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 had a day off and was getting ready to meet friends in the pub. I had the TV on in the background while I was getting dried and dressed and I didn't really take it in to begin with, I couldn't get my head around the size of the buildings or the number of people involved, I thought it was a light aircraft accidentally hitting it and causing minimal damage until I saw the second plane hit

I was watching Neighbours while toddler ds was having a nap and dd was on a play date. Dh rang me as he'd seen it on shop tv display. I remember thinking "Ohh, I wonder if they'll go to a news flash after Neighbours!" Well d'uh!

I was glued to it and then I remember BBC2 finally went to kids tv and trying to distract myself by watching The Tweenies. But I was fooling myself. Went back to the news and watched through most of the night. Remember having no appetite.

Omg...I was living a compldifferent life.
I was with my first husband...everything was pretty rosy.
Hadn’t long had our house in Florida
He was at work.my son and daughter still lived at home
I wasn’t a grandmother
My mum didn’t have dementia. She called round with her friend. They’d seen it on tv when they were at the gym

Can’t believe it happened before my world fell apart.

I found out when I went to check in for my flight to Florida from NY ( I forget with airport) and the airport was in lockdown.

Putting on makeup & getting ready for work.

I listened to it unfold from the car whilst on the School run.

I was at uni but it was still the summer break. I had been shopping in town with my then boyfriend. When we got back to his we turned the tv on and saw what was happening.

I was greeting planes bound for America as they diverted to a Canadian island.

99.9% of guests were grateful for the 5* hotel they were put up in and to on their way the next day. They understood they were lucky to have flown at all and were certainly lucky to be heading to Mexico the following day despite the detour.

1 woman I will NEVER forget kept harping in about wanting us to provide her free water (they were FB) and about how her thong she was wearing wouldn't be clean the next day and she hoped bed be buying her new underwear or reimbursing her. She was loud brash and rude and I was embarrassed for her 😡

I was the height of professionalism but just wanted to scream at her that she was lucky she hadn't had to jump out of a burning tower black and was alive.

Sat at my desk and the woman on the next bank of desks had a SAHP who called her. I remember thinking when she said a plane had gone through the first tower "nahhhhh"

Not long after she said the same about the second. I couldn't believe it was true, you couldn't get on any of the news channels on the LAN they were clogged. When I got home I put the tv on and was literally shell shocked at the sight of people throwing themselves from windows rather than face the inevitable.

I still think back to that scene.

Youarenotkiddingme - It wasn't Newfoundland was it?

The Gander people stayed longer than 24 hours; there must have been more than one diversion airport

And according to this there were 2 great apes on one of the planes - I wonder where they put them?

www.washingtonpost.com/local/on-sept-11-a-tiny-canadian-town-opened-its-runways-and-heart-to-7000-stranded-travelers/2016/09/08/89d875da-75e5-11e6-8149-b8d05321db62_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.90ea4c5c59df

My moped had broken down on the way to work. When I walked into work, everyone was just watching the news about the twin towers. We didn’t actually do any work that day, we were in a stupor.

But it didn’t feel hugely different in impact to the civilian bombings and assorted terrorist atrocities that were also occurring in the rest of the world at that time, just because it was ‘closer to home’.

I was home from uni, doing reading for the next term & was watching Oprah Winfrey as I ate a bag of ready salted hula hoops and a lump of edam for my lunch.

There was a news flash but I didn't think it was serious at the time as nobody really knew what was going on.

I went shopping into Cardiff in the afternoon and remember seeing the news footage on tv screens in all the shops.

I can't read it lapdance without a subscription but its a remarkable story. I'm going to see Come From Away next year. The story is so moving.

And according to this there were 2 great apes on one of the planes shock - I wonder where they put them?

Bonnie Earle-Harris spent the days following 9/11 with a special group of international visitors: nine cats, 11 dogs and a pair of endangered apes. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA) employee crawled into the darkened cargo holds of about a dozen planes, comforting and caring for the terrified pets.

The bonobo apes, on their way from Belgium to a zoo in the US, had their own handler. But several of the animals were alone.

“They [seemed] very stressed and frightened,” said Harris, 51. “They were thirsty — they had been on the planes for at least 18 hours.”

At first, authorities were loath to allow the animals off the planes, but by the second day, Earle-Harris and a local vet prevailed, transforming an empty hangar into an ad-hoc menagerie where the animals could stretch and run.

She shrugs off the acclaim, however: “It needed to be done. If it happened tomorrow, we’d do it again.”

I had the horror of breaking the news to some American colleagues here for work. Horrible business.

In the car on the way home from secondary school (year 8) and hearing it on the radio - I remember looking up in the sky expecting to see planes coming down :( couldn’t comprehend the news I had heard.

I then went home as I finished work at my. My then boyfriend has an American passport (his dad) but british, I’m canadian, some local Brit friends came over and we watched the news all evening completely shell shocked. It’s like Dunblane and London 2005 etc etc, the world seems more unsafe as we go. But really it’s not. Media spreads fear for £ and on we go

We had just bought a new DVD player and was plugging it in and setting it up when it came up. 20 mins later dh who was in RAF was called back to base.

Alex no I was in the Canary Islands!
We had heard news of 9/11 and then got told planes were being diverted to us On way to Mexico! We had to get to airport and meet guests and take them to hotels.

It was a real test because it's not exactly something we were trained in and it hard to really know what to say. I can imagine many were nervous to fly as well but most guests were great and very appreciative of the f at we didn't actually know anything (like if and when airspace would open) or timescales etc.

In the Beverley Wilshire hotel, Los Angeles, had been in New York the week before! Devastating news

I was at work, just finished lunch. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing, and saw the second plane hit. We didn’t do much work that afternoon just watched the news.
I was in an in an unhappy marriage, it was the push I needed to end it. I kept thinking of all those people who went to work and never returned. I felt that I had to make decisions to live a better life for those who had lost theirs. Now I’m in a happy marriage with two (mostly) lovely children, I give thanks to those that lost their life that helped me change mine.

I was at home ironing in front of tv when the live news broke. I watched in absolute horror was breaking my heart crying.
It's something that stays with you.

I was at work in Kensington Central Library. A colleague said oh my look at this and we just looked at his computer screen in disbelief.
The following year was odd for me as I and many other security guards provided temporary cover in offices opposite the Houses of Parliament as all the permanent staff refused to work 11th Sept.

In a bar in Leeds called brb with my friend, it was the day before 2nd yr of 6tg form college started and we were having drinks and pizza. I can remember what I was wearing as well. It was scary as my Dad worked in Canary Wharfe at the time in London and had to be evacuated.