9/11 - Where Were You?

[Marmite59]

It will be 15 years ago on Sunday.

I was working in Canary Wharf; we were told that planes were on their way to London to attack! It was an awful and crazy day. It was before the advent of social media and the main information outlet was 24 hour news which was in its infancy.

Personally (not politically) it meant a lot to me. I've visited NYC loads of times and have family there. We visited a few weeks after (pre booked) and it was mournful to the point of elegiac. There was also a nationalist spirit which the 30 something me found distasteful but now I understand it better. I have family members who lost friends and some saw it first hand. I've taken my family to see the 9/11 Memorial and it is heartbreakingly sad yet - to me - a symbol of New Yorkers' unbroken spirit and incredible resolve.

So what are your memories? Have they faded? Where were you and what did it mean to you?

[StealthPolarBear]

I was at work. I had my leaving do that night. We were still trying to pretend it was an accident but looking back it seems surreal.

[dailyarsewipe]

In a ward round at work. Came back to the department to find it empty and everyone watching TV in silence

[Blueberry234]

I was post night shift I woke up and popped on some mindless rubbish as couldn't get back to sleep then it all started, the night shift the following night was very somber

[grauduroi]

I was at work with an american....it was surreal and incredibly sad. He was trying to get information but it was so slow and difficult to get anyting accurate

[Blueemeraldagain]

I was at school . Year 10 ICT and a boy came running into the lesson and told us. He had been told by teachers who were watching the news in the staff room.
I remember going home and watching the second tower collapse on TV.

[Hopelass]

On a plane on the way back from
Greece. Pilot told us we may be a bit late landing we were early in the end and we didn't know anything until all the mobile phones started going off as people switched them on in baggage collection and news spread quickly through the crowd.

[PikachuSayBoo]

I was in the shower pre smear test.

Dh came and got me out the shower. I stood dripping wet not really understanding and then had to race to the smear test. I was telling the nurse who hadn't heard anything and I obv hadn't realised how bad it was because I told her that I thought it was a small plane, hadn't realised it was a big jet.

Then in the car on the way home I realised it was now two planes and big ones. I think I was still driving back when the first tower collapsed.

[KittyandTeal]

At home, I was on my gap year and had a day off work.

Our cleaner was around, we just sat in stunned silence watching news 24. Every so often one would say 'surely it's an accident' in a disbelieving way.

I know it might sound dramatic but I see the world as pre and post 9/11 now. I do feel something huge shifted that day, it might have been on a personal level, at 18 realising just how complex and horrid the world can be.

It seems strange that I teach children (and there are almost adults out there) who don't remember and weren't born yet.

[PikachuSayBoo]

I had a friend in NY who's mother worked near the top of the second tower and was there when the plane hit the first tower. Thankfully she survived as she ignored the tannoy announcements to stay at your desk and left her office before the second plane hit. I remember talking to my friend the next day on yahoo chat and being stunned by what she was telling me.

[DailyMailPenisPieces]

With my new baby, wondering what sort of world I'd brought them into.

[StorminaBcup]

At work, there was a story on the intranet news about a plane crashing into the twin towers. Went on a cig break and came back to the news that a second one had crashed. I remember to feeling a bit of an impending sense of doom and there was lots of talk about ww3.

[happyvalley4]

I've never ever admitted this but 9/11 stopped me from thinking about having an affair!!!

I was married and working in a bank and was developing a new computer system with a really hot guy. The two of us spent hours alone in a room testing the new computer system.

On 9/11 we were in this room away from the rest of the world and we had this amazing connection. You know the sort of thing you see on films. The subject matter was totally work related but we kept exchanging these amazing looks and when I accidentally brushed his hand it was like an electric shock.

We were in the middle of one of these looks when someone burst in and announced that a plane had crashed into the twin towers and another was heading our way!

That brought me back to earth with a bang! And I headed off to sort out my team.

After that I made sure I was never alone with the hot IT guy again.

What an embarrassing story

PS I've now been married 18 years and I have never contemplated an affair since.

[Often]

At work. Colleague came running in the office to tell everyone. Got home just as the second tower fell.

Remember it being on every channel, 24hrs

[BishopBrennansArse]

At work. Someone came running in after lunch to load up bbc news on her computer (on dial up).
Office shut early and went home to watch on news 24.

[Marmite59]

I remember seeing the jumpers. I could scarcely believe what I was seeing. In NYC itself the most moving thing was a) the photos of the missing everywhere, like something from a South American junta, and every street seeing another fire station with pictures of the dead. Then, when you got down to Soho, you had the surreal sight of ray banned hipsters and in the background just twisted metal and the smell of the dead.

[thegoodnameshadgone]

I was in the army in Germany.

[LozzaChops]

I was walking home from 6th form college, got home before the first tower fell and sat in front of the news. My mother's cousin (I didn't know him) worked for Cantor Fitzgerald, and was above the impact zone in the North tower.

I went to NY for the first time this past January. I found his name in the memorial and went to the museum, which was a very odd experience. So many deeply personal items, I still don't know quite how I feel about it. They'd recovered a bronze statue from the floor my relative worked on. Not personal, but quite...eerie.

