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 a year 9 Science lesson, but didn't find out about it until got home and just watched in on the news.

My Dads brother had a meeting in the Towers that day, but thankfully, he was below the impact zone.

I remember coming home from the baby clinic with my six month old first born and switching on the telly and watching it all unfold. I felt sure that it was the beginning of the end of the world and I was distraught that I had brought a new life into such an evil world. I remember just holding him and feeling so sorry that his future would be tainted by these terrible events.

I'd got a day off work, we'd just had breakfast and were heading out on a family day out together.

I was off work recovering from having my tonsils out, I was watching daytime tv on bbc 1 when it suddenly switched to a newsflash then I turned over to news 24. I just remember feeling a bit dream like as if it couldn't possibly be true

First week of secondary school for me, nothing was mentioned at school probably because we were so young. I used to phone my mum at work to let her know I was back safe after walking home and was told that I was not allowed to turn the TV on until either mum or dad was home. She didn't want me watching that home alone at 11 years old.

Charlies- exactly. I was overdue with DD. Came home and watched the news with DSd who was home from Uni. I wondered what kind of mad world we were bringing our kids into.

I was working nights - I woke up at around 2pm, turned the TV on and it was all happening.

My aunt was on a plane to the US for a holiday. They landed in NW Canada and all the passengers stayed for several days in a local community hall, with the local people all chipping in to help with cooking etc, as there were no planes for several days.

I was in Washington, D.C. staying in a youth hostel. Our plans for that day were to go on a tour of the White House that morning, then catch the greyhound bus to New York and go to the top of the World Trade Center that evening at sunset.
Instead we overslept and were woken by the sound of sirens everywhere. Looked out of the window to see emergency vehicles constantly driving past, and military looking people with guns walking around. Went down in the lift to check out, someone in the lift told us 'you ain't going nowhere today' then the lift doors opened to total chaos in the lobby with signs up saying 'terrorist attack please remain indoors.'
We squeezed into the breakfast room which had a small tv that everyone was watching and tried to figure out what was going on. The local news was focused on DC as central areas were being evacuated and there was panic about a missing plane possibly heading towards us so it was a long time before I realised that there had also been an attack in New York. It wasn't until the evening I saw the images of the towers and realised the full extent of it.
Eventually we were allowed out of the hostel and spent the rest of the day wandering around aimlessly not knowing what to do. We saw the smoke from the pentagon but didn't get too close. I couldn't phone my parents to let them know I was ok until the next day as the phone lines were jammed. They were worried sick about me as they thought I was already in New York.
Two days later we got the bus to New York to try and get our flight home. Our bus driver was Muslim and when we got off the bus he shook everyone's hands and said I'm a Muslim, these terrorists are not my people, please don't hate us. Our flight was cancelled so we spent a few days walking around New York in a daze. Ground Zero was still smoking and it was heartbreaking to see all of the missing person posters everywhere. On a positive note we also saw huge queues of people donating blood, and many people donating essentials to fire stations (who were working round the clock on rescue attempts) so people were donating toiletries, spare clothes and work boots plus food as none of them were going home between shifts.
I've not been back to the US since, and I'm not sure I ever want to.

Some of these recollections are harrowing. to those personally affected.

I was in a y10 RE lesson, I can remember the classroom, where I was sitting and the head of RE coming in to tell us.

BadgersBum makes a good point - I remember a friend checking in to a hotel near some tall towers in Malaysia not long after and being really worried about being near towers.

welshgirl how terrifying. Glad she was okay.

I was at work, big bank head office. We had recently had big flat screen TVs fitted all round the building that ran news channels 24/7 with the sound off. I remember my manager coming back from a meeting and going "Jesus Christ!" - we all looked up and saw the smoke coming out of the first tower. And we all watched in horror as the second plane crashed in. The whole office, watching in silence, because there were no remotes to turn the volume up. We started calling our NY offices (not in the WTC but close by) to make sure that people were safe.

I clearly remember when the first tower collapsed someone said "they must have put a bomb at the bottom of the building, look at how it's falling" and remember this feeling of utter helplessness and panic (a lot of us had been at work when the Bishopsgate bomb went off and it brought back some awful memories).

The last time we had been in NY back then was in 2000 and we had lunch one Sunday at Windows on the World.

It sounds ridiculous, but it was so very high up! I kept thinking about jumping from that height being the lesser of 2 evils.

We went to the 9/11 museum last year - I thought it very appropriate and terribly sad.

It was ds1s birthday (11/9/1998) and we was at my mums house celebrating his 3rd birthday, when my Nan came into the kitchen and said to go into the lounge and watch the news.
Not a sound in room apart from the 4 children playing.
I too was heavily pregnant, 33 weeks, ds2 arrived on the 23/9/01, 5 weeks early.

