Original 9/11/01 Thread:

[speeder]

I thought that some of you might be interested in the main thread from the actual day, (there were lots of others):

Holy Cow! The World Trade Center Has Blown Up!! Turn on your T.V.

[kach22i]

I quickly read the first four pages - had to stop, was getting flash backs.

Now I remember why I shut out the world and work through that day to meet a deadline. I was worthless the rest of the week.

Pretty much still am.

[Jared at Pelican Parts]

I woke up that morning, turning on the news to check the traffic only to see the WTC towers collapsing on the news. I remember thinking "plane must have accidentally crashed into the tower." On the way to work, there were armed police on the freeway overpasses. It wasnt til i got to work that it really hit me as to what had happened. No one worked that day. We spent all day glued to the TV's we quickly set up in the office. A very sad day.

[legion]

I was already at work for a few hours. Got the news through e-mail that a friend's wife was watching TV and a plane had hit one tower. We were treating it like a curiosity. Comments like: "What a dumb pilot!" abounded. A friend in the communications department had hacked a sattellite feed of CNN and set up streaming video of the broadcast. I could watch it on my PC.

I tuned in just in time to see the second plane hit. The first words out of my mouth were "Osama Bin Laden". A coworker said: "Who?"

[Jims5543]

My cousin worked in the WTC in 1993 when the bomb went off. He went into his bosses office the next day and quit.

He told his boss, "They (Osama and friends) will not stop until they take this buildign down and I am not sticking around to see it happen". He was laughed out of the office.

He moved the florida a month later. He was the first person I thought of when this happened. He was right.

[Panzer909]

My sister worked in Manhattan at the time. After the second plane hit (I was convinced that the first plane was some kind of freak accident at the time), I immediately tried to call her on her cell#. All I got was that "we're sorry, but the Verizon wireless number you're attempting to dial has been temporarily disconnected" or something to that effect. Frantic, I called her office number..............

Nothing. Kept ringing without going to a voicemail.

This went on for a painful 45mins or so when the phone suddenly rang.


It was my sister. She couldn't call from anywhere because the phone lines were so overloaded & she finally got through. Turns out her office told everyone to go home because of "the plane accident on the World Trade Center building" (this was well before they collapsed) and she came out of her underground Metro stop to find that all hell had broken loose. People were covered in soot, crying, chaos everywhere. Five minutes before, her main concern was wondering what she was going to do with her unexpected day off!

[Porschephile944]

I was in Geometry in high school when the first plane hit. Didn't find out anything happened until the next period in biology after my mom had called the school to have them tell me that my dad was alright (flying from Logan to New York that day) but the school wouldn't tell my anything about what happened so I knew something major had happened. By lunch most people knew something had happened and rumors were all over the place, but the school still wouldn't give us any information and by that point had shut off the internet so people couldn't find out anything. The bus ride home had some people that knew what happened and other not believing it to be true. I found out the real extent from a moms friend who picked us up from the bus stop that day and then saw the news coverage when I got home. It still upsets me when I see footage of anything relating to that day.

[techweenie]

I saw the first tower fall while getting ready for work. Drove to work and the entire executive staff did a fairly normal day's work, with most of the hourly staff glued to the TV and weeping.

The CEO was well connected in financial and insurance circles and knew over 200 people who worked in the towers. That was an especially hard day for her.

We didn't know then that the attacks had essentially killed the company, between associated businesses and key customers having major offices in the towers. The company had just completed a $7.5 million financing round days before, but effectively shut its doors in December '01.

[Dobby]

Yeh I rememeber that day like it was yesterday. It feels wierd that it was 5 years ago.

[Porsche-O-Phile]

I was working as a flight instructor out of Santa Monica at the time with aspirations of being an airline pilot (at the time, the aviation industry was going gangbusters and it was a great career move). Woke up to a phone call from my brother (back in Boston) who said "just turn on the television". I asked what channel and he said "any of 'em", so I knew it was either going to be aliens landing/invading or something big on that kind of scale.

Pretty much spent the entire morning watching the events unfold. I went to work at about 10:30 pacific time (I had originally had a lesson scheduled for 11:00) but there was obviously nothing going on at the airport. No students ever showed up - mostly it was just instructors standing around dumbfounded wondering "what are we going to do now?"

I saw my work (and income) cut by about 2/3 due to students quitting over the next two months. I eventually got hired with a cargo outfit out of Burbank which would ordinarily have been a great "stepping stone" job to build time and experience in bigger aircraft in preparation for eventually getting hired by the airlines, but it ended up going nowhere. Simply no movement in the industry until I decided to hang that up in 2003 and go back to doing architectural work.

I still talk with a lot of my pilot buddies - the industry is still lousy, uncertain and very vulnerable. Bunch of guys I know got laid off ("furloughed" they call it) and never called back. Others (like me) languished in crappy jobs until their motivation or money ran out. Some are still there because they don't know what else to do.

It sure changed the aviation industry, that's for damn sure.

[bryanthompson]

Before class spanish class in high school, I checked my email. I saw the headlines on drudge and turned on the TVs in the library. Nobody said a word... we all just gathered in the library and watched.

Yeh I rememeber that day like it was yesterday. It feels wierd that it was 5 years ago.

+1

[tabs]

I was in Bed asleep through the WHOLE thing...

[jyl]

I was in office, getting ready for market open. A trader ran in and said plane just hit WTC. We put TV feed on big screen in conference room and watched. Watched second plane hit. Went to investment conference in nearby hotel. Hundreds of investors and management teams milling around, TV footage fed to all the screens. Watched towers fall. In financial industry, so everyone knew people in WTC and surrounding NYC downtown. Went home and don't remember rest of day. Next day, started trying to figure out what to do w/ stocks when market reopened. If living, life has to go on.