Where Were You When The Planes Hit?

In My Humble Opinion
41

I was getting ready to go to work at a really shitty job, when I heard a news report that a light, twin engine plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I thought, “Wow! Just like that bomber in WW II.” I didn’t have a radio in my car, so I had no idea of what was going on at the time. I got to work and found out that a second plane had hit. We didn’t have a TV in the office (or even a radio), so we all gathered around the office manager’s PC waiting for the CNN page to load. When it finally did and we saw the photo of one of the towers in flames, all I could think about was that we were going to be facing a very long war.

When the boss’s wife showed up, we all pretended to go to work (I worked at a satellite phone retailer), while bitching about how pointless it was for us to be there that day (like landlines, the sat phone systems were so jammed with traffic that lots of calls couldn’t get through). Eventually, she convinced her husband to go home and get a TV so we could find out what the hell was going on. He brought it in and set it up in the middle of the office and we all gathered around the TV to watch it (by this time, the towers had come down and the planes had all been grounded). I’ll never forget Dan Rather saying that they just got a video tape in of the towers and that they hadn’t had a chance to review it, and were going to be airing it unedited, so he apologized in advance for anything that might be on it. Then they showed the clip taken from someone’s balcony looking at the towers as the first one burned, you heard a woman’s voice reacting in shock and horror to it, then the second plane hit and she screamed, “Jesus Fucking Christ!” This had me worried, since the boss was a Fundie Christian and I was afraid that he’d shut the TV off and go into a tirade about how awful it was someone was taking the Lord’s name in vain. Instead, he turned to one of the salesmen and said, “You know, it’s always nice when someone remembers Jesus at times like this.”

After work, I got home to find a message on my answering from a friend of mine which simply said, “Whiskey tonight?” He and I went out to eat, watched Bush give his speech during dinner (and boy, that was weird, a crowded restaurant suddenly goes silent as the waitresses all turn up the volume on the TVs and nobody moves while the President talks), then we went back to his place and proceeded to get drunk while watching CNN.

42

I was unemployed and watching some decorating show. Kid Kalhoun was also unemployed and screwing around on the internet. He told me to flip to the news because a plane had crashed into the WTC. Shortly thereafter, we witnessed the 2nd plane hit.

I couldn’t stop crying for about a week. I still cry when I see footage of the towers going down.

43

I was in bed, asleep, because it was the only day of the week I didn’t have class in the morning. (I was taking a year off before grad school but taking Japanese for fun.) My mom woke me up, I think because she got kind of freaked out and wanted somebody to watch it with her. I got downstairs just in time to see the second plane hit live.

44

I was at school. The office was abuzz with the news of the first plane, and my first thought was that it was an accident like the bomber hitting the Empire State Building. Then they brought news of the second plane hit, and I knew it was terrorism. Spent every spare second for the rest of the day in the Principal’s office, glued to the TV and clogging up the phone lines, trying to get word on a couple of our former students who were attending Columbia and other schools in the area.

45

I was on the phone, in the Graduate Student Office/Lab of my department, reading CNN. The hold music was radio, and switched to the “breaking news”. I thought I was listening to a radio drama. Then CNN updated. Then it went down.

School was closed (proximity to the US embassy being the issue) and we were sent home, along with all the government workers that worked nearby. Surreal day.

46

I was still in bed.

I remember my husband’s alarm going off, and Christie Lee from The Bob and Tom Show talking about a plane hitting one of the towers. I told him to turn the damned thing off so I could go back to sleep.

I got ready for work a while later without ever turning on the TV or radio. I walked to work (as usual), and when I got there, my coworkers were all abuzz. I worked at a grooming shop, so we didn’t have a TV - just a radio. I didn’t see anything until I got home that night. My boss called her brother in Seattle and woke him up, telling him to watch TV and not go to work that day. My husband worked in downtown Indy at the time, so I think they were sent home early and didn’t go in the next day.

