9-11

[Merrydeath]

I was at home listening to the radio, and thougt 'what bad taste to talk about killing so many' then found out it was true. What a horrible thing to happen to the US.

I"m going to quote this, without Pete's permission. He's offline now but it struck me as very poetic..

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Not doing too well today.

It's September 11, and I thought very little special about it when I got up this morning. But we have overcast skies (here in Chicago) and non stop rain all day long... it appears as if the heavens themselves are in mourning.

But during my morning commute, I was listening, as I do almost every day, to the local country station. Yes: patriotic rednecks. And they started playing clips of 9/11 news reports and 9-1-1 emergency calls from that day, and then some well-mixed montages of audio clips along with "I love you, I miss you, I will always remember you" type songs.

...And I started weeping like a baby. Here it is, five years later, and I think I have finally given myself the space and ability to really feel about the tragedy more than I have since within the first week that everything happened. I have been carrying this mood around with me all day long. Even as I write this, I am overwhelmed with emotion.

I guess, deep down, I needed this... It just came upon me without warning, and I was not prepared to handle this sudden melancholy.

[Dusi Sparrow]

I was at work (around 4.30 pm) when the clips about the WTC crash showed up on the internet. I first thought it wasn't real and then realised the terrible truth. When I went home 1/2 hour later I sat down on my bed and watched in horror what was happening. I couldn't even move or anything else than cry.

When I saw the pics on the news of the service at ground zero yesterday I started crying again.

Strange thing I don't have relatives in the US and live in Germany, but it affects me deeper than I thought.

[Silkie McDonough]

Celebrating my birthday.

Ended up having an ex-boyfriend, that I wasn't talking to, take me out to dinner because I wasn't about to sit at home alone.

[CrazyCholeBlack]

2 days from celebrating the little Swabbies first birthday. Twas quite chaotic in our house at the time.

[Lady Seahawke]

I was on the Los Angeles Metro line at approx 7:10am, at the corner of Sepuvida and Ventura...when a grungy shabby haired man got on the bus, his hands filled with all sorts of newspapers...as he stepped on the bus he called out...

"They took down the towers...its true...the towers...New York...they flew planes into the towers in New York."

I thought he was crazy...I rushed into work, and found out he wasn't crazy. We work in a highrise and lots of people were scared. Finally, they told us to go home. I didn't want to go home in fear... They had tried it before in 97 and their mode of operation is to keep going back. So, was it a total surprise...the action of it ...no, however, the magnitude dismay shocked and broke my heart...

But, my thoughts were if I had went home and cowered in fear... do that??? Then, they would have gotten what they wanted. I refused to do that. For several hours I walked ... I think better when I move...so I walked. Then, for the next few days to several weeks...I took care of things I needed to do...including but not limited ...

Going from place to place and buying every American flag I could get... getting out my very large box of Shabbas candles, standing at the street corner and allowing anyone who wanted to join me to light a candle in the memory of those who died.

Finding the CERT program and becoming certified (still a member to this day and now level 3)... being certified in First Responder Mass Casualty First Aid, training with the Fire Department, and refusing to feel powerless.

[Gigi]

We'd just gotten back to San Diego from a convention in Las Vegas. I got online to chat with friends, and only one was on and she was writing that she couldn't get on base that day, something must have happened, they NEVER closed the base! Then she was gone a second, came back and wrote, "Turn on the news."

My Aussie friend was sleeping in the guest room. She was supposed to go LA to fly home the next day. I went in there to wake her up and tell her the airports were shut down. When I walked into the room, she sat up and asked, "Is this real?" She'd heard the TV and thought she was dreaming it.

Her nephew was also visiting the US, but he was in Washington DC when it happened. We called his hotel and he was fine. He said he was going to go site seeing that day, but the streets were full of sirens so he stayed in.

I was in a daze that day. I think I was so shocked, it didn't really sink in. When they played footage of it over the weekend and I saw it all again, this time I just cried.

[Dorian Lasseter]

Pittsburgh, Pa, in an 'AllStaff' meeting at work.

Another staff member walked in and just announced it "A passenger plane just hit the twin towers in New York..."

