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 in GCSE history... Year 11 and the day after my 16th birthday. I remember the days afterwards and genuinely feeling frightened about what would happen next, especially as a Londoner.

Had just come home from work at lunchtime - dds were home and met me at the door with ashen faces - I thought something had happened to dh, who was away in SE Asia at the time.

Later in the day (vivid memory of this!) Dh's old aunt rang to complain that Countdown wasn't on! I explained that many channels were concentrating on the awful news - 'Haven't you seen the dreadful thing that's happened in New York?'
'I don't care about THAT! I want Countdown!'

I was in my lounge getting ready to collect (my now ex) H from work. Eldest was in his car seat ready to go. Never heard of the WTC before then.

I was working in financial services and our company had offices in the Twin Towers. A colleague was driving back from another site and called to say a plane had hit - we assumed, like many others have already said, that it was a small plane and an accident.

Our whole department and many others crowded round a big tv in our e-commerce dept and watched in disbelief as the second plane hit and then the towers collapsed.

As our company had offices in Canary Wharf and other prominent buildings I think a lot were evacuated, it was a horrible horrible day.

Just back from visiting my gran in hospital. Turned on the news while getting ready for work in time to see the second plane hit. Dh went to work as I was in later and I spent the whole time glued to the tv in disbelief. When I got to work everyone kept asking me what was going on. I told them that they had collapsed. One girl fainted, turns out her brother worked at Windows on the word restaurant. He thankfully had been late to work and was just getting off the tube when the first plane hit. She didn't find out till the next day and was in hospital with a severe anxiety attact. It still angers me when those conspiracy nut jobs insist it was blown up. The poor people who died. I still think about them. The ones who fell out trying to get away from the heat. The ones who jumped rather than being burnt alive. Awful just awful.

9/11 is ny burthday.
I was working from home and had LBC on and heard them saying there had been explosion in twin towers then it slowly unfolded. We went to TGI fridays for my bday with dcsand it was on the large screens all evening.
This year i am flying home from holiday on Saturday morning

But we are changing at JFK on saturday night and land back in uk 9.30 in morning of 9/11 which i am bit apprehensive about.

DS1 was 6 weeks old and I'd met up with my SIL for coffee in town. It was such a lovely day I decided to walk from town to my mum's house to meet her when she finished work.

As I walked through the door I shouted out a hello and my mum replied 'quick, quick get in here and watch the news'

She'd just got in and turned the telly on and was watching replays of the second plane hitting. We couldn't understand how many planes had hit or what had happened.

It had been such a lovely day then suddenly this horror.

I was visiting a friend in Brooklyn. I woke up to what I thought was the sound of thunder but after putting the tv on realised was the sound of a plane flying into a tower. We watched the news in utter disbelief all day. Outside I could see the huge plume of smoke and dust where the towers had stood and ash was raining down on the streets. Because communications were down it was late afternoon before I could contact my family in the uk to let them know I was ok. I got through the day in a very stereotypically British way - stiff upper lip and cups of tea all round - and didn't really start to process it all until the first anniversary. Such a sad, sad time.

Dh and I were in Boston, about to check out from a hotel, saw a smoking tower on the lobby TV and seriously thought it was some kind of movie - then watched the 2nd plane hit the other tower and realised from the reactions of those around us that it was real.
The vast majority of people in those 2 planes were from Boston and the surrounding area and the outpouring of disbelief, shock, grief and then understandable anger was shocking and raw and heart breaking to witness.

We left Boston and travelled North, ended up in Kathadin National Park in Maine, away from any cities or indeed any significant towns.
Reading newspapers with pages and pages of long obituaries and first reactions to events was difficult to digest and so at odds with being on holiday.

It was very striking how many random people we met (waitresses, petrol station attendance, park wardens etc etc) were incredulous that any body/any nation could have such hatred towards the US of A. Nothing justifies these attacks, but we encountered some very blinkered and ignorant views - the lack of knowledge of very recent preceding US history was rather staggering.

I totally agree, history has been cut in 2 - before and after 9/11.
I still get a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach when I think of the jumpers
I was 16 weeks pregnant with DS1.

I heard the news in the car. At that point, they thought it was a small plane and was an accident. By the time we got home, they knew it was a passenger jet and we put on the TV news. When the kids came home, I made XH change channel until we decided what we should tell the kids. They had to know, but I wanted to tell them in a way that would not scare them too much. He just wanted to watch the endless coverage and was quite happy to let the kids watch it happen over and over again. It caused quite a bit of bad feeling between us, as he just wanted to watch what he wanted on the TV and stuff the kids' feelings.

I can remember trying to explain events to my very frightened 9 year old - when I couldn't comprehend myself the horror of it all.
Husband had to travel to US three days later. The kids begged him not to go but it was unavoidable really. The plane was almost empty.

Nothing justifies these attacks, but we encountered some very blinkered and ignorant views - the lack of knowledge of very recent preceding US history was rather staggering.

Well, we were in NYC three weeks after and we encountered nothing but stoicism, resolve, and heartbreak. Very little anger, which I thought was staggering. I thought it brought out the best of America in the main; I'm not saying there weren't right wing nut jobs but FFS: 3,000 massacred in the space of an hour! And it's an absolute fallacy to link the attacks with American conduct. They hated the west and it's values, pure and simple, and would massacre you and me in a heart beat given the opportunity.

