Wow. I wonder if you were the only person in the western hemisphere not to see it – about eleventy bajillion times – that day. It was really hard to avoid.
I’m pretty impressed that one poster very early on said it looked like Bin Laden’s handiwork.
At the time, I was working for J&R Music World, a block away from the World Trade Center. I was there when the towers came down.
Zev Steinhardt
Just how loud was it a block away? Like a freight train? Jackhammer?
When I saw the video of the second plane hitting I had the screwiest thought, “that big fireball coming out the other side looks just like they do it in the movies.”
I still have both major threads bookmarked.
It was a very loud, low rumbling noise… with vibrations. I was able to feel the towers crumbling.
Zev Steinhardt
My thoughts ran to the book The Running Man by Stephen King, first published under the pseudonym Richard Bachman, which ends with our hero overtaking and killing the crew of a big jet, like an SR-71 Blackbird, and flying it into the evil corporation’s tower – thinking about how much fuel is left in the tanks.
I kept thinking that scale and type of the attack was straight out comic book villainy. It was very surreal and patently and hugely historic.
I remember thinking that watching the Berlin wall come down was no longer my generation’s Big Historical Moment.
Lastly, and weirdly, the following crossed my mind:
What the hell is The Daily Show going to do? They can’t joke anymore.
When Jon Stewart did return to the air, he gave a very moving and heartfelt speech.
Right. I was watching live TV while putting my shoes on to go to work (I live in Virginia). They were showing the first tower burning, and speculating about accident or terrorism or whatever, when the second plane struck the other tower while I was watching. I knew instantly when the second plane entered the frame that it was going to hit and that it was absolutely terrorism. I don’t understand how anybody could have been confused after that.
The reason for reports of fires and explosions in Washington, DC is because there were fires and explosions at the Pentagon – and everyone always assumes the Pentagon is in DC (it isn’t, it’s across the river in Virginia). I work in DC, and get lots of calls for the Pentagon from callers who can’t believe they really have to dial a Virginia area code to get the Pentagon exchange, even after Pentagon officials actually give them the correct phone numbers.
As successive reports came in, the damage got worse and worse and we didn’t know how bad it was going to get or when it would stop. The sense of a series of blows following one after another was very strong.
One thing I recall about that day is rumors that yet another plane had taken out the FAA control center in Leesburg, Virginia. National news broadcasts eventually phoned Leesburg and got in touch with the small-town sheriff, who laconically said the FAA control center was unharmed, and advised everyone to remain calm.
At this time the President’s and Vice President’s whereabouts were unknown, and for a few minutes, the only person who seemed to know something real and seemed to offer comfort to the people of the United States was the sheriff of Leesburg, and we clung to his words.
That was a very surreal day.
I was on the west coast, living in Seattle at the time, pregnant with Whatsit Jr. My mom called and woke me up around 6:30 am my time - so I guess after the second plane hit the tower. She told me to turn the TV on, and it really took me quite some time to process what was going on. I was thinking, wow, something hit the World Trade Center hard, and then I saw that both towers appeared to be smoking, and I spent quite some time trying to figure out what sort of plane could hit one tower and then go straight through it and into the other one like that. It made more sense once I realized that the news reporters were saying there had been two planes, but then it took me additional time to process the fact that this clearly meant it had been done on purpose.
We watched the towers fall on live television. My mom didn’t want me to go to work because she thought that maybe the terrorists would try to bomb Microsoft (sounds silly now, but that day nothing seemed too outlandish - a friend of mine in Chicago told me it was a very eerie feeling that day, driving past the Sears Tower) but I went to work anyway. I wish I hadn’t. I got nothing done.
Thanks for posting the link, ivylass. I reread that thread, and Cartooniverse’s thread, every year.
I was on my way to the gym when my wife called to tell me about the first plane. My first though was that it was an accident, just like the B-52 that crashed into the Empire State Building in '45. Then, when I got to the gym, she called to tell me that another one had crashed as well… and my first thought was that someone had been trying to get a closer look at the first crash, and had crashed into the buildings as well.
I suppose I was in denial.
I spent the rest of the day following the news and arranging for a trip to go donate blood. The place filled up, though- I wasn’t able to give blood for another week or so.