The meeting was about half way through, but it ended right then and there. My office space at the time was in another building across the street. As I went outside, it was so eerie quiet. Not ahardly a sound, not a plane in the sky, nothing. Once in my office space, the tv in the kitchen area was turned on, and we watched the reports, I just missed the second plane hitting the other tower. My wife called me, she was at work and had just heard, I had to go outside (my cell phone at the time sucked for reception) and it was so quiet. When I came back in from that conversation I fould out that the towers had fallen. The rest of the day/week is still just a hazy dream of sorrow/anger/frustration/rage...

["hellfire" Marie]

Oddly enough I got really, really sick about the time the whole thing started to happen, but I didn't know that it was happening. I had just moved to a new town, so when I started having these horrible pains in my torso I didn't know where to go. My husband and I spent all morning looking for a hospital. When we finally found one I walked into the lobby and the pains just stopped. I do not pretend to understand why, and I have not had them since.

But the really odd part was when I got back to the apartment we were living in. I checked my email and someone had sent a message saying "9/11 kinda odd that it is 911 for an emergancy" I thought to myself 'who the hell knows that I was going to a hospital this morning?' and that's when my husband read about it on MSN. We were both very shocked, but relieved that no one we knew was in New York that day. I have lost someone very close to me before and understand how difficult getting through a tragedy can be. My prayers went to those who had to experience it up close and have had their lives changed because of it.

[Rogue Mermaid]

I was on my way to work when I heard the first plane had hit. I was working building a halloween store in a strip mall next to the party store I worked for. I was by myself in the store with a radio listening to the news as I worked. The actual party store was very busy because people kept coming in to buy flags. When they ran out of flags people started to buy anything that they could that was red, white & blue (balloons, ribbons, and thing).

We closed around 4pm and I didn't see any footage until that night after work. I remember how horrible it was and being shocked to the core when I heard about the jumpers.

[Cap'n Pete Straw]

I"m going to quote this, without Pete's permission. He's offline now but it struck me as very poetic..

I grant you permission retroactively.

* * * *

Dare I start? I have a lot to say...

The mornng of September 11, 2001, my wife had already left for work (these were the days when our respective commute times were reversed). I turned the TV news on, getting ready to jump in the shower. What a breaking story! An unbelievable tragedy -- a plane went horribly off course and crashed into one of the Trade Towers. I was in a hurry and wanted to catch the entire story later, so I threw in a videotape so I could catch up at the end of the day, in case the story was hard to find on the later news broadcasts (little did I know).

Then I took my shower.

When I got out of the shower, I discovered that the world had changed.

The reporters were stating that a second plane had crashed into the second tower. At that instant I knew this had been deliberate. I called my wife on the cell phone with the news, while I rewound the tape to watch the "live" footage of the second crash. I left for work, and went downtown Chicago on the CTA "El" train, where so many people were unaware of what had happened. As the commuters discussed the morning's events and additional breaking news, so many people refused to believe what was being told to them.

When I entered my office building, the live nws coverage was being broadcast on the lobby's television monitor... at that moment, before getting on the elevator, I watched the first building collapse live on television. Then I reached my office on the top (14th) floor of one of the tallest buildings in the South Loop of this major metropolitan city -- known worldwide as "Second City" only after New York. Recognizing the significance of my geographical location, the day actually became more surreal, if that were possible. I can only compare the feeling with the scene in LotR when Frodo "sees" the burning Eye of Sauron looming ever closer -- for the first time in my life I felt like I was conspicuus upon the Face of the Earth.

We turned on the television in the office and soon learned of additional missing planes, of planes being flown off-course, reports of additional crashes without any details. I cannot now recall the exact timing or details, but there were reports about the White House being targetted by suicide hijackers (or at least its air space being compromised), and reports came in regarding the the Pentagon crash.

We received a preparatory alert that we may need to evacuate the building. Then my family started calling me on the phone to get out of the city. I explained to them that the last place on Earth I wanted to be was jammed like a sardine in the subway, because if I were going to try to murder a large group of innocent people, this would be my primary target: create a widespread panic, then attack them with a bomb or poison gas when they are trapped in subway tunnels.

