9/11 20 years on where were you can you remember it happening

[TheCatsHaveEyes]

Just read an article about 9/11 cannot believe it will be 20 years since it happened next month. Still remember it like yesterday.
It really was my generation's JFK moment I think.
I was working at Fenwicks part time student. My friend came over to relive me so I could go on break and told me about a plane flying into one of the twin towers. I assumed she meant a light air craft so as I wandered into the staff room I was shocked to see the type of plane crashing into building and gasped as did everyone else already watching in the room. Only then did someone say that was a second plane.
After work me and all my family watched sky news on a loop it was horrendous those poor souls what they went through. The world seemed so terrifying suddenly.

I've written a lot on here for previous threads about where I was and what I remember so wont do that again here. But yes 20 years - I shall be trying to have the quietest day i can to simply remember again. The world did change that day.

I was in my flat waiting for an estate agent to turn up to do a valuation, when my dad rang me to tell me to put on the telly because a plane had hit the WTC. I was cabin crew at the time, and often flew to NY, so it felt a bit close to home. Then the estate agent turned up just as the second plane hit, and we sat together in silence on my sofa watching the towers fall. It was so surreal and shocking.

I had friends in the air on flights all over the place, and it was a frightening time as we didn’t know how many more planes were being targeted, or if they were all American. Gradually I managed to contact them all; some of them were stuck grounded in all sorts of random places for days, as their planes had been told to just land at the nearest airport. One friend ended up sleeping on the floor of a sports hall somewhere in Arctic Canada.

I kept thinking about the crew on the hijacked planes and what they’d gone through, trying to reassure the passengers and stay professional. All of our training at the time taught us that hijackers wouldn’t put the plane in danger - how wrong that turned out to be.

I remember vividly that end of the world feeling, that everything had changed. Looking out of my window at the sea and wondering what was going to happen next. The following day my mum was diagnosed with cancer, so nothing was ever the same again, but not in the way I was thinking that day.

I was at home and my children were at school. My cousin was visiting as he was on leave from the army. I will never forget the fear on his. I watched the news all day but wish i hadnt.

@SirSamuelVimes

We watched that documentary at uni as part of an American lit module. Heartbreaking but brilliant piece of film.

It’s like a disaster movie but real. If it was a disaster movie, people would think it far fetched. Must admit I have to fast forward or mute the tower foyer footage and there are a few parts that make me cry.

I've never been able to watch it again, @Loubiemoo. The thuds that start while they are standing on the foyer, and the looks on their faces when they realise its people falling, people jumping. I think it's the worst thing I've seen in my life.

I was heading back to uni for the final year the next day and had been out in town buying supppies. DM was watching BBC1/ News 24 when I got in and it was just about the point where the newsroom got new footage in and confusion as they realised that it was actually the second tower and therefore no accident. Watching the events unfolding was horrific yet strangely captivating as the situation changed so quickly in multiple locations.

It was sureal and a very strange moment of realising thar something had shifted in the world even if it wasn't clear what the consequences were.

I was in a meeting (worked in the city). I came out into the open plan office and it was deathly quiet. I

I noticed a crowd of people around a desk and thought it was a birthday or something. I wandered over and realised that everyone was staring at a tv screen (we all had these on our desks). I saw a plane strike and these was a gasp. Someone at the back said ‘George’ and there was another gasp. We had offices there and George was our guy over there.

A woman visiting from our NY office on obviously had her whole team there, and later heard that the Pentagon had also been targeted. Her sister was working there and she couldn’t get a hold of her.

My previous company also had an office there.

It was just so bizarre. Then there was a rumour that planes were heading for Canary Wharf and our boss said ‘just go home’.

I was in year 6. I remember dropping my friend home on our way back and mum taking ages talking to her parents. Mum had been really quiet in the car. I eventually got out to see what they were talking about and taking so long and was hurried back to the car. I think she might have said something about a plane crashing into a building. After getting home I put the tv on and it was everywhere. We watched the towers fall. I just remember the shock that adults could do that. I don't think the impact of how the world would change hor then nor did I truly understand how many people had been killed. But my safe little bubble burst that day. It was only as time went on that I started to understand the impact of that day and what it meant for the world

I was shopping in Bentalls in Kingston that day, and walked past the TV department, where all the sets were showing the awful news, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, so caught a bus home, and spent the rest of the afternoon watching in disbelief.
My friend’s daughter worked in NY, close to the towers, and was on her way to work on a train, and would have alighted at the station under the tower, but all trains had stopped, fortunately. It was quite a long time before my friend was able to contact her as all the phones were out, but thankfully her daughter was OK. Her office was a mess, though.

I remember I was in my lat year of secondary school I was 17 and the time I went home for lunch and saw this on the t.v at first I thought it was a movie but then realized it was real absolutely horrific my heart breaks for what those victims went through

Sitting with my 3 week old ds in my arms

At the local maternity hospital for my scan with dc3. He's now 19. It was on on the TV in the waiting room

I was living in Australia at the time and my mum had come to visit so I'd taken her away for a few days to do touristy things....I remember turning on the TV late at night in our holiday unit and seeing the rolling news, it was unbelievable, we sat up for a few hours watching it and feeling completely helpless. We went on a day trip the next day with other tourists and at first it was hard to relax and enjoy the day, everyone was stunned by what had happened. I didn't think about problems with ongoing plane journeys at the time but mum did get home as planned albeit security was much tighter and nothing even slightly sharp was allowed in her cabin luggage

I was 16, it was my first day at college. They announced it in my first class.

At my mums with my 2 year old. DH was teaching so I called him and he then put the radio on in his office. It was my day off from teaching. It felt like the end of the world, just like when we got the stay at home message from Johnson the first time.

