Where were you when the Twin Towers fell?
 

I turned on TV after breakfast and saw the first tower burning. At that time, broadcasters claimed a plane flew into the tower by accident. I was minding my own business when I saw the plane hit the second tower. Chills ran up and down my spine. I managed to watch longer and thought to myself "the Towers are strong. They won't fall." Shortly thereafter, all heck broke lose.

It was the week before school started at the Univ of Oregon, heavy partying that week. My roomate and I were both yakking our guts out early that morning from a long night of drinking. I was puking off the deck, he was bowing to the porcelain god. I was mid puke when my roomate called my attention to the tv. A crazy day that started with puking and ended with crying. I still can't believe that happened...:confused:

Sleeping......

I had taken a crew to dinner in Windows On The World Sunday night. Flew a trip Monday morning back to Raleigh. Deadheaded same day to Tuscon, Az for training. Was in the sim at 4am that Tuesday morning, when on first break, was called on cell, asking if I was still in Manhattan. Found a TV and saw the second one go in.

My credit card was never charged for the dinner.

I saw the second plane hit live during good morning america or one of those shows. I was on my way out to work. I was an office slave at the student conservation association in NH then. When i got there everyone had gathered around a tv in the basement. I got there in time to see the tower go down. I couldn't beleive it actually collapsed.
They let us go home early.

was just getting up to get ready for work (appr. 6ish west coast) was listening to the radio and heard the reports. wasn't sure whether this was a hoax (or really bad joke) so I called my friend/boss to turn on the TV in our shop and tell me what he saw without telling him what was going on. all he said was "oh *****." still went to work that day business as usual, but needless to say the mood was extremely somber

In the office, preparing for the markets to open. A trader ran into my office and told me a plane had hit one of the towers. We went up to the large conference room, the screen had been switched to CNN. We watched the second plane strike and knew it was a terrorist attack. I left the office, got in a taxi, and went to a conference in town, that I was scheduled to attend. All the screens in all the presentation rooms were switched to CNN. Everyone was standing around watching. I saw one of the towers fall. People were stunned, silent, swearing. I returned to my office, packed up my briefcase, and took the subway home.

I was at work, on the Marine Pkwy Bridge...maybe 5 miles away as the crow flies..

"Felt" the first plane hit... saw the second plane going in..

felt the shockwave from the first tower collapsing....

Then a few weeks later, the plane went down in Rockaway....

I work in the construction industry... Rehabing bridges... gives me unique perspectives to see things sometimes

Like they said, it was early morning here on the left coast. Getting ready to go to work. Couldn't believe what was going on, especially when the second one hit live on TV.

Hope we never see anything like that again anywhere. And if we do, I'll personally push the button if they'd let me. Don't go and ask me where the missles would be aimed. I'd just take out a couple of well known mountain ranges and wait to see.

waking up for one of the first times with my current girlfriend. i will never forget her muffled scream.

I had no idea...got up, took a shower, dressing for work. My son was watching Cartoon Network. I got a phone call from one of my employees asking what we were going to do about work. I asked him what he was talking about. He said to turn on the TV.

Ended up going into work, but sent everybody home since it was nuts, and people thought we (USC) or downtown LA could be a target. The most eerie thing was in the following days. We are right under the "downwind" leg of approach to LAX for jets coming in from the north or west. For the rest of the week the skies were silent.

I was at work, we were let out early

Southern Hemisphere - It was approx 11pm and I was watching the West Wing. They interrupted it, actually to report on the event. :(

On vacation in Santa Monica, that day we were headed for San Diego. A couple of days before there had been a 4.x earthquake so the whole experience seemed very surreal. Then we went on to Vegas - seeing the giant signs displaying 'God Bless America' etc. was a strange sight compared to the $3.99 all you can eat steak dinners that were showing on my last visit.

Less than one month earlier my wife and I were at the top of one of the Towers.

She said "Let's buy some souvenirs". I said, "Not today, we'll buy them some other day..."

