As it happened...Sept 11 on SDMB

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
81

When I heard about the first plane, I assumed it was a GA aircraft – some pilot who wasn’t looking where he was going. When the second plane hit – and I saw it on TV, as I was just hanging out before getting ready for work – I made the first reply to that thread. I suspected terrorism then.

Though I was living in L.A., the attacks directly affected me. I’d been a fairly active pilot After the attacks, the nation’s airspace was closed; and it remained closed in the L.A. area longer than in most of the country. When the airspace was finally opened months later, there were other things going on that kept me on the ground. Of course the economy suffered, and there were layoffs at my office. Two years later I was jobless, and had a brand new mortgage in another state. No money to fly with. I’m going to have to spend at least 20 hours and thousands of dollars before I can get current again.

As for The Day itself, it was surreal. My office was probably like every other workplace around the country, with people unable to fully focus on the job.

82

My elderly mother was living with me at the time. I had been up all night working on a project, and didn’t get to sleep until about 6 am. I got a few hours of sleep, before hearing my mother calling me to come down and see what’s on tv. She never did that, so I knew it must be important. I came down just in time to see the second plane hit.

I had lived in NYC for 25 years, and I knew that two friends of mine worked at Cantor Fitzgerald . . . but had no idea whether they were at work at the time. It took several days before confirming that, yes, they were at work that morning . . . at the top floor of the north tower. They didn’t have a chance.

83

What I remember was when the guy who sat next to me in history class (I was a senior in college), and told me he thought that he had heard something about the U.N. building being bombed, or something like that. We both just kind of shrugged it off as a stupid rumor.
I’ll NEVER forget that. I don’t think I’ll ever get over how creepy that was.

Right after class, I went straight to the library to study (in the quiet area), and didn’t find out until I called home about two hours later. And then when I came home, naturally I turned on the news, and got online.
(BTW, this may seem like a stupid question -but why the Trade Centers specifically? Why NOT go for the U.N.? Or go all in Washington exclusively?)

84

Total speculation:
[ul][li]They’re big. Easier to hit than a lot of other targets;[/li][li]They had thousands of people working in them, for maximum casualties;[/li][li]Large, concentrated Jewish population in NYC;[/li][*]Hitting government building would be devastating; but people could say that they don’t work for the government or near a capital. By hitting the WTC, terror could be instilled in anyone, anywhere in the country.[/ul]

85

I would have guessed that hitting the U.N. would have killed diplomats from LOTS of countries. If that had happened, the other countries wouldn’t have bailed out so soon, there would have been more pooling of intelligence, etc.

86

All these accounts are fascinating and heartbreaking. Every single one of them.

I was a freshman in high school at the time. I’d just walked into my US Government class, and saw that my teacher had turned the TV on for unrelated reasons (we were going to be watching a film that day). I saw the north tower burning and thought “wow…they bombed the World Trade Center again?” My second thought was that it was an awfully awkward place to put a bomb. (I was, and still am, a morbid kid.)

A few minutes later, when I saw the second plane hitting the south tower, I thought they were showing earlier footage of the plane that had hit the north tower. When it finally dawned on me that I was actually watching live footage of a second plane hitting the WTC, I got chills. I felt very numb the rest of the day.

And unlike a lot of others in here, I actually had class that day. My teachers all tried their darndest to take our minds off of what was happening on TV, with varying degrees of success. My sister was surprised that I actually had homework.

When my family said grace around the dinner table that night, my dad added “…and we ask for your blessing on those who were murdered today.” His use of the word “murdered” gave me chills all over again.

When I saw the paper the next morning, I remember seeing the cover photo on the front page (captured at the very moment the second plane hit the south tower), and thinking that it was horrific, but strangely beautiful at the same time.

