Where Were You When The Planes Hit?

In My Humble Opinion
61

Getting ready for work; I hadn’t been listening to the radio, and normally didn’t watch tv in the morning, but that morning I turned it on and heard about the second plane. I immediately thought of the 1993 attack. Glued to the set, and switching around to see if anybody had new information. (That was the first time I ever watched Fox News; while CNN was interviewing generals and security experts, Fox had Oliver North and, I kid you not, Jerry Falwell. Never watched again.)

I called into work, and my supervisor told me they were sending everybody home anyway. My company’s headquarters were in the North Tower; 300 employees died that day.

I thought a lot of things while watching tv that day. Things like:

“My ex-wife was flying to Orlando today; hope she’s okay.” (She was in the air when it happened; ended up having to rent a car and drive back to Atlanta.)

“Bush hasn’t been very impressive so far, but he’d better grow into the job in a hurry now.”

“Man, Giuliani is really on top of things.”

“Well, at least now maybe we’ll drop that SDI crap.” (Ha!)

“I hope the Republicans don’t panic and start throwing out civil liberties.” (Ha!)

“Our best security is good relations with other countries. We need new diplomatic initiatives; obviously we can’t act like an imperial power.” (Seriously, that’s what I was thinking. It’s not my fault if the folks in charge took the exact opposite lesson.)

It was a few days before my office was functioning again; since it was an insurance underwriter, we started seeing documents detailing the incredibly huge claims that were being filed.

It was strange looking south toward Hartsfield and seeing an empty sky.

62

I was at my desk at work. Got an email from someone on an email list, sent to the whole list, telling about it. Immediately tried to go to the Washington Post website… which was being overwhelmed with hits.

A little while later I heard a loud “whoosh” noise. A minute or two later I looked out the window in another part of the office and saw the plume of smoke from the Pentagon. The “whoosh” was probably the sound of the explosion.

The first tower collapsed shortly after that. Then I heard a loud “bang” (to this day I don’t know what it was). I decided it was time to head home at that point… for some reason I was a bit jumpy. I picked up the kids at school (and was not the only parent doing so), took them to the grocery store, bought loads of junk food and rented a couple of videos, then took them home to play hooky. Didn’t tell either of the kids why we were playing hooky.

63

I was on the subway when the planes hit. I got out at the Fulton Street subway station about two minutes after the second plane hit.

I was about a block and a half away when the towers came down. I heard and felt them fall.

Zev Steinhardt

64

Damn, what a picture. :eek:

65

I was living in Maryland with my now ex-boyfriend Jared, and I was working evenings at The Journal newspaper as a news editor. So, I was fast asleep when Jared called from work that morning telling me that a plane hit the Twin Towers. I remember thinking, you woke me up to tell me this? Then he paused, his voice shaky, and said, “and a plane hit the Pentagon.” My heart dropped – my dad worked at the Pentagon. I tried to imagine what would happen if a plane hit that huge building and I imagined great damage, so I immediately freaked out. I told Jared to come home as fast as possible.

I started dialing from my cell phone and my home phone my mom, my dad, my brother, my aunt. All I would get is a fast busy signal. For what seemed like an eternity I dialed over and over and could not get through to anyone. I was in agony. I did not know if my dad was OK. I started wailing and sobbing. Finally my phone rang and it was my aunt Lee. She got through to my mom, who had heard from my dad – he was OK. In fact, he wasn’t even at the Pentagon at the time, he was at an off-site meeting. At that point, I was so relieved that nothing else mattered. I didn’t care about anything else, I was just so happy my dad was OK.

So at the time I was an editor at the local daily newspaper, so I had to get into work immediately, because we were going to have a whole lot of news to cover that day. As I drove over the bridge across the Potomac from Maryland into Virginia, I could see a black column of smoke rising from the Pentagon against a clear blue sky.