Within about a half-hour, the real call came: downtown Chicago was to be completely evacuated: Get Out Now. As building fire marshall, it was my responsibility to get people out rapidly and safely; being on the top floor, I had the added task of sweeping all the floors to be sure that no one had been left behind. All the time, my mother kept calling me, emotionally begging and pleading with me to save myself and get out. I tried to reassure her that I had some responsibility to others ... I finally stopped answering my phone (soon the cell lines were jammed and I was unable to make any calls at all for the next couple hours) and kept moving myself and others out of the building.

I don't claim to have done anything heroic that day, and circumstances thankfully resulted that I did not save any lives ... but to this day I feel somehow proud that I was the last person out of the building, aside from the security guards and the guy with the keys who were all anxious to lock it all up and leave. I feel as if I did something, as insignificant as it was. I did something on a day when, in reality, none of us could really do anything at all.

Getting a taxi cab was Hell. A co-worker and I flagged down a cab driver (who was as anxious to get out of the city as we were) and with the resultant traffic jam on Lake Shore Drive, it was alreasdy a $30 fare when I got out of the cab at the "closest point" of the route to my apartment. Leaving her in the cab, I ended up walking about two miles home.

I could fill a volume of what I went through the remainder of the day. My attempts to reach my boss' son who lived in New York, and trying to reach my boss (who was out of the country) with updates. My unsuccessful attempts to reach my own children who lived almost an entire state away. Standing on the front porch, staring at the sky in utter amazement that there were absolutely no planes whasover (and we lived under a regular heavy flight path to the world's largest airport). All the while watching the continued live news coverage in utter disbelief as America tried to assess what damage it had suffered, and how many Americans had actually been lost, and who could possibly hate us so very, very much.

...And then there is the eerie feeling I still get to this day whenever I look out my office window at the Standard Oil Building, which was built according to the same plans as the World Trade Towers, and looks for all the world like their surviving triplet (which it is).

But I have already written more here than I have ever before been able to say about that terrible, terrible day.

[William Brand]

I was at the computer at work when my wife called and told me a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I turned on the radio and within a few minutes the second plane hit. I just sat and listened as the radio spilled out updates.

After a time the UPS guy arrived and I asked him if he had heard. He just shrugged and said, "We deserve it. We've been doing it to other people for years." Just like that. He said it without any regard for the loss of human life. I had to walk out of the room. Then I found that walking out of the room was not enough. I left work. I didn't ask for permission, I just left. I went home and watched the images on television for two hours before going back. Then I told everyone there to take turns going home and watching the events unfold. It couldn't be explained. They each left one at a time and only some of them came back to work the same day.

The full shock of it hit me three days later when I saw this fireman break down and hug a fellow fireman as he ried to describe the loss of seven friends. I still get worked up thinking about the firemen. I have four friends that fight fires.

For almost two days I couldn't get a hold of a friend in New York who worked in Tower Two. He was not killed. We learned that he had called in sick the morning of the attack and a coworker of his had agreed to go in his place.

His coworker died.

[lady snow]

i was at weork in hazleton, pa. when a coworker came into operations and told us a plane had just flown into the wtc. we went down the hall to the cxustomer lounge and got the tv turned to channel 16 just in time to see the second plane hit the second tower. spend most of the day in shock going from tv to tv in the buiolding (never knew there were that many tvs in the building before then) when the first tower collapsed my brain just couldn't believe what my eyes were seeing and when the second one went straight down, i just couldn't watch anymore. i still can't comprehend the enormity of it all. i have everything that was published about that day, newspaper aticles, special printings of magazines and such put away. my momn said that that was good, that when my kids were older, i could explain it to them, but i don't know how - since i still don't understand it. the fiorst comfirmed death (with death certificate #00001) was father mikal judge, who grew up with my father's family and officiasted over both my grandparents' funerals. i knew him my whiole life.

[Red Bess]

It was warm and sunny - nice September morning. I had just put my kids on the school bus and was leaving for work. (My husband had just started a new job and my youngest had started kindergarden exactly one week earlier.) I never had the TV or radio on in the house in the mornings -- it just seem to add to the noise and commotion of getting everyone going. So about halfway into my 20 minute drive, I turned on the car radio. The first thing I heard was "And now we are getting reports that a second plane has hit the Towers". It's a good thing I had been driving to the same office for 15 years, because I was pretty much in a daze the rest of the drive. When I got to work everyone in my department had been in a meeting since 8am (I get in around 9) and hadn't really heard anything. I came in and sat in the back and remember thinking "How is any of this important when the world is ending out there?" Of course, once our meeting was over the rest of the day was spent watching the TVs that were set up in various places in the building. No one really did any work that day.