I was a student nurse on placement and one of the patients called me over, he was watching the tv on one of the portable tv units next to his bed. I remember thinking he was showing me a trailer for a film or something and he was saying 'no this has just happened' I couldn't process it at all

Went back to my student house and all of us sat watching the news in silence.

The year before I had been in America and walked around the base of the twin towers, the whole thing felt completely impossible.

I was at my sisters having just collected our Mother's death certificate. Can't believe it was 15 years ago.

I was recently graduated from university and living at my parents' in northern New Jersey a few miles from NYC. No one had turned on the news that morning in the house yet (my folks were both off work for doc appts) and I hopped on a bus en route to NYC to interview at a temp firm. As we neared the meadowlands, people started getting on the bus excitedly. Weird, I thought. Then we reached the area of the meadowlands with a sightline to the NYC skyline. And I saw the cloud from the first tower hit. No clue what was happening. The poeple who had hopped on the bus started taking photos they had already heard the news and got on the bus to gawk. The bus continued down route toward the Lincoln tunnel. I was on my cell to my parents and as they spoke to me they saw the 2d tower fall on the TV news. Instant death of thousands. I couldnt grasp it. Being on the bus was like being in a fake movie. As we reached the entrance to the tunnel our bus was turned around; FBI trucks were blocking the way as security lockdown was being put in place. For the next days Channel 2 CBS was the only TV station broadcasting as their antenna was on the Empire State Building; all the other local TV networks' transmissions antennas had been on the towers. We were all glued to Channel 2 news, as the story developed and they started to call the wreckage "ground zero." Everyone in my area knew someone who had escaped or perished or been involved downtown. The American flags sprang up everywhere; George W. Bush gave his famous speech from the wreckage site. And the Afghanistan bombings began. And the march toward Iraq.

I was in the first week of a new job, there were two of us and the management had run out of tasks for us. After sorting out the office library, which annoyed us both as it meant sitting on a dusty floor wearing our brand new work clothes, we were allowed to leave early. I was driving home when I heard Simon Mayo saying that the second tower had come down.
I had never heard of the WTC. I got home and put the telly on. DH (then boyfriend) was in the US on business and was due to fly internally that day. I spoke to his office but they hadn't been able to contact him, lines were so busy, which happened back then (can that still happen?). Eventually he contacted me and said his flight was cancelled and he was safe.
When he got home we didn't take too long to get engaged, life really became too short.

I was at work and knew my friend in NYPD was there as she'd been on night shift just across from WTC. My colleague's sister was at work in WTC south tower. We had no idea if they were safe or alive as all staff watched TV. Later that day my friend's husband called to say she was alive but couldn't get back to Long Island. Fortunately my colleague's sister had decided to go to the gym that morning (she didn't usually) and was running late so was still travelling when the first plane hit.
My friend had to work on the clean up operation and has never spoken about that. Says it was just too awful to think about it.

On my honeymoon. We didn't find out until several days after it happened. We didn't believe the people who were telling us until they brought out a newspaper.

I was at home in France. Our neighbour came round and told us to put the TV on.

I had just had a baby; otherwise I might well have been in NY for NYMEX week. Several colleagues were there, they were fortunate not to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. However, my father lost several friends who worked at Cantor Fitzgerald :(

I was at work. My collegues and saw the second crash live on TV. There was a sense of disbelief. We went home early from work as where I was working was deemed a terrorist risk.

On honeymoon in the Maldives. Sat and watched it in the beach bar.

We we living in Asia at the time. I was heavily pregnant with DC2. I'd drooped DC at pre-school and the teacher said something like "isn't it terrible what has happened in America". I went home and turned on the TV, and spent the rest of the day watching BBC World.

My then DP and I were Masters' students, on a tiny income. We lived in a cute little flat about 20 minutes walk away from the centre of town, and we decided that morning to bunk off the work we should have been doing and walk into town and have an egg sandwich, coffee and crisps in Starbucks (that was our regular "luxury" and we thought that was a massive indulgence - I guess it was at that time as coffee shop culture had only really just got going outside London.

We pootled into town, had our sandwich and coffee, and pootled back to start work. I switched on the computer and the first web page I loaded was the Guardian, which was stuck on an emergency splash page with only basic information about what was going on (remember splash pages?)

None of the news sites were working as the web traffic had jammed them, so we switched on our tiny CRT TV and watched live in horror as the second tower fell. I remember ringing my mum and telling her to get to a TV screen - she worked in a hospital and the only screen there at the time was in the entrance atrium (their department didn't even have computers!) so she had to go down to the atrium and everyone non-essential in the hospital was there watching in horror.

I felt really weird for ages afterwards, got into the habit of surfing news pages all the time in case something awful had happened. Never quite left me I don't think.