47

I was sitting at my desk, exactly where I am right now and someone mentioned that a plane hit one of the towers. I assumed it was probably a small plane and an accident. I went into our lunchroom where we have a TV and the footage showed far more damage than I expected and the news teams thought it was a large passenger jet. I think I said something about, how could a modern passenger jet possibly screw up that badly? Then the second plane hit on live TV. I started yelling about damn religious zealots or something like that. I assumed it was Muslim terrorist related to the prior attempt to blow up the building.
I remembered my cousin worked at the WTC and I started crying. As the events unfolded and the building came down, I assumed that tens of thousands died. I had a fair idea of how many people worked and visited the towers everyday as I was there a few months earlier.
I got hold of my wife, I told her I going to pick up the kids from school/daycare and meet her at home. I was then going to give blood. I just assumed there would be a critical need. She said she would get the kids so I said I would go right to the Blood Center. I was just telling my boss I was going to leave when the CEO made the announcement he was shutting down the plant for the day and everyone should go home to his or her families.
I walked outside on the incredibly bright and perfect day and in a daze, I drove to the blood bank. As I drove north I saw this huge heavy long black cloud streaming south from Manhattan. I was the first at the blood center but within the hour, there were 50 or more of us. It was amazing; no one called us, we just all did the only thing we could think of doing to help. We organized a bagel and coffee run and helped the staff with paper work and in anyway possible. The bagel shop asked what all the bagels were for and when they heard it was for the line at the blood bank, they gave us the bagels and loads of cream cheese and large coffee carriers all free. I finally drove home and hugged my family for a long time.

My niece was an EMT in Trenton, her unit got permission to go to the city to help, and they staged them in North Jersey near the Lincoln Tunnel and waited to be called in. They were finally sent home around 3am. The never had need for them.
My cousin who worked in towers, had been home sick that day, she was recovering from pneumonia. A most fortunate severe illness. My Aunt worked five blocks north and walked all the way up north of Central Park and finally caught a bus home to the Bronx. All day we kept calling around to the extended family, making sure everyone got home safely. My Mom took it upon herself to coordinate this.
It crossed my mind to re-enlist, despite being 35. It was my 35th birthday the next day, but we did not celebrate.

Jim

48

I had just dropped off my kids at school/daycare and was driving to work when I turned on the radio. The second plane had just hit and the radio DJs were beginning to realize that it wasn’t an accident.

I went on to work and discovered that the news websites were useless. My co-workers and I spent the rest of the day in the lab, gathered around a little TV with bad antenna reception. My husband didn’t have access to a TV at his workplace and I remember calling him and trying to describe the fall of the towers.

49

I was waiting for my French III class to start at 10.15 when my boyfriend called me and said a plane had crashed into the WTC. He was watching it on the news - his parents had told him. I didn’t realize how serious it was and didn’t think about it during class, didn’t mention it to anyone. On the way home after class, I remember being annoyed that it was all news and no music, still not grasping what a big event it was. I went home and turned on the TV and actually *saw * the carnage, saw how devastating the attack had been.
I worked at a normally busy restaurant that night - it was completely dead. Hardly anyone came out and all they did was stare at the TV. Which was what we did all night too.

50

I was at home, but I didn’t know it had happened because I never turned the TV on (ever since, I have turned the news on EVERY MORNING when I wake up)! I learned that the second plane had hit just a short time earlier as I was pulling out of my driveway. I have a pretty long commute to work, so I basically listened to it on the radio, including the collapsing of the towers. Weird, because I was listening to an ABC affilitate, and they had Peter Jennings’ TV feed going. So, I remember his voice describing the collapse of the first tower. Usually, he was always so composed, but I recall the disbelief in his tone about what he was seeing. I got to work, and no one was there yet (I work in a very small company). My boss came to get me, and brought me to his house. We sat there with all the employees of the company, plus some workmen they had at their house, and watched it for about 2 hours. I remember one of the workmen saying “bin Laden did this.”

51

I was in High School attending 5th period. The teacher apparently sensed some commotion in the class and calmly told us that two planes had hit some buildings. She told us that the whole story would probably be available for us on the front page of AOL, so I made a mental note to scan the news for some plan crashes that night.

I figured out the whole story in my 6th period class.

I distinctly remember that “holy shit” was nearly everyone’s first reaction.

52

I was unemployed at the time, and had a job interview at 11:30 that morning. My husband was getting ready to go to work and woke me up around 8:30am saying, “You might want to get up and watch the news. Someone flew a plane into the World Trade Center.” He was doing his inappropriate maniacal laughter thing that he does when something is really disturbing and serious. I was like, “What, like a small plane? What are you talking about?” and I could hear CNN in the background downstairs, and sort of pick up the urgency of the announcers’ voices. He was like, “No, a friggin’ jetliner. Like terrorists or something.” [maniacal laughter] So I tear up out of bed and downstairs and start watching. I know I saw the second plane hit. I know I warned my hub to temper his maniacal laughter at work because people wouldn’t understand his weird way of coping. I know at some point I called my mother to tell her what was happening and get her to turn on her television. I know I went to the job interview. I know that I called friends. I can’t remember specifics.