I didn't realise how scarred New Yorkers were by it until I went, it seems really close to the surface a lot of the time. I met a woman working in a post office in midtown who had worked just by the towers at the time, and hadn't been anywhere near the area since the day happened.

One of the things that struck me was how they treat the fact of the people who jumped. There was a section in the museum but you had to go behind a screen to see it. I went, because I know my relative could well have been one of them. There's a definite feeling of what I suppose is shame bestowed on that. I know some people refuse to acknowledge that anyone jumped.


I just remember an odd sense of unreality, on the day it happened. Seeing things unfold on live television in that way and on such a huge scale, and in a location that is so familiar to everyone, whether through film and tv, or having been there.

[takesnoprisoners]

My brother had already moved to NYC and Dad and I heard the news at home and were desperately trying to reach him and we couldn't. That panic and fear is something I wish upon no one. DB called the next day and spoke for 2 minutes.

[KanyesVest]

I was in Sydney, sitting in a friend's house, waiting to get a taxi to the airport to come home. We were watching Sandra Sully on the 10 o'clock news and it didn't go back to regular programming. When I got to the airport, loads of people hadn't heard and I remember telling an older couple who had no idea. Then we all got on a plane to Singapore, and on to London.

My dad was in a plane flying the other way, and was over the middle east when the planes hit. They were told they had to divert due to weather conditions and only when they landed in Sydney did the pilot explain what had actually happened.

[PartiallyStars]

I was at work. The woman opposite me had just come back from working in New York. I could hear her on the phone to someone in the US going "Oh my God", and it was clear from the tone of her voice that something awful had happened. I went on the internet while she was talking and when I couldn't get a news site to load I knew something big had happened. We were on the same floor as IT and they got a visual feed up just before the second plane crash. It was awful. We had a branch of our business in that area of Manhattan, just a block or so away, thankfully all were OK.

[AnnieOnAMapleLeaf]

I was on a plane out of Newark bound for Taiwan. Around 9:00am (Newark time), all entertainments systems (live streaming news) and telephones were disconnected due to "an incident on the ground in New York". No further details were given. Ten hours later, we landed in Taiwan and were met with the horror of what had actually happened. I switch my mobile on to numerous missed calls and voicemails from friends and family in Canada.

[SloanePeterson]

In my last year at school, 2 weeks away from my 18th birthday. We were upper sixth at quite a posh grammar school and our common rooms were very small rooms at the top of what had once been a private house. About 5 of us were up in our common room skiving triple games ( we knew the pe teachers were far too lazy to climb all the way to the top to come and get us, and by the lasts year we knew we could get away with not doing games anyway). It was a Tuesday, I remember it so clearly. One of my friends got a text message on her Nokia 3310 (remember those?!) from a person she knew from a computing chat room telling her to switch on the radio. It was Chris moyles on radio 1 and it was so sombre. I admit I had no idea what the twin towers were. We listened and couldn't really comprehend the scale of what was happening. We drank lots of tea made with horrible powdered milk and sat just waiting for the bell to go, which it did after about an hour. I got the school bus home and the driver didn't have the radio on as he normally did. I remember coming home to my mum and younger siblings who were 7 & 8. That's quite odd to realise as I think of them being much much smaller when this happened, like 3 & 4. Mum clearly knew what was happening but didn't let me talk about it in front of them so I went upstairs to watch on my tv. I watched all night, I was even allowed to take my dinner up there which was big no no usually.
We really thought it was world war 3. Such a confusing time. I had history the next day with our truly remarkable teacher who just said sod it, this is important, let's talk. He'd bought lots of newspapers on his way in and we read them and just took it all in. The pictures, the close ups of the people in midair will never leave me. In a way he was very reassuring. It's very strange to think that by the same time a year later I was on my gap year, and then 2 years at uni. It seemed such a gargantuan thing at the time but it amazes me now to look back at how true dust settled and things carried on. Not to be flippant, but I almost felt the same waking up to the Brexit news. Total disbelief, tv on round the clock, and just an overwhelming thought of bloody hell, what's going to happen now? I agree with previous posters that it's odd to think my children aren't aware of 9/11 yet. It changed everything

[ayeokthen]

My pal and I had a day off so we went for a boozy lunch and her boyfriend (who worked in the financial sector in Glasgow) called to tell us. We bolted up to my parents house and just stood, terrified, watching the second plane hit. She turned to me and said "this can't get any worse" just as the first tower collapsed. I just remember being scared, hurting for all the people who were dying in front of us, and just knowing the world would never be the same again.

[sunnydayinmay]

At work. DH was at home, and phoned to tell me. We managed to get the BBC news website up on my old dial up internet connection, but it kept crashing. My office junior kept sobbing, so I sent her home to her Mum.

[Rshard]

I was in Madrid visiting DH who was working there at the time. We were due home that night and turned up at the airport not really expecting it to affect us but UK airspace was shut and we were sent back into the city where we stayed for 3 days before being able to get a flight home.

It was a devastating attack, very sad. I remember watching it on CNN in the hotel room on my own