My kids were still pretty young, so even though the teachers had tried to at least explain a little about what had happened, they weren't really scared or concerned. They just knew something bad had happened, but that they weren't in any danger and the adults would take care of it. I remember wishing I could be that blissfully innocent again.

That was 5 years ago and since that day, I always turn the TV on when I get up in the morning. I just need to be reassured that the world hasn't ended while I was sleeping.

[Aurore Devareaux]

I was enroute to work, about two block from pulling in and the tape I had been listening to played out. When I went to change it, I caught the tail end of a news broadcast and was unclear as to what had occured.

When I made it into the building, no one was up front, which I thought a bit odd. I went back into one of the other sections and found everyone gathered around a television that we kept around.

I remember thinking that what I was seeing on the monitor could not be real. That it had to be a mock up like "War of the Worlds" was when first broadcast on the radio way back when. As the reality set in, I remember just feeling numb, like my mind was unwilling to accept what had just happened. I cannot recall any event in my life that has shaken me as deeply as that morning.

[Black Syren]

My husband , Daughter and I were going to eat at our fave mexican resteraunt and then go have his hair cut. The radio was trying to be impartial here to keep panic down and I remember feeling the shock. It was the only time I have ever seen resteraunts and barber shops so deadly quiet.

As we live in Austin cops and FBI were everywhere, Congress had been closed and the Capital surrounded. The world seemed so surreal that day. God Bless to all those who lost lives, Who were there aiding others and who still feel the shock.

[Red-Handed Jill]

I woke up to the news (had a clock radio at the time) and was stunned. I managed to get myself showered and dressed and got to work, but wasn't much good to anyone because at the time I was worried about my brother. He had recently started working in Manhattan, but didn't tell me where, so I spent most of the day wondering if my brother was alive or dead.

I was one of the fortunate ones in that my brother worked nearby, but not at the WTC. He called me once he got home to tell me he was okay and that he had watched both towers collapse.

Another friend of mine was on his way to a meeting in one of the towers and in a spate of extremely good fortune, was running late. He watched as the first plane collided with the tower.

[Cheeky Actress]

There are moments in each generation that causes us to reflect and remember what we were doing, where were we when our lives were greatly changed forever.

In my father’s life time, he was only 8 years old living in Albany, NY when he heard the original broadcast of the “War of the Worlds”. In October 1962, when the whole world feared we were only seconds away from the ‘nuclear annihilation’, he was in the Air Force stationed down on the Gulf Coast when the Bay of Pigs/Cuban Missile Crisis. And he had gotten off early from work that November day when President Kennedy was shot and killed in Texas.

I had gotten to work on time that sunny Tuesday morning. Funny how you remember the strangest things…like me, sporting a new fall outfit I had got just a week earlier for my birthday. As I sat down at my desk, and it seemed that it would be like any other day. As I logged on to my computer and was on my way to grab my first cup of coffee, I stopped by my girlfriend, Roxanne’s desk to chat. It was then one of the graphic designers ran in from the employee break room and stood in the middle of the main project area and shouted. “A plane crashed into the Trade Center!” I remember looking straight into Roxanne’s face and seeing a mix of confusion, panic and disbelief.

It took only seconds for everyone in the office to dash to the break room. There on the television was the horrific scene, then as we all tried to fathom what was going on, the second plane struck the other tower! I can remember hearing one of the project managers crying out. “God in Heaven!” As I felt my whole body shake, and eerie chill came over me. I remember turning towards our CFO and our CEO and saying without blinking. “This isn’t the end of it…they’re not done…there will be two more.” How or why I said this..to this day I don’t know. Then the horror of the moment turned very real for us. Within seconds of the second plane crashing into the second tower, our facility lost power, light and phone!