At work we were transfixed by the stories coming over the news wires. On the photo wire, we saw images that were so graphic that they didn’t make it into any newspapers. The ones that haunted me the most were a series of shots of people who jumped out of the towers: people free falling, some holding hands. You could see their faces, what they were wearing. It was gruesome, yet I couldn’t stop looking. Last night, my mom and I were watching that documentary by the French filmmakers who were there that day, and it was the scene in the tower lobby where the firefighters kept hearing intermittent loud crashes, which were the bodies hitting the ground. My mom asked me, would I have jumped? I said, well I think they jumped because they were facing burning to death, so yes, I think I would have jumped - anything to get away from that searing heat of burning jet fuel.

For the next few nights, I sat transfixed in front of the TV late into the night, switching from CNN, to FOX News, to MSNBC, watching the scenes of carnage. I was simply horrified, but I couldn’t stop looking.

A little over a week later, Jared and I took a week off and we drove north to visit Nantucket, then Acadia National Park in Maine. We drove right by New York, and even though it was about 10 days later, you could still see a cloud of smoke rising from Ground Zero.

It took like a month for me to realize how truly disturbed I was by the whole thing. Those 30 minutes or so that I couldn’t get through to my family, and I didn’t know if my dad was OK; those were the most horrible moments of my life. I started to become really fixated on my dad’s safety. Where was he, was he OK? I started to plan survival scenarios in my head in case there was another attack. I had survival supplies in the trunk of my car. I was constantly anxious and went into a depression. Then I started getting really bad insomnia that lasted for months.

It wasn’t only that my dad worked in the building that was attacked; there were other reasons it hit close to home. My dad and my brother often took flights from Dulles Airport to California. One of the hijacked planes took off from Dulles on its way to California. That flight could have easily had my dad or brother aboard.

Now, 5 years later, I have just moved to Arlington and my route to work takes me right past the Pentagon every day, right past the side that got hit. It is all repaired now, but you can see how the stone blocks of the repaired section are lighter in color than the old section. I often imagine what it was like for people driving to work that morning who saw the plane crash. It must have been terribly frightening, as the plane would have been so low that you would have thought the plane was going to crash on the highway.

66

That was me, I think…

I was in Seoul, S. Korea, laying on my bed proofreading galley sheets for the dictionary my buddy and I were publishing.

I had the TV on for background noise, and looked up when they cut to a shot of the first tower on fire. I remember looking at that huge gaping hole, and wondering how in the heck were they gonna fix that?

Then the second plane hit, and the rest of the evening wasn’t much fun.

67

I was in a Reno casino/hotel, about to head home after a 3-day weekend. Woke up & turned on the news about 2 hours after the towers had fallen, and spent several minutes trying to figure just what the holy hell had gone on, and what that cloud over Manhatten was all about.

We had flown in, which is unusual (Reno is only 4 hours from home), so we soon realized we were stuck for another day. A very strange day…all the monitors in the casino that were normally tuned to sports or music videos showed CNN all day.

68

I was home, day off from work. My brother called, and told me that a plane had crashed into the WTC. I turned on the TV-and saw the second plane hit! I remeber feeling “this isn’t real”! Later, I became sick-the people down the street lost their son-he was in plane 2.
Later, I sawa film clip of some palestinian women shrieking with joy at the news-I heard that this was a flase presentation 9the film clip was about some unrelated event-anybody know the truth?

69

It was around 11pm in Seoul, and I was watching my favorite TV drama when the news flashed at the bottom of the screen. I thought it was a plane accident, so I waited until the end of the thing I was watching before flipping to CNN. It was before the second plane hit. Our family was freaked because my great-uncle works in NYC, but he was in the Empire State Building at the time, much to our relief.

I remember that one of my friends in Atlanta was on AIM and actually heard the news through me.

70

I know what you mean. I work just south of SFO (and near OAK and SJC), and on a normal day I’m pretty much guaranteed to see a plane whenever I look out the window. To seek nothing but empty skies all week was just…weird.

