I just want to add that the only other message board I visit regularly is Talking Broadway’s All That Chat. They have a very strict policy that the only topic of discussion on the board is theatre or theatre-related. The only exception in the ten year history of the boards was the events of 9/11/2001
I was at work, employed by a Top Ten defense contractor. I went about my business until time to go to a class at the local university, and I hid my ID card for the first time ever.
When I got to the parking lot at school, the first tower collapsed. When I gotr out of class, I heard the second one had fallen, too. I went home instead of back to work so I could call in to find out if we were still open for the day (yes), then I went back and worked as usual,
The next day I had class, not only did I prominently wear my ID, but I also had on other items to radiate that I was pissed off about it, and don’t cross my path.
I was across West Street, at work in the World Financial Center. After the first plane struck, there was a ton of confusion, and the scene on the street was horrific (couldn’t tell much from our windows - even though they faced the Towers, we were on the ninth floor and everything was too far above). Flipping through news channels, NPR had the best immediate reporting. After the second plane hit, we evacuated. As I was making my way by foot to midtown, I saw the damage to the towers (amongst other things). Not being an engineer, I thought the top of the South Tower was going to sheer off and fall. I was well enough on my way by the time of the first collapse. I heard the noise, but my view was blocked. When I got to my wife’s office, I found out what had happened, but not the full ‘how’ (still thought it was the just the top). We left her office, and heard about the second tower in the streets. My thoughts were similar to what I thought happened to the first tower. It wasn’t until they reopened the 59th Street bridge to foot traffic that I could get a clear look downtown to see what had happened. Got home, watched the news for maybe an hour, then switched on Nickelodeon or some other happy, brain-sapping network to try and calm my nerves.
While I had been lurking these boards for a bit, all the outright erroneous information about what was going on locally finally prompted me to sign up two months later.
I was working at USPS HQ in L’Enfant Plaza, DC, about 3 blocks south of The Mall. I was in my cubicle working, when one of my coworkers said “Hey, a plane has hit the WTC” I thought “What a dumbass!”, then a couple of minutes later, my coworker said “A plane has hit the other tower”. That’s when I knew it was a terrorist attack.
A few minutes later, (by this time, we were all gathered around my coworker’s computer as he was surfing for the latest news, then we all saw that a plane had just hit the Pentagon. That’s when I said “Fuck it, I’m outta here!” To be honest, I was more worried about getting tied up in traffic than getting harmed. So as me and a couple of coworkers hightailed it out to my car, the announcement came over the P.A. (which is only used in emergencies or very important announcements) came on saying you could leave if you wanted.
We walked over the overpass over the SE/SW freeway, where you could see the Pentagon burning across the river. We got in my car and, knowing the 14th St. Bridge would be screwed, we went south on 295 to the Wilson Bridge and made our way to Arlington (where me and a couple of my coworkers lived). It took about 90 minutes to get home. As I was dropping one of my coworkers off, we saw a couple of fighter jets scream by.
When I got home, my wife had left a couple of frantic messages. She was teaching at TJHSST out in Fairfax County and had to be there for her students, some of whom had parents working in the Pentagon. She took a break to pick up my son at the babysitter’s and I took him home with me, watched CNN, and called my folks to let them know we were fine.
Pretty hectic and stressful, but nothing compared to what New Yorkers went through.
Similar experience to that.
When the Pentagon was hit, I went to the rooftop of the building I did site work at at the Washington Navy Yard and watched the smoke rise over Arlington. Sirens were wailing all over the place, and they closed the base gates instantly - everything was at full alert.
My wife called - she worked in Alexandria, and we normally carpooled. I told her to go home. She was begging me to leave too, and I told her I couldn’t. I tried to make her understand that I physically couldn’t, but in her state of mind that didn’t sink in. She was pissed off at me for a while over that.
They let people leave the base in mid-afternoon, and I caught a ride home with a friend. My office was actually in Crystal City, right across the highway from the Pentagon, and they had to shut the ventilation system down for the building that day because the building filled with smoke from the fire.
I went to work two days later, and I could still smell the smoke. It took a long time to go away.
I was on hold, on the phone, waiting to speak to the assistant crown attorney. Since his hold music was always the radio, at first I thought I was listening to some radio play (CBC has those, ya know.) My first thought was: “Is this some kind of remake of War of the Worlds?”
Since I was sitting on the department computer lab, I loaded up CNN (before it crashed).