This is JP (Overpaid Slacker), I crashed at Ron's after getting back from Hershey --

I was living in New York (Brooklyn Heights) at the time, but my firm's fiscall year ended 9/30 and I had vacation I'd lose ... so I took a week off and went up to Syracuse (where I'd grown up, so I was staying at my mom's). I'd been out until about 6:00 in the morning, so I was just hitting "power sleep" mode when the phone rang.
MOM: "Get up, turn on any television. A plane just hit the Trade Center"
ME: (who you rouse from sleep with the same degree of risk to grievous personal injury as a particularly ornery Grizzly): What?
To be honest, I thought some guy in a Cessna had a heartattack or got too close on a flyby and pranged the building
MOM: Get up! A plane just hit the Trade Center!
ME: Mom, whatever happened will still have happened after I get a few hours' sleep. I'll call you later.

And I hang up. Ten minutes later, just as I'm getting back to real sleep, the girlfriend (who lived with me and works in midtown, but hadn't made the trip to the 'Cuse) calls from her office:

ME (particularly irate now): Hello?!
G/F: JP, a plane just hit the trade center, get up!
ME: I know, my mom just called. I'm exhausted. I was at (a friend's) until six. I've got to get some sleep.
G/F: It's terrible! The plane just flew into the building!
ME: I KNOW! Look, are you OK?
G/F: Yes.
ME: You're at your office?
G/F: Yes. But JP, it'sterribletherearepeoplejuststandinginthestreets and..
ME: Well, that's New York for you. I'll call you later.

I hang up. Let me re-emphasize that I'm exhausted and foggy and have no idea the magnitude of the event. Ten minutes later, my sister calls:

ME: HELLO!!
SIS: JP, Oh my God, a plane just Kamikaze'd the Trade Center.
ME: G-dammit, Peggy, you're my *third* call in twenty minutes, I know!
SIS: Are you up?
ME: No, I'm trying to get some f*cking sleep!
SIS: Oh my God, I think a plane just hit the Pentagon!
ME (not really paying attention at this point): Peggy, I'm going back to sleep, I'll call you later!

I hang up. I'm almost back to sleep, and the words "Kamikaze'd" and "Pentagon" are tumbling around in my head. I can't get back to sleep now, so I angrily cast the sheets aside, stomp downstairs and turn on the TV.

I spent the rest of the day fielding cell phone calls from friends and relatives who didn't know I was in the 'Cuse and wanted to make sure I was alive. It took me 2 hours to reach the G/F (though I was sure she was OK, being in mid-town). The now ex-G/F never let me live it down.

I really wish I'd slept through that day, even if I would've spent the last 6 hours of the pre-9/11 world unconscious. A buddy lives down the street, so I rolled down there and the two of us just watched in silence as much that we believed collapsed with the towers.

JP

I, like a lot of others watched the second plane live. Went to work & watched the towers fall, then we had to secure all our water reservoirs.

was doing work at a client. they walked in the door and said a plane hit the tower and it collapsed....huh?

i ended up driving home with the top down, not a single plane in the sky could be seen or heard, earie.
that's what it was like before plane travel.

I heard about the first crash on the radio right as I was arriving at work.

Where I worked at the time had a large training and conference room with 5 TVs and cable television.

Me and about 20 of my coworkers spent most of that day in that room tuned into NBC, CBS, ABC, CNN and MSNBC and watched the carnage as it occured.

walking up the stairs out of the garage into the living room and my cell phone rings, buddy says:

"WWIII JUST STARTED! TURN ON CNN!"

I'm all what the hell? Turn on the TV. Didn't turn it off for 4 days. Dropped everything I was doing. For awhile, figured it was the end.

I had just gotten a tooth pulled. The saddness of my heart very quickly made the pain in my mouth go away. Randy

I'm actually curious as to why this topic was started, not angry just curious, we all have had to deal with that horrible day in different ways and there are days that I flash back to that day when I was supposed to go to a meeting just a few blocks north of the Trade Center and at the last minute decided to head to my office in Times Square first. The PATH train that I would have take would have put me right there at time of first impact....

My coordinator burst into my office with the news, spent the day at my buddies apt because we couldn't take the trains, tunnels or anything out of the city until that night. People siting in the streets crowded around car radios, somehow the world got a heck of lot smaller that day...

