What were you doing 17 years ago today?

[PepperSteaks]

I think September 11th is definitely one of those moments when you remember exactly where you were. As MN is such a cross section of society I thought it would be interesting to know where people were when it happened.

I was at work.
The Prime Minister was in the next building. Security were running wild. Lots of checking under stuff and cars with mirrors.

DH worked at a cable tv call centre and watched the whole thing unfold on the huge screens.
One guy he worked with was only there part time as he was a journalist. As soon as the news came through he said that Bin Laden was behind it. No one else had ever heard of him.

I was at work, my boss called us in as he had a tv in his office and had been called by a friend to say something was going on so we had the tv on when the second plane hit. I remember one of the interviewees explaining the building structure and saying they would collapse due to the way the planes had hit. I couldn't believe it until they did.

Our company was owned by an American company and we worked in partnership with one of the most iconic American companies so there were lots of people with connections there. And I interviewed an American girl that day for a casual job. She was very fragile.

I remember the skies over London being so uncharacteristically quiet as they grounded all the planes.

At work. I came into the office after a meeting and saw loads of people crowded around a desk.

I went over for a nosey and saw the second tower hit (we had TV streamed into second screens on our desks) and someone said 'oh - George' (the name of one of our colleagues who worked in our US office). We all knew people there. One of the US team was over here and had a relative at the pentagon that day too.

I went into a meeting later on that day and when I came out everyone had gone home.

I remember playing tennis when plane went overhead - I can't remember how long planes didn't fly - and everyone just stopped and watched it fly.

Picking my two up from primary school.

On holiday in Florida. BIL was with us and worked in the London office of a company based in the WTC. We'd heard it unfold on the radio and were on our way to Disney. The park was evacuated and we went back to our house to watch the news.

We were on the train travelling to see the ILs. DH had on a t-shirt he'd bought when in America as a student. A young American came over and asked if DH was American because of his t-shirt and told us that 2 planes had flown into the WTC. All seemed very bizarre. Got to PILs and they had the BBC news channel on. Felt like a film, just impossible to process it was real and then they showed the people jumping to their death. Just awful.

DBro's company had an office in the WTC, he had some colleagues from the UK office who should have been in it at the time it was struck but they'd been out on the piss the night before and were late going in. They were in a hotel nearby and were woken by the porters telling everyone they had to leave the area NOW. They had to walk all across New York to get to the other company office to get help, all their stuff was in the hotel which was destroyed when the towers collapsed.

I am slightly horrified that some of the people who were teenagers at the time said it was the first time they'd heard of terrorists. The Good Friday Agreement was only signed 3 years previously, and over 3500 people were killed during The Troubles. It was not the first time terrorism had affected us although obviously the scale was completely different.

I was in primary school. I was only 7 so I don't remember with total clarity, but I seem to recall they closed schools early. My mum came and took me and my cousin to my aunt's house, which only ever happened that once. I do remember seeing the north tower collapsing.

I was 22. I had my 22nd birthday in Manhattan in June 01 where I was working at the time. I missed 911 by a couple of weeks.

I was back home in Leicester on the day. In nyc is started dating a news producer for channel 4. He called me and said turn on the tv something's happening.

I had an ex who was a stockbroker. I heard on the news they evacuated the stock exchange. I was in shock. I remember my housemate trying to take me to a bar to play pool to take my mind off it. I tried all day to call people.

I can't say friends or family died but people I met over there did. This post is as random as my state of mind that day

DD1 was due 4 days later, saw the first plane on the Yahoo news page as I opened PC. Waddled downstairs, switched on Sky news, saw the 2nd one live and spent the rest of the day in tears thinking I was going to give birth in wartime

We should have been in the US on holiday that week but hadn’t gone as I had fallen pregnant accidentally

I was at work. At the start it was being reported and dribs and drabs of people watched it on a big screen. As the day progressed, everyone was down there glued to the reruns. Horrifically compulsive.

In a pub in a major city. It came on the screen behind us and everyone just went silent.

Working as a station assistant at Charing Cross tube station. I remember the Evening Standard paper that day. And the big bosses asked if any of us might have relatives in New York and to ring some number if that was the case. All the mobile signals were down, of course.

I was only young, primary school age. I remember coming home early and seeing it on the news. I didn't really understand what was happening at the time.

I was at a hotel in Heathrow on a work training course. I saw the tradegy unfold on the TV in my room, and fled when they announced that there might be rogue planes over London. I figured Heathrow was somewhere I didn't want to be. I don't think I was the only one as my absence from the course was not mentioned at work.

My DH lost his boss, and some close friends. It's not something he will ever forget as the knowledge that friends and colleagues were trapped, waiting to die is horrific.

I was with my mum.

Guys at the timber yard were talking about it when I bought some wood. It was right at the beginning so could have been an accident at that point.

I was at school, in year 8, just about to turn 13. I had of course, never seen anything like it before, it was shocking in a way I don’t think a similar act would be now, because there have been so many since.

I remember the talk of how the world would be changed forever by it and for a few years afterwards, finding the world quite unchanged. It was only when I was a bit older I understood that I was at the time too young to remember what the world was like before it. I grew up in the changed world I heard people talking about then. Worked in places with bomb drills as well as fire drills etc.

I was working in an office. Suddenly the internet froze. Then the news started trickling in. We didn’t know anyone directly affected but the footage of those poor people jumping still haunts me.

Just returning from an outlet shopping centre. I couldn't take it in, it felt like I was watching a film.

I was, and still am, cabin crew. I had to fly to South America the next day. I remember driving to Gatwick and seeing all the grounded American aircraft not allowed to fly home, they were parked everywhere. A lot of our passengers didn't turn up, the plane was quite empty. We had a middle eastern passenger in first class, who had a friend in economy. Rumour had it that the flight that had hit the tower had been the same. Some of the crew were twitchy and those poor blokes got watched like Hawks! That day changed my job forever.

At work being all sciency.

Watched the news on our ancient macs.

One of the PhD students had friends who worked in the Twin towers she was beside herself trying to contact them.

I was working in a cafe and out dish washer came down saying they'd said on the radio about the first plane, she then kept coming down with updates. I remember sitting, crying that night watching the coverage. Seeing the people jumping was heartbreaking. Watched The Falling Man last night, hard to believe it's been 17 years.

At home, with my ExH, watching events unfold on TV in absolute horror. My exH had just left the London office of an American company based at the top of one of the twin towers.

We were on holiday with friends in Cornwall, I heard it in passing on the radio at tintagel and thought maybe it was a bad radio play. We had friends living and working there, it was really tense trying to find out if they were okay. I remembered dancing to Jazz and drinking Gin and Tonics at the windows on the World, it was huge I couldn't imagine it all gone. One friend got bored of watching coverage and wanted to watch a comedy sitcom, it was a jarring evening.