Where were you on 9/11?

[ckweb]

There are certain events in the course of history that define us. We can remember vividly where we were and what we were doing when we first learned of the tragedy. I'd like to hear from others on this forum where they were and what they were doing.

I was at home. My dad woke me up and watched the tragedy unfold on television. I went to classes later that day and it was almost a surreal atmosphere. On the one hand, I was filled with immeasurable sorrow and uncertainity. On the other, life just seemed so vivid and full that day. I feel as I though I can smell and touch my memory of that day.

What is your story?

[Zylka]

Awoke from a dream in which I was burning, in some sort of forest disaster (no sh*t). CBC news was blasting from my alarm clock, and I sat there half asleep for a few minutes as I usually do. Everything was an incoherent faded babble until...

"Once again, terrorists have hijacked 4 airlines, smashing one into the pentagon and two into the world trade center towers. There is no word on the fate of the 4th flight, and The world trade center towers have since collapsed. American airspace has been shut down, and all international flights have been diverted to Canada..."

The urgency in her voice slapped me in the face. Holy f*ck, I woke up right away. Ran downstairs, to find my Dad staring at the TV with a stern look, strangely void of actual shock

"Oh my God"

To which he replied

"Yeah."

Skipped class that day, and couldn't keep away from the tv. That day was the last in which I cried, to date

The silent horizon shots on CNN... broken only by a hypnotic melody of sirens

Unbelievable

[MichaeltheGreat]

Ironic in a way, but LTEC! and I were at home in Tijuana, and she first heard about it on ICQ from Alexander's Horse, so we turned on the TV to CNN, just before the second plane hit.

At that time, nobody outside had any way of knowing how many people were in the towers, or how many got out.

I couldn't get across the border into the US for a few days after that. My daughter was in class at her school, up in San Diego.

Us down here, my daughter up at her school, we all saw the towers go down. Our son Ian is too little, even now, to have a clue about such things, he was just crawling around then. At school, one of my daughter's classmates just lost it completely. Her older sister, a college junior, had just started a semester long internship for a company in 2 WTC, only a week or two before. It was a pretty rough time for them, because it was that much more personal.

When the buildings went down, I just had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I remember seeing the WTC in 1981, the towers were just overbearingly huge from the base looking straight up. The company I worked for at the time (they had an office in silicon valley), Gibbs and Hill, later moved one of their offices into 2 WTC, on the 93rd floor, IIRC.

[Eli]

I was studying for a Discrete Math exam, and installing ADSL.

[Skanky Burns]

I was asleep at the time. We were all woken up by my sister calling.
I spent most of that night and the next day on Poly talking about it.

[MichaeltheGreat]

I'm topping this one, too, through tomorrow. (For Ming's and Mark's info)

[Dis]

in bed sleeping. my mom called my around 8:30 to 8:40 in the morning PDT was around 11:30 New York local time.

I work a psuedo-swing shift and I live in PDT

[Colon™]

I was at school, none of us heard it there. When I came home I turned one my computer and went to bloomberg where the main bulletin said the financial markets had closed because there had been an attack on the WTC. I thought that was a freak joke, that someone had hacjed the site and post a hoax. Then I went to the site of the financial times, which also said the WTC had been attacked, with planes. Still couldn't believe it but I couldn't check it on CNN or BBC because those sites were down. Then I asked Imran on ICQ, who confirmed it and also told me the towers had collapsed and the Pentagon had been attacked too...

[notyoueither]

At work. We watched it happen update by update on CNN.

When the buildings fell no one felt much like working anymore that day. I didn't make them.

[Robert Plomp]

I was in my office (14:46 in The Netherlands)
I opened www.nu.nl (dutch news source) like I do every once in a while, and it topped that a plane hitted the WTC by accident.

After that I tried to reload, but that was impossible.
I didn't got any radio or tv close, thus I tried every news source on the internet, but all sites were down.

Once in a while new info came, about a 2nd plane hitting the WTC and all that. I was making phone calls to my family, nobody knew it yet.

Later I went home, and listened in my car how the towers fell.

I will never forget how I told the news to my co-workers, they didn't believe me first.

[The Mad Monk]

This archived thread is from two months after the attack:

http://apolyton.net/forums/showthrea...0&pagenumber=1

I tried to find Chris' thread, but its not there.

[Stefu]

I was at school, using the computer. I first read about it in Apolyton. There was the thread about plane hitting the building, and I first ignored it, I guess I didn't fulyl realize what had happened. Then it started growing and I read about the strike. I bicycled home fast and (IIRC) second plane stroke when I wasn't watching. I logged to Apolyton and pretty much stayed here, occassionally watching TV.

What's scary is that on Sept. 10th, this one guy at our school had exhorted on Chemistry class "I hate those Americans. I wish there was something that killed many many Americans!"

[Gatekeeper]

I had been on vacation from work the previous week (through Monday) and was sleeping in, trying to put off the inevitable that Tuesday morning.