My office remained closed for a couple of days when I went back to work on Monday there wasn't a smile to be seen for my entire 10 block walk from Penn Station to my office....

I saw a documentary about Rudy Guiliani and it peaked my attention. The 2 most vivid events in my memory are the WTC attacks and the day the first Space Shuttle exploded (the one with the faulty o-ring). I think they were particularly memorable because I saw it on TV live.

Not trying to make any trouble...

At work. Wife called and I started watching via Internet. Knew that the air system had been shutdown as I went home. Driving south I could see the contrail of Airforce 1 and its guard planes, all alone in the blue sky over the Mississippi river. All I could think was if someone wanted to use a Stinger missile to bring that plane down that would have been the perfect moment. They would have known nothing else was in the sky.

I had just gotten out of an Accounting test and couldn't figure out why I couldn't get onto any news site.. period. Til I tried slashdot it was the only news site up (abit so slammed it had to pull the comments section down). Once I heard I walked over the the science building where I worked and watched it live.

I walked out of my apartment building over by the West Side Highway just a few minutes after nine. There's a police precinct over on 42nd street and a rescue company a block up. I thought it was quite strange that literally EVERY UNIT had fired up and was TEARING down the street, I thought, "Must have been a BAD accident or a robbery downtown."

I got to the office and somebody said "A plane hit one of the trade center towers." My first thought was, some idiot in a 172 was not paying attention in the VFR corridor up the Hudson. But how could you NOT miss the tower on a CAVU day like that?

At around nine-thirty I looked out the window, our offices were on the 44th floor back then, and saw smoke pouring out of the north tower. I tried to call my old man but the circuit was busy, so I sent him a blackberry email (it was working all day when cellphones were inop) to let him know that we were evauating the bldg and I was going home to hole up.

Thinking about it today brings back the rage, anger, frustration and sadness of it all. The rescue company up the street lost 13 men that day.

Me too. Very sad watching the events unfold at home.

Up earlier than usual that morning (left coast) say Tower 1 burning and saw Tower 2 get hit. As others said, I thought WW3 was starting.

My fiance and i had just driven back on sunday 9/9 from VT. We crossed through NY and I wanted to take a photo, but was driving. I think she was asleep.

On Tuesday, I was at work and a co-worker announced the first plane hit. I called my fiancee (who worked at the Pentagon) and told her to leave work. She said she couldn't and had to go into a meeting.
Then the coworker announced the second one. I called my fiancee's coworker, who gave her my message to leave and told her to call my cell.

We jumped in the car and headed to Officer's Club at the local army base. I saw a plane flying south and then bank left. As we got to the parking lot, we saw the same plane flying north. 30 seconds later we heard the explosion. On the TV, we saw that the Pentagon was hit.

Somehow I was able to get my fiancee's boss on the phone who said he sent everyone out. She walked home.

I was originally due for a second inteview with a company there but it had been cancelled.
I recieved a call from my mother-in-law that morn, minutes after the 1st plane hit... I put a tape into a VCR and, as it turned out, recorded the entire day. Why? I don't know it was an odd reaction. I never do that.

I called a couple of friends that had local businesses and no TV. They all sat in my living room as everything unfolded. Could see the smoke from the roof of my house. A sinking feeling that spriraled downward as the day went on.

Lost two good friends there as well as a few aquaintances.

May they all rest in peace.

I was driving to work in Pittsburgh. Had Howard Stern on. Robin mentioned that someone had reported a plane flew into the WTC. Thats all they knew, and so I assumed it was a small plane and a drunk pilot or something. Got to work, got in my cubicle and started surfing the net (like I always did :D) and then I decided to check the news sites. None of them would load. Too much traffic. That was strange, so I decided to go pee. On my waslk to the bathroom, walked by a TV and everyone in the office was in there. Saw the 2nd plane hit, and sat down with everyone else in silence. Then I put in a call to my father, cause my cousin worked in there. Found out later on that he was in the 2nd tower, decided to leave even though people said not to, and he had just made it to the lobbywhen the 2nd plane hit. Then the pentagon got hit, and I was sure thought it was the end. When the 4th plane went down in PA, they sent us all home. At the speed of an airplane, that was only like 5 minutes away from downtown pittburgh.

