9/11 - Where Were You?

[Marmite59]

It will be 15 years ago on Sunday.

I was working in Canary Wharf; we were told that planes were on their way to London to attack! It was an awful and crazy day. It was before the advent of social media and the main information outlet was 24 hour news which was in its infancy.

Personally (not politically) it meant a lot to me. I've visited NYC loads of times and have family there. We visited a few weeks after (pre booked) and it was mournful to the point of elegiac. There was also a nationalist spirit which the 30 something me found distasteful but now I understand it better. I have family members who lost friends and some saw it first hand. I've taken my family to see the 9/11 Memorial and it is heartbreakingly sad yet - to me - a symbol of New Yorkers' unbroken spirit and incredible resolve.

So what are your memories? Have they faded? Where were you and what did it mean to you?

itsalldyingout, so very sorry for your loss that day , truly awful.

I was at work. Someone came in to the office after going home for lunch, and mentioned the first plane, and it just seemed like it was some kind of freak accident, until the second one hit.

I was at home. I had just called my DM to tell her my H had left me and our DS and moved out the night before.
She came round and we just sat and watched the news, both really distraught about what we were seeing and the news I had just told her.

I was in a geography lesson in secondary school. Our teacher stepped out to take a phone call from his daughter who (he told us a few days later) told him to turn the TV on immediately. He refused saying he was teaching and that was that. Got home to find my mum watching it on the news absolutely speechless.

Sofa, freshly pregnant with pfb and hormonal, in tears, thinking (in a spectacularly me, me, me way for which I am truly sorry and by), what kind of a world am I bringing my baby into. < I know. But I was hormonal.

Very sorry about your cousin itsall .

Yes, things definitely changed after 9/11.

It was strange because everything had changed for me that summer anyway...I was 19 and living/working at a resort and it was the first summer I really started to realize I was growing up, and not particularly well as I kept making shitty choices. I changed so much that summer, and then 9/11 happened and it changed my country and, it would seem, the world.

I was still working at the resort, cleaning cabins, when someone burst in and told us. We ran to the staff quarters to watch the TV and I remember thinking (and saying) "HOLY SHIT" but I didn't really get it for awhile.

But yes, it changed things forever. People are still feeling the aftershocks, still deeply afraid somewhere. That's why so many people are inexplicably voting for Trump.

We were on holiday. Really rural. Knew nothing about it. It was pre smart phones. We were in a cafe and saw a picture on someones newspaper. We thought it was a book review. Reached a town and at our hotel started teanslating newspaper while checking in. Manager took us to a tv room and let us catch up with the news. We sat in shock. How could the world have changed without us knowing about it.

I was on my way to pick up my new glasses in the City of London at lunchtime and I walked past a TV shop with a huge crowd gathered round the windows. I wondered what the hell they were staring at and then saw the black smoke billowing out of one of the towers of the WTC and was horrified, because I knew people who worked in those buildings.

I ran to pick up my glasses and rushed back to the office, but my colleagues were totally disinterested and didn't want the TV on. At that time I worked for a small, financial publishing company and literally no one cared . I did though, because I'd worked for an investment bank immediately before getting that job and I'd talked to the guys at Cantor daily to confirm trades. We used to talk about the amazing view they had I'd tell them how lucky they were to work there, instead of in a windowless trading room, like I did. So anyway, I went to the pub round the corner from work and watched as the horror unfolded

My DH (who I hadn't yet met), was working in Tribeca (the district of NYC directly north of the Wall St area). He was in a meeting when the first plane hit and someone ran in and said 'Someone just flew a plane into the WTC!' and they all went 'What a fucking idiot! Imagine flying a plane into a big fucking tower! How could you not see it?'. To see what was going on they all had to go downstairs, so my DH stood in the street with thousands of others and watched in utter disbelief. He said the jumpers were the worst thing for him. When he realised what they were doing he said he couldn't watch any more and he started to walk home (which was in the West Village, so not far). When the north tower fell everyone started running, so he ran too and didn't stop until he got home. I met him six months later in London and he was still pretty traumatised by it.

We took our sons to the memorial when we visited last Oct. Its very beautiful, powerful and moving. Hard to believe what happened there 15 years ago when you stand in that lovely, tranquil space now. We didn't go in the museum - we thought it would either distress (or more likely bore!) our children, who have no concept of what happened and I'm hoping it stays that way for a while tbh.

I was at home. I'd just taken DD to nursery and DS, nearly two, was upstairs for his afternoon nap. I was having my lunch and watching the tv when the news came on. Couldn't stop watching it in total disbelief.

At home on mat leave with DS. Watched the news for the whole day and most of the night, flicking through BBC, sky and Fox News whiie waiting for news on A couple of friends if ours who worked very close to the Pentagon. They were fine but we didn't find that out until 2 days later.

At work in an Army Barracks in N Yorks. We were a week off a huge training exercise that had been months in the planning.

One of my colleagues came running down the corridor shouting "Turn the radio up NOW turn the fucking radio up" (I had the only radio in the building).

We were listening to Chris Moyles explaining what had happened. Everything stopped. There was about 10 people cramped into my tiny office listening to my crappy radio alarm clock.

The Colonel came in and said he was off to the Mess - he told us to do as we wanted. Said "Go home now but prepare for war, next week could be the real thing"

We all went to the Mess and watched Sky on a loop. One of the staff came in just after 4 and opened up the bar (against the rules). We all sat there shell shocked. One of the lads commented on a Squadron that was overseas and said we needed them back NOW so the Regiment was whole.