That’s when I realized what was going on. Our building was shut down since we were across the street from the National Defense HQ in Ottawa. A good chunk of downtown was shut down because of the proximity of the US Embassy (it’s STILL a pain in the ass given how close it is to the actual street… GAH!)
I went home, checked up on NYC and Pentagon friends and passed on messages of “they’re safe, they just can’t call” to their families for them, then went off to the dog park. It felt a little unreal, to be sure… and my major concern was that when the mouse bites the elephant in the shin, the elephant starts to do a major amount of stomping around without looking at what it’s stomping on… and not really caring about the collateral damage.
I don’t want to throw this into a big, big debate, but it wasn’t just the elephant that was bitten on the shin that day. Twenty-four Canadians died just on 9/11 alone, not to mention the ones that were victims in other terror attacks.
Which is why your government chose to send troops to Afghanistan as well, right?
I was attending a trade show in Chicago, and my family was visiting friends in Kansas City (we live in Atlanta). I’d been at the show since the previous Friday, and had pretty much covered everything I’d planned to do. I had plans to meet a potential partner in their booth at 11, but otherwise didn’t have any reason to be there that morning, so I’d slept in a bit. Didn’t turn on the TV in the hotel room for a while after I did get up, so it was just before 9 am CDT – 10 am EDT – before I did. I was just in time to catch the breaking news that in addition to the WTC planes, a plane had just crashed into the Pentagon. I just sat down on the end of the bed facing the TV and stayed there. Was still there about 10 minutes later when the south tower went, and nearly a half hour later when the second tower went down.
At the time, news was still coming in every few minutes – the Harrisburg plane had gone down by then, but I don’t think that was clear yet – and no one had any idea how widespread the attacks might be. I was in the Marriott on State Street in downtown Chicago, and it was far from clear that the Sears Tower, or even the McCormick Center where the trade show was being held, wouldn’t become a target as well. But I didn’t have anyplace else to go, so I stayed where I was for a while. Eventually, a couple of hours later, it seemed unlikely that there’d be more attacks, since all of the planes were on the ground, so I got dressed and headed down to McCormick. There were almost no attendees anywhere – most of the people on the floor were vendor personnel who’d arrived to work the booths before the attacks started, or at least before they heard about them. Many of the booths had large LCD or plasma displays for showing product videos – all of them had been tuned to news channels. So the few of us who weren’t actually tied to a booth just wandered up and down the aisles, checking in with friends from other companies, etc. It was really kind of eerie, as everyone was still a least a little concerned that there might be other attacks, and that Chicago might be a target yet.
Of course, I’d called my wife not long after I turned on the TV in the hotel, but there wasn’t a lot either of us could say or do. I’d been scheduled to fly from Chicago to Kansas City to meet up with my family on Wednesday, 9/12, but it became obvious fairly soon that that wasn’t going to happen. It also wasn’t clear whether planes would be flying again by the time we were scheduled to return to Atlanta from KC on Sunday. I was at the show with a co-worker from Atlanta, and he made plans to drive back with some other Atlantans he knew, sharing a rental car one of them had the prescience to reserve immediately after the second plane crash. It wasn’t until several hours later that I determined that my flights were definitely canceled and that I’d have to get there by other means. Rental cars were all gone by that time, and there were very limited (and expensive) Amtrak tickets available for Chicago to KC. So I decided to sit tight for a while.
Spent Wednesday holed up in the hotel for the most part (they willingly extended my stay, since few of their incoming guests for Wednesday/Thursday had been able to get into Chicago), except for a trip down the street to the Borders store on Michigan Ave. Seemed weird to be shopping, but I needed more reading and listening material. If I’d had a little more foresight I’d have grabbed some more CDs while I had access to a decent selection.
By Thursday afternoon, Hertz began to have some rental cars available at their downtown location from people who’d rented them elsewhere in order to get home to Chicago. I was willing to take pretty much anything they had, but when offered a choice between a Crown Vic and a compact I took the Crown Vic, reasoning that I might have to drive Chicago to KC to Atlanta in it, with my wife and two kids along for the KC to Atlanta part. I checked out of the hotel about 6 pm and hit the road for KC. I figured I’d drive until I was too tired, then grab a hotel and finish the next day. This is where the extra CDs would have been handy – I listened to the two I’d bought at Borders the previous day as many times as I could stand, then amused myself by watching my progress across Illinois and Iowa on the NeverLost system.
Made it as far as Iowa City that night, slept in the next morning then started off again. Stopped in Des Moines to get some lunch and hit a mall music store to get some more CDs. Arrived in KC mid afternoon on Friday.
