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?

I was 14, at school,I remember at an after school club the teacher listening to the radio at various times throughout the club but not really understanding the relevance or what was happening until I got home that evening. I also missed two buses that night which was very unusual, strange thing to remember but I'll never forget that day

I was in Paris on business and watched it in a client's reception area. I had to get on a plane to Switzerland that evening. There was about 4 people on the plane.

I was on Lindesfarn, bird watching. I got a bit narked as RAF jets started flying overhead. I walked back to the village and called into the local shop. Shopkeeper was staring openmouthed at the television.. when I saw what he was looking at, I went back to the cottage, where we saw the second tower go down. I recall speaking to DD later that evening g, both of us in complete shock.

7/7 I was in a meeting. At lunch we all turned our mobiles on. Pandemonium. All mobile masts were off, so london colleagues were unable to reach family/friends/colleagues

I was at work with a colleague who was frantic with worry for his wife who was cabin crew and in New York at the time. He couldn't contact her as no mobiles were working, just had to wait for a call from her to say she was safe. It was a truly awful event - watching real life disaster movie unfold live on tv.

I had just started the final year of my PhD, so I was in the lab. My only source of news for several hours was the radio. I didn't see any pictures until I got home that evening and watched the news. I remember feeling that nothing would be the same again (in fact I had 'it's the end of the world as we know it' as an earworm that day).

One of my fellow students was on her way to a conference which didn't really happen. Many of the attendees never got there as their flights were turned back.

I was off work sick, lying on the sofa, watching it unfold on live tv.

I was picking up my friend from Heathrow - she was arriving here from Australia as she was planning on travelling Europe. We got a call when driving home from a friend after the first plane hit and didn't quite believe it. We got in and watched the second plane hit on the news. After that day I became quite anxious and have suffered on and off with it ever since (generalised not related to the event but I still think it flicked a switch in me).

Many of the attendees never got there as their flights were turned back

I was at a conference on 7/7, it was the final day. Conference was in York, and many of the delegates should have been travelling back south on the East Coast Mainline that afternoon. The university put them up until the trains were running again. University of York, they were awesome.

I was at work - someone next to me was on the BBC website reading the news and they turned to me and said "hey look, this is weird, a plane has hit a building in NY."

The rest of the day was spent watching the news in our meeting room. Very little actual work got done that day! I was more than a little worried as my boss had flown out to the US from London that morning - remember, we didn't know which flight had been hijacked so I was all of a flutter for a while until I heard from her.

All in all, a very surreal day and not one I will ever forget.

myself, my sis and my mum had been on the towers three weeks beforehand we had just got back to ireland from NYC. was on my to work that day and my brain could not compute what had happened

shocking

my cousins' family worked in finance on the second tower(10th floor) both got out ok
one later died as a result of the toxins!!!

On a bus to work in Portland, Oregon. Some guy was listening to a tiny radio and told me a plane had flown into the Empire State buildings. I didn't take it seriously, I had heard a lot of bizare things said on the Portland buses but I knew the moment I came off the bus that something was wrong. It was completely quiet, nobody was about. I ran to to work, tried the various news sites which were all down or too busy and finally rang my mother in Germany, who was hysterical by that time because she hadn't been able to reach me.

I was working in Amsterdam. At the start of the day (which was beautifully sunny, like in New York) I'd been watching the Beeb news talking about Tony Blair going to the TUC conference to have a row with them about Clause 4 (at least I think that's what it was, although looking on Wiki it seems Clause 4 had been done for some years earlier). I was thinking he was really in trouble, though.

I heard about it when someone in my team came over to say 'a plane has crashed into one of the World Trade Centre towers' and I thought 'oh no what a terrible accident' and then he said '.. and another one has crashed into the other one'. I remember thinking 'my god has someone interfered with air traffic control or something?' (causing the planes to veer into the towers somehow).

Completely unable to access any news website, a lot of what I heard next came from Yahoo Messenger from a friend in Malaysia. I remember hearing about the plane at the Pentagon and that was much more frightening in some way, you don't imagine the Pentagon as being vulnerable to attack (and by this point it felt like an attack). And also that the towers had fallen, I couldn't imagine how that had happened and imagined them having collapsed sideways like a tree being felled.

I also remember hearing about the plane in Pennsylvania although reports were very confused and sketchy, I think at first there were reports it had come down on a school? I was certainly concerned that other cities were going to be attacked next.

We went home by train and everyone was trying to get info via text message, I remember one guy on the train saying to us "Bush is finished". We turned on the TV at home and that was the first time we'd really seen anything. It was staggering. Manhattan completely hidden by smoke.

It seemed so utterly surreal - up until that moment, plane hijackings had been something largely survivable - as a passenger you knew to keep quiet and comply with their demands and then they would land the plane somewhere random and probably someone would have to pay a load of cash but likely you would get away. We know now that the people in the later planes knew that wasn't going to be what happened to them.

I had to fly back from Schiphol a few days later, the first day flights were going back to the US. The queues stretched the entire length of the airport and you were allowed to take almost nothing on board, just your laptop in a clear plastic bag (I might say this made for very quick boarding of flights for once). Everything was very subdued and I was very nervous whenever anyone stood up on the flight (which was only going back to the UK so not a long one) wondering if this was it.

We got word the following morning that the people in our New York office were safe.

Thoughts to all who lost loved ones that day and as a result of that day.

We know now that the people in the later planes knew that wasn't going to be what happened to them.

I can't imagine the horror I really can't. I recall the many photos of the destruction but the one that summed it up for me was a photo of the smoking North Tower and in the corner of the photo to the left was the second plane just coming into view. If anything could sum up pure evil that was it for me.

