What were you doing on 9/11 before you saw the news?

I was working at the public library in my hometown in PA at the time, driving the library bookmobile that went to the retirement communities, nursing homes, and senior centers. There was no parking space near the library building for the library bookmobiles, so all three of them were stored in a large parking lot at a local factory a few miles away from the library. I was just pulling into the parking lot in my car when the guys on the radio morning show I was listening to reported that two airplanes had hit the towers of the WTC.

I sat in my car listening to the radio, just stunned. After a few minutes, I called the library on my cell phone to find out if they still wanted me to take the bookmobile out to the scheduled stops for the day. I kept getting a busy signal and had trouble getting through. I remember thinking it might be the end of the world. The library staff member who finally answered the phone was kind of freaking out too and didn't know what I should do, so she patched me through to the library director. The library director said the library was not going to close because it would have been the wrong thing to do, and that the library phone had been ringing nonstop with people wanting information about the attack. She said she hoped I would be able to drive the bookmobile to the regularly scheduled stops for the day but she would understand if I felt that I couldn't. I immediately decided to take the bookmobile on the road as usual.

Unfortunately, the AM/FM radio antenna on board the bookmobile was broken, so the only station I could get was a static-y AM station. The station was broadcasting a live satellite feed from one of the major network TV stations, so I at least could follow along with what was happening in NYC. The elderly bookmobile patrons also kept me updated throughout the day. Many of them were alive in 1941 when Pearl Harbor was bombed and several of them noted that this was my generation's Pearl Harbor. There was a lot of fondness between myself and the bookmobile patrons and I considered almost all of them good friends. Looking back, I'm so glad I made the decision to take the bookmobile out that day. It was a very emotional day with lot of sadness, tears, and hugs. Somehow, sharing the tragedy of the day with all of them made it more bearable than it would have been had I gone home to sit alone in front of the TV.

Incidentally, two of my close friends from college worked at the WTC, one of them at one of the financial companies and one of them at one of the stores in the underground mall beneath the towers. I was unsure if they had survived until days later when I finally reached them both. They had both made it out alive. The one who worked at the financial institution worked in the South Tower. He told me that after the first plane hit the North Tower, he and several of his co-workers made the decision on their own to leave the building. Those who had chosen to stay were killed probably on impact when the second plane hit the South Tower. Back in college, we had always teased him about what a nervous worrywart he was, but it probably saved his life.

was 21 at the time. just quit my job a week or two earlier so i could focus more on school which the first day was 9/11. i was awake just walked the dog, was reinstalling windows 2000 on my pc after messing around with a XP beta. was actually listening to howard stern when the first plane hit the announced it then turned on the TV for more coverage

I live in northen NJ about 20mins away from NYC. after the second tower fell i went to this spot in west orange, nj where you can see the city skyline. there were plenty of other people there. i brought a disposable camera to take picture of the smoke filled skyline. i lost the camera at a party later that month before i could develop the pics i took.

spent the rest of the day watching the news on tv and listening to wnew fm talk radio with ron & fez and opie and anthony who were taking calls from locals and discussing various news info that was being reported like OBL, al qaeda, the vans on the bridges and muslims cheering in paterson, nj.

first day of school was canceled. met up later with my friends at a bar to blow of steam after all the events. alot of people where up in arms of what may have being going down in paterson. there was some retaliation against the muslim community reported on the news and i'm trying to remember if some muslim girl or group of teens were attacked/harrased near the paterson libary. the san gennaro festival was canceled due to the attacks but that didn't stop my friends and i from visting weeks later. city around the area definitely had a strange toxic smoky smell to it

reply to post by VicDiaz89


Sitting in a dorm room in South Korea. My girlfriend (Wife now) called me from a more northern base in ROK and said "turn on the TV, a plane just hit the WTC".

I turned on the TV and watched. (the second plane had not hit yet.) As an Air traffic controller, my first thought was, OMG an air traffic controller is in a world of S@#$%!!!