Our original plan, when I was due to arrive in KC on Wednesday, had been to drive down to visit my family in NW Arkansas on Thursday/Friday/Saturday, then back to KC Saturday afternoon and to fly back to Atlanta on Sunday. Instead, we kept the rental car my wife had had in KC, turned in my expensive Hertz job, and struck out the same day (Friday). Spent part of Saturday with my family before hitting the road for Atlanta. Stopped over along the way Saturday night and made it back home late afternoon on Sunday.
I was driving in to work when I heard Imus and crew announcing the first plane and was puzzled about what was going on. Then I just stayed at my desk listening to the reports of the second plane, the Pentagon, the crash in Penna. Arrangements were made for TVs to be brought into our auditoria so people could watch but I stayed at my desk since…
My brother worked in WTC 7 but I thought he was in one of the towers so I was called his home and left messages. I am very very lucky that he got home and was able to call me before the phones got overloaded and I couldn’t get through anymore. I was able to leave word with Grandma and my parents that he was OK.
I never watched any of the TV coverage. I deliberately watched anything but. The first time I saw a glimpse of it was watching the movie The Barbarian Invasions in late 2003, where the screen is taken up with a huge shot of the second plane hitting the tower. It was a shock to finally see it.
I forgot to add: the security guards were armed the next day.
I got out of the subway on Church Street, below the WTC, and one of the towers was on fire. There were about a hundred of us milling around in the street, wondering what was going on. We saw people jumping from the windows. “That’s never the answer,” someone muttered. I couldn’t watch anymore, and turned to go to work three blocks away to find out what was going on. I took one step and heard a loud “Vooooooomp!” sound followed by a horrendous explosion. We all started running. I looked over my shoulder and saw a big explosion, followed by debris. I ran to work.
My boss had a great view of the towers from her window. She was there, dazed, standing at the windows “I saw both of them” she said. I found out what was going on and called my then-girlfriend (my now-wife) and told her I was okay. She didn’t know what I was talking about. I told her someone bombed the towers and to turn on the news.
We eventually walked down the stairwell and started hiking north, hurrying past the Brooklyn Bridge, in case it was targeted as well. Every sound of a plane flying by had us all looking up, trying to spot the plane to see where it was going. The second building came down when we were in Chinatown.
I got through to my friend in LA (a NYer-born) but after that couldn’t get a line out.
I walked all the way home to 47th Street & 9th Avenue. Along the way I bought a cupcake at the Cupcake Cafe (because I deserved one, dammit) and found myself amused that I was still interested in this hot girl’s ass that I saw briefly as we plodded through the village.
There were TVs and radios out on the street. Everyone was watching us walk by. We had a film of dust on us from the first building’s collapse.
I got home. Talked to my parents. Hugged my girlfriend for a long, long time. And then we joined the tv watchers, while we called everyone we knew to make sure they were okay. And they all were, by some miracle.
I was putting on pantyhose when the first plane hit - we were getting ready to go to court. I was just finishing getting ready when the second plane hit. We headed out to court. We were sitting in the hallway waiting for husband’s case to be called (in Rolling Meadows) when one of the bailiffs came out of one of the courtrooms and yelled, “The Pentagon has been hit”. We waited a few more minutes, then the rest of the bailiffs came out and told us that they were canceling everything and giving us new dates - they wanted the building evacuated. We left and went home. I left again to pick up my son from school - I know it wasn’t necessary, but I was freaked out and wanted him near me. We watched the news and tried to get drunk. It was one awful day.
I watched it on TV for a while, then went to work. I didn’t really care that much. It didn’t affect me on any personal level. I still think the significance of that day was overblown. I was mostly worried about the anti-Muslim backlash and the warmongering I was sure would ensue (and it did), for what was really just an isolated criminal act (albeit a major one). I still don’t think it was an act of war I never sat around getting off on all the hand wringing and RO binging like so many other people did. Not that it wasn’t tragic for the victims or that I didn’t feel anything at all, but I was honest enough to appreciate that it wasn’t MY tragedy.
ETA, my dad was working in State Department in DC at the time and at one point there was a rumor that a plane might have hit there. They had evacuated the building for some reason (probably just a precaution). I was worried about my dad for a minutes but the rumors turned out to be nothing.
