Thanks for posting this, Annie-Xmas. The SDMB and that thread were a lot of my experience of 9/11, since I was stuck at work with no TV or radio and every news website was bogged down.
Never forget.
I will never forget that thread.
Today I had lunch with someone who had a 9am appointment at the WTC that day. Being the lazy musician that she is, she changed it to 3pm so she could sleep in until noon.
Someone I went to HS with was supposed to be on one of the flights. (Didn’t learn this until today)
Wow, I’m glad that he missed it!
When I was in college I always said hi to a nice Japanese guy who had his guitar lessons right after mine. I heard that he was a really great guy.
Right after he graduated, he flew back home, on Korean Airlines flight 007. 
This was a shocking read. I was 14 when the towers were hit, and the full impact of the idea that terrorists were attacking the US never really took hold. I was certainly old enough to understand what was happening, but my life at that point was more about getting good grades and flirting with boys than following the news.
Reading the thoughts of fellow Dopers as it happened, from my now-adult perspective, hit home in a way that nothing else has, and gave the event a new significance in my mind. Thank you so much for posting the link.
I saw a guy in church on Sunday. His brother died in the WTC disaster. He worked on a floor above where the plane hit, and so couldn’t get down. Before the collapse he managed to contact his brother here by phone, and they talked.
Technology can be creepy.
Man…that day was so surreal. I just rewatched the Kevin Cosgrove phone call video. How sad. My interpretation of events was a bit weird as I learned of the attacks on my hour commute to work while listening to the Howard Stern show. Of course at first I thought it was all some big gag…and it was strange hearing Howard get all serious and trying to let listeners know it was no joke.
What a day.
Out of all of the horrors that day. The Kevin Cosgrove audio was the most chilling for me. The desperation in his voice, trapped up there with two other people. Then the end of the audio sounding like a wind tunnel picking up speed as the floor gave way beneath him, and his last haunting words. I’ll never forget who Kevin Cosgrove was, the sound of his voice, the accent.
Horrible day.
I’ll never forget that thread, either - reading here about things that were happening in New York as they were happening really brought home the power of the internet to me. We were woken up on a holiday day by the clock radio alarm accidentally left on - we spent the day after that glued to the tv and the internet.
The narrative of my experiences during the attack and the following day. I re-posted it most years, maybe all years, here since 9/11. Quite a few Dopers on the day were worried about it, it was a source of genuine warmth and I have always been very grateful that they were looking out for word from me.
Not for the first time, I wound up in the very room where I was setting up the oxygen trees on September 11th, 2001. I took some time here and there to close my eyes and think about what was there, what was done. A hard day, a sad day filled with memories.
Driving over the 59th St Bridge last night with my Dearly Beloved we looked out the side window. There were the beautiful evocative and utterly appropriate twin beams of light, leaping up into the heavens.
I spoke to Omar a few months ago. He entirely changed his life after the attacks. He left a highly successful career as a surgeon and joined the US Army. He served several tours of duty as a military surgeon and now trains others in surgery performed on the front or near the front. The conversation was quite upsetting actually. He’s filled with rage over the attacks, over what he has done and will do. His anger fuels his focus, drives his commitment to a military life. And is frightening to listen to.
Somehow I’ve never heard of Kevin Cosgrove. So I found the link to the call. It took me a while to get up the nerve to listen.
Damn, the way he screams at the end, and then the sound cuts off.
Looking at a Wikipedia article I noticed his birthday. He was born just six days after I was. I’m the age he should be now.
I feel sorry for the 911 operator as well. She kept her voice calm, while it was probably tearing her up inside, and knowing there was nothing she could really do for him.
Just read it, for the 10th time.
I listened for the first time as well. Utterly haunting.
The thing about that video/phone call that strikes me most, aside from his last moments, is just how utterly human Kevin was, how New York-cynical. He and his two compatriots are clinging to life, trying to breathe fresh air from the busted building or window while the billowing black smoke conspires to choke them, and at one point, we get that exchange that goes something like:
“Please relax sir, save your air. Help is on the way.”
“Easy for you to say lady, from your air-conditioned office building”
Which of course, the WTC was, not long before. Its just…remarkable in some way I cannot define properly.
I don’t know, maybe its me. Knowing aforehand that he’s going to die just makes that conversation so…real. Well…because it was. I sound stupid here, but there’s something to this…can’t put my finger on it.
Add that to the fact that there were how many firefighters trudging up the stairwells in an attempt to rescue Kevin and others like him that were trapped above the fire when the buildings collapsed…its eerie.
I remember that thready very well - it was how I found out what was actually happening on that day. Every online news outlet I tried to check was down (too much traffic), and since I was at work, I didn’t initially have much access to TV or radio. (That changed later during the day, when the TV our lab used for educational videos was finally turned on to CNN so the employees could watch as they worked.)
In reading the original thread, I noticed how many things were reported as fact that we now know NOT to be true. It’s not surprising that in “the fog of war” things get garbled, exaggerated or simply mis-reported, but this is the kind of stuff that conspiracy theorists latch on to.
Thanks for the link. Really brought back some somber memories.
Actually for a while there wasn’t much TV or radio coming out of New York anyway. When the towers collapsed, they took most of the City’s most powerful tv & radio broadcasting equipment with them. Only a few major networks had backup transmitters on the top of the Empire State Building. This this report filed on September 12, 2001, itemizes the damage.
You have clearly articulated the reason I wrote the Narrative. I did not want my long-term memories to be a mélange of my experiences, t.v. reports, magazine articles and stories told to me.
I needed the entire thing to be what I did, saw and heard and experienced. And so it is.
I wrote the bullet points around 2 am on Sept 13th, 2001. I wrote the entire narrative on September 14th, 2001.