53

I was staring right at it. The local geography I’m about to describe won’t mean much to anyone not familiar with NYC, but here goes:

I live in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens, and worked, back then, in downtown Manhattan, at 61 Broadway, about 6 blocks or so from the WTC. I biked to work every day back then, through Forest Hills to Metropolitan Avenue, and then straight down Metropolitan Avenue to get over the Williamsburg Bridge, which leads to downtown Manhattan. Looking straight down Metropolitan Avenue toward Manhattan, the Twin Towers were directly in front of me.

So I was biking, and at one point, I look up, and…there’s smoke coming out of the top of one tower. “Hmm, a fire in the Twin Towers,” I thought. (Nope, didn’t see either of the actual planes crashing.)

By the time I got to the bridge, I could see the second tower in smoke as well. “That’s weird,” I thought, “how’d a fire spread from one tower to the other?”

I kind of had to fight my way through crowds in the street downtown to get to my office, I chained up my bike, and went in. It was only then that I heard that the towers had been hit by airplanes.

After maybe 45 minutes of working, our network cut out. Then the power flickered off. Then a big “BOOM” and a cloud of black dust out all the windows. Finally, someone notified us all that one of the Towers had collapsed, and we should evacuate the area.

I unchained my bike, now covered with a layer of gray ash like I imagine the area around Mount St. Helens was in 1980. Walked with a crowd of people, all of us holding wet paper towels to our mouths, up Pearl Street, past the Brooklyn Bridge, then to clear air on Madison Street (for you non-NYers, that’s not the same as Madicon Avenue, of advertising fame; that’s in Midtown), many vendors offering water. Looking back every so often, all I saw behind me was a cloud of black dust.

I made my way to my parents’ Lower East Side apartment, where I washed up and called my wife to let her know I was OK. After watching the news for an hour or two, I biked back home.

While much of the ash came off the bicycle in the course of ordinary use, I never washed off much of it. A little gray ash lined that bicycle until the day it was stolen from in front of my home.

54

I can remember very clearly turning off the shower that morning and hearing something unusual: the TV was playing, and the volume was up pretty loud. Although I could tell it was a news station, I couldn’t tell what they were saying. My family NEVER turned on the TV in the morning, so I immediately knew something bad must be happening. As I was getting dressed, I finally made out the reporter saying something about two planes being hijacked. I thought, Oh great, terrorists. I never imagined how bad it would get, of course.

When I came out of the bathroom, my dad and brother were watching CNN, and my brother said two planes had hit the WTC. The first thing I saw was the replay footage of the second plane crashing into the tower. I’m kind of glad I didn’t see it live, only a few minutes earlier. It was shocking enough to see it when I already knew it was a deliberate attack; I can’t imagine how horrible it would have been to suppose the first plane was an accident and then see the second one hit on live TV.

A few minutes later, the news reported that some Palestinian group was claiming responsibility, and that’s when I thought, “Well, that’s settled then . . . it’s going to be World War III in the Middle East.” I don’t remember hearing Bin Laden mentioned until several hours later. I was immediately very depressed, simultaneously shocked and not shocked . . . being a pessimistic sort, I was amazed something like this hadn’t happened sooner than it did. 9/11 was like the other shoe finally dropping.

I was out of the room when I heard a reporter break in to announce that smoke was coming from the Pentagon. That’s when I really started to get scared. What was next? The White House? The Sears Tower? How many planes did these scumbags have anyway? At that time no one knew, so you just waited to hear about the next one.

A few minutes before the first tower fell, I realized I was late for work and called in. My coworker said they were all watching the news there, too. I went back downstairs to see Dan Rather saying that the first tower appeared to have collapsed. All you could see was that huge plume of smoke. I’ve never been a big Dan Rather fan, but I did admire how he deliberately avoided the “OH SHIT THE SKY IS FALLING” reporting style you might expect in such a situation. He kept reminding viewers that, despite the smoke spreading over the entire city, it was NOT all of NYC that was under attack, but only the WTC itself. It doesn’t sound like much of a comfort now, but for someone just turning on the TV, or living in NYC, it was probably a good idea to assure everyone that, at least at that particular moment, the world wasn’t ending.

I finally decided to head off to work, because, well, what else could I do? On the way there I listened to the radio as the second tower fell. Somehow not seeing it was just as horrible . . . the announcer described it falling from top to bottom, then concluded by saying, in obvious shock, “That’s it . . . the World Trade Center has been destroyed.”