Taking the Kumho's off my 911 and installing my street tires.

I was asleep in my dorm room when the phone rang. It was a buddy of mine who said I should turn on the TV because the WTC had been bombed. I turned on the TV, took about 30 seconds to realize that something big was happening, then woke up my friend/next door neighbor and we watched everything unfold on my TV for the rest of the day.

Was at work when a coworker walked over and said she heard a plane had hit the WTC. Tried to get out to the news sites and nothing would work. Walked out to the car and turned on a radio and started listening to what happened. I decided this was probably not a fluke. Went back into the office and stripped a network cable down to make an antenna for a tv that is used to display the happenings at work. Tuned into the news stations just in time to see the second plane.

I have cousins that live and work near the towers so I started to try and call but could not get through.

Was a very surreal day. My wife was a teacher. I called her around noon and filled her in. She did not know what was going on but her school had been in a lock down since 10 am. They where told to keep all TV's off and not to let the students know something was going on (6th grade)

I knew a few people that worked there. One got out and made contact right away, One was never found and the third turned up a few days later. He basically was wondering around NY in shock. He was ok otherwise.

My wife and I had been there the weekend before.

I was on the ground floor of the Pentagon and actually knew nothing about what had happened in NYC. A lot of the offices, especially the intel & ops type places have CATV tuned to CNN all the time, but we had nothing. I walk out of my office and down the hall to rinse out my coffee cup and saw a couple folks running down the hallway. Not too unusual for the Pentagon. It's a big building and sometimes you have to hustle to get to meetings on time. Just then our Executive Officer comes busting out of the Command Section and runs down the hall into our personnel section. So, now I'm thinking something might be going on. I turn around, go back to personnel and ask, "What's happening?" He just says, " There's been a terrorist attack. We're evacuating the building" So I head back to my office and calmly but sternly tell everyone that we need to leave and leave NOW. At this point, I still don't know what's happened, but figured a car bomb in the parking lot was the most likely scenario.

As we're on our way out of the building, I hear that a plane has hit us and the WTC and think that it's just some little Cessna like the one that flew into the White House a few years ago. Then as the Pentagon Police are funnelling us through the subway entrance/exit to the building (since closed off), I can't help but wonder if we were being set up for something larger. There are something like 5,000 people down in the subway trying to get out and it would only take a couple of satchel charges tossed down the escalators to really create the desired terrorist effect.

Once we got outside and I saw the plume of smoke coming from the other side of the building, I was thinking this was serious, but still had NO IDEA of what had really happened as we could not see the impact site from where we were.

After standing around in the parking lot for about 15 minutes, where we still couldn't see the impact site that was just around the corner (gives you an idea of how big this building really is), I decided to head across the street to one of the hotel lobbies to see if I could catch something on TV. It was only then that I saw what was happening in NYC. One tower was already down although I didn't know it. I thought it was obscured by the smoke. Then I saw the other tower come down live. The whole room just stood there in stunned silence and/or muffled curses. Then the hotel manager asked us if we could clear out of the lobby, because they wanted to set up triage in here.

I went outside and saw one of the fighter jets flying overhead and was having a hard time coming to grips with the reality of the situation. Then a Navy commander comes down the sidewalk telling people there's another plane inbound (the one that eventually crashed in PA). I immediately realized that "inbound plane" + "Combat Air Patrols" meant that there was no way that plane would get to its target and that I might very well be in the debris path, so I decided to get the hell out of Dodge.

I was prepared to walk the 9 miles to my house, but was surprised to find the subway still operational. I was home before noon and it wasn't until then that I saw on TV the extent of the damage to the building. Had I known, I would have never left the scene, but would have gone and tried to help. I still have regrets about that.

--Jim, just visiting from the BMW R1100S board

I was on a conference call with the CEO, in the World Financial Center....directly next to the WTC. I could hear the plane hit through the phone call.
Ken
Merrill Lynch