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 working in the custody cells under a court. I heard about it by someone texting me while I was actually in the courtroom, but the text said "stop working and watch TV," which I could not do, so I didn't know what was going on. I went back down to the cells where I spent the rest of the day working until 4pm, no phone reception down there and no internet connection there in those days, and we did not have a radio, so just kept hearing apocalyptic things from people coming from outside and getting various text mssages about what was happening. The first time I actually saw any visual images was after 4.30pm when I got home, both towers had fallen by then. It was all very surreal and didn't really hit me until hours later.

The footage of the first plane hitting came from the Naudet brothers, Jules and Gedeon, who were filming a documentary about a rookie firefighter in New York. They then followed their firefighters in to the towers and filmed the mobilisation and rescue attempts of the extremely brave men and women who were there there that day. They were also there when the towers collapsed, and filmed the dreadful aftermath. It is a very powerful and respectful documentary and pays tribute to all that lost their lives that day.
I have visited the fountains, which I though were beautiful , and the museum, which was very well done, but I did feel a sense of unease, as if I was intruding on people's private grief, I can't explain it really.
The world was changed forever on that day.

Hobbitwife DH and I visited the Memorial 3 years ago. It's was just before the museum opened so we didn't get to go inside. I spent a lot of time wandering around looking at the names engraved by the pools. It felt so surreal and I shed quite a few tears I must admit.

I was shocked to see the news item this morning about the British stag party who were asked to leave after walking around with a blow up sex doll. How some people can behave like that at what is essentially a mass grave is beyond my comprehension

Was my very first day of middle school (yr 5), can remember our grandad picking us up and saying there had been an accident in America and he wanted to get back to watch the news. We all then saw the second plane hit the remaining tower live, grandad realised we weren't watching an accident anymore and turned the tv off
The images that really stick with me are watching the news later on at home seeing all the office paper flying around the streets and people walking around covered in dust in a daze, horrific.

Roomba, if you didn't know him to take drugs, you realise there could be a connection right? Look up 'mysterious deaths 2001' in Google.

Ps. We definitely saw it live, was about 5 mins after we got home from school roughly 3.20pm uk time, absolutely heartbreaking

Yes, indeed cavemum, some peoples attitude beggars belief really, although I didn't like people taking selfies at the fountains either.
I may have given some of them some hard stares....

I just double checked as I was doubting myself but it's on YouTube. Sky news showed the second plane live.

I was at home with my preschool DSs. We were flying out to Washington the next day, so 9/12, to visit some friends who lived in Baltimore. My dad rang at around 2 to tell me to switch on the news, and that I may not be travelling the next day. I switched on and the second plane had just hit the second tower. There was a lot of confusion but it suddenly seemed clear this wasn't an accident.

I rang my friend in Baltimore. She'd just got back from the school run and had no idea what had happened. This was just before the Pentagon plane. It seemed very odd that I was watching live news in the UK before she even knew about it.

I can remember watching all afternoon and evening, seeing the towers collapse. I think the second tower collapsed first as it was more badly damaged and I can remember hoping everyone had got out. It seemed ages between them being hit and collapsing, surely enough time to escape? But they were such enormous towers and with no lifts working, and panic and smoke.

I can remember watching footage of people jumping and realising then that there was no way out for some people and jumping was preferable to burning. It makes me cry just to think about it.

We had aimed for a midweek flight so we could spend two weekends with our friends as the husband would still be working. Could just have easily been the Tuesday rather than the Wednesday. In which case we would have been in the air and possibly diverted to Canada or back to Heathrow.

It definitely felt like the start of a new era. I felt quite afraid of what had been started, was it going to escalate with reprisals until WW3?

The first plane hit at about 1.45pm UK time and the second at just after 2.00pm. You couldn't have seen it live at 3.20. There were lots and lots of replays, though.

The second tower to be hit collapsed at about 3.00pm and the first tower at about 3.30pm.

I don't doubt that some people did see the second plane hit live or the Towers collapse but an awful lot of people that think they did actually saw replays.

The timescale in UK time went like this:

1.46pm first plane hits WTC
2.03pm second plane hits WTC
2.37pm plane hits Pentagon
2.59pm South Tower (second one hit) collapses
3.06pm Flight 93 crashes in Pennsylvania
3.28pm North Tower collapses

So most people would have still been at work/school when it happened live.