It was then the CEO decided we should all go outside to the commons and he would see if he could get a hold of someone locally to tell us what was going on. As I sat and watched everyone grab for their cell phones all I could do pray that my father and mother were safe, that my friend in Seaford, NY (Long Island) didn’t go into the city that day, and that my sister didn’t plan on flying out of Boston to New York that morning, which was the norm for her. Roxanne was kind enough to lone me her phone so I could call my husband, my folks and my sister. They were all fine…but we were still in the ‘dark’ at work. It took an hour to restore the lost power. Come to find out a truck had crashed into a main utility transformer taking out everything in a three mile area.

We were told by the CEO to go home and be with your loved ones. As I gathered up my purse and keys, the CFO entered my cube, he said that he had just heard news about two more planes, one crashing into the Pentagon and the other that had crashed in a field in PA. I stood there for a moment in shock. We just looked at each other for a moment as if trying to determine if this surrealistic day really happened. He was still shaken by the events of the day and were I. Sadly; I fear that the event that took place on this day five years ago has changed all our lives forever.

[Rumba Rue]

I had just logged onto the computer and saw the headlines on my homepage.

So I quickly turned on the TV just in time to see the second plane hit.

It stunned me, I didn't know how to react or what to say.

Unfortunately for me I just didn't want to see anymore of the footage that has been repeated over the 10th, 11th and 12th this week. I just couldn't handle it.

I watched other shows instead.

[Capt. Bo of the WTF co.]

On my way to meet with the staff at the Boone Home In Defiance, Mo. to make final preperations for the annual event at the end of the month. turned for home when the first announcement was made, and was on the phone to cancel the meeting , watching the news as the second plane hit. Watched it all from then on. Went and picked up my son from school and just stayed at home checking emergency supplies just in case.

[Captain Midnight]

I was at work anticipating celebrating my birthday that evening with my family. Needless to say, not much celebrating went on in my house that night...

[lady snow]

that's also my brother's wedding anniversary

[Salty]

westren NY

most of the kids i went to school with lost family that day, classes and cllege shut down fer 3 days

[Blackwarden]

That's an easy one for me to remember. I was 100' underwater on the wreck of the USCG Cutter Duane in Key Largo. It was my day off and I was taking a "busmans" holiday, diving off my boat, while the relief captain drove. When I climbed the ladder after the dive, John told me what had happened. Being the joker he is, I really didn't believe him until he switched the VHF to a channel where all the other captains were talking about it. My second dive on Molasses Reef was quite surreal. Here I was in one of the most beautiful places on earth and all I could think about was the horror taking place in New York. Little did I know that when I got back to the dock it was to be worse, much worse than I could have ever imagined.

Regards,

Blackwarden

[captjacksparrowsavvvy]

I live in NY. After the plane hit the pentagon, most of us felt that "we" were under attack. The airbase is less than 10 minutes away and it went on the highest alert. Our news reported that a plane was heading towards the power plants in Niagara Falls and EVERYTHING SHUT DOWN. Banks, malls, schools, stores, everything closed and people were sent home. I had kids in school and I couldn't get them out because the schools went into lock down. We couldn't get thru the phone lines were overloaded with calls. We stayed glued to the TV and local radio because the fear of that plane. If it would hit the powerplant, most of the East Coast would be out as it was once before when there was a problem.

So we just sat there, waiting and praying. Kids got home and we all stayed in the house waiting for instructions.

Our cousin was a block away from WTC. Her store was damaged with the white ash and she had to walk blocks into NJ to get away from all the destruction. She wasn't hurt but the memory is haunting.

My girlfriend was in the tower the day before at a finance meeting on the top of the North Tower.

The worst part was not knowing what was truly happening. One of my kids said something like "whatever happens, I hope that it happens to all of us so no one is left alone"

[Lady Alyx]

I was getting ready for work and popped into the room that had the television on and thought I was watching a trailer for a new movie..until it dawned on me it was real. I just plunked down watching in disbelief....after awhile I finished getting ready for work. I drove in to work and found the parking lot empty. I work in Aerospace and our facility is right by the LAX airport, so we were told to stay home in case of any terror threat about to approach LAX. I drove back home and continued in horror to watch the building's collapse. On the Hispanic channels it was a bit more graphic, they showed footage of people jumping out of the windows. That was so surreal. I will never forget that image. Our work matched our contributions 100% for the families. So if you sent $100.00 they actually received $200.00. May they rest in peace.