towards anyone in particular, except those well deserving.

I remember leaving my desk and walking thru the plant to the receiving office to let the receiving clerk know he’d screwed up once again. I told him what needed to be done to correct his mistake and he told me that on his way into work he heard that a plane had hit the world trade center, and they were saying the second tower might have been hit as well by another plane.

I headed back to my office, thinking it couldn’t be true but decided to check the radio for myself. Radios aren’t allowed where I work. The rules are rather strict cause we’re in a very competitive business. Get caught with a camera, even on your cell phone, and your fired on the spot. I stopped by a friend’s office and mentioned to him what I had heard. Out came his radio as well. Shortly after you could hear a radio playing in every office as we listened to the story unfolding.

Everyone was in shock except for one guy named David. He was mad in a nutty kind of way. He’d been born in Canada and immigrated to the U.S. several years before. The day before 9/11 he’d been sworn in as a citizen of the U.S. and he was ready to go to war. He was going to join the military and kill all those bastards. It didn’t matter that he was 50 years old; He was going to go kill them anyway. Several people had to sit with him and try to talk him back down to planet Earth.

There are televisions stationed throughout the plant, which are always tuned to the company network. They give the latest info on scrap and production goals and internal info. They were all switched to CNN and crowds were gathered before every one of them. Not much work got done.

It was a totally surreal day.

i was at work when a custumer told us about the first crash into the wtc. of course we all thought he was jokeing. we turned on custumer's car raidios and found out it was true. we then of course heard about the second into the wtc, pentagon and the one that crashed/was shot down in pennsilvania. we wer all upset at such a thing happening. two ladys that work in the store had husbands at the wtc and both had been sent off to do things that were not planned for and as such were not killed. there was even one lady who said the us only got what it deserved. i wanted to smash her head in for that comment.

on the way home from work i pass by an international airport that was compleatly full of aircraft parked in all available spaces with security useing machine guns gaurding them. there were literaly hundreads of aircraft parked between the runways. i have never seen so many large aircraft in one place at one time.

once i got home i hit all the news channels and the internet looking at all the footage i could find, i watched it over and over again and was struck by how early pictures of the pentagon had seemingly no debres while in later pictures there was debris everywhere. as well as the fact that the wtc collapses had masive secondery explosions that didn't make sense as well as the fact that the buildings went down as textbook demolition implosions. almost perfectly like those i had seen on show about demolitions that used to air quite frequently before 911 but not seen even one since.

that is when i started to seriousely doubt what we were being told, and felt that this was some ellaborite set up once all things were considdered. untill that day i was a major us supporter, now i have some seriouse isues with the leadership of the usa.

At 5:46 A.M. Pacific time, I ended my workout at the gym. That was the same exact time the first plane hi the WTC. Weird. But I did not watch TV or listen to the radio at all. I went home, showered, and decided to sleep (was unemployed at the time). My mom called, my answering machine picked it up, and she was going on about "were being attacked, those F@%$*& are attacking us everywhere". I had no idea what she was ranmbling on about, and I went to sleep anyway.

My friend who was staying with me at the time woke me up 5 hours later and told me to turn on the news. I saw, it, and it took 5 minutes to sink in.

At the time, I lived 5 minutes from Sea-Tac airport. Normally on normal days, planes would be flying low right over every 20 minutes, so loud all conversation had to stop. I realized what felt so weird: the total silence. I had not heard a plane at all the rest of that day. It really hit home then.

But generally speaking, I slept through the whole thing. Not surprising, I slept through earthquakes before.

I was homeschooling at the time.

My daughter and I had just taken her first morning break from classes and she went to turn on Blues Clues. She turned the TV on and said ...'that's not Blue'. I looked and didn't understand what was happening. A few minutes later, as we both stood there trying to understand what was happening, the second plane flew into the second building.

At that moment I remembered that my elderly parents were on an American Airlines plane that was flying out of NYC at just about that time.

They were not on that flight. We cancelled homeschool for the rest of the day and prayed and wondered what was going on.

It took at least 2 months before it sank in that what had happened was real. It didn't feel real. I couldn't believe it had happened.

I was at work that day and my husband called to tell me what had happened, that a plane had hit WTC. I thought he was either mistaken or that it was a minor incident. Denial and all that.
Soon, co-workers were getting calls from their families. And we all pretty much gave up work to search the Internet for news.

I remember we were not allowed to go home early, although no work got done that day. The trip home was errily quiet as many regular commuters were home watching the events. I've never seen so few cars on the freeway at rush hour.

I remember seeing the collapse over and over and wondering why, thinking of the horrors the families and friends of the WTC workers faced.

I remember the drone of planes. Regularly. Seemingly 24/7.
We live near the Canadian border and Selfridge ANG.

Surreal, indeed.



Looking back, I feel anger at the government for whatever role they may have played. For whatever coverup or deception they have employed.

I feel that those who died did so needlessly. I feel for their friends and families who must surely wonder how this could have happened. That they may never get closure for this tragedy.

I was driving into work on a 30 minute drive. I caught a brief discussion of it on a local radio station. As I flipped through the stations I only caught small banter and it was exactly like the banter regarding the embassy bombings and other U.S. interest bombings from the past few years. Which is exactly was my first thoughts of the matter. Just another embassy or nightclub bombing in katmandu or somewhere.

It wasn't until I got into work that I realised it was something entirely different. I came in throught the back door as usual and walked through the banquet room as usual. We had two large projection screens in there and we often had sports or something on as we set-up for events and dinners.

