I just got home from work, and got a call from Mrs. blur, who told me to turn on the news, just in tome to see the 2nd crash into the WTC.
I’m visiting my parents in San Francisco. I woke up around 8.45 a.m. to the sound of the TV news. I couldn’t hear what was being said, but I knew something was wrong straightaway because (a) my parents wouldn’t normally be home at that time and (b) if they were, they wouldn’t have the TV volume loud enough to wake me. So I got up and went into the TV room to see what was going on.
In my car on the way to work.
That’s it…no story.
I was in engineering class when the prof announced it at around 8:15, West Coast time. Just then, a student entered and sat down next to me and explained the whole situation. By that point, both towers had already collapsed. I ran back to my dorm, the news was on the TV in the lounge. I ran back to my room and checked my email, and my DC relatives had already emailed me, saying that they were ok. I went back to the lounge and watched TV for most of the rest of the day. I was too sick for lunch or dinner. Finally, somebody brought some pizzas. I had just a breadstick and a diet coke, and I still almost threw up. I had two prayer sessions this evening as well, one Jewish and one multidenominational.
I work in a Television News room, on a morning show. This happened just before our 6 am newscast.
We had just gone live to shots of the first tower burning, were figuring out a plane had crashed into it-- when the second plane came barrelling along.
Mr. Rilch had to get up at 6:30. I’m still not sure if he turned the TV on himself, or if it was at the urging of his mom, who calls us from Pittsburgh(!) whenever something major happens. At any rate, he woke me up at 6:45, telling me to come downstairs.
I saw an aerial view of Manhattan with smoke billowing up. Did that fault line finally let go? I wondered. Mr. Rilch gave me a brief explanation: at the time, the two planes had crashed, but the towers were still standing. How awful, I thought. But fire burns upwards. Those poor souls on the top stories won’t make it, but everyone below them should be able to evacuate.
I was still thinking in terms of repairing the top stories on otherwise intact buildings. Mr. Rilch mentioned that people had been jumping. I thought it would be over as soon as the flames died down, and kept reminding myself that this wasn’t a movie.
Mr. Rilch was here for the first tower collapse. I was brushing my stupid teeth, and came out to see an enormous beige puff next to a lone tower. He had to leave, and I stood numbly in front of the TV. Commentator commentator commentator, then there’s a flume of smoke. Male commentator says, “What— Is that—” A beat. “There are no words.”
I thought then that it would be like a movie, and not in a good way. I thought the Sears Tower would be next, and the Space Needle, and what would they hit in LA? NBC Studios, to avenge any remarks Jay might have made?
Called mom. Called a lot of people. My sister said just what I’d been thinking: that we both had a hard time reconciling ourselves that this wasn’t Die Hard, and Bruce Willis wouldn’t have survived either.
Thank you, Straight Dope, for being my touchstone.
I walked into work, and everyone was talking about the collapse of the WTC towers. I didnt believe them at first. They asked me where i had been (asleep). So, i read the list of events at CNN.com. It seemed to me like it was unreal, like i was reading a list of possible scenarios if something did occur (which of course did). It wasnt until I got home and saw the collapse of the first and second towers on TV that it dawned on me that this really was reality.
Rhonda and I were coming back from breakfast when the radio station she had turned on, with the news, i was not quite awake on the way home, but i popped my head up and listened with shock.
My parents were at home and when i walked in the door, they wre watching the news.
The twins were in school, and their ISTEP’S are this week, they found out after the tests were completed.
ISTEPS re a statewide acheivement/aptitude test.
First heard about it in my Precalc discussion, circa 8 am. Apparently I was the only one, as more than one person looked at me in shock when the TA asked the class “Did you hear what happened this morning?” and I shook my head with a confused look.
He told me/the class what happened, and a couple classmates filled in a few blanks.
I didn’t really understand what happened until I had my computer lab session and read some articles on CNN.com. After reading those articles (especially the parts about the people who fell/jump from the top floors of the WTC towers) and seeing pictures of the skyline with the towers smoking and later pictures of the same stretch of skyline without the towers, I was in shock.
I kept thinking that it wasn’t real. Kept expecting costumed superheroes to arrive and start rescuing people. Or some miracle of some sort.
But, no, the real world doesn’t have super heroes. Or discernible miracles.
I was at work (I’m in Germany so it was early in the afternoon for me) when a co-worker heard it from a colleague in another subsidiary.
I couldn’t believe it at first - I was thinking about an accident and the odds of two planes chrashing into the same building. At once we searched the internet and when we saw the first pictures it was clear that that was no accident.
We switched on the radio and heard that one tower had collapsed. We were just sitting there, couldn’t really grasp it! A few minutes later we went to the cafeteria where a TV was running. There was a German reporter reporting live when suddenly the second tower collapsed.
We were all deeply shocked, some of us were nearly in tears.
I still can’t really believe it. I see the pictures and I hear the news but it escapes me! I think there isn’t enough room in my head to grasp the horror!
i had just walked into work at 5 minutes to 9, when a coworker asked me if i had heard anything about a plane and the wtc. i said no and turned on the radio. just in time to hear gibson and sawyer turn to the reporter at wtc, 2 minutes later i hear 2 of them say oh my god, charles gibson said: " that is a second plane." then he went on to describe what had just happened. i put out a staff email for the office on what was happening. until our building shut down at noon i kept close to the radio keeping staff updated. finally at 10:30 they turned on a tv in a confrence room. i was chilled when i heard wtc2 go down.
I was on the top floor of my school’s science building, heading for the bathroom, when one of my classmates just arriving asked if I’d heard about the plane hitting the WTC. This was at about 9:45 and I had left home just before 9:00 and hadn’t heard a thing yet, since I listened to a tape all the way to school.