71

I had the day off so I was sleeping in. I missed all the strikes and the towers collapsing. I woke up and saw a huge plume of smoke out the living room window. Holy crap, I thought, there’s a really big fire in Adams Morgan. Of course the plume wasn’t coming from Adams Morgan, a few hundred yards away, but from the Pentagon, miles away. I left the house to get a cup of coffee, still oblivious that anything was happening. An old guy walked passed me muttering “Crazy people blowing everything up.” Whatever, dude, I thought. I picked up a Washington Post, whose headline was completely irrelevant. It wasn’t 'till I got to the coffee shop that I figured something really big was going on. A man just outside was on a cell phone calling someone in New York. Remembering the old man I saw earlier, I asked him what was going on. He told me. I got a coffee and, for some reason, read the useless paper. Then I went home. The super was doing some work on my building. I told him what happened and we went to my apartment, where we watched TV all morning and into the early afternoon.

72

I did what I did every morning – spent my time in unemployed sloth activities. Got up, peed, layed down on the couch, turned the TV on.

Some news story about some fire somewhere. BORING! Turned over to the Game Show Network. Watched a bit of Pyramid. Then I got to wondering – what was that news story about? I turned back to the news, and witnessed the second plane hit.

Within an hour I was pacing, ranting, and raving “Nuke the fuckers! Remove them from the face of the Earth! NOW!” It was all emotion all morning. By around 2:00, I crashed. No more energy, no more emotion. I slept for a good hour. I was awoken by a call from my GF, seeing if I was OK.

At around 6:00, I went out to vote and get some dinner. It was a glorious day, and I heard not one word or got any feeling that it was a day different from any other. It was business as usual. I almost wondered if I had dreamt the day’s events.

73

I had just taken my oldest daughter to kindergarten. I went by a neighborhood burrito place to get some breakfast, and when I got home, I went to the kitchen and turned on the t.v. on the way. I heard the announcer say that a plane had flown into the WTC. I said to myself, "Well, it finally happened, some drunk yahoo flew his Cessna into one of the buildings. (I’d been expecting it for years.)

I walked into the living room and saw the second plane hit. Just then, my husband walked down the hall to the bathroom, and I told him, Do Not go back to bed.

The scary part is, my daughter’s school is across the street from an Air Force base. My first instinct was to go get her, but they had that place locked up tight. We live about a mile from the base, so my husband walked up there to see what was going on, and nobody was getting in.

I was afraid for my daughter at first, but realized that bin Laden probably didn’t know where this town is! His name was the first that came to mind when I figured out that it wasn’t an accident.

Reading Clothahump’s post reminded me. When I saw the first replay on the second plane hit, I told my husband, "Holy shit, It fuckin’ turned! That was not an accident!

A side note: After typing all this my hands are shaking so that I can hardly type.

Sneezy

74

I was in my second period chemistry class when the planes actually hit, although I didn’t find out about it until I was on my way to art (third period). At that point, I don’t think most of the student body knew what was going on. I overheard some bits of conversation in the hall, including “Do you think we’ll go to war now?” and “Who could have done it? It couldn’t have been an accident, could it?” When I got to art, the teacher didn’t give us any instructions for the day so we just sat around. There was a radio on the teacher’s desk, not far from my seat. It was playing loudly enough that she could hear but I could only catch a few words. I remember hearing “Pentagon,” “World Trade Center” and most frighteningly, “Crash” and “Terrorists.” I have to say, it was terrifying having just those words to go on and a mind that was racing to piece something together.

It must have been half way through the class when the teacher actually stood up and announced to the class what happened. Needless to say, we were stunned. Then she turned on the TV and we spent the rest of the class watching the news.

For the rest of the day, all of my classes just left the news on. There was only one class that even tried to do a lesson for the rest of the day: Government. Our teacher, one of the best the school had, discussed the attacks with us, not just having us watch the same news reports but actually trying to help us understand what was going on. No easy task as she was as in the dark as everyone else.

Oh, for what it’s worth, my school was in Arlington, VA, within 5 miles of the Pentagon.

75

Can you give us some sense of the intensity of the vibration? Was it like being next to train tracks, or next to a jackhammer, or was it more subtle? Did you have difficulty standing during the collapses?

76

It was mid-afternoon Central European Time. I picked up flodjunior from school - he was seven years old then and in the second grade. I suppose I did the normal after-school routine - made the boys a snack and chatted to them from the kitchen, tidying up and getting things ready for supper while they ate. If you expect me to remember what we talked about or what was on the menu, I’ll have to disappoint you. But I distinctly remember I had a meeting planned with other Americans that evening.