I must have slept really hard, because my alarm began blaring at 11:01 a.m. and the first thing I noticed was that the FM radio station I listen to wasn't playing music. In fact, it sounded like an AM station ... playing news.

Everything after that for a while was a sort of blur. I remember hearing snatches of the news on the radio. Something about the WTC being attacked, along with the Pentagon and a plane crash in Pennyslvania. Something about the towers collapsing.

Something about 50,000 people potentially killed.

That hit like a ... well, it just hit. I jumped out of bed and ran across the room to flip on CNN ... and the rest is history. I was at work at the newspaper by 3 p.m. putting out a special edition by 5 p.m. and working on the next day's coverage.

I was the Page 1A editor that horrible night.

Gatekeeper

[Frozzy]

I was on a bus in the UK, going home when the planes struck the two towers. When I got in, my mum said to me: "You know the World Trade Center Towers in New York, well some planes flew into them. Another one flew into the Pentagon."

I actually said "**** off!"

Then I went in and saw the breaking news headlines on T.V. and I was glued to the TV until 11pm that night.

Amid all the jokes about September 11th, Osama Bin Laden, and the Taliban, I am still hurt by 9/11 because my uncle was in the North Tower, but because he was below where the plane struck, he survived.

September 11th is portrayed in many ways, the Stars and Stripes, the two towers burning, but I just remember seeing a gap in the New York skyline, which I believe resembles the gap that the tradgedy left in all of us.

[Hurricane]

I was at (my former) work at the check-in desk when one of my colleagues told a small plane had crashed into the WTC. At first I wouldn't believe it, but after reading it on different web sites, I understood it wasn't a joke. Like everybody else, I thought it was an accident, but when the second plane hit, and they were confirmed to be full-size passenger jets, I understood something was terribly wrong. About the same time came reports of first a car bomb in washington (this was later changed to the plane that hit Pentagon).

Most radio stations continued with their ordinary programs which made me really mad. People are told to turn on the radio when something big happens, and all you get is music! I could follow the situation on the web, however, even though most sites were down. None of my customers had hard about the crashes, and I recommended them to listen to the radio news. I called one of my friends, who watched it on tv. He said the damage on the towers looked small, and that they most certainly won't fall. Five minutes later the first tower came crashing down.

When I got home I sat all evening watching BBC world.

[Dis]

I didn't try to get on the net. I watched tv from the time I woke up. I had to take a shower and go to work. I don't have internet access from work.

When I got home I watched Fox news and CNN for a bit then went to sleep.

[Hydey]

I was at home, post value added posts (spam) on the threads of apolyton , then I sat backed and watched the action on CNN .

[Dis]

I didn't think I was going to watch those programs. Yet here I am watching them.

I'm watching PBS right now PDT. They are going into the technical aspects of the WTC crashes and how it affected the structeral integrity etc etc. I watched the same thing days after the attacks, although there are a few new insights.

P.S. I'm still surprised they kept the bad words in the taped telcasts. It just seemed eerie that they were cussing in the taped video feeds on CNN.

[aaglo]

I was cyckling home from work. At home i took a shower and opened tv. And then I saw the second plane hitting the building. The rest you all know...

[Dis]

and I still remember those weird alarms the fireman have when they are still too long. It was the most eerie sound. That video just gave me the chills. This was just after one of the buildings went down. I think it was shot by the doctor cuy with the surgical mask.

They never play that video any more. It was the most eerie of them all.

[Guardian]

I was right here at work, just like today.

For those who don't know what I do for a living, I work in a company that runs computer systems for other companies - mostly banks and financial organizations. Our systems handle hundreds of billions of dollars every day, so we're pretty "hot" over here. I spend my workdays in a steel-and-concrete, bunker-like facility which is partially hidden in the forest and surrounded by barbed wire fences and various security systems...

Anyway, enough of that. To make a long story short, I work with computer systems and I was right here doing my job when, in the early afternoon of September 11, 2001, we started getting complaints about slow internet connections...

When you access the internet from a corporate network, you usually have to go through a proxy server, which acts as a gateway between the corporate net on the inside of the firewall and the whole wide world on the outside. Since all outbound traffic has to pass through the proxies, that's a good place to start looking for clues when there is a problem...

On September 11, 2001, at about 3 pm local time (9 am in New York), our proxies where swamped. A quick check in the service logs revealed the cause of the problem: hundreds of people where looking up various news sites on the web...

Something big must be going on...

A collegue went to turn on a radio. In the meantime, I opened up my own web browser and typed in the address of the largest newspaper in Norway. It loaded a whole lot slower than usual...

When it finally came up, the front page filled my screen with the image of the plane crashing into the second tower...

Airliners crash into World Trade Center

I stayed at work for about another hour, but I didn't get much more done that day.

[Nubclear]

I was taking my son to school (he was sick at the time, so I was talking with the teachers) when one of them came into the room and turned the TV on, and we got to see the WTC burning.