I remember sitting at the bar later that night with one of the oldest guys. He was a man mountain, a huge bloke who I'd always thought was intimidating. He suddenly started crying. That affected me more than the TV did I think. It was inconceivable that such a big strong bloke could be in tears.

(The exercise did happen, but it changed direction. And the Sqn came back by the end of the month, 2 months early. We trained, hard, the whole of 2002 and went to Iraq in January 2003).

I was at work in Bristol, was on the phone to a colleague who had radio news on in background. He said something like "have you heard the news, from America?" As I was at my desk I went straight to the BBC news site which crashed half way through loading.

DH works in aerospace industry and had seen images very early on, discussion in their office was whether it was photoshopped, it seemed that unreal.

Went home that day and watched news channel in disbelief.

I was a SAHM with toddling twins at that time. DP was covering the shop (antiques) that day, with the radio on. He rang at about two pm and asked me to put Sky News on the television, which I did, just as the second plane hit. We stayed on the phone with each other most of the afternoon. I put the girls in the garden, I didn't want them to see.

I couldn't sleep properly for several nights, I just kept seeing it all over and over again, and like PPs, yy there is definitely a sense of the world having changed irrevocably that day.

I live in a pretty rural area, when we see large planes they're usually pretty high up. I went to London a year or so later for the first time in ages and found myself really stressed by the planes flying over so low, coming in to land at Heathrow.

Changing pounds to dollars in a bank for a trip to New York I was due to take on the 16th.... I didn't go, United asked that we only fly if necessary due to all the cancellations and refunded our flights plus extra which they didn't need to do. It was so so sad watching it unfold.

I was on my way to school when it happened. I'm American and I am from Utah. My parents were in Las Vegas on a very rare vacation and I was at my Aunt's house and she was driving me to school. It was on the radio and it was just being reported as a terrible accident. However by the time I got into class the second plane hit and all the TV's in the school turned on. The principal made an announcement over the speaker system to continue the day as normal, but nobody did. We were all in shock. A lot of us didn't realize the gravity of the situation at the time, but there were plenty of people who had family and friends in New York who were terrified.

I was very worried about my parents being far away and in a highly populated area and they couldn't come home. My grandpa drove to Las Vegas and picked them up though, so we could be together as a family.

The sense of community and country and all of us coming together as Americans was such a strong feeling for a long time afterwards.

I was at work at the time, for an international IT market research co, very small but we had lots of international employees (mainly from Europe). I remember about a dozen of us crowded around a PC screen looking at BBC news on the Internet and everyone was very quiet and shocked. I recall saying to my Dutch and French bosses that the UK would probably have to go to war alongside the US as a result of it. People were crying and the bosses let them all make international calls to family from the office phones (not normally allowed as so expensive). I gave a few people lifts home that day as they were too distressed or scared to get public transport. The rest of the week was so quiet, no-one was able to comprehend what had happened or talk about it.

We (me and DH) were meant to go out that night and celebrate a friend's 30th birthday. Friend often went to NY for work and cancelled, they said it didn't seem right to celebrate when such an awful event had unfolded that day.

I think it was so shocking because we hadn't seen anything in the US on that scale and it was mostly domestic terrorism. In the UK we had gone through the Blitz, IRA bombings and suchlike so perhaps more expectant of being under threat, IYKWIM. Although I had to question that for myself when 7/7 happened.

It's amazing how many people seemed to have had access to a TV as this was unfolding. I also saw it.

I was sat in outpatients that afternoon and the receptionists were watching this on TV around the time the 1st plane hit. I was booking in and they were preoccupied watching it.

I stood and watched and saw the 2nd plane hit and it had an unreal spooky feel about it. I said to someone is that a 2nd plane hitting the building or a repeat showing of the 1st plane.

People were kind of struck dumb.

I was 8 and I just got home from school, and all I remember is just seeing the towers burning.

I had never heard of the World Trade Centre before so I didn't completely understand the magnitude of what I was witnessing.

I do remember my dad calling my mum and asking why the same film was being showed on all the channels and my mum saying this isn't a film, it's real

15 years today.

So so sad.

Completely agree with everyone who said the world changed that day.

I was at work, inflight.

We were called to a briefing in the galley....

Didn't realise the full extent until we landed and were told the details.

DD2 was still only two. We got back home from meeting DH for his work lunch break (he works for a big American insurance broker). When we got home there was a message from DH saying that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York.

I put the TV on just in time to see the second plane hit the other tower.

DH's employer had offices in the Twin Towers and lost colleagues there, some of whom DH had known well and had met. We often remember them.

We knew then that the world had changed forever and was now a far more dangerous place.

I was at home after having been to the doctors to find out that I was pregnant with my first child. This news in itself had been a complete shock as it was unplanned and I had just started a new job the week before. Then as we sat at home taking in the news that I was pregnant, the first plane crashed.

Remember lying in bed that night thing what a surreal day it had been, and what future could an unborn child look forward to.
Thoughts go out to anybody who lost loved ones that day.

I came back home from sixth form after lunch, early due to free study time that afternoon. I was watching the news when the second plane hit. (Or so I think. Maybe false memory.)

I was working in Portland St in the west end of London - warnings on the news said planes were heading to Canary Wharf & The Post Office Tower, the second of which we were in the shadow of.

It was a very eery day to say the least. Our building had a good solid old basement, because of which we ended up with half the staff of neighbouring buildings sheltering in our Design room - as a rule, only suppliers & the companies staff were allowed down there, but until the news changed & we knew London wasn't going to be hit, anyone was welcome

Very few people were in the streets, Ive never seen the area so quiet, never. It was a very eery, scary day