After the snack, flodjunior went upstairs to play on his computer, and totnak (18 months) got out some toys and started playing on the living room floor, so I sat down to check my e-mail. The latest message was from a mailing list I’m still a member of. It was addressed to five members and said - “Are you all OK? PLEASE check in!” I couldn’t figure it out until I realized they all lived in New York City. I just felt a cold chill, something awful must have happened… but it took nearly an hour before I understood what. I didn’t dare turn on the TV, because I didn’t want the kids to see it before I knew what was going on - flodjunior especially is a sensitive kid and I didn’t know what might happen. During that hour fella bilong missus flodnak came home with a headache - which is very unusual, I’m the headachey one in the family - and went to lay down. He’d heard a little about a plane hitting a building in NYC on the car radio on the way home, but didn’t pay much attention, so I had to tell him what happened when he got up.

Never did go to that meeting. I found out later it had been cancelled, I wasn’t told that, but I just needed to be with my family that evening.

77

regurgitated from [URL=“Who did you initially assume was responsible for the 9/11 attacks? - In My Humble Opinion - Straight Dope Message Board”]this also-current thread —

I get off the downtown 6…bunch of people crammed around televisions in some underground beauty shop or some such thing, making it hard to get out of the #6 subway under Rockefeller Center. “What the hell is everyone milling around for?”, I ask in annoyance. “Uhh, a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center” Me, visualizing a Cessna or a Piper Cub: “Oh, that was smart. Gee, there’s a big tall building at the lower tip of Manhattan, who woulda guessed?” I worm my way through the crowd, muttering about pilot licenses in the bottom of Cheerios boxes.

I get upstairs and someone says a second plane has flown broadside into the other tower. :eek:

78

It was my freshman year of college. That morning, I’d gotten up a little earlier than usual–at about the time the first plane hit, or a little before. I’d stayed in bed for a little bit, looking at the ceiling, then decided to go to the dorm cafeteria for breakfast (this was the dorm next to mine).

So I walk out there in my freakin’ pajamas (remember–freshman year of college), pad my way through the cafeteria, and make my way to the cashier holding an everything bagel, some cream cheese, a donut, and probably a diet, caffienated soft drink of some sort. As I paid for the meal with my student ID, I noticed that the normally-friendly cashiers were talking about the Oklahoma City bombing. Still being a bit asleep, I didn’t really pay it much attention. I then walked over to the toaster (which was in the cafeteria, less than 20 feet from the checkout), and put in my bagel.

As my bagel toasted, I noticed that another student had entered the cafeteria. She wasn’t eating or finding a seat or going into the food area, though; she was staring at the cashiers, and her eyes were growing wider and wider. After a few quick questions, I grabbed my food and ran up to my dorm room, where I joined the flood of people trying to pull up cnn.com, and started IMing my friends, trying to find out more.

79

When the first plane hit, my wife and I were sitting in airplane seats waiting to leave the gate at DIA.

We got ferried off the plane…then ferried out of the concourse…we spent three hours or so in baggage claim (with me getting all our information using my phone and PDA), then shuttled home.

This is the perfect week to go up to Washington state, the tourists are gone, the weather’s nice. By the time we got new tickets, it was October. Four adults spent a week in 450 sq. ft. of boat, freezing our butts off with nothing to do but watch CNN talk about anthrax. It sure doesn’t rate with the losses others have been through, but it left a pretty indellible memory.

The wierdest part was sitting in the Hot Tub at night over the next two or three days. We overlook the southern approach corridor to DIA and there’s ALWAYS three to five planes on the horizon at any time. During that time, we saw one plane…and it was really loud and really fast.

80

You’re probably misremembering a small, nitpicky bit. Rockefeller Center is between 5th and 6th Avenues, and 48-50th Streeets (and right outside my current client’s office building). The 6 train is the Lexington Avenue line. Notable stop on the 6th where you might have encountered a crowd like that is Grand Central Station.