Then the second one came in and hit live while I was watching.... Then everyone in the dorm panicked!! Breaking out thier real-world chem gear ready for North Korea to take advantage and strike S. Korea. We were all scared out of our minds!!

Pretty crazy experience for me.

I was sat at a desk at work in the UK and screen grabs came round on email. Everyone was shocked and then after work, I sat there all evening and watched the live events unfold.

Very surreal evening

I was watching cartoons with 2 3yr olds I babysat. Programming was interupted for the breaking news when it hit the first building, I watched it for hours after that. Unfortunatley, so did the children. I wish I had turned it off but I just had to watch u know. For the next few days the little boy asked me constantly if a plane was going to crash our apartment building.

I had just got home from school, and my mum was sitting watching the news. One plane had already hit. I watched the second one hit, and the resultant fires, jumpers and eventual collapse of the towers. Still chokes me up just thinking about it.
For months afterwards I'd hear nasty sounding aeroplanes taking off at night from a tiny airport we have locally, predominantly used for cheap holiday destinations but otherwise never used. I'd lay in bed wondering if any of them were carrying bombs or whether it was the end of the world.
I still live in fear of large aircrafts. They come swooping past my house and across the bay I live above. Only last week I saw a huge cargo plane fly past the bay, engines roaring. My son covered his ears, and I felt like crying. I wish things were quiet and peaceful

I was in Spain with my folks having my dinner being moaned at by my dad because I smacked another kid for bumping into me and spilling juice or something all over me, the kid was with his group and laughed. Then I went "whatever" and went into the bar area, seen the news, ran in and said America is being attacked by fighter jets by Iraq or someone.... bless my 14 year old mind.

I had just arrived home after attending a triva night down at the local watering hole and was watching the news when it happened. Never forget it.

i was taking the istep test (i think it was the istep???) in my 10th grade math class at the time.


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Originally posted by Mayura
These and the continuous Osama posts make me want to puke, but I'll play.

I went to school and wondered why the hell am I forced to say 'Declaration of Independence' anyway? Then I got stoked about sitting around, watching the news, and not having to work much to fill my mind with trivial bullsh*t that day.

edit on 2-5-2011 by Mayura because: (no reason given)

You had to say the declaration of independence everyday in school?

Wow, and I thought having to say the "pledge of allegiance" everyday was bad......

Just sayin

I had fallen asleep with the TV on the night before. I woke up in the morning to Tom Brokaw saying something like "The United States, the most power nation in the world, has been the victim of a terrorist act." After that woke me up, I continued watching it and then I even saw it as the second plane hit live on TV.

I never would have imagined that morning that it was an inside job...

For me it was a very hectic and busy day, I was at the time working nights managing a security company so I should have really been in bed. Plenty of time for sleep when we are dead so being a wonderful sunny day in London I decided to make the most of it. My girlfriend at the time had a sofabed being delivered so I stayed at her studio and thought to kill time I'd make it a memorable evening for her when she returned home. I did not sleep at all that day rather busying myself in the local area a rather well to do area having a fine selection of good shops. I thought flowers for the good lady and a nice meal, so off I went procuring the necessary items. I found a lovely florist which had lavender in stock so I got a nice bouquet made up using large stemmed flowers surrounded in a bed of lavender. Then to a well stocked delicatessen finding some nice Italian hams and fine cheese for a pasta dish when she return home. I thought quality that should do it sorted, but worse still I found a little book store and how could I resist? My girlfriend was highly academic and was about to study law so I thought lets find her something funny and light to read scoring a nice book for her as well. After a walk around the area casually taking in the park and some of the finer sights of London I decided to make my way back to ready myself for the delivery.

Once back at base I arranged the floral offerings, I then sat there and smoked a nice big spliff while admiring the flowers. Having sorted out my urges and now running on a nice high I said sod it lets open up the window and make some noise, so I listed to a number of minidisks I carried on me at all times some early style drum and bass. As the noise level increased so did my activity in the galley area whipping up a perfect pasta even having a glass of red wine which is something I would not normally drink.

