09/11/01 Where were you?

[Paulobergonci 673]

Well, i don't know if they will allow this topic, it's a "delicate" topic, but i thought it would be interresting, share our stories, our feelings about it.

So, where were you when you first knew about the attacks?

I'll start.

well, it was almost 10am, i was 10 years old, i woke up and turned on the tv to watch some cartoons. I turned on TV Globo (i'm brasilian and that's the most important channel here) and i saw two buildings on fire, and i got mad because thats the only thing they were showing, i wanted to see cartoons!!

Then i yelled to my mom: "Mom!! Theres two buildings on fire in São Paulo!". Yes, i thought it was in São Paulo because i just saw the top of the buildings, and even if they had showed the whole city i wouldn't know it was NYC. Then i turned off the tv.

Only at night, watching the news, that i knew what really happened.

That's my story, and i'll never forget that day, well i guess no one will forget.

[_marsh_ 1,117]

I was in school. Everyone was acting strange the whole day. I got home and saw what happened. My thought was "cool explosions". I then got rather bored and then went to play pokemon. (I was in 2nd grade :| ) I only really realized what that whole ordeal was about until a couple years later. Don't call me insensitive like others have. Again, I was only in 2nd grade.

[astronelson 339]

At the time I would have been at home, asleep. They started around 10:45pm in my time zone, and I was 9. If I recall, the next day school was cancelled.

[Paulobergonci 673]

Yep marsh, you were what, 7, 8 years old?

[airman15 4,111]

I was only 6 years old at the time it happened. I was still asleep since it was 5-6 am where I was at. Everybody was in shock or panicking but I had no clue why since I was only a 1st grader. I finally realized what happened and why it did roughly 6 years later. Now I am supporting a group trying to rebuild the Twin Towers over the sites of the new, delayed "towers 2 and 3".

[Wiecher 192]

It was the birthday of my cousin, so my whole family was sitting in front of the television with cake.

We were just having a party, when someone called 'Hey, put the television on, something happened in New York'.

When we saw what happened, we didn't really feel to continue the celebrations, and after discussing what could have happened, we went home.

And today it's my cousins birthday too, of course, so I hope no new 'anniversary' attacks will happen, or we'll have the same situation again.

[Keder 116]

I was 3 years old so, I can hardly remeber anything.

[MandelSoft 2,769]

It was 4PM when I did see it on CNN here in the Netherlands. I was 9 years old back then and I just got back from school. At first I wasn't shocked, because I didn't realise what was going on. Later I discovered what really happened and that was kind of awkward.

Maybe because NYC is by far not around the corner here (5000 km), you don't feel the effect of 9/11 as much as in the USA...

[TekindusT 3,809]

It was around 14:15 p.m. in my time zone, and this is "Simspons Time" for me. September 11th is a holiday where I live, so we had no school and my parents were at home watching another channel in the living room TV. They called me to come here, "a light aircraft" had crashed in the WTC and I inmediately switched off my TV and went with them. I was 12 at the time and I still clearly remember these moments, I was terrorized.

  Edited September 11, 2011 by TekindusT  

[The Avatar 1,088]

I remember the day: I was in the car with my mom, and we were deriving to a class, or to/from preschool. We were at a public recreation facility that is for people who live in our small suburb of Val Vista Lakes. My mom was listening to the radio, and the radio host announced that an airplane has crashed into one of the Twin Towers. Now, mind you, I was 3, so I can't remember all of the details, but if my memory is correct, they canceled my preschool, and possibly other schools in my area. And that's all I can remember. Of course at the time I didn't realize what had happened, the severity of what had happened, and how much it would change America.

[Meg 368]

I was at work, in Arlington, Virginia, about 4 miles away from the Pentagon. We could get CNN on our desktops so I was watching the news about the WTC towers. We could see the column of smoke from the Pentagon before it hit the news. We had to wonder what else they weren't telling us about. Eventually they started reporting about the Pentagon too.

They evacuated the building because the 4th plane was still in the air. I didn't want to go home because I was living in an apartment that was less than a 1/2 mile from the crash site. I went to an office on a higher floor. Contrary to reports, I could see that the Capitol was not burning.

When I got home, I could smell the Pentagon burning from inside my apartment. It took them a week to put the fire out.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Well, I wasn't working that day, being a part-time teacher at that time, so I was at home. I was watching the CBC news net because I had just had breakfast, and wanted to start the day. The networks were all pre-empted and U.S. News feeds ran the rest of the day. One of the networks actually got a shot of the first plane hitting the tower, and it was played over and over in the intervals.

I watched the whole thing, essentially live.

Everyone was in shock, and when it turned out it was a terrorist attack, besides being stunned, there was both panic and anger. Far too many U.S. legislators leaped to the false conclusion that the hi-jackers had infiltrated from Canada, and caused us a considerable amount of angst. This was probably due to the L.A. car-bomb incident where a man with false Canadian papers was apprehended at U.S. customs in the Vancouver area. Most politicians are very good at generalizing from the particular.

