I was in third period English when my teacher got a call from her husband who told her. She got off the phone told us a pane crashed into the WTC and said it was no big deal. Soon after, she got a tv into the room and we were all scared shitless. The first thing I saw of it was it second tower getting hit. Now, I’m even more scared because I live near New York and near the Groton Naval Base.
~Kittie
I was just getting up this morning, and turned on the TV to Headline news. First thing I see was “One tower already gone…” and I’m thinking “Someone’s just bought a whole world of hurt down on them.”
I was listening to NPR on my way into work. Some music had just finished - I have no idea what it was - and the announcer said in an extremely calm voice “And momentarily we’ll have information on the two planes that hit the World Trade Center.”
He said it so matter-of-factly that I thought he was talking about two small Cessnas, like the plane that landed on the White House lawn some years back. I thought “Ok, an aviation accident. Happens all the time, it’ll be headline news today, and then that’s it.”
When I came into work, I found a dozen coworkers crowded around a TV and someone explained to me that these were hijacked passenger airlines.
You’re school allowed students to know? My county decided it would be “business as usual.” We were even told not to turn our TVs on. Today was Midterm Report Day, so I filled out the reports at my desk with the talkradio going softly.
Weird, huh?
My alarm clock is set to the local news station (I go to college in New York). I woke to the plea that all firefighters in NYC please report to duty. I rushed over to our tiy TV and held the antennas up so that I could get some fuzzy reception and watched the second tower smoking, not even realizing that one of the towers was already gone.
None of us bothered going to class, assuming (correctly) that it would be cancelled. The phone lines have been completely jammed as students try to reassure their parents that they’re all OK.
I sent the following e-mail around at about noon EDT.
"I was in my apartment [about 2.5 miles north of the WTC] when the planes hit - I was watching the news as the second plane struck. I went outside, with a weird feeling of suspended animation - just watching the towers burn (and people’s reactions) as I walked slowly south along Seventh Avenue. After about ten minutes I’d had my fill; while I was making my way north, my friend Jay called to tell me to get inside; the Pentagon had been hit and no one new how many more targets there might be. Since he was able to see the towers from his apartment, I joined him - and arrived just in time to watch the first collapse.
"I’m back home now. The streets are crowded with people walking north, away from downtown - all transit has been shut down. No one knows how much damage the subway has sustained - several major lines travel under the WTC so recovery could take days, if not weeks. [Actually, a lot of the system has reopened - bravo, New York!] Buses are suspended to keep the avenues open for ambulances.
"So everyone walks, punctuated occasionally by ash-covered police vans.
“It’s unbelievable. I think we’re at war, but with whom?”
I was in Comp and Reading when it happened, but I didn’t hear about it. After Comp and reading, I went to my car and then back to the Campus Center. People were crowded around a TV and I thought it was just some club watching something they did on a TV. I walked into the eating area and saw the video of a building with smoke. I sat next to my friend who said it was the World Trade Center.
“Why would someone bomb it again?” I asked, remembering the incident in 1993.
“Planes crashed into it,” said my friend.
This confused me and at first I thought it was an accident.
“Two planes in eighteen minutes. That was not an accident.” said my friend and only then did I realize that it was probably terrorists, and then hijackers I learned.
Classes at our school were being canceled. None of mine were, but my last class, our teacher let us out early.
In my dorm room. I am usually one of those people who hops out of bed at 6:30. Today, for some reason, I woke up at 7:00 and just didn’t want to get up…I just couldn’t do it. I finally did get up at 7:30, ate some breakfast, and the phone rang. “Awfully early,” I thought. It was my mother.
“Two planes just crashed into the World Trade Center. They think it’s terrorists. Turn on the TV, now.”
“What station?”
“Any station! Just turn it on! They’ve just started a war. Goodbye. click”
And the TV has been on since 8:00 this morning, so I saw everything that happened since then, live. Horrifying.
I was here on the boards. I hit refersh, saw a thread asking what just happened, opened it, ran to my TV and watched in horror as the buildings went up in flames, and then watched as they collapsed. Horrible and shocking and frightening.
I had turned on my computer to check my email shortly before seven our time (9 NY time) and I saw a burning building, and then I realized there were two buildings there which meant it was the WTC. I checked my email and just sat there…Screech Owl ICQed me and I had to tell her the news. Next about five minutes later fierra came on as well as Hamadryad, and we spent the next hour exchanging information and as Screech said a lot of fucks and shits… I went to work and there was nobody on the streets, it was eerie, and some of the stores didn’t open on time. If it was like that in Canada I can’t imagine what it is like in America. My heart goes out to the American people, I can only imagine what this tragedy means to you, and it puts my petty little problems into perspective. I may be a Canadian but I feel that this is an appropriate time to say God Bless American, and Godspeed to those who lost their lives in this horrible tragedy.
Keith
I was at a seminar, here in Atlanta. It started at 9AM, but as everyone came in, someone said “did you hear that a plane, a 737 has crashed into the WTC. It’s hanging out of the building.” We discussed it, then started our class for the day.
At 10, we got a break, and that’s where we heard about the second one and the Pentagon, and the one in PA.
They cancelled class until 12:30 and my boss and I sat and watched CNN. It’s just a shocked feeling.
I can’t reach my friend who works in the Pentagon. I did shoot an e-mail to his fiancee, so hopefully I will hear from her soon.
I overslept a little this morning; so I didn’t have the news on while getting ready as I normally do. I hopped in the car and was surprised when my alternative rock station sounded like AM news radio.
By the time I got to the end of my block the reporters had given the general gist. Then another reporter cut in and said, “The New York World Trade Centers are gone.”