A buzzing sound started to disturb my creating in the kinky kitchen of culture and the time had come to take delivery of a sofabed. I thought it's only a little two seat sofabed how difficult can it be? I used to unload articulated lorries by hand so this should be a simple 10min task. Nope as if! bloody thing did not want to traverse the small staircase but after a fashion got the bugger in and done the business on it making it up all nice. I felt a sense of accomplishment having had a busy day and my evening shift was now looming so I took to the bathroom for my ablutions. Having dropped a nice big fresh and smelling like a bitch I decided it was time to fill up and eat so I grazed on some pasta while listening to some music. After a feeding frenzy and still having about an hour to kill before my departure I decided to again par take with the herb rolling a fine spliff, I then mixed myself a vodka and orange and got ready to switch on the TV and catch the news and weather before leaving.

This was the moment my world changed forever BBC news... the sight of it still sending a shiver down my spine, I knew it was real and happening but could not believe it.

ok,your all gonna think omg hasn,t she lived lol
I live in britain and i turned on the tv for the children hour coming on for my daughter who was 1 at the time.
All i sew on all channels was these buildings burning,only one had been hit at that time.
Well i had to wait for a friend to get home to moan about the fact there was no kids hour today because of these to tall towers being burnt by planes flying into to them,his reply,"their the world tread centres,dont you know what they are???",me......no not seen them before in my life(i was 21 at the time).
So for the next hour i was told all about these towers and what the were and about the taliban(also had no clue),another thing people kept asking me was how i,ve never noticed them in films,and to top it all my bestfriend growing up had a skyline pic on her wall of them!!!!!!! heehee
Needless to say i notice them all them time now,in films,programs and also lernt alot about them too
great thread made me smile remembering,thanks,nice one

I was out running errands or something, and while driving, my husband called me and said he'd heard there'd been some sort of attack on New York, but he didn't know anything else. I thought surely this is a case of misunderstanding and didn't take it seriously.

But when I got home, I told my son to put on the tv to see and immediately saw a burning building with a plane sticking out of it and heard it had hit it. I was stunned. As we watched and saw another plane passing behind it, we both laughed and said "watch, that one crashes into it too" -I truly thought it was just a plane in the background flying by while they filmed this! -But then, it did. And our jaws dropped and we were speechless (and embarrassed for having made such a crass joke).

Like everyone, we were in shock, and outside, people in the village came to see me and hug me, because they knew I was American. They were all crying.

But then I called my dad, and he was upset, and said something like "we americans thank you for your concern."
And again, the floor fell out from under me. I realized that I had been rejected by my family and my country, and all my loyalties were for nothing. I had no country, no people, and this had just provided an opportunity for that to be clear to me.

It was then I finally decided, after so many years, to take the french nationality, get a job here, stop calling myself american, start trying to integrate and gain the french mentality- I needed a country and mine had ran off with it's tail between it's legs and dumped me.

So that day had both historical and personal significance for me.

I was with Hip-Hop group Tha Liks (or Tha Alkaholiks) in Melbourne Australia, none of us had ever been there before. I got a call and a friend told me that "America just got bombed." I had to break it to the guys and they cancelled the show straight away. It was the middle of the night. I remember we all walked outside and every TV in every shop or cafe or whatever had the EXACT same image on it. It was so surreal.

Some garbage bins were burning too. I was a little drunk so we all thought the # had hit the fan everywhere.

I saw one guy get mugged and hit in the head, he was bleeding, walks into the 7/11 and asks the attendant to call the ambulance. The attendant goes out back to get him something, I can only assume for the blood, and while he is gone the guy steals some ice cream and Coca-Cola out of the fridge and runs off. What the # right?

Weird night.