Meanwhile, as Meg noted earlier, Operation Yellow Ribbon was taking in the orphans of the sky. Now that the chips have all landed, the Government of Canada has proclaimed, yesterday, that September 11 will be observed as a National Day of Service in perpetuity in Canada.

Foreign, friendly, near, and mainly English speaking, Canada is a great place for a holiday.

[Paulobergonci 673]

wow, great stories guys!

[nathanthemayor 1,261]

I don't remember much from 9/11, just that at day-care that afternoon I watched live coverage on TV(In fact, back then I din't even know what the WTC was), and the newspaper picture the following morning. I was 5 years old at the time.

  Edited September 11, 2011 by nathanthemayor  

[Meg 368]

wow, great stories guys!

I wouldn't use the word "great". The whole thing sucked, big time. I had been in the Pentagon as a kid since my dad used to work there. It felt like a childhood friend had been attacked. (yeah, I know that sounds kinda weird but I have fond memories of being detained because I was in an allegedly secure area when I was 8 years old.)

But, yes, I know you didn't mean "great" in the good sense.

[Renedius 25]

god bless you New York

  Edited September 11, 2011 by Renedius  

[DavidB_ 83]

All I can remember is that I had just started school, but I do remember my mum meeting up with friends around the time of the WTC disaster... Even so, on the tenth anniversary of this awful event, may the souls of those innocent victims rest in peace. My thoughts are with their family and friends.

[Alejandro24 575]

I was 9 years old. I woke up as another day when my mom sayed "some people are bombing the United States", something suprising for me. The living room TV was on in a program -hybrid, I think so- called El Mañanero, a program with news and humoristic content, with the pictures of the fog in the tower.

But some minutes later it transformed in a breaking news in all the national channels and anothers of cable. Many channels interrupted the transmissions to give the news, an airplane has crashed to one of the towers. Then happened the next crash, nn communications media all was a total caos, the news was very disjointed and everyone in TV, Radio and in the Net knew the same. After all said or speculated, of a terrorist attack, at the first all thinked about an accident.

While all the event happened, in the local news reported about the cancelation of the flights to United States and Canada, on par with something unusual happened in Mexico City with an high red alert and the eviction of most of its skyscrapers. Unusual because an eviction only happens with an earthquake alert. Then the alert touched Guadalajara and Monterrey, that in these year there were not too many skycrappers as today, and the cities in the border with United States.

After the towers collapsed the family in Chicago called to everyone here in Jalisco and adviced about the caos in USA, and of course, reported that they were fine.

Then my brother came home, and in the Computer and with a very slow connection of Internet (56Kb) tried to get into Yahoo!, T1MSN and another sites but many of they didn't worked. 8 years later, in my class of Internet and Networking in the high school, knowed that was because the servers of many sites were in these towers.

I watched all the attack in TV, as A Nonny Moose says, essentially live. I suppose all America, from Alaska and Greenland to Argentina and Chile, watched the attacks in live TV.

At 13 hours I went to the school, at 17 hours all the school We all did honor to the flag and observe a minute of silence. Because most knew it and because it had a general idea of the disaster. At 19 hours I was in home watching the news with the family and watching the others channels added to the list -including a local channel of NY- because the attacks.

Recopilation of news when it happened, from Mexico and Chile.

MTv LA suspended transmissions.

Report with Joaquin Lopez Doriga, at the night.

  Edited September 11, 2011 by Alejandro24  

[Msprintz 25]

9/11 it's a date I'll never forget, and 2001 is a year I'll never forget as the 01'-02' school year was my senior year of high school. I was in English class when I first heard of an aircraft hitting the World Trade Center, from a fellow student who had just come back into the room a few seconds earlier. I don't think we completely comprehended what had just happened for at least a minute, that's how big of an event this apparently was. Living in central Nassau County a suburb of New York City these events hit fairly close to home so it was also fairly emotional for everyone taking these events in. For the rest of the school day a somber tone existed as news trickled out that the event was not just isolated to New York City, and that the Pentagon had been hit as well.

One other thing that I will also remember is that it was a perfectly clear day, and as a result you could see the smoke clearly from some of the taller structures nearby. As a result of our schools location next to a 13 story hospital many students actually had went up to the top floor for a glimpse of the smoke.

[guns_of_fire 3]

I remember being on the school bus on a clear blue day only a few clouds. Sun shining in, I was sitting quietly while everyone was chattering away excitedly, in my memory it would of been any "normal" day in Highland, IL. However that changed as soon as I popped into my first class. Our American History teacher came in the room with nervous excitement and told or English teacher to turn on CNN. We see the first tower burning and about 5 seconds later the second plane hit. At first I thought it was video footage of the first plane that crashed, at least until I heard the reporter saying " A second plane as hit the other tower, this is no accident. We are under attack." The next class Math, the teacher her TV on CNN, but the volume was turned off. However I was paying more attention to that than the math teacher. Few days later it hit me that I had watched people die on live television, it was an odd feeling.

