September 11, 2001, is a date that will forever be known simply as 9-11. As we reflect on the day we think of those we lost in New York, Pennsylvania and Washington DC; and we remember the courage and bravery of the heroic first responders. We will never forget.
We lived in North Carolina at the time, I was still sleeping when my husband called from work and told me to turn on the tv, a plane had just flew into the first tower, we thought it was a horrible accident. Right before we were getting ready to hang up, the second plane hit and that’s when we knew it was a terrorist attack and that the US was going to go to war.
I was at work just 30 miles up the Hudson, walking across a parking lot to meet with my team in a conference room thinking about our kids coming up to visit in a couple weeks. My phone rang. It was my wife. After a few words she said get back to your office and turn on the TV, something terrible just happened in the city. That, and the birth of my son are burned in my memory.
Hero’s Live Forever.
I was driving when I heard about the first tower being struck, a presumed accident. In a few minutes I was in front of TV watching the unfolding tragedy for the rest of the day.
Will never forget. Will never forgive.
I worked for ten years 180 miles from home on a one week here/one week there schedule. On 9/11, I was here – sitting at the end of the bed for the first week, barely sleeping as I changed video tapes in the machine to record this atrocity because we can’t ever forget.
My 9/11 YouTube Channel Playlist – 17 videos – starts with “As It Happened” 5 days later
I posted links to the individual videos on Free Republic.
https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/chat/3883124/posts?page=13
@21:10 – “We heard a very loud blast, an explosion…” and then the second tower collapsed.
Was working for Sprint that day at our Virginia HQ, near Dulles International Airport (IAD). Soon after seeing video of the attacks in NYC and the Pentagon, I walked outside to a brilliant bright blue sky and noticed no air traffic, except for 2 fighter jets. Surreal, being so close to IAD and no commercial planes in the air.
Our director of IT, former USMC, got us together for a conference to discuss contingency plans. Nobody left the office that day, and of course the mood was somber.
We did lose an employee that day–one of our telecom technicians was atop WTC2 working on an antenna when the building crashed.
When the Towers came down and all the tunnels in and out of the city were shut, it left people trapped, with no way to get home. What happened next was the evacuation of that part of NYC by boat, any and all boats that could get there came to help. This video is the story of that Boat Lift.
https://www.americanwaterways.com/media/videos/boatlift-tom-hanks-narrates-untold-tale-911-resilience
Terrific video, thank you for posting.
USA-Patriot ,
Thank You for posting this vid about
the Man in the Red Bandana . Every Year
I Learn about Another Hero on that Fateful Day .
Thank You Again .
I was in mid-town Manhattan, in another skyscraper, looking at the WTC from my desk!! Most definitely I can never forget the evil attacks or all that followed. We lost friends who worked in the WTC. One of the firefighters who perished had been Best Man at a friend’s wedding. A college friend was in the first impact zone, never had a chance. Then of course all the impacts on our nation and the world. No, I will never forget.
I was in mid-town Manhattan, in another skyscraper, looking at the WTC from my desk!! Most definitely I can never forget the evil attacks or all that followed. We lost friends who worked in the WTC. One of the firefighters who perished had been Best Man at a friend’s wedding. A college friend was in the first impact zone, never had a chance. Then of course all the impacts on our nation and the world. No, I will never forget.
Is this article at Lawfare a confession in advance of a disclosure by Durham?
https://www.lawfareblog.com/partisan-taint-trump-russia-investigation
Are they at the Bargaining stage on the Kubler-Ross scale? I can’t wait for Depression on November 3.
Whoopse. Sorry. How did my reply get into this thread? It was meant for an earlier one.
I was asleep in Cali. Wife woke me after the second strike. Watched them fall on CNN.
I was apolitical before, it changed that. Debating a friend who believe the Loose Change nonsense got me scouring the internet for alternative new sources.
Ah – Ok, now I understand. Some topics are not open to honest open discussion.
While I was homeschooling our kids, hubby called from work to say turn on the TV, WTC struck by jets. Did so, watched the events for a few minutes, then returned to our regularly scheduled activities. We had no flag pole, so draped a flag over some tree branches to show our patriotism. My club meeting was held that night in defiance of TPTB’s efforts to ruin our life. To this day, when jets fly overhead (often), I pray for the safety of those aboard. And I choose ground transport rather than air. Still resentful and defiant toward those who would try to destroy our constitutional republic founded on Christian principles.