I was crashing with a friend at her parents’ basement here in SF after what I can only assume was a night of drinking. Her dad came down and said that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center. My friend rolled over, asked if that was in SF, and then went back to sleep. I got up and turned on CBS and on the computer. I remember that by the time I was online, only one plane had hit, but I don’t remember the second one getting hit. I’m sure my attention was more on the SDMB and news sites than on the TV, and it probably got lost in all the other rumors of the moment.
I had to work at a deli at 12:30 Pacific. My boss, who was in Vietnam, happened to be taking a break out front as I arrived. He shrugged and said, “Eh, no big deal.”
I was a prosecutor at the time, conducting criminal pretrials at the Justice Center in downtown Cleveland. Someone mentioned that morning that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I said something like, “Oh, that’s too bad,” and went on discussing cases. Not much later, someone else said a plane had hit the other tower. Things kind of ground to a halt; we all realized something big had happened. A judge across the hall brought his TV out of chambers so everyone could watch the live coverage. Within ten minutes or so, the word came that the building was being evacuated as a precaution. WTF, I thought, are terrorists really going to target a courthouse in Cleveland? (Then I thought about Oklahoma City).
The elevators were shut down, I don’t know why, so we all trooped down the emergency staircases. There was a cop on the case I’d been pre-trying who wanted to look at another file, so we stopped by the prosecutors’ file room. The whole floor was almost deserted. A supervisor there told us everyone else had left, he was about to go, and we should too. The cop was a little annoyed he couldn’t see the file, but we left anyway. There was a little traffic jam to get out of the underground parking garage where I’d parked that day, but I got home without any other difficulty. I’d already put out Old Glory that morning as I left for work, or I definitely would have when I got home.
Our boys were just 4 and 2 at the time. I gave them big hugs, and my wife too. We didn’t watch the news with the boys around, but got caught up after they were in bed. The next day I went back to work as if nothing had happened… but actually, everything had changed, hadn’t it?
I later learned from the 9-11 Commission’s report that the flight which crashed in the Penna. field had flown over where my parents and sisters live, and had turned just west of Cleveland before heading directly towards Washington. Bizarre to think it might have been overhead that morning as I went about my work.
I was in 10th grade in 2001. It’s probably worth mentioning that I’m from Arlingon, VA. I could drive five minutes from my house and get to the Pentagon. A lot of people from my school had parents who work for the government and who might have been at the Pentagon that day.
On September 11, my day started completely normally. I got out of my second-period Chemistry class and was on my way to Art. The mood was especially tense that day and I didn’t know the reason. As I walked into the art room, I heard somebody behind me say to somebody else, “We’ll probably go to war now.” I had no idea what they were talking about.
We didn’t do anything during the first half of art class. Everyone just sat around talking. I don’t think most people had any idea what had happened. I didn’t really know anyone in the class, so I just sat at my desk, reading. I was sitting near the teacher’s desk and she had a small radio. She had the volume low so that even from my seat, right by the desk, it was barely audible but I could catch a word or phrase here and there. “New York” “Tower” “Plane crash” “Trade Center” “Pentagon” I wasn’t sure I heard that last one correctly. All the talk seemed to concern something happening in New York. It couldn’t possibly affect my area. I guessed that if whatever happened, if it was going to lead to war, maybe they were referring to “the Pentagon” meaning the DOD.
Half way through the class, the teacher turned off the radio and quieted the class down. She explained what had happened. I don’t know that any of us entirely believed it until we got to our next classes. Most teachers in the school had TVs in their rooms so most of the rest of the day was spent watching CNN. The only class I had that actually did anything else that day was Government. In that class, we discussed what had happened and what was likely to happen and so on. I think that helped a lot. We had all heard the same thing over and over from whatever news channels our teachers had had on, but being able to discuss it with an actual teacher and have questions answered (as best a high school government teacher could) was somehow really reassuring.
What is “TJHSST”?
My wife and I were on a cruise ship off the coast of Alaska. We’d made some great new friends on the cruise, and that Tuesday was the second-to-last day of the cruise. Our friends had a cell phone and managed to secure rental cars in Vancouver, BC, and in Seattle. The drive back from Vancouver to Denver (they then drove on to Dallas) really cemented our friendship.
I remember watching the whole thing on television (we got a CNN satellite feed on the ship) and wishing to God I was home on my sofa watching it. I’ve never been so truly frightened in my life.
…was sitting in science class, flipping through the textbook while the teacher talked.
Our principal came on the air to tell us and her voice broke halfway through. You could hear the hallways up and down the school going dead quiet. I think I heard someone screaming downstairs.
I took the rest of the day off and spent it huddled in bed before choir rehearsal, that night.