I saw the second plane hit the second tower live, it was a Tuesday, and I didn't work on that day. I remember ringing my ex-husband in disbelief that it was all happening. It just seemed so surreal and film-like, but unfortunately it wasn't.
I've read a lot of books on the subject, 102 Minutes, is excellent, as is the documentary of the same name. That is the time between the first plane hitting tower one, and the total collapse of both buildings.

I was in Norfolk on holiday with my folks. I was miserable because I'd just realised I'd fallen for (now) DH but didn't think he felt the same way - we were more or less 'friends with benefits' at the time.

We went out for the day & when we came back one of the other holiday makers rushed over and told us a plane had hit the twin towers. We spent the rest of the day watching it on the news. The sights are burned into my memory.

That night all we could hear were jets & transporter planes flying into RAF Marham. It was quite a scary time.

We saw the second plane hit. It was mind numbing. It just didn't comprehend as being real.

At home with my eldest - it was her first birthday. I'd just said goodbye to my parents who had been over & switched the radio on did some background chat while I tried to get DD to sleep. Heard on radio about the first plane hitting (although it was initially reported as a light aircraft)... Turned TV on & say cuddling little one on disbelief as I watched the second plane hit. It was horrifying. DH was working up in the City so I was a little scared something may happen up there & we live near LHR. It wasn't eerie to hear of all planes being grounded etc. Needless to say DDs first birthday celebration tea was sort of called off. Very surreal day. Thoughts are with all those affected drawing closer to the anniversary

Hobbitwife is 102 Minutes the one they often show on Channel 4, that's made up of footage shot by lots of different people? It's very well done as there is no commentary, you just witness it from the view point of ordinary people.

One thing that struck me as very poignant at the Memorial is that the names are grouped together as family/friends/colleagues and not in alphabetical order. When they were putting it all together they contacted the families of those that were killed and asked if their loved ones had particular friends they worked closely with or relatives also killed so that they could ensure they were shown together for all eternity

15 years.

I was away at uni in London, but had been back home for an overnight stay. My mum and I were walking around the town centre before I got my train back to London, and were a bit at the small group of people outside the Sony TV shop watching the TVs.

Just before I got on the train, my boyfriend at the time rang me to tell me that I may not be able to get into London at all because planes had gone into the WTC and London was on high security alert. He didn't know if he would make it back to our shared house that night either. Mum and I checked with the train staff and found that Kings X was still open "for now" so I decided to still head back.

I set up text message news alerts on my phone (ah, the days before proper internet on phones) and made it back into and across London. Stayed up most of the night watching the news.

That's interesting about the Memorial Cavemum. I'm Irish and have a very Irish surname. I was at the memorial a few years ago and found an NYPD officer with same surname and his name was was right beside another officer with my paternal grandmother's family name. So both my paternal grandparents names iykwim. We thought it was a nice coincidence. Maybe it was more.

Yes, that's the one, cavemum.
The names are grouped together as from the same company/ area, such as Cantor Fitzgerald or Windows on the world staff etc.

In Brooklyn, there is a special memorial to the firefighters who lost their lives, including their chaplain Father Mychal Judge, who has a street named for him in Manhattan.

Interesting - I've just looked them up. They weren't NYPD. They were both Cantor Fitzgerald. No idea why I thought they were NYPD.

Freaked out right right now because I was 6 YEARS OLD and can remember it. I was on holiday with my family in Berwick upon Tweed. I remember going to a castle, (can't remember the name even though I was there with my own little family last year) and the guards all had big guns and were searching bags and everything. Very scary!

Working in a newsroom, and came in from a story to find everyone in silence, watching the various TVs but with limited information as it was just afetr the first plane crashed. There were maybe six of us watching at my desk when the second plane crashed and I vividly remember the collective gasps as we realised this was a terrorist attack. I phoned my DH who had just had a knee op and was recovering at home to tell him to watch the news. We stayed on the phone to each other for a few minutes, not speaking apart from the occasional "Oh my God" as we watched it unfold.

I was 19 and heavily pregnant with dd1. I'd,gone with my mum to visit a friend whose toddler was birthday it was that day, he was playing with a remote and switched the tv on. My mum commented that it was a strange time to have an action film on tv thinking that it was an Arnie film and it took a few minutes of us ignoring the tv before we realised what it really was.
I can remember just thinking what have I done, bringing a child into this world, we were convinced that there would be WW3.

Working from home with a poorly baby. Having lunch break when the news broke and didn't do any work for the rest of the day/weekend (it was a Friday when it happened, wasn't it?)