Some things I was thinking about today: I work at the Titanic artifact exhibition. After I discussed September 11th with my boyfriend today, it dawned on me that this will probably be a museum exhibit as well, someday. It’d be full of dust-covered items from the WTC, and possibly pieces of the towers themselves. It’s actually quite eerie to think about, and I hope it doesn’t happen until I’m either deceased, or a very old lady.

Another thing was that the pictures from Ground Zero reminded me very much of footage from a war-torn country–ANY war-torn country. It made me think of how easily the United States could become one of these countries. This thought in particular hit home very hard. :frowning:

87

As for why not the UN; I expect it was because they were angry at the US not the UN. Or at least, angrier. As for why the WTC; because it was symbolic of what this country stands for; commerce. Like killing the Queen of England, blowing up the Kaaba in Mecca or bombing the Vatican would be; a strike at a symbol of the nation or religion. And one certain to get the violent reaction they wanted.

88

I recall being at work in downtown DC that day, and I think it was just people trying to make sense out of what was going on, in part because the phone and Internet connections were bogged down due to traffic…any little bit of info that people could get was passed to the entire office. We could see the smoke from the Pentagon and I remember distinctly that there were rumors (maybe even reported on the radio?) that the USA Today building was burning, that there were fires on the national Mall, etc.

There was really so much smoke…maybe the rumors were partly because the smoke appeared to be coming from other places depending on your vantage point.

89

My first thought after the first plane hit (which I didn’t see live) was “What a terrible accident and may their deaths have been mercifully quick”. I didn’t know it was a large commercial airliner. I presumed it was a small plane, and the pilot had a heart attack kind of thing. Or maybe a jet that badly malfuntioned.

My first thought after the second plane hit (which I did see live) was “Dear God, none of this is an accident, is it?”

90

I was getting ready to go running when we heard that a plane had crashed into the WTC. My husband (who is a small aircraft pilot) said he thought it was probably a Cessna or similar. We reassured our 2 older (but 11 and 9) and sent them off to catch the bus.
I went running after the second tower went down. I went because I was about to jump out of my skin and I thought it would calm me down. The kids were in school and at preschool (the 3 year old). While I was running, I overheard some people in the park talking about the Pentagon and bombs or fire. I thought then “my god, this is how stories get so inflated. There is a tragedy in NYC and now it has to involve the US Government.”
I got home to realize that it wasn’t a fish story at all. The weirdest thing for me was the empty skies. Living near 2 extremely busy airports, I am used to seeing jet planes in the air day and night. Now there was only silence and blue sky. Time and space seemed to expand and stretch–it was like we were all suspended in slow motion for a few days. I also remember being glued to the TV and hoping against hope that Bush et al wouldn’t use this as an excuse to further their aggression. :frowning: My sister lost most of her friends from the New York office that day.

91

That day blew. I can only be happy that I was especially-poorly supervised that day. Well, that, and since I was friends with Vix, that she survived.

92

I didn’t hear about it till I got to work, and initially thought it was a couple of nutjobs in Cessnas, making a suicidal statement. Then I started watching the news in the breakroom…

The moments that still stand out for me (besides the biggies, of course) are when I first saw the burning towers and thought “If this were a movie I’d roll my eyes and say what a ridiculous plot it was,” and when when Bush first made a statement. My immediate reaction to seeing him was, “I wish Clinton were still the president. I’d feel so much safer.”

And the other powerful one was watching coverage later that evening, and they were interviewing an ER doctor. He looked exhausted, even though he said they didn’t have the flood of patients they expected to. Then he started talking about a woman who came in looking for her brother. She said she was going from hospital to hospital trying to find him. And the doctor started crying as he described it. It just struck me how overwhelming it must be for a NYC emergency doctor to break down.

93

When I went to see Fahrenheit 911 I was assuming they would show the footage and was actually steeling myself to finally see all of it (the part in The Barbarian Invasions was the one plane hitting only). When Fahrenheit 911 had just the audio, I realized how powerful that was–people must have seen it so many times that just hearing the audio would produce the images in their minds anyway.