I was living in So Cal, and I had woken up early because I had to use the bathroom…when I went to open my bedroom door, it wouldn’t budge…there was no lock on the door and I’d never had problems with the door before. I tried again and again, the handle would turn, but the door wouldn’t budge. I leaned my shoulder into it, but I just bounced off…finally, I yelled for help and my parents came running…they pulled, I pushed…and finally the door spilled open….that was weird we said….I looked over at the time…it was 5:50 am.. the whole thing took about 2 minutes…the first plane hit at 8:48 Eastern time…Pacific time is 3 hours behind
I was arriving for a dentist appointment when the radio report came on about the first plane. I was in the dentist chair when someone came in and announced about the second plane. My dentist paused and said, “I wonder if it is Bin Laden?”. I had never heard of Bin Laden before.
I picked my daughter up from day care and was numb for the rest of the day. I”ll never forget the internal feeling I had that day.
yes, like being punched in the gut. hard to breathe. numb indeed
I had just started a new job, in a company that had a bunch of Kosovo Muslims there.
I was in the breakroom and folks were watching the 1st building burn- Matt Lauer and Katie Couric were talking. Then we watched the second one hit live. The first words out of my mouth was “This is War”.
Had Fox on the SiriusXM while driving and Karl Rove was on. Had some interesting stories about what took place while the attacks were taking place and shortly thereafter. Really put a human element to things that the fake news would never report about a Republican administration.
I was in my office at the Naval Research Laboratory on the Potomac River, next to Bolling AFB, in Washington, DC. We were located in sight of Washington National Airport and not much more than a mile from the Pentagon. After the plane slammed into the Pentagon, some of us went outside and could see the thick dark smoke boiling up from the building location. There was a brisk wind that day and it blew the smoke directly toward the lab. A sad day I will never forget. And yet, we have domestic terrorists today burning our cities and disrespecting and attacking our law enforcement officers and emergency rescue personnel. It is hard for me to fathom.
I was working on the top floor of a Philadelphia high rise. Got the news by email from my sister in Atlanta after the 2nd tower. No one knew if all major cities would be under attack so I was nervously keeping an eye on the clear blue skies., not sure what I would have done if I saw a plane heading our way. Internet was spotty in 2001 and nowhere near the level of first person reporting we have today. News was reporting 50,000 people working in towers so the magnitude of death was potentially staggering. The 3,000 range was a relief.
Commuter trains were shutting down and mid day I caught the last outbound to a station near where my husband worked and could drive us home. Riders sat in silence some quietly crying.
My strongest memory was the children of tower workers making “have you seen my dad?” posters and you just knew they would not turn up. The medical tents for survivors were empty. The eerie sounds of alarms in the ashen moonscape after towers fell.
A co-worker lost a brother in law at Windows on the World. He did not normally work there, just setting up for a conference. British guy. Our corporate emergency response guy volunteered for recovery operations and had sobering reports. He created a slide show set to Enya to present at our training sessions in following years and to this day I can’t hear her music without seeing those images in my mind.
A national shared loss experience.
Every time I hear Enya’s song, “Only Time”, it takes me back again. It played solidly and constantly it seemed.
My husband, then a director of a wilderness survival school, was in South Jersey near the shore, teaching survival skills to 100 adults from all over the US and the world. He had no television access in this “primitive camp.” I called him after the 1st plane hit the WTC. He had a helper drive a car down into camp, so they could all gather round and listen to the radio. He remembers looking up into a perfectly blue cloudless sky and wondering how a plane could get lost enough to hit a building on such a clear day. Then they heard the reports of the second plane hitting the tower.
Then, his boss received a call from his wife, that her brother, Michael Horrocks, was missing. He was the co-pilot on United Flight 175 that was the second plane to hit the WTC. All day long we all prayed to know his whereabouts, until we heard the horrifying news.
A few weeks later, driving to an appointment in DC, I could see the aftermath of the attack on the Pentagon.
May Michael’s soul, and the souls of all of those departed, rest in peace. And may God grant you and yours His consolation.