I lived overseas at the time & it was the wee hours of the morning. My Mum rang to see if I was watching the TV - I may have been a bit sharp, along the lines of 'Of course not, it's 4AM' 🙄 She said I needed to turn it on. The (now ex) DP & I worked for ourselves, from home, we sat glued to the news for a couple of days. Totally beyond belief.

I was in Canada on an aeromed. The most surreal 24 hours of my life, quite frightening! Was on one of the first flights following the event.

I was 12 and had just come home from school. My mum was still out at work. It was an ordinary day. I switched on the radio to listen to Radio 1 and heard the news. It was so surreal that I thought for a second it was a hoax but the horrifying reality soon dawned on me. I watched the TV coverage for the rest of the day. It was definitely a defining moment in our history, everything was different before and after 9/11. I think it also marked a change in my life because I was a child and after 9/11 I became less naive and more mature and aware of politics and world events.

They hated the west and it's values, pure and simple, and would massacre you and me in a heart beat given the opportunity.

Yes, I realise that.
It was the lack of ?awareness, I suppose is the word I was looking for, that there were people/countries/forces in the world that did not whole-heartedly love the USA/Western values/politics, that I found astonishing.

Yes, I realise that.
It was the lack of ?awareness, I suppose is the word I was looking for, that there were people/countries/forces in the world that did not whole-heartedly love the USA/Western values/politics, that I found astonishing.

Yeah I get that and that was exactly how I reacted in 2001 tbh. On reflection 15 yrs later I tend to think that was a misreading and that any nation would hv reacted the same. OTOH Fox News .....

Working in a call center for a large bank and all of a sudden the lines went quiet, call numbers dropped right down but then i had a call and half way though the man the other end swore and hung up. One of our managers went onto the internet and told us what had happened after that we only had calls from solicitors who were completing mortgages and were allowed to go in shifts to watch the big screen tv they set up in the foyer.

When I got home I spent the whole night watching it on the news. I had friends in the states who I had met in early chat rooms and one guy worked in the towers. I never knew his real name but he used to tell us about his family and friends, what he was doing for breakfast while I was thinking about dinner, how he was bored at work so chatting to us and talk about the view from his office. He never came back to the chat room after that day and I still think about him.

I was a very young 13 and I didn't hear anything until I arrived home from school. I didn't understand or process it at all. Had never heard of the World Trade Center. I could see that it was an awful disaster from the footage on TV - the smoke and people running and screaming stick with me most clearly - but I didn't comprehend the scale at all. Hearing that 2 or 3 thousand people had died felt meaningless to me - I had no idea how many people would normally be killed in a war, explosion, accident or terrorist attack and where this fell on the scale. In fact those numbers are 10% of the population of my home town; around 3 times the number of people as students at my school. But I had no feeling for that at the time. I remember adults being quite scared and saying it would be world war three but it seemed really far away and then nothing really happened (until 7/7 anyway).

On the tenth anniversary I read a lot of the articles and people's accounts etc and it really hit me then what it must have been like to hear the news at the time and I appreciated a lot more what people were feeling and why it had shocked the world so deeply. Also that there really was no comparing to any scale because it was off the scale. I suddenly understood with a big old jolt why it was so horrifying and awful when the towers just collapsed - I don't think I'd really registered as a child that there were so many people still inside at that point, who would have experienced abject terror and then immediate death. In 2001 I saw footage of buildings falling, in 2011 I understood what people meant when they referred to that moment as watching thousands of people die.

I wonder about watching one of the documentaries now that I have more of an understanding but I haven't been able to bring myself to do it yet. Maybe this year is the right time.

I was at work - my boss was on a conference call with the US and came out to tell us.

We tried the internet but it was down. I called my mum and she had the news on as the 2nd plane crashed. I was then on the phone to her again when the first building collapsed.

Drove home to a very sombre chris moyles show, was v surreal.

I've been to NYC several times since - the first time, the Freedom tower was part built, my friend and I considered going to the museum but when we were in the queue, there were recordings of peoples last messages (from the planes and top of the towers) being played and we thought it was a bit strange to view real life grief in that way so decided against going in.

I've been since and seen the fountains - very touching.

SloanePeterson... Great experience.
I was a production journalist on an afternoon newspaper in New Zealand. Started work about 6-7am, only to have someone break the news a bit later. I actually said "are you having me on?" Seemed amazing.
My then 18-month-old DS1 was home with his dad watching TV, and saw the twin towers fall. He was big into Bob the Builder/Thomas the Tank Engine at the time. All he could say was "oh dear, oh dear ...". That's what made DH turn and look at the TV.

I was at school in Sixth Form at the time. I think it happened in the afternoon just before the end of classes. I didn't hear about until I got into the car with my friend and on the radio I remember them talking about people falling and jumping out of buildings. It was very bizarre.

Then I got home and turned on BBC and saw the towers burning. Really shook me and the confusion in the aftermath was just as bad.

15 years on I think the picture is finally somewhat clearer.