Where were you when 9/11 happened

[Floopyfloop]

I know this topic has been done many times before but this 9/11 seems to have really made me think about it more.

I was in an interview for an internal job change and the interviews were being held at a Marriott hotel. It would have been an amazing job to get. I got through the first round in the morning and rang my now husband to tell him I was through to the afternoon interviews on a payphone. He sounded really unnerved and told me that something awful had happened in NY and to see if I could watch the news somewhere. I asked them in reception if they had a telly. A crowd gathered and watched in stunned silence. Everyone thought it was an accident but as the second plane hit, everyone was horrified when we realised it was deliberate.

I was called into the interview about 5 minutes after the second tower was hit and I sat there white as a sheet, trying to keep it together. The interviewer asked if I was ok and I explained what had happened. She said that her brother worked in lower Manhattan and said she needed to leave. I really hope her brother was ok. After that all the interviews were cancelled for the day and we sat in the hotel bar watching it unfold.
There was a Marriott in the WTC complex so the staff were worried about their colleagues.

I had visited the WTC myself in the April of 2001 and I went to the Top of the World Observatories In the South tower.

I was in Boots buying baby supplies as my second daughter was just 4 weeks old at the time. I heard about it on the car radio and raced home, turned the tv on and left my daughter in her rock a tot car seat! I was just absolutely horrified and glued to the tv for the rest of the day.

I was in a jet blue airplane leaving JFK in New York and heading to Amsterdam. I got lucky 😳

First day of garden leave after leaving a job I hated - I'd gone into town to celebrate freedom and walked through Debenhams to see a crowd standing around the tv screens. I went straight back home and watched the news all day.

The internet had gone down so my former colleagues were calling me for updates.

We had also been in New York in the March of 2001 on a similarly beautiful day. We'd gone for coffee and a cheesecake at the windows on the world cafe. I did one of those stamp a penny things and probably still have it somewhere.

Same. First job at national newspaper. Watching stunned in news room.

In work, my dad phoned to say he'd heard on the radio someone had hit the WTC. He assumed light aircraft.
So we all put our computer screens onto internet, it was BBC news or CNN and there was a lot of buffering. We just kept refreshing and watched it dazed. The whole office block was at a standstill.

Pumping ground water out of boreholes in fields on Silk Mills Lane, Taunton , as part of the ground investigation for a new bus station.

I was 20 working as an office junior and my colleague told me. I'm a bit ashamed to admit I didn't know what the twin towers or WTC were and I just said oh right. She said that is really serious you know and I said I've never heard of it. Not as bad as one of my other colleagues who was on the phone to her boyfriend and just relaying the whole thing to us like it was funny but she wasn't a nice person at all. Anyway I went to the gym after work and they kept replaying it and no one got anything done- just standing around the tvs watching it. Reading the papers the next day was horrify

I was on holiday overseas with my toddler. Blissfully unaware what had happened for days, I had noticed some people watching TV coverage but didn't pay attention as we had more important things to deal with like going to a theme park and dinner bath and bed.

That makes me think of the 7/7 bombings and my sister in law living in London. She was nowhere near it but her mum demanded she move back home to be safe.

At a very high profile military station, we went into lockdown.

I was working at an Accountants firm in the city (London) We got sent home. It was a little scary. My daughter was in nursery and my husband was working abroad. I left work and went to collect my daughter and all was fine, but it was a bit worrying as there was a threat that London would be next and I worked right in the square mile.
It was much worse when the IRA bombed my office in South Quay, Docklands, in 96. That was awful. The bomb killed the lovely man I used to buy my cigs and mags from. My boss was very injured. I'd just left work, thankfully. There's pics of my computer hanging out of the blown out window. We couldn't work in those offices for a year whilst the building was rebuilt. We did go back to it, about a year later.

In bed in my mum and dads house. I got out of hospital that morning. I was 12 weeks pregnant with dd and had hyperemesis. A neighbour phoned and said to put the tv on. Mum and I just sat and watched it in silence. We couldn’t believe what we were seeing.

On the sofa feeding my newborn. Horrendous.

It was much worse when the IRA bombed my office in South Quay, Docklands, in 96. That was awful.

Obviously that was horrific & very personal to you but on a global scale the fall of the TT was massive.

I was 20, at my parents house, a few days before returning to Uni, sleeping off another boozy night, got out of bed and put the TV on to find the world had changed

Ambulance for a migraine?

no wonder the nhs is on its knees

My 18 year old brother was also flying out to barcelona as it unfolded he was in the air as the second plane hit. He was on a boys holiday and didn’t think to phone to say he arrived safely. Cue lots of panicked phone calls to the hotel but they had gone to a bar for a “quick” pint on the way there. He was stunned and a bit tiddly when we got hold of him at 10pm

At the British Museum.

What's always stuck in my mind was the sign outside saying bags may be searched. Pure coincidence as the first tower hadn't been hit then, but it was the first time I'd seen such a sign since the Good Friday Agreement, so it put me slightly on edge. I'd just got in and met my BIL when his wife rang to say the first tower had been struck. We were planning on staying until she rang back to say there were 6 planes missing, one thought to be heading across the Atlantic. I wanted to get out of the City, not convinced by his comment that the Museum wouldn't be hit as it was full of Islamic treasures. So we went to the loo then as we came up stopped at the shop briefly. The woman working there had heard, and was desperate to tell everyone to leave but wasn't allowed.

Got home and spent the rest of the day with my mother glued to the TV.

I'd dropped 2 of my (then) 3 kids off at nursery-they went 5 days a week-2 mornings and 3 afternoons at the time

I'd gone off to get some shopping with no3 and picked up the other 2 on my way home

Got in,made the kids a snack and turned the tv on expecting to watch crossroads (the comeback one)

Nothing-it was on the tv guide as being on,but on the screen was just blue sky with no audio and a 'heavy-something-bad-has-happened-feeling'

It took a few hours to get to the bottom of what had happened and I remember being shocked

My dad was sure it would spark ww3-i remember checking the daily newspapers everytime I nipped to the shops and it took weeks for that fear to die down

I was at school when it happened. I was in year six and we were supposed to be having a maths test. We came in from lunch and the whole junior school were taken into the school hall and a film put on. The teachers were really quiet and none of them stayed with us. They just kept putting their heads round the door and we're all in the entrance hall just outside. Nobody told us anything.
The attached senior school had a big school trip in New York.
Going home mum was odd and snappy. She was a teacher at the school. We dropped a friend home and mum and her parents were talking in a huddle.
When we got home I put the tv on and the rolling news was on. Mum shouted at me from another room to turn it off and told me there had been a plane crash but she didn't want us watching it. That was as the first tower fell. I told her what had just happened and she told me not to be ridiculous and that skyscrapers don't collapse. Then she came through. We watched the news in horrified silence

I was staying with my mum and she said something about it being Bin Laden and also referenced the previous bombing. I hadn't a clue what she was talking about but remember being shocked by the images.

A couple of people mentioned 7/7 and I remember it taking hours to get home across London that day

@Inyournightgarden yep that ambulance trip 22 years ago is deffo the reason the nhs is on its knees

I was in uni on my postgraduate course. My brother was working in one of the WTC buildings - not, as it turned out, the twin towers but one of the other ones. I was beside myself until I got word he was ok, but it was very late that night as he’d had to walk out of the city before getting transport home, and there were no mobile signals.
he lost friends in the WTC though.

No one actually cares where you were

I was in secondary school. Got home and a friend from my old school phoned (we'd recently moved to a new town and I'd moved schools) and tried to explain what was going on but I didn't really know what she was trying to say. I put the tv on and watched the aftermath