Originally posted by VicDiaz89
Im 21 years old, i was 12 years old when i turned on the tv to watch yu gi oh.lol lame i know,but to my surprise saw video of a burning building on every channel..I still remember that day and what i saw on t.v very clearly,like it happened yesterday even though this event didn't mean much to a lot of us at the time bieng so young,i beleive its made me value life so much more as ive matured...I'd like for you to take a trip down memory lane and share with ATS your memories of that tragic day and maybe how its affected you as a person as youve aged. -Thanks to those who contribute and i hope osamas death has brought all victims of his terrorism some sort of closure...

I was in the sitting room of my cottage ... completing an assignment I had to hand-in for the Natural Earth Sciences degree I was taking at the time ... my then partner had been playing a gig the night before and hadn't got home until late, so was watching tv in the bedroom ... I went upstairs to the bathroom and could see he'd fallen asleep so went to turn off the tv and saw the live news report coming in about a plane hitting the first tower.

I sat on the end of the bed with the remote in my hand, to try and find-out what had happened ... and saw the 2nd plane hit the 2nd tower.

I watched in dumbstruck disbelief ... my brain unable to equate what my eyes had just seen ... and the images of people jumping out of windows on live tv will stay with me forever ... I bearly tore my eyes away from the tv that day ... still feeling like I must have misunderstood what I'd seen

Even now when I see footage of that day it is still as intense as when I saw it unfolding live ... I think it was just the enormity of the event that struck me most ... and the gut feeling that the things we were told on that and subsequent days just didn't add-up ... the logic of the official explanations was incredibly flawed ... and I couldn't understand why they would be telling us such implausible things ... or how they could possibly imagine people would be gullible enough to swallow such rubbish.

Even though I was not personally effected by the event as in, I knew or lost someone that day ... the impact of the event I witnessed made me shed a great deal of political naivety and ingrained a totally different worldview in my mind.

Woody

reply to post by VicDiaz89


For us it was the 12th, I was getting my son ready for school, and listening to the annoying woman on the commercial station who did the breakfast show.
When she started OMG-ing about it all, I thought "of all the breakfast show hoaxes the silly cow has done, this is the lamest". Like most media people in NZ she loves all things American, wants to be American, is bitter because she was born here etc..
So, I thought if anyone was going to make up a story to make the USA seem as if it was the innocent victim of an attack, it would be her and the other lame brains on her show.
I simply didn't believe it. The fact that she kept carrying on as if it was the same kind of thing as the bombing of Hiroshima with a similar death toll just annoyed me, as I doubted that...
She said "everything has changed". In reality, not so much..
Well, except for 9/11 being the excuse for so many wars, and most recently the assassination of OBL, that is..

I was asleep in bed. The phone rang and woke me up. It was my mom, she asked if I was watching the news and when I said no, she told me to turn on the tv. I turned it on and watched as the 2nd plane hit the WTC. I was still on the phone with my mom and the first words out of my mouth was "OMG, we are going to war!"
The next three days were very strange. I was in shock, my family depended on the air lines, my (now x) wife worked for a major airlines and we spent many weeks worried that she would lose her job, luckily she didn't but for me personally, I was shaken to the core.

It is a day I will never forget.

I was in 5th grade doing some work in class, then my teacher came in the room flipping out. She turned on the TV and was like, "Osama Bin Laden did it! I KNOW he did!" I was like "Who in the # is Osama Bin Laden?" Then they sent everybody home early, praise the Lord.

Then I remember standing in the kitchen, in front of the pantry listening to the news. I told myself at 12 years old, that I'd never forget that moment.

4 years later, at 16, I learned of the New World Order. I never learned so much truth in my life.

i was in my freshman year of highschool and it was 2nd period algebra one of the teachers from a class down the hall came in and whispered something to my teacher he turned the t.v on and the trade center was billowing smoke the whole class watched as the 2nd plane hit. i remember leaving class and meeting up with my girlfriend at the time she was more shocked than i was; the usual roar in the hallways during passing time was much quieter than usual almost a collective curiousity of what was next.