Page 2 | 9/11 was 19 years ago

mummabear1967 · 2020-09-10T21:19:44+00:00

Can’t believe it. Remember it like it was yesterday. I remember it coming on the ITV or BBC News, I thought it was a scene from a new movie until I quickly realised it was indeed reality. Doesn’t it just sadden you that all those lives are over for nothing? It’s just heartbreaking.

Lightsabre · 11/09/2020 00:11

Just to clarify, we were in New York as part of a trip.

Biancadelrioisback · 11/09/2020 00:12

I was at school. Was only 11 at the time. Had no idea what was going on.
As soon as we got home my mam ran in and switched the channel over and we watched. We hugged, she cried, I didn't understand

WithIcePlease · 11/09/2020 00:13

I remember it all so clearly. Ridiculously I also remember the QVC tsv that night for nail varnish. It was bizarre

june2007 · 11/09/2020 00:14

Wow, it was one of those moments that you remember where you were when you first heard. I went for a jon interview (which I got.) I walked past a television shop everyone was crowded round watching the screens, it took a ew moments to realise it was the news and not a film everyone was watching.

GlummyMcGlummerson · 11/09/2020 00:17

19 yers! Crikey.

I was still at secondary school and was off sick. I watched it all live and it was horrible, and so shocking

Whatdowehaveherethen · 11/09/2020 00:18

I remember being in my English lesson in year 9 when the news came through. I can't believe so much time has passed and so many questions have gone unanswered. Those poor people. I remember being sent home and the first thing I saw on the news was children in Iraq jumping around in glee. Neither they nor I knew at the time but soo many of those children would be killed later.

That news segment has stayed with me forever. Those poor kids looked so happy. As far as they knew, they had beat the enemy.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist as such but I can't see how this happened without 'help'.

I can't get those voices out of my head of people calmly saying goodbye to their families.

I think about them all. It's still so sad. It always will be.

VytaminSea · 11/09/2020 00:20

A day I have never forgotten. I was on holiday. Sat in a little cafe full of Americans and watched the second plane hit live on CNN. Everyone in the cafe was screaming and crying. It was very scary.
We flew home 3 days later and the security at the airport was super tight. I was only a young teenager, didn't speak the language of the country I was in and taken off into a cubicle, without my mum, for a full body search and pat down. Everywhere!
My parents friends lived in Washington and their son in laws father worked in the pentagon and one of the offices that got bombed was his. He was having it refurbed at the time!

AdoraBell · 11/09/2020 00:22

I remember the day clearly too. DDs were a couple of weeks old, I’d just put them down after a feed, put the TV on the relax for half an hour. Someone who was working with us had a sister who was working in the twin towers as a cleaner. She was an illegal immigrant from Colombia. She was never found and her family had no way of tracing her.

GlummyMcGlummerson · 11/09/2020 00:28

My parents friends lived in Washington and their son in laws father worked in the pentagon and one of the offices that got bombed was his. He was having it refurbed at the time!

I thought a plane crashed into the pentagon too?? (If so, careful you'll get the conspiracy nuts talking )

Smallsteps88 · 11/09/2020 00:37

I went to the chippy after school and my best friend phoned me and asked if I was near a tv. I wasn’t so she told me there’d been a plane crash in New York. I thought “so? Why is that a big deal?” Then when I got home and saw the news it was like nothing I’d ever seen before. Gave a lot of racists a green light to be loud and proud. The next day in school was really shameful.

MissConductUS · 11/09/2020 00:52

I was at work, about a mile north of the WTC. I could look down 5th Avenue and see the buildings and did watch the second plane hit and the towers come down.

They shut down the subways and bridges immediately, fearing more attacks. When the trains started running that night I walked to Grand Central Terminal and caught a train home. When I got off I saw my parish priest wearing her black clericals standing on the platform, there to offer comfort to anyone who needed to have a word. She hugged me and I had a bit of a cry. She had baptized my son a year earlier.

When I went back in the next day the smell of smoke was everywhere. It took over three months for the fires to burn out. The smell of burnt flesh lingered for weeks. Posters went up everywhere saying "MISSING" with pictures and descriptions of people who perished but hadn't been identified yet.

It was a very dark time but we got on with it. I've never been prouder to be a New Yorker.

Torvean32 · 11/09/2020 00:55

I'd just graduated university and was packing up the flat getting ready to move home. The tv switched to the new and my flat mate and i watched in horror as the second plane hit, and then the towers collapsed. It was so surreal.

