Let's talk about 9/11
DjArcadian
3,630 Posts
Where were you when it happened or when you found out? I was dead beat tired at the time, woke up and jumped in my car and was greeted at work with "Did you hear what happened?". I said no. I usually listen to the radio when driving to work but didn't that day. My co-worker shows me some news webpage (MSN.com I think) and it shows a picture of one of the planes hitting the towers. My first thought was someone hacked the site and put some movie pic up with a bogus story or my co-worker was pulling my leg. I sat at my office all day with hardly a single call coming in. Felt eerie and from that day forward my business was pretty much sunk as I worked in a travel related business.
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I was getting ready to go to my Global Political Economy class, when my roommates girlfriend told me and we all stood around the TV in silence as the second plane hit. I still went to my class and the professor basically broke it all down for us. He even made a reference to Iraq, when someone in the class asked if Iraq had anything to do with it he said, probably not, but they will probably pay for it.
My brother was working directly across the street at Merrill Lynch and one of my best friends was on the 10th floor of one of the towers working for the NYSE. It was a couple of hours before we could ascertain whether they were OK.
My brother got trapped inside the Merrill Lynch office with Giuliani and Kerick who were using it as an impromptu "command center". His wife - who works for the EPA a few blocks away (and still has nightmares about having seen people jumping out of the towers) wasn't able to contact him for hours. He made it out ok, just coated in debris.
My buddy inside the towers actually came downstairs and evacuated the area right after the second plane hit, well before either tower collapsed. He and some of his coworkers walked over in the direction of Chinatown.
It was a pretty frightening morning but fortunately for our families, everyone was safe.
I remember it was around 6:00 a.m (PST) and I was getting ready to go do some training with the rest of my unit. Normally, we would congregrate around the duty desk because there was a TV at the desk. One thing that I vividly remember was that everyone was silent (I knew something was up) and staring at the television. I asked someone what was happening and the guy told me a plane crashed into the WTC. If my memory serves me correct, I hung around long enough to hear about the second plane crashing into the other tower.
Well, we didn't train that day. As a matter of fact, we were locked down on post. Shit was bizarre. I walked around the block and there were soldiers posted on the corners with their weapons (something that you'll never see on a military installation). I had to pull duty that night and one of jobs that I had to do was to check for anything suspicious.
I was bugging out, thinking someone would plant a bomb somewhere near our barracks...
That was one of the longest days ever.
btb
This country still hasn't begun to deal with what happened that day.
What do DC folks have to say about 9/11?
I remember driving past the Pentagon about a month and a half after 9/11.
To see it on TV is one thing but when you see it up close...it has more of an impact.
My uncle was in the rear parking lot of the Pentagon when it was hit. It wierds me out how vague he was when he described it. Really all he said was that "it was loud." I was in college at the time but I heard from friends at home about what they saw. More and more, the following video has been on my mind:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7866929448192753501
The company I had just begun to work for in SF lost ~350 people that day. Including people I had just spoken to a few days prior. They occupied the floors just below Cantor-Fitzgerald and second most deaths. Only the lowest floors were even able to escape, some entire floors were incinerated immediately. Things were very very tough at work for the next year or so.
One that caught my attention was the memo/pamphlet that was published in Sept. 2000, which discussed transformation in the 20th century.
It should be of note that the U.S Army started there 'transformation' in 2000.
started out as a great day
getting records ready to carry up to nyc for another
monthly trip to nyc
i loved going to that stupid third saturday show
being in a great city
meeting so many interesting, fun & nice people
going to les after the fair & hanging at jammyland & wutang school
as usual , cnn was keeping me company when the news broke about
the wtc was on fire
my first selfish thoughts were about
"would this effect biz"
then
i remembered my buddy barry (soul candy)'s girl
worked the front desk at wtc
it started to sink in
many people i knew from my monthly trips
were in trouble
then that second plane hit
while i watched helplessly
that was it
things were never going to be the same
then something happened a few miles down street........
barry's girl had the late am shift, so she was safe in the bronx,
some people that i would see semi regular in nyc
never came back (wtc,economics,wtf?)
other foreign nationals went back home to europe,s.a., africa
I had just got off the treadmill, and was gettin' ready to hit the shower to get ready for work. I was watching "Today" on NBC when the first strike on the WTC was announced. Initially, I remember thinking that pilot error caused the strike, but then, a second plane hit the WTC and I knew it was deliberate. I remember calling my wife at work to tell her what happened. It was surreal to watch two planes hit the WTC just minutes apart. I was shaken up by what happened, very distracted in my work that day. When class begins today, I'll definitely say some words in rememberance and respect to those lost that day. My heart goes out to all of those who lost someone on 9/ll, and to all the souls lost. Evil NEVER begets good!!!
Peace,
Big Stacks from Kakalak
When the first plane hit someone came into the room to tell us the news.
One of the visitors from Jersey had a brother who worked at WTC.
We found a TV and set it up in the room.....the meeting was effectively over and we spent the rest of the morning watching, numb and in shock.
Watching the dude from Jersey trying to contact family and get news on his brother was gut wrenching
He rented a car and drove home that night.....we found out a few days later that his brother had been a victim.
Well, I parked myself in front of the TV and that's where I remained all day long. My professor cancelled class that day (it was a journalism class) and said that it was more important to watch how the media would cover what happened. It was haunting to hear the survivors call in and tell their stories. And some people who saw the 4th plane go down called they said that they saw what looked like another plane in the area before it went down (implying that it was shot down). That was the only time I heard that as a possibility.
I remember going to work the next day and how eerily calm everything was. I managed a video store and was there with my boss - he told me he was glad I came in only because he was so unmotivated and having someone else around helped.
It's hard to believe that it's been 5 years already.
Yeah. I got a call from my sister and turned on the TV. We just sat there in shock. I remember having the "I dont get it" feeling the whole time. I couldn't seem to comprehend what I was looking at. I remember wondering who was doing it. That was really weird... we were being attacked and we didn't even know by who at first...
I'm in Korea right now. Things have been so busy and I haven't had any internet access so I didn't even realize yesterday was 9-11. we were in a family member's car and they said it was the anniversery of 9-11 over the radio. They radio guy talked about it a little bit. It was in Korean, so I couldn't really follow the whole thing, but basically he was saying what a tragedy it was. Then he played Marvin Gaye, Whats Goin On. Can you beleive that? Korean radio station. Our Korean aunt and uncle that were driving us turned around and asked us what it was like. We said it was scary.
It was kind of weird not being in america yesterday. the interesting thing is, there is no shortage of bad feelings towards the US Govt here in korea, but people still know that 9-11 was fucked up, and seem genuinely sympathetic.
I still can't get my head around 9-11.
I didn't have any personal ties to anyone in the area, but obviously human empathy begins to take over and you feel helpless and hurt for the people who were there, or people who had family and friends there. Soon after, the towers collapsed and an already dire situation was made unimagineably worse. It's eerie how you feel this sense of "this just can't be happeneing" in times like that. It's almost as if you can't fully cope with the situation and you resort to simple "no I don't believe it" denial. Not literally, obviously, but it was IMPOSSIBLE to wrap my head around the whole chain of events. Why would this happen?? HOW did this happen?? Who's behind it? What does this mean for the future??? It instantly created a million questions - most of which had no answers.
All I knew was that the world was going to change.
One thing is for sure - it doesn't feel like 5 years ago.