I can still remember hearing that so vividly, and thinking of all the thousands upon thousands of people who must be dead. I actually thought there would be many more than 3,000 killed, because they were saying something like 50,000 worked in the WTC. Somehow, though, the eventual total wasn’t much of a relief.

Needless to say, I spent the rest of the day watching the little black and white TV with my coworkers in the office, dreading what awful thing would happen next, wondering what had happened to the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania, and being terribly frustrated that nobody knew for sure just who the bastards were that did this vile thing. Revenge was definitely on my mind, but I knew there wouldn’t be any joy in it, even if we caught/killed everyone responsible. The damage was still done, and all those people had still died in terror and pain.

So yeah, that was a pretty shitty day, wasn’t it?

55

Asleep (I’m on the West Coast). A local friend (lissener, actually) called us and said, basically, “Turn on the TV right now.” No real details, just “turn on the TV.”

I got up, went into the living room, and turned on the news. Good timing: not more than five minutes later, the first tower collapsed.

Then I went to work, about which I can tell you absolutely nothing.

Now, five years later, it’s strange how the little details have made an impression. One of the oddest is that I remember thinking, as I watched the building fall, how only an event of this magnitude was capable of shocking the CNN chatterdrones into wordlessness. Anything short of this, they’re prattling away on the soundtrack or in a picture insert, making empty comments and trying vainly to add information or context or even just speculative blather; but this time, in that split second when it became clear what was happening, even the professional babblers joined the rest of us in our stunned silence.

56

I was about to leave for work in Manhattan when my friend called to tell me about the first plane. We still thought it was an accident then. So I called my boss, stayed home, and watched the second one hit on the news, along with the rest of the chaos. My roommate watched the second one hit from the roof of our building, where he’d gone up to look at the damage from the first plane, but I was too nervous to do that, and I’m glad now. (We were maybe two miles away, with a very clear view of the towers on the skyline). The smoke was on the horizon where the buildings used to be for days and days.

The rest of the day is blurry, but most of it was spent trying to find out if anyone I knew was dead. (No. One friend who worked there happened to oversleep that morning; others were nearby, but escaped injury).

57

I read on the Dope about the first one hitting and thought ‘that can’t be right, it must be a sick joke’, then thought it was probably an accident. I turned on the TV and watched the second plane hit. I had then to go into work and run the office myself as all of the other staff were out. I spent a lot of time on news service sites and crying.

58

I listen to talk radio at work, and it was right around 9a, and I was waiting for Neal Boortz to come on, and the local TV radio announcer said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.

“Oh, my goodness!” I called out to my cube mates (yes, I said goodness) “A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center!”

I turned off my radio and flipped on my TV, and I’m watching it, thinking the plane must have had engine trouble, when I saw the other plane coming.

Now, this was a very surreal moment for me. My brain refused to process what my eyes saw. I saw it was a plane, I recognized it was a plane, but my mind said, “Police helicopter” because what else but a police helicopter would fly that close to a burning building?

Then my co-worker said, “Did that just happen?” I said yes and grabbed the phone to call Ivylad. He’d told me it was a terrorist attack after the first plane hit and I pooh-poohed that.

Then, we ran into our bosse’s office to watch NBC, and someone interruped Katie Couric to say, “Katie, I’m at the Pentagon. I don’t know what happened, but the building just shook and the windows just rattled.”

When the Tower 2 fell, a wide-shot was on the TV. A co-worker down the hall was yelling “Something’s collapsing! Something’s collapsing!” and I thought there was an explosion on the ground.

Then, when Tower 1 fell, I lost it. I still can’t believe it was all over by lunch.

59

I first heard about it when I walked into my third period AP Literature class during the senior year of high school. I walked through the door and a friend said to me, “America is going to war.” And I looked over to the TV just as the second plane hit.

I also blogged about this at my blog, www.ronincyberpunk.com (blog is completely SFW)

  • IG
60

I was at home. I was between contracts, so I was doing some solo work on the computer. SWMBO was getting ready for work and said something about a plane hitting the WTC. I thought it was just an accident, like the B-25 hitting the Empire State Building, when she said something like, “Holy shit! It was deliberate, it wasn’t an accident!”

I got up and went into the room where the TV was and she and I watched what was happening, including the second plane striking.

I have a picture up on the door of my office right now. It’s one that I have put up every 9/11 since. It is the shot of the second airliner banking to the left just before impact , with a header: NEVER FORGIVE and a footer: NEVER FORGET. Everyone who has walked past today has looked at it, nodded, and gone on.