Then I proceeded to fail a geology test because it was REALLY REALLY HARD.
Afterwards, I got back to my car as fast as I could and flipped on the radio. A plane hitting the WTC sounded like HUGE news, but damn, that was a freakin’ hard test…Just as I did, they announced that the north tower was down and…wait a second…the south one just went too. (This was at just about 10:30.) I drove across campus in a daze, trying to imagine this. Then I left my car parked outside Fine Arts and caught a ride with some other people over to the student center, where I joined a crowd around a TV for about forty-five minutes. Then somebody said they were cancelling classes for the rest of the day, so I headed back to my car and got home as quick as I could and called my mom.
They lived in DC until this summer. My mom’s former office was one of the ones evacuated (on Pennsylvania). If she’d been involved, I’d have been in a total, screaming panic. As it was, everybody we knew there got home okay.
I was just heading out the door to go to work and the the Idiot Morning Guy on the radio was babbling something about how a plane just hit the World Trade Center in an “Oh the Humanity!” voice. (The Idiot Morning Guy is prone to hyper-dramatic hysterics. A car has crashed “MY! GHOD! IT’S A TRADGEDEY(spelling intentional)!” A school has shut down because the sprinkler system is stuck on “A TRUE DISASTER! THOSE POOR CHILDREN!”)
I rolled my eyes, assumed that at worst, it was a minor accident and set out to work. Imagine my shock as I started to learn the level of damage from the first one and the horror as the second plane hit.
I feel a little horrified that my first reaction was to: :rolleyes: about it.
Fenris
Mom called me around 6:30 Pacific to wake me up and ask if I’d heard the news. (uh, no Mom, what news?) Halfway through her second sentence, I flipped the TV on and didn’t stop watching (except when I had to go to work, when I got it off Internet feeds instead) all day long.
Like a lot of people I was at work and got my first news of it from this fine message board. Getting to internet news sites was difficult, so I’d to personally thank all of the dopers out there who posted updates as this tragdy developed, you kept some of us out of the dark.
Shortly after the second tower collapsed, our company went into a “heightened state of alert”, part of which is severing “network connectivity, Internet & un-trusted connections” to and from the facility. Then we had to rely on little radios and phone calls from home for updates.
I was at work, tackling the bills. I had just finished one account’s, and was pulling up the second account when someone in the back screamed “Turn on the TV. Ron’s on his cell phone. A plane just crashed into the World Trade Center.” The TV was off, so we had the radio and I was on-line for the next four hours.
The bills are still unpaid.
At home checking out SDMB, actually, contemplating going to the gym when teigra called from work. The boss’ wife was at home and had called boss to describe what she was seeing on TV.
Teigra called me to tell me about a fire at the WTC.
“Here in Tallinn?” was my first thought.
“No, in New York.”
whirr-click. “Okay, a fire at th-”
“A plane hit it.”
Like most people here, I also assumed it was a small plane that wandere-
“TWO of them.”
“Wait, what? Two planes hit the WTC towers in NY?”
“Yes, and the pentagon’s been hit, too. Another plane crashed into-”
Now somebody’s pulling a joke.
“Oh Bullshit! Somebody’s pulling your leg. Okay, you had me going at the WTC thing, but the US military complex? The Pentagon is the HQ for the US Military! We’re talking about Army, Navy, Air Force, Coast Guard… ANYthing having to do with defence decision making is done there, you don’t just fly a plane into the pentagon!”
“It’s TRUE! We were just looking at pictures on the boss’ computer!”
It was about 4pm local time (11am EST), and not having cable was suddenly an irritant. I of course try to check CNN.com with no joy.
Yahoo news shows a picture of the twin towers burning and the headline “2 planes crash…”
My friend from Australia calls: “Are you looking at the news??” And gives me a description of what he’s seeing on the TV.
A pub.
A hotel pub.
I need a TV.
SOMEbody MUST be showing CNN SOMEwhere.
On my way downtown, I pass a TV shop (“of course!”) and cross the street to see the image of the second plane hit.
mother
puss
bucket
I spend the next hour at that TV shop surrounded by images form a variety of stations (mostly Russian, unfortunately) and making long distance calls to Canada.
My first rational thoughts were echoed by various State Representatives: “This is a declaration of war.”
By pure chance, I changed the channel on my TV just before I left for class. NBC showed the tower in flames, and the anchors were speculating about an air traffic control problem. As I watched and listened, the second plane sped across the screen and into the second tower. Clearly, thought I, this is no accident.
Back when I was working and had spare cash to spend, I’d bought a little 2.2 inch LCD TV. I grabbed it as I headed out the door to class and watched it at every opportunity throughout the day. Everyone else at school crowded around the one TV that was placed in the forum.
Two of my four classes let out early. The professor of my last class of the day let us go, saying he was just too distracted, because his mother lives in lower Manhattan and he hadn’t heard from her yet.
I was sitting at work yesterday morning, e-mailing back and forth with a friend about whether an e-mail petition with 1 million signatures would force the Nobel Prize committee to revoke Arafat’s prize. The friend sent me an e-mail saying “terrorist attack in NY in progress NOW!!” I tried to get into MSNBC, but the internet was jammed. I walked over to the CNN television over the elevators in the middle building, and spent much of my morning watching TV. The crowd never got below 50 people, at least until the building was closed. (I work in SSA headquarters, near Baltimore.)
I was in my living room with the news on, as I normally rise at 0500 Pacific time here on the left coast. I was waiting to hear about the aftershock that woke me up. Obviously, I never heard how strong the little earthquake was. For me, I saw the coverage live.