I will remember the day the barbaric cowards killed 2,000 people who were just living their lives.

May God bless the victims and their families.

[Paulobergonci 673]

wow, great stories guys!

I wouldn't use the word "great". The whole thing sucked, big time. I had been in the Pentagon as a kid since my dad used to work there. It felt like a childhood friend had been attacked. (yeah, I know that sounds kinda weird but I have fond memories of being detained because I was in an allegedly secure area when I was 8 years old.)

But, yes, I know you didn't mean "great" in the good sense.

Yes, sorry, i used that word in the sense of "impressive stories".

[Easy Bakes 253]

I was at home preparing for work that day.

Someone called me about 7:30 AM and told me to turn on the news.

Just about in time to watch the 2nd plane Hit.

Later on i was stunned speechless when the 1st tower collapsed

exactly as if it was being demolished. then the next one collapsed.

my work canceled all our service calls that day,after it was determined the planes were hijacked and there may have been many more still in the air[we didnt know about the Pennsylvania plane yet at that point] they started evacuations of the larger buildings in the DFW area.

I watched TV coverage all day.

[Ocram's Razr 963]

I was on the bus when the news hit. I did not believe it. I was a couple days into 3rd grade, recently turned 10, and coping the loss of my grandfather. 9/11 made no change in my life that year. My parents divorced that year, I had first reconciliation and eucharist, nisqually earthquake was fun.

None of the bad news sunk in until 4th grade.

[Duke87 1,070]

I always find it interesting how people from some pretty far away places were affected.

This sort of thing always hits a little closer to home when it, well, happens closer to home. Around here everyone knows someone or knows someone who knows someone who was involved. My sister has a friend who lost her father that day. My mother has a friend whose husband came home late that night covered in dust and had his kids think he was a ghost. My uncle has a friend who worked at the World Trade Center but survived because she hadn't left for work yet when the first plane hit and when she saw that decided it was a good excuse to go back to sleep. My cousin's wife worked there but wasn't there that morning because she was taking her son to a doctor's appointment.

I saw the smoke rising from the site the following Saturday from Ferry Point Park in The Bronx. I visited the site that December while they were still clearing the rubble. I was in the construction site in 2008 and I've been around the site quite a few other times in the past decade. The Freedom Tower has now risen high enough to be a visible part of the skyline.

As for that day itself, I didn't find out until after the towers had collapsed. My 9th grade history class was interrupted by another teacher barging in and announcing the news (I will never forget the look on her face...). At that point work basically stopped and by noon they had sent us all home early.

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

And now the rather beautifully symbolic memorial is open to the public. Maybe it is time to stop all the breast beating and get on with life. NYC most certainly has. The population in the WTC area has doubled.

The ironic thing is the nose-thumbing construction of four buildings to replace the two. An example of the American way, I think.

[Paulobergonci 673]

i think there was 7 buildings in the WTC complex, and all them were destroyed.

[airman15 4,111]

The ironic thing is the nose-thumbing construction of four buildings to replace the two. An example of the American way, I think.

There were 7 buildings in the original complex. There was a hotel that sat between the twin towers, 3 smaller office buildings on the 16 acre lot and there was a 7th building across the street to the north:

That means the WTC lost 3 buildings and the other 4 were replaced by hideously (at least in my opinion) planned structures.

  Edited September 14, 2011 by usfighter15  

[A Nonny Moose 8,261]

Being an outside observer as most of us in other countries are, what I see now is three tall buildings replacing two, plus a shorter structure, a museum, the memorial, and a huge transit nexus. Three, four, five, six, seven. Even, I guess. I tend to agree that an opportunity was lost to build nicer buildings, the present ones being rather ordinary and Bauhaus, but at least the entry to the museum shows some originality, and the transit nexus will probably rival the Moscow subway in sheer, overwhelming opulence. The memorial with its symbolism is breath taking. Too bad about the towers. I sympathize.

I downloaded the newly completed BAT yesterday, and have a pretty good feel for what will be there in the end. I also tested the ploppable version and found some deficiencies that I reported on the BAT thread. They are minor, but effectively this version is currently eye-candy. nycc06 should get a Trixie for this.

  Edited September 14, 2011 by A Nonny Moose  

[BlondeTwiggy 43]

I was in 5th grade, and some guy in our class was like "Did you hear about the twin towers?" and he kept talking about planes...I had no idea what the twin towers were so I was confused...our teacher got information that confirmed his report... I remember being afraid and wondering if they would bomb Indiana.. lol

then I went to my grandma's and watched the news for hours.. i remember they just kept playing and replaying that video of the plane crashing into the tower..

[IDS2 3,344]

I was in 1st grade, waiting at the bus stop, and some older kid (5th grade or so) came out and told us all that the towers had fallen. I didn't know what terrorists were at the time and I thought everyone was saying tourists had knocked them down. When I got to school all the TVs were on and everyone was asking about it but all the teachers tried to hide it from us. I remember about half the kids being pulled out of school by their parents, and when i came home my mom was crying. Weird stuff...