My first thought was, “Cut the damn hyperbole, lady. I wanna know what’s going on.” Then she said that the second of the WTC towers had collapsed. Forget cell phones being a distraction. I nearly wrecked right then, and I’ve been going back and forth between rage, shock and grief ever since.
Right here, sitting at my desk. My son was watching cartoons and I had just logged on to the SDMB and there was two threadas at the top of the page.
I promptly turned on CNN and I’ve been sitting here all day monitoring websites, making calls for people who can’t call out of DC and NY to their families and mailing out updates to people had had no other reliable news access from their work.
I’m still in shock. I work in Crystal City, VA and have my radio tuned to 107.3 with Jack Diamond. When the first reports came in, I thought the first plane was a small news plane. However, when the second plane hit, and both were described as large jetliners, I knew it was terrorists. At 10:00 am, we were sent home. I walked in my front door at 11:30 am and have watched television besides sending emails to my family and calling my parents. I said quite a few prayers for those terrified passengers on all of the planes that crashed and for the people caught in the twin towers. I agree that war was declared. I will wager $.53 (what is in my change purse) that all the military services will report increased enlistments in the next few months. I will further wager that President Bush will do quite a bit more than a few airstrikes against Osama Bin Laden.
By the way, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank all of the foreign Dopers for their statements of condolences and support. I know that for all of the differences of opinion on this site, the truly caring people on this forum make this world bearable.
P.S. On this terrible day, we’re not “virgins” anymore, in that we have experienced terrorism on our own soil; something every other country in the world has long experience with. I know that security measures must be taken, but I hope that our underlying values won’t be compromised. God bless everyone who reads this message.
I was standing on the scaffolding conducting the warm up for the band. I saw our band director walk up towards the field, and when I waved to him, he didn’t seem happy for one reason or another. After the warm up was finished he told us all what happened. This was all around 9:30 this morning. I was surprised. It still seems like something out of a movie. We ran the show and then went down to the library to watch the news, where we learned that both WTC buildings were hit and the pentagon was hit as well.
I fell asleep with the TV on. I woke up around 6 to the sight of the second plane exploding against the building. I live a short walk away from the airport (LAX), TRW, Hughes/Boeing where the B2 bombers were built and L.A. Missle Defense Air Force Base. If there’s any west coast targets, I’m one of them.
Nothing like a fatwah to wake you up in the morning.
I had just left the office after handing in yesterday’s paperwork. I got in my truck and turned it on. It was about 10 minutes to 9. I always keep a NYC news/talk station on, and they had a live reporter on the scene describing what he was seeing just after the first plane hit. The only way I can describe his report was that it sounded just like the reporter describing the Hindenburg disaster so long ago. The man was distraught and practically crying.
What a world.
…at about 6:10 a.m. (California time), minutes after the 2nd WTC impact. She had to go to work (Los Angeles Unified School District schools are operating as normal, AFAIK), but after she left I hung around the apartment for a couple of hours taking in the TV reports.
I’m a grad student, free (more or less) to set my own hours. By the time I got to Caltech, school officials here had made the decision to shut down the institute “at least for today.” We’re not barred from campus, though, so I’m here in my lab trying to get some work done. It’s either that or sit around doing nothing, helping no one.
I had Painting class this morning at 8:30. Nobody had heard anything yet. The prof was demonstrating color mixing techniques; people were laughing and making jokes. There are two girls I like in the class, and I had kinda made significant eye contact with both of them. It was a fun class. My personal life has been getting increasingly better lately. This morning, still before I had heard anything, I wrote in my journal “everything makes me happy.”
After painting class I went to work in the Ceramics studio. The radio in there barely works, and I could only catch a few scratchy words of news, and I couldn’t make out the context. “Bah,” I thought, “More stupid Middle East news.” I turned the radio off and worked in silence.
I got back to the dorms around noon. Campus had a strange feel, but I could put my finger on why. On the front door of my dorm there was a cyptic sign, saying that the college sympathizes with the victims and thier families, and that classes this afternoon were optional, and if you did go to class you were encouraged to discuss “the situation.” It didn’t specify what “the situation” was, and I was thinking some kind of natural disaster, or, at worst, a local school shooting.
I don’t have a TV, so I turned on the computer and went to the local paper’s website–because I thought the situation was something local–and found an article titled “Northland Mourns Tragedy” or something, but, dammit, it still didn’t say what “the tragedy” was. And neither did the regional paper’s site, but at least I could gather that something serious had happened. So I go to cnn.com and… oh, my god.
I’ve been listening to NPR and and reading news, etc., online since. I’ve got class at six that I’ll probably go to just to get my mind off the horror.
I’ve been numb, and have broken down once or twice. How can the world be so awful?
This morning around 7:30, strangely enough, my housemate happened to mention to me that her godfather used to work in the WTC. We talked about how neither of us had ever been to New York and that we were eager to visit it some day.
As I was riding my bike to Chemistry, a black cat walked right across the sidewalk in front of me. I’m not terribly superstitious, but I had a funny feeling that something bad would happen today.
At 9-ish, when all this started, I was sitting in my Organic Chemistry class, learning about aldehydes and ketones.
I was at work when I heard… I was mixing agar for the petri dishes when a coworker came in and said, " My mother just called, and said a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center." I was surprised, but then remembered how a small plane had once crashed into the Empire State Building and didn’t worry too much.
Then our boss came in and told us more: Pentagon, one tower collapsing, then both towers collapsing. All the news websites were jammed, and we could only get through to Deutsche Welle’s site in Germany.
Sporadic Internet reports were announced in the lab throughout the morning, and I ate my lunch in the break room while watching people falling 100 + stories to their deaths on television.
Awful, absolutely fucking awful. 