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 20 and came out from having my first (and only) tattoo done and was shopping in a big city with friends when the news started to spread. I remember hearing that New York was on fire but not really understanding how or why we went home and sat watching the news as more and more disturbing images and the full horror of what had happened began to sink in. The world changed for me that day, any youthful optimism that had previously remained was wiped out.

In the middle of a very stressful meeting with team. Someone knocked on the door and said they 2 planes had crashed into the World Trade centre buildings, it sounded too terrible to be true and cynical me was convinced it was a hoax, told them they were gullible and continued the meeting.

Was shocked when we eventually left the meeting room and found out it was true.

Sorry Sloane, that should have been: great experience, well told .

I was 19 and had just got back from working in Upper State New York at a kids summer camp. I'd been in NYC just a few days ago.

Massive shock. Was on the radio at my temp job (I'd two weeks left till uni and wanted to earn all the cash I could) and everyone was just speechless. Turned the TV on and it was on literally every channel : the only time I'd ever seen the same thing on every channel.

I was a university skipping class at the canteen when the whole thing happen. Funny enough (or not) 11/09 is my birthday and I remember spending it watching the news the whole day. Don't even remember if my family and I went out to celebrate or not. I remember people calling me ti say happy birthday and that my birthday was now forever a historical day. Not for good reasons tho.

It had all happened in the wee hours of the morning NZ time. I remember getting up for work, having a shower and taking a bowl of cereal back to bed to watch the early news with DH. Turned on the TV and the first thing I saw was the footage of the second plane hitting the tower, Then it cut to the first tower falling, then the second. It felt like watching a movie and took me quite a while to comprehend that it had actually already happened, and the sheer number of people in the planes and in the towers and how they died.

NZ felt both a very long way away from NY and yet so very very close that day.

I was on exercise in a relevant military role being tested to prove we were fit for role. We were on 4 hours notice to move.
I've never been so scared in my life. Our padre gave everyone pastoral support. We needed it.

I was in London at a client office. As I was in meetings I didn't really know what was going on until later.
The company I worked for had a main office in the World Trade Centre. The first plane hit their floors. Back at my usual office some of my colleagues had been on phone calls to the New York office when it happened. TIthe lines just suddenly cut off. It was horrific for them.

After teaching year 4 all day and I had the radio in while I was putting up a display. Heard the reports then another teacher came in and we went and put the TV on. Think I saw the second plane hit. Then I had to make my way to Gatwick to collect my mum who was flying in from Europe. Airport was covered with armed police.

We were on a beach on holiday with our 1 year old DD. We kept hearing snippets of conversation and a lot of people were leaving the beach. My DP went back to the car to listen to the radio but couldn't understand what was being said, just the word Pentagon kept coming up. We got back to the hotel and every single TV was on in every room which I thought was odd, as soon as we got in the TV went on and we just stood in horror watching what was the second plane hit one of the towers. The footage was repeated so many times I lost count. The feeling of dred was so strong I can feel it now. We flew home the next day as planned and the security at the airport had stepped up leading to queues outside the building. Not one person that I saw complained, everyone was still in shock. Such an awful event that even today reading all these accounts has me in tears.

I was home, at my parent's house just over a mile north of the towers.

My little sister was in primary school a couple of blocks away from the towers. My dad and I made a panicked run towards her school as the second building crumbled. I literally ran into her running away with just streams of screaming, terrified people.

There was a moment I looked at my dad's face and I could see he thought he had just lost his youngest daughter.

I was pregnant and a police officer screamed at me to get indoors as we were being gassed. It wasn't poison gas, it was the smell of everything burning but I was devastated.

It was a terrible time

Sorry I hope I haven't upset anyone with that!

I was at work. I work for a company with offices all around the world and NYC office is one of the main offices we regularly communicate throughout the day. As soon as the first plane hit the tower, we received an internal email letting us know of what happened. We straightaway tried to see BBC news, SKY news etc on the internet.
In my office there are colleagues from other nationalities, they tried to get the news in their own languages in their countries' news channels but the internet was completely frozen. We got mass email updates from our company but I remember these messages didn't have much details, no one knew at the time exactly what was happening.

I remember, only few days after the 9/11, we got the confirmation that all colleagues from NYC office were accounted for and all safe. The sector I work for, deals with lots of interaction and trade with USA and after 9/11, some of my colleagues in my office (London) lost their jobs whereas some other departments had to employ extra people for additional workload due to 9/11. My workload increased tenfold too , trying to do crisis management.
I will never forget that day, everything felt so unreal, like a scary movie. I can't imagine how much more scarier it must have been, for the people in NYC and for people with loved ones in NYC.

welshgirlwannabe horrific experience. Glad you were all ok after that.