I was at sixth form and was 17. I remember hearing the news in the sixth form common room and everyone was in shock.
Then getting home and every channel replaying the footage over and over again.

@Hen2018

I was working alone all day, in a unit off site. I left work at about 4.30 and put radio 4 on in the car.

I wondered why Eddie Mair was on early, rather than the news starting at 5. I decided he was playing a cameo in an afternoon drama and thought it was rather far fetched.

Something about it was unsettling so I put the TV on when I got in.

I had similar. Was at home with baby dd, and often put the R4 afternoon play on. It was rubbish. Seemed to be made up of someone saying in a tense voice "I don't know what's happened" in various ways. When they didn't stop for the news at 3, I began to get suspicious. So I tried to put the BBC on the (dial up) internet, and found the internet was not really loading anything, which is when I realised something really was up.

I was at work and my colleague who worked in the work shop had been listening to the radio and came upstairs to the office to tell me.

My now exh picked me up from work I asked him if he had heard. He told me I was talking rubbish and that I was mistaken. When we got in we put the tv on and he saw I wasnt.

I was 8. I remember the footage after I came home from school. I remember my mother trying to call our family in New York and getting more and more agitated. I remember dad taking me out to help in the garden to get me away from the television and to try and protect me from the footage I suppose. We found and rescued an abandoned baby hedgehog that day too. So minor in the grand scheme of everything but I remember it all vividly.

@Dollywilde

I was 12, in Year 8. I remember the first I heard of it was when my mum picked me up from school and said ‘apparently there’s been a plane crash in America’ and I did a sort of disinterested ‘oh really?’ because it wasn’t especially unusual. I knew something was up when she said ‘no, I think it’s quite a bad one’.

It’s odd to think our teachers would have known what was going on that afternoon and were still teaching us without talking to us about it. Not sure how I would have done my job that day pretending everything was still normal.

They quite possibly didn't know... it was before smart phones and before widespread internet in school. I was a teacher and knew nothing until a parent told me at the end of the day. I recall driving home listening to it on the radio

I was 25 and had had serious surgery and had another check up - first one I attended alone. Heard in a taxi on way back to where my mother worked, then we just went home in shock. We had relatives in America, only one that might have been near so desperate to find out they were safe (they were nowhere near) then just sad.

@Dollywilde teachers didn't know unless someone phoned them to tell them. In 2001 there weren't emails pinging every second - in fact I don't remember using my email that much then, still used staff pigeon holes for messages. My DH only knew as I got through on his school office extension when he had a free period.

I was working for a large Insurance Broker in London at the time and we had an office in one of the Towers. The news started spreading through the office soon after the first plane hit. A very grave tannoy announcement was made just after the second plane hit saying that it looked like a targeted attack and to go home immediately. We lost 295 people and I later found out that some of my London colleagues were on the phone with WTC colleagues at the time the plane first hit. One of the 295 was on one of the hijacked planes. We had a memorial service at Southwark Cathedral a few weeks later. It was a very sad and shocking time which I will never forget.

At my desk in the office at a job I hated. Trying to get Sky News on the very slow Internet.
Then trying to get hold of my friend who was working in Canary Wharf because there was talk of another attack coming.
Watching the TV in pure disbelief and horror that it could happen.

I am American but on 9/11, I lived in Greater Manchester (my husband is from there). I had just put my eight-month-old daughter for a nap before I had to collect her older brothers from school. I put on the television and walked into the kitchen to make a cup of tea, when I returned, I saw that the news showed the World Trade Center on fire. My heart went into my throat.

My aunt worked in the WTC. I had no idea which one she worked in but I just hoped and prayed she was okay. I was just about to call my sister in Texas when I, and the world, saw the second plane hit the other tower. I was suddenly plagued with confusion, fear, dread and helplessness.

I called my sister and couldn't get through to her or anyone at all. I had to stop what I was doing, wake the baby and had to go to the school and collect my sons. I barely remember doing it. It was a strange reality I was feeling because in my head, my aunt and her family were affected, my country was under attack and no one had a clue what was happening at the school gates because they were preoccupied with other things because they were not as connected to phones as we are now and the news hadn't reached them yet. I was in so much panic.

By the time I got home the children back home, I turned on the tv and heard about the Pentagon. I simply couldn't get through to any relatives of mine, the lines just kept dropping. I was simply frantic but trying to keep things together for my children. I just remember me just sort of throwing food at them for snacks and just pacing the floor.

Then I witnessed the south tower collapse. My son, who was nine-years-old at the time, said I collapsed into sobs and fell to the floor and that I stayed like that for a while. The bad news just kept coming when it was announced that a plane had crashed and it was suggested that it had been hijacked and then the news of the Pentagon's collapse and finally the collapse of the north tower. I just sobbed and sobbed and held my phone hoping for someone in my family to call me. I simply knew I had lost my aunt. My husband was working in Europe so I had to keep myself calm (it didn't work) for my kids but I was so scared and dumbfounded and deeply sad and I wished to be back "home".

After three days, I finally got a call from my sister. Our aunt was in the south tower and just heard the explosion at the north tower but didn't know what it was and proceeded to do have her breakfast at her desk and do her work. She wasn't concerned because they had a spate of fire drills before and she had a lot of work to do and didn't want to evacuate the building. Finally, her boss told her to go down and was the last on her floor to leave and she made it to the ground floor by the time her tower was hit. Had she stayed, she would have been directly affected and killed.

I met with her two years ago, in 2019, and asked her what she witnessed. Her tale was harrowing and she was deeply scarred and still emotionally wounded by what she saw on the day. It took her 16 years, to go back to lower Manhattan (she lives in mid-town) and go to the site. I know she lost friends, acquaintances and extended family members on the day. I totally understand her not ever wanting to to be there ever again.