So I took my son into the car, and we recieved news that some middle eastern country had actually shot a nuclear missile at Washington DC. This was obviously false, but did panic me quite a bit.

I got home just in time to turn on the TV to see the second plane crash into the World Trade Center.

[Dis]

I wonder if they have numbers for how many people tried to access various sites.

I did not get on the computer all day long. I think it was Sept 12 when I finally got on Apolytoon.

[Pandemoniak]

I was working, harvesting grapes in Beaujolais (vendanging) during the whole day. When we come back to the farm, at 1800CET, I received a phonecall from my girlfriend. I rushed in the basement of the farm where everyone was having a drink, and start speking of it. Everyone mocked me and called me a "post-apocalyptical wackos". They didnt laughed more than ten minutes, until they decide to turn the TV.

[Harovan]

I was coding at work, when I suddenly received an email from a friend in Florida. She wrote, that the WTC towers and the Pentagon have been hit, seemingly the US are under attack and a war has begun. I answered, that it sounds more like an act of terror and added a blind guess in the direction of the usual rogues (Saddam/Taliban/OBL). As it became clear very soon, I was not the only one, who guessed so, even though there is still no prove.

[Lars-E]

I was at work.

Came home and saw the planes chrash on tv. One of the most dispicable acts of mankind.

[DRoseDARs]

I'm rather irritated about how I found out. My stepdad usually wakes up 'bout 4-ish in the morning, lets in the cat, has coffee and reads the paper. After news of the first plane hit (just before 6am in Reno, Nevada), he woke my mom up and turned the TV on in the master bedroom. They saw the second plane hit and both towers fall LIVE. During that fall semester I didn't have any classes on Tuesdays or Thursdays, so my alarm wasn't set to go off until 11am(2pm in NYC) at the earliest on those days. They let me sleep through one of my generation's (1981ish-2000ish) pivotal moments. They didn't want to wake me up; my mom said I might have been "grumpy" if she woke me up before my alarm. I might have blown up on her if I wasn't already numb from what I had seen by that point. Perhaps I've been spared the horror of having the LIVE images burned into the back of my retinas, but it still bothers the hell out of me that the only memories I will ever have of this event will be of PREVIOUSLY RECORDED or EARLIER TODAY footage.

One can only hope that I DON'T get a second chance...

[des-esseintes]

I was sitting at home, bored out of my ****ing mind, nothing to do, i turned on the comp and tried to play a game but it was no fun, surfed the web but all the interesting stuff i could find wasnt interesting at all, i turned on the TV but it was just the same boring ****, then i turned on CNN, it had some crap about World Sports i thought "what the hell" and sat down watching, half asleep, then the anchor comes and tells me that terrorists have crashed two airliners into the WTC

and i thought "finally some action"

[MrWhereItsAt]

I was asleep at home. The time the planes hit, I was just finishing an assignment. I went to bed uncharacteristically early, about 1am. Had I turned on the TV right then, as I normally do, I would have seen it all on CNN. Ever since, the last thing I do at night is watch about 5 minutes of CNN. As it was I woke around 8:30 to National Radio. Through the haze of waking up, I thought the news reports were from a radio series, like War of the Worlds in the '30s. Eventually I woke up enough to realise this was rather odd, as it was the normal news announcers who were in the story. I turned on CNN and lay in bed until 11 watching - transfixed. I then got up and my flatmate and I sat in the lounge flicking through channels (much like when the last bombardment of Baghdad happened, the live footage was on 7 of our Cable channels) until I had to go to class.

French class was not French class that day, it was poring over the newspaper I had bought on my way to class with the full cover picture of the burning towers. We spoke not a word of French that day, with one of the strictest lecturers the department has. All this time we spent comparing what we had seen and heard, trying to figure out exactly what had happened and when.

The atmosphere for the whole day was more than a little surreal. We were discussing things like any current event - that sounds terrible, but we are on the opposite side of the world, for most of us the USA is just what we see on TV, and none of us had ever been to New York. It is something that seems no more real to us than seeing footage of the war in Eritrea, floods in Bangladesh or student protests bloodily put down in Beijing. We knew it was real, but it was more fantasy than reality to us.

One point - I had really really disliked Bush since the election (never heard of him before then). The one glimmer of respect I have had for him through the whole term was when we later on saw his reaction to being told the news that first time, in that classroom. Somehow the reaction seemed to be something a proper leader would do.

[Tingkai]

Don't be so sure that what you remember from 9/11 is accurate. A study done following the Challenger explosion found that "flashbulb" memories can be faulty.

The day after the Challenger explosion Psychologist Ulric Neisser asked his students to write down where they were when they heard the news. Three years later he asked the same students the same question.

About one in four students were wrong on every major detail about where they were, and only 10 per cent got the details right. The students who put down different answer were just as likely to be confident about their memory as those who provided the same answer as three years earlier.