The aim was apparently to kill 20,000 not 3,000. I'm glad the Americans killed him and I don't care about the subtleties of it.

I was in Tokyo, studying as part of a gap year - it all happened late in the evening their time. We were watching a DVD and when it finished the TV showed the towers on fire. The news was all in Japanese so we were confused about what was going on but recognised the World Trade Centre. I turned on the US Asia/Pacific radio news channel and listened pretty much all night, totally incredulous.
My then boyfriend (now DH) was on his way to visit me in Tokyo. He got on the plane in London and everything was fine. By the time he arrived in Frankfurt the first plane had hit and the news was all over the airport. He watched the second plane hit while in the airport, and then got on the flight from Frankfurt to Tokyo! I was very happy to see him at the airport the next morning.

I was shopping at Merry Hill Centrte jsut after going for lunch at Pizza Hut. A few stores down is/was a TV store and they were showing it on all screens, the first plane crashing in - I thought it was a movie. Sat down on the benches outside and realised it was news. Then the second plane.

Went to pick up the kids from school and got home to see the first tower fall. I turned it off then as didn't want the kids to be distressed.

Awful seeing footage of the jumpers, and am pretty shocked to hear upthread that they seem to be treated differently in the memorial. What an awful choice to have to make

Feeding my 3 week old baby, horrified at the world I was bringing him into.

It was the day after my 21st and I was bleary eyed, at work at my part time retail job. A mall security guard told us there was a security alert and what had happened. We didn't have a TV or radio (or breaks!), so throughout the day people were talking about it but no one knew anything. I remember one lady I worked with saying basically "oh these things happen all the time, it will all blow over" and thinking she was nuts, that nothing on this scale actually in America had happened before.

A classmate popped in to check I knew and he told me the first tower had collapsed, he looked really shaken, but even then I didn't quite grasp the enormity of what had happened.

When I left at 5.00 it was like something out of a TV movie - deserted streets, a couple of people running home, newspapers everywhere. Very eerie. When I got home I found my friend who was down visiting had missed her train back and stayed sitting with my flatmates watching the news all day. It was only when seeing it on TV that it actually sunk in, and you just knew that the world had completely changed.

I was at work having recently returned from maternity leave. I was working part-time for the first time and struggling badly with undiagnosed PND.

A colleague told everyone in our office (I think someone had emailed them). At first the news was reporting that a small plane had crashed into the World Trade Centre and that 2 people had died and I remember thinking it would be more than that.

Then the news progressed - large plane, second plane etc.

Some people went into an office to listen to the news unfolding on the radio but I was very concerned that I was only in for 4 days a week and I had to show I was productive in that time so I stayed at my desk and continued working. I remember someone making a jokey comment about me continuing to work when something major was happening; that really upset me. Inside I was feeling quite panicked and was very aware that I'd left my baby at nursery and what if something like that happened near nursery and I'd just left him etc.

The world hasn't felt the same since that day.

Totally unrelated but I was made redundant a few weeks later so I should have just stopped working and listened to the news.

On holiday in Vancouver. We had just had breakfast and the atmosphere felt a bit odd, but we had no idea why until we saw the TVs in the bar and discovered what had happened. The hotel manager was being interviewed for TV, letting people know there were rooms available at the hotel for people stranded in Vancouver. Feels like yesterday.

I was at work (on the top floor of a tower block), we weren't allow to have our mobile phones on or use the internet during work hours (unimaginable where I am now!).

One of my colleagues' husbands was retired and phoned the office to say a plane had crashed into the twin towers. We just thought he meant it was an accident until he phoned back to tell us about the second one. We then begged permission to have a peek at the Sky News Website to find out what was going on!

I was driving somewhere, heard it on the radio news, turned for home and spent the rest of the day watching rolling news coverage and trying to get hold of my friends in Manhattan to make sure they had been elsewhere.

I was at home with a poorly 9 month old. Remember watching it happen from the first plane hitting, with just utter disbelief, and being unable to turn the news off. I think some of it was because this was the kind of shit you saw in films, not real life. And news tended not to be happening as you watched - it was reported on afterwards in the 'proper' news programmes. This 'as it happens' was new.
As it was before proper social media, I remember the amount of false information going around - at one point I remember the news saying there were reports that Chicago was hit, and Toronto. Phoning Canada as exDh's family lived there. Couldn't get through - panicking and phoning ex at work, who told me off for disturbing him
Trying to get through to friends in the US whose families worked in NY.
Just horrific.

I think we were all glued to the TV and radio for days weren't we? I guess because it was the biggest terror attack any of us remember? It really did seem that this was the start of a war. I suppose it was - Iraq, Afghanistan, Daesh have all started as either a direct or indirect result of action taken because of this.

I was shopping with exh as off on holiday a few days later. We got back in the car & Chris Moyles was on Radio1 in the afternoon, he was very sombre & I couldn't believe it when he said, we got home & had sky news on solidly for the next few days. It is truly the worst thing I had ever seen.

I have been to NYC 3 times since 9/11, each time we have visited we always go to the area & now memorial to pay our respects & this time we went (feb 2016) to the viewing area up the new wtc. Its breathtaking.

There is a documentary film called "Rebirth" I watched it when it was first released, it follows people directly affected by that awful day, it's so powerful, emotional & inspiring. One of the people featured, Tanya, her story really struck a chord with me & I have found Sergio's name (her fiancé) on the memorial.

I was 16 at home with my dad. We sat and watched the news gobsmacked

At work. A colleague had a relative working in one of the towers
He was allowed to go home for the rest of the day when it became apparent the relative was either missing or dead.Alas he was killed.
I remember the panic on my colleague's face as call upon call from
different relatives confirmed there was no response from his cousin