As soon as I came into the banquet room I looked up at the screens to see both towers smoking terribly. A handful of employees were sitting or standing and their eyes were glued to the screens. Immediately I got filled in and we all watched and shot conjectures back and forth and nonchalantly set-up the room for the days goings-on.

Consequently the towers fell and the rumors and anxiety made the day very weird indeed. I didn't know if I wanted to be there, or at home or what. The place was basicly my home and the employees my family and a ton of work to supervise, so I just went with flow. It of course was the main focus for everybody all day.

My first thoughts of the collapse was to the best of my recollection, were OMG, that huge building just fell into nothingness. I didn't have any thoughts of how or why. It's was just awesome. Then the second tower came down, and my thoughts were the same. At this point it was obvious the impacts were intentional, I believe the pentagon had been hit at this time, and the word in on the tube was organized attack. My first thought here was 'blowback' and I was right. For 4 years I didn't hear anything about the term 'blowback'. I was in 4th grade when I first heard the term 'blowback' I believe President Reagan used it when addressing the Pan Am flight that exploded over I believe, Ireland.

For a few weeks I was engrossed in the aftermath of the collapses. Intrigued with the video of the people on the street running and taking cover from the pyroclastic-like debris clouds. Those videos still steal my focus when I see them. At about that time is when I started to have thoughts about the manner in which the towers fell. How very strange, beautiful and clean they fell. This is also about the time I learned of building #7 and was then pretty convinced that there was more to whole incident then what was let known at the time.

This is also the time period that I began to dislike the current president as a speaker. I don't have enough information to make an informed opinion on his and his administrations accomplishments and failures, but as a speaker I began to loathe him. I started to see his arrogance and resented his belittling and pompus tone he took when addressing me the American public. IMO it is this time when he really showed he had no idea what it means to lead a nation. Or to motivate a people.

This supposition in addition to the utter confusion and disarray of the whole 9/11 debacle has made me...i just feel gross, im done.

I got up to go to work and did something I rarely do and that is to turn on the television. I sat on my ottoman and watched as the second plane hit the towers.

The thing that got me the most was the absolute calmness of the reporters commenting on the events.

I was manic the whole day and ready to go back to war, but alas, I'm too old and unfit to serve.

September 11th 2001 started out so beautiful for me, I will never forget the crisp, cool, fall like temps that morning. I awoke early and left the house at dawn the sun had yet to make an appearance as I strolled across the grass field with my bow and arrows in hand. The deer stand strapped across my back was brand new and my mission for the day was to test the equipment out in preperation for the upcoming deer season a scant few weeks away.

As I climbed the tree and turned around to sit at a hieght of about 25 feet off of the ground, the hickory tree made quite the observation post to watch the sun start to peak over the canopy of the forest, the trees began to reveal the dappled color of fall in greens,reds, and yellows. All seemed right in the world, how wrong I was.

After spending the best part of the early morning watching squirrels chase each other up and down the neighboring trees, I headed out of the woods to Walmart for a few last minute hunting items, upon reaching my truck I could hear my cell phone ringing from inside the truck, my wife on the other end sounded strange to me, I had never heard such fear from her voice before. She was at work and watching the news from there.

She told me I needed to get out of the truck and go into the house and turn on the television that a plane had flown into the world trade center, upon reaching the house and turning on the TV what I saw made my jaws drop, as the second plane struck, I realized that this was a historic event taking place. I grabbed a blank VHS tape and began taping the news, why I do not know, but I remember thinking that I had to record these events.

Stunned and dazed by what was taking place I tried to continue my plans for the day as I got back into my truck, I proceeded to try and drive to Walmart after getting on the road I remember turning on the radio and the local talk radio show said that reports of cars pulled over on the highways and people weeping behind their steering wheels shocked me into the reality that this was now wartime.

I made it less than a quarter of a mile down the road and turned around and went back home to spend the rest of the day in front of the TV. Till just a few days ago I have never viewed the VHS tape I made that day because I didnt want to relive those feelings. 8-hours of news from that day and I can still hardly believe the images from those broadcast's. some of the impact segments I've never seen since that day.


Sentinal,


[edit on 4-9-2006 by the_sentinal]

I was working in London at the time at my old job. Standard office block for a magazine just off Oxford Street, a square newsroom with internet access for every computer and a TV in one corner. It was a dull day, I was working on a story for the next edition and was trying to get clear in my head what my unclear boss wanted for it - she wasn't very good an interacting with people.
When someone first mentioned that a plane had hit the WTC my initial thought was on the lines of: 'Some idiot's flown a Cessna into the bloody thing. Don't they have warning lights on the towers?'. Then someone turned the television on and suddenly the world changed in a fraction of a second, because seconds after CNN came on the second plane hit.
My story flew out of my head and I joined the growing crowd under that television set, staring up as this unearthly silence enveloped the office. I'll never forget that silence, it spoke of bewilderment and incomprehension and fear. We just stood there and watched it burn.
When the first tower collapsed there was a collective sound that was a cross between a gasp and a groan, a noise that sounded as unearthly as the silence. People were in tears, several turned away. It was a horrible moment. And then shirtly after the second one went down and I found myself wondering what human tragedies were being hidden in that terrible shroud of dust and smoke.
When I went back to my desk two things happened. The first was that I had a phone call from my father to say that I should go home later on the tube, making sure that I stayed near the door in case I had to make a quick exit. That got my entire office laughing, as we all dismissed any possible threat to London. (Little did we suspect that 7/7 was on the way.)
The second thing was that I emailed a friend of mine. I wrote: 'The yanks are going to go mad over this. They'te going to bomb whoever did this into the Stone Age.'