I was on honeymoon with my new dh. I had been ill, and so in bed for all the wrong reasons, got up to try having a bath to cool the fever. My new dh switched on the tv while I was in there, and flicking through channels to find something in English, found a "film", then went into shock as he realised it was the news channel.

His cousin who worked in the twin towers had come to our wedding, and had not gone back yet....... the family are always remembering when our wedding was, and how it "saved" this cousin.

At work wondering what to do as our house sale fell through the day before and we had given notice on our flat so would be homeless in 2 weeks. Then saw the news and my troubles paled into insignificance.

Ds was 5 weeks old and I was staying with my parents in Dublin. DH was living and working in Europe and DS and I were going to join him two weeks later. I heard it on the radio and we switched the TV on and spent the rest of the day watching it all unfold completely horrified. I also wondered what kind of a world we had brought a baby into.

A friend came to see me and DS with her DCs. She had driven for an hour and had the same drive back and we were all so engrossed in what was happening that we never even thought of food. Her DCs were starving when they left and she took them to Macdonalds which was a huge treat and is what they remember of the day.

DH had had a friend staying and he was at the airport waiting to fly home. He phoned DH to tell him to put the TV on. DH worked for one of the big accountancy firms. They lost quite a few people on th planes.

I still get tearful thinking about it. So completely horrific.

I'm not sure of the complete story but there was an American MNer who lost her DH in the towers. I think of her often. I think MNers helped her identify some of her DH's belongings. They were all photographed and you could view them on line. I'm not sure of the full details but I remember reading about it shortly after I joined MN.

I was working in Central London in a record shop. I was on my lunch break when a colleague burst in and shouted that a plane had crashed into the WTC and "the USA is on DEFCON 1". Obviously not true but I was so scared that I ran to the toilet and threw up - was convinced we were going to be hit (I was in the West End not far from houses of Parliament etc).

We crowded into the stockroom to listen to the radio for updates - heard the next plane hit & heard aboit Flight 92. I was too scared to get on public transport when I finished my shift so ended up walking home to my flat in Hackney and watching hours and hours of news footage.

The skies the next morning were eerily quiet as there was a no-fly zone enforced over inner London for a while.

I was at home when the first plane hit, then in the car being given a lift to work by my husband when the second plane hit (we had the radio on). I worked at Borders bookshop and was in the music department when one of my colleagues came and told me that a plane had hit the Pentagon. I really expected to hear next that something had happened in London. During our 'lunch' hour (about 5pm because it was the late shift) some of us went over to Waterstones café where they had a TV. That was where we saw the towers falling and realised the full enormity of it all.

There were Borders stores in the WTC but we were told that all employees were safe. Our shop closed early. I think that shows a measure of the impact and shock caused in the early stages by the whole event. Although we were thousands of miles away and perfectly safe, we closed because of events in another country.

It's all so vivid that I sometimes can't believe that my eldest DS was born after 9/11, i.e. into a world where it was already in the past. Although the consequences go on and on.

I've been to NY 3 times since. Once when Ground Zero was a building site - prob 2007. Had a wander around the area and past the fire station closest to the Towers. There were lots of tourists taking photos with some of the fire department guys and you could buy a calendar to raise money to help families of the firemen who had been killed. I felt really sorry for the firemen posing for photos and felt quite angry at some groups of giggling young girls. I put some money in a collection box and blessed myself. My Catholic upbringing coming out! One of the firemen saw me and gave me a thumbs up and made a blessing in my direction. It made me quite tearful.

Was back in NY a few years ago and went to th new Memorial which I do think is nice but I hated the fact that you exit through a bloody gift shop. It felt very disrespectful.

I had got married three days before, and was on honeymoon in Rome.

I think about how long we have been married, and that is the number of years since it happened.

Felt very stressful on our way back and it took three hours to get through check in.

In Madrid, 7 months very pregnant, resting in bed because of the heat. DH came running into the bedroom.
I had been living in NYC a few months before and had been swimming every morning in the twin towers gym because I wanted a healthy pregnancy. The friendly faces of everyone who worked in the gym and pool, all the usual swimmers I spoke to, they all came rushing to me. It was awful.

in a hotel in the middle east
some people cheered, a lot were gloating, the mighty fallen etc. it was horrible. obviously not everyone was like that, many were also horrified, but there was a definite undercurrent of schadenfreude

I was at school. I was only 6 and I think they didn't want to scare us so we just carried on as normal. But I remember coming home from school and it was just on the TV all night and my mum and dad looked terrified. My brother was only 1 and my mum was pregnant and I just remember it being a very scary time and going into school the next day and the nastier kids saying "It'll be London and Birmingham next!" and laughing at my reaction, because all their families lived in that rural Welsh area and mine are all in the West Midlands so I was terrified.

I was doing work experience at a national newspaper. Everything just stopped while we watched it unfold on the TVs in the office. When I saw the footage of people jumping out of windows I went to the loo and cried.