The weather that day was awesome. For the next several weeks it remained every bit as awesome. And every night I had to be somewhere such that I’d spend some time at a bus stop looking at a nearby skyscraper. And every single time I couldn’t help but imagine a jet flying into it. I knew it was irrational, but the fear was there anyway.
Not long after was the anthrax scare, and I remember seeing people on buses wearing gas masks.
It was a very strange time.
My friend who lives and works in The Bronx reported a tank rolling down the street. Very strange.
I was in Barcelona, on vacation with my parents. We went to the Gaudi cathedral. The attacks had already happened, but we were on vacation. We weren’t watching the news, or anything. I remember as we walked to the cathedral, I overheard someone saying something about an attack on the Pentagon, and I thought they were talking about some sort of conspiracy theory or something.
We get to the cathedral, which was still under construction. Some parts of it were open to the public - in particular, the spires. It was Summer, and the place was packed. I’m halfway up the tower, and the crowd and the narrow passage got to me in a big way. I’m not normally claustrophobic, but I was close to freaking out in a big way. I managed to get out and back down to the ground, and I’m shaky and miserable, and basically just want my mom. I see her walking up to me across the plaza, and before I can say anything, she says, “There’s been a terrorist attack in New York. They blew up the World Trade Center. We have to go back to the hotel.” And my first thought was, “To hell with the WTC! What about me?!”
By the time we got back to the hotel, I think both towers had already come down. We watched for a few hours and emptied the minibar in my parent’s room. I don’t really remember much about the rest of the day.
B-25, just to clarify (probably just a typo). A B-52 would have made a bigger bang, had one even existed in '45.
Yeah, some of the corollary things that happened were surreal - no flights for days afterwards, the stock market crashing hard, and the job market drying up were just a few (I was looking for temp work at the time, and there was NOTHING. There’s never nothing in the temp world.)
Huh. Even as I was typing that, I knew it sounded wrong. Thanks.
I was driving to work and was hearing about the first plane on the radio and there weren’t a lot of details. I was thinking then it was a small plane and that it was a terrible accident. I also remember thinking that was odd because it was such a beautiful clear sunny day.
Then, I stopped for gas and when I went inside to pay the men who worked there were all transfixed, watching CNN. They told me another plane had just hit and it was instantly clear to me it was terrorism.
I heard about the first tower driving to work, and they started talking about the second tower just as I was turning onto the street to get to my office. As soon as I got to my desk I hit cnn.com and my phone rang and it was my husband and all he said was “Holy shit.”
By about 10:30 or so, I don’t remember, they decided that we were going to put out an extra. I’d been at the paper 22 years and we hadn’t ever put out an extra before, and I don’t think we’d had one in years before that, probably since the Kennedy assassination. Maybe Kent State.
All the TVs in the newsroom were turned on, and we just kept having to see it over and over. I volunteered to do anything that was needed, and was given four jobs to do simultaneously: Answer the newsroom phone, which mostly just consisted of saying, “Yes, it’s true,” over and over; transcribe some stuff that people were calling in from the field; look for relevant stories on the wire (I found the first comparison to Pearl Harbor, and one of our columnists used it); and try to research information about the physical structure of the Twin Towers. I think we had the extra on the streets by 2 p.m., and it was sold out by end of day.
The faxes kept rolling in, mostly with notices of community events and meetings that had been canceled. Classes canceled, concerts canceled, plays canceled. People faxing us letters to the editor, enraged and grieving. I remember one brave little fax from a tiny suburb announcing that their council meeting would be held, dammit.
Being busy was a very good thing to be that day.
My parents were in Italy. I tried to call their hotel to see if they were OK – why I thought they might be in danger I have no idea – and got nothing but busy signals.
They were scheduled to fly home on the 12th, but were forced to stay another week.
Ha. “Forced.”
Actually, we broke for lunch at about 11-11:30-ish. As mentioned…
“Haven’t you guys heard?!” she whispered, “It happened just a little while ago; someone flew a plane into the World Trade Center in New York. On purpose.”
The serious shit had already happened, we just hadn’t heard about it.