I was driving into Omaha to start my work day when I heard the news on the radio. Knowing everyone else was still.at home, I called and told them to turn on the television. “What is it?” they asked. “Just turn it on. It’s too terrible. I can’t talk about it.”
If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand lose its cunning;
May my tongue cleave to my palate if I remember thee not.
On my way to work, heard on the radio when the first tower was hit. Our entire bank staff stayed glued to tv/radio and watched the horror.
I was at work in bristol pa
I was outside before the first plane hit… I was looking up at the beautiful day and saw an airplane passing the moon..and I thought what a beautiful clear day to fly ..
Little did I know when I walked back into work..a plane had hit the first tower..I often think of this beautiful morning and how could something so beautiful turn into something so horrific .. I left work just knowing this was no accident.. such a terrible day in our Freedom loving country
With resolve we came together Our Flag waving our people giving our First respond ers courageous ordinary citizens all pulled together ..I’m honored to he an American
I was sitting in my recliner drinking my morning coffee when the 1st plane struck. Was glued to the TV when the 2nd plane struck. I knew at that point we were under attack. My son was at the local university in his morning class when it happened. He came home early—only after his professor turned the TV on and made them watch it. He told them this was all our fault. We deserved this. We had it coming for many many years. He said we should have never been in this part of the world. OUR FAULT. Needless to say when son came home and told me what he learned in class that day I went ballistic. I yelled at him and informed him to tell his so called “Professor” I wasn’t paying for an education by an activist and for him to keep his opinions to himself. Made my son sit with me and watch it all day long. He learned more than he wanted to that day. Was the 2nd time that I realized that the professors on our university was brain washing the students.
One can’t think of 9/11/2001 without understanding the aftermath of how the Military-Industrial complex has taken advantage of the perpetual wars since. Understand that the Patriot Act, written well in advance of 9/11, and the NDAA have usurped our liberties.
The “Plan for a New American Century”, which called for a “new Pearl Harbor”:
https://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1141698/posts
How Chinagate Led to 9/11 FrontPageMagazine.com ^ | 5/25/04 | Jean Pearce
“As the 9/11 Commission tries to uncover what kept intelligence agencies from preventing September 11, it has overlooked two vital factors: Jamie Gorelick and Bill Clinton. Gorelick, who has browbeaten the current administration, helped erect the walls between the FBI, CIA and local investigators that made 9/11 inevitable. However, she was merely expanding the policy Bill Clinton established with Presidential Decision Directive 24. What has been little underreported is why the policy came about: to thwart investigations into the Chinese funding of Clinton’s re-election campaign, and the favors he bestowed on them in return.
“In April, CNSNews.com staff writer Scott Wheeler reported that a senior U.S. government official and three other sources claimed that the 1995 memo written by Jamie Gorelick, who served as the Clinton Justice Department’s deputy attorney general from 1994 to 1997, created “a roadblock” to the investigation of illegal Chinese donations to the Democratic National Committee. But the picture is much bigger than that. The Gorelick memo, which blocked intelligence agents from sharing information that could have halted the September 11 hijacking plot, was only the mortar in a much larger maze of bureaucratic walls whose creation Gorelick personally oversaw.
“It’s a story the 9/11 Commission may not want to hear, and one that Gorelick – now incredibly a member of that commission – has so far refused to tell. But it is perhaps the most crucial one to understanding the intentional breakdown of intelligence that led to the September 11 disaster.”
I was arriving at my office 7 miles west of NYC at 8:30 and remarked to a friend that it was such a beautiful day. A bit later a co-workers wife was relaying via phone what was happening. Left work and went to a nearby friends home to watch tv. She wasn’t there and I sat on the couch crying with her housekeeper. We embraced and agreed life would never be the same. Drove home with my head on a swivel scanning the sky.
I and Wife were getting ready to go to Eugene Oregon for Dentist appointments. My Wife ran into the bathroom saying “A plane hit on eof the Twin Towers! She’d been in NYC some years ago and had visited them.”It appears to be an accident.” she said. I said:”This is an act of war.This is no accident.”
The local TV station out of Medford, Or was talking about the B-25 that hit the Empire state building
back in ’46, when the second plane hit.
“Once is and accident,Twice a coincidence,Three times is enemy action..”.I said to my wife..
I feel that Bush and Co. should’ve “gone Roman” on the perps. Trump is still cleaning up that mess