EmbarrassedUser · 11/09/2020 07:30

We had just finished watching Neighbours and then after it finished the presenter said something like ‘there is news coming in from New York etc’ and the rest is history. We were just glued to the TV for the rest of the day in horror. I’ve always said to DH that it would be the most unbelievable action/horror film but somehow it actually happened, dreadful 😭😭

Cakestandkitchen · 11/09/2020 07:33

I had an accident on holiday so was in hospital in Turkey watching it on TV. No idea what the commentary was saying but understood exactly.

Twizbe · 11/09/2020 07:51

I was waiting for a bus and I saw a bloke I knew from school. He said something about someone 'going for America' and was laughing. He didn't say what actually happened so I assumed it was someone publicly saying something.

It was only when I got home I saw the news and saw what actually happened.

My husband has a friend whose father was on one of the planes. Today is always a hard day for him.

CorianderLord · 11/09/2020 07:54

I was in year 1 and they shut the school in the afternoon and when she picked me up my mum was wearing a t-shirt with the New York skyline - towers front and central. I had no idea what was going on but remember my aunt pointing it out and my mum going white as a sheet.

She put a jumper on.

Always interesting to hear people say that the world changed as I don't remember the world before. Anyone care to tell me how it's changed?

Original poster

mummabear1967 · 11/09/2020 07:56

@Whatdowehaveherethen

I remember being in my English lesson in year 9 when the news came through. I can't believe so much time has passed and so many questions have gone unanswered. Those poor people. I remember being sent home and the first thing I saw on the news was children in Iraq jumping around in glee. Neither they nor I knew at the time but soo many of those children would be killed later.

That news segment has stayed with me forever. Those poor kids looked so happy. As far as they knew, they had beat the enemy.

I'm not a conspiracy theorist as such but I can't see how this happened without 'help'.

I can't get those voices out of my head of people calmly saying goodbye to their families.

I think about them all. It's still so sad. It always will be.

The victims calling their families is just heartbreaking. The fear they must have all gone through.

OP posts:

Original poster

mummabear1967 · 11/09/2020 07:58

@Twizbe

I was waiting for a bus and I saw a bloke I knew from school. He said something about someone 'going for America' and was laughing. He didn't say what actually happened so I assumed it was someone publicly saying something.

It was only when I got home I saw the news and saw what actually happened.

My husband has a friend whose father was on one of the planes. Today is always a hard day for him.

Thinking of your husband and his friend

it just makes me so sad thinking about the events of that day xx

OP posts:

OnlyFoolsnMothers · 11/09/2020 08:00

I was at school my dad was fraught saying world
War 3 was about to start.

I do wonder how life would look now had it never happened-no Iraq war, no isis maybe, less populism- or maybe worse?

Fifthtimelucky · 11/09/2020 08:01

I remember it well. I had just dropped my older daughter off at school and was at home with my toddler. I had the television on all morning.

Toddler will be 21 next month. The father of one of her school friends was one of those killed.

peakygal · 11/09/2020 08:02

I remember being in school and our teacher telling us what was going on and not really paying much interest in it, then going home and seeing it on the news..My first thought was the world was ending. Crazy to think its been 19 years

StopMakingATitOfUrselfNPissOff · 11/09/2020 08:03

I was only just a teenager, I remember coming home from school and my mum and brother were glued to the TV. I had no idea of the significance and assumed it was an accident.

I remember watching as the second plane hit

leafeater · 11/09/2020 08:07

It was my second day back after maternity leave, in Central London.
We watched it in the office then went next door to watch in the pub as it was the only place with a tv.
Coming home that afternoon was scary. I wouldn't go on the tube as I was worried and ended up walking miles, right past Big Ben.
Everyone was expecting a mirror attack in London.
Then the skies went quiet as all the planes were grounded.

Aroundtheworldin80moves · 11/09/2020 08:10

I grew up in London. Bombings, while not an everyday occurrence, where always there in the background.
I got a phonecall from my Dad saying go straight home from school, not going out from friends, as there was a bomb in New York. It confused as all to be honest- NY was the other side of the world (I was 14). Why would it effect us?

When we got home we saw the truth.

I find it strange there are adults now who weren't alive then.

HowFastIsTooFast · 11/09/2020 08:12

I was working in a shop in Leeds. The managers went out for lunch together and saw a crowd outside Currys watching the news on TV.

They came back to relay to us at which point the phone started ringing with parents/partners of staff calling to see if we'd heard. I was sent out to get the early edition of the Yorkshire Evening Post which miraculously had managed to get it on the front page despite it not happening until the afternoon.

We didn't see another customer after about 2.30, the whole city emptied. We ended up locking up early and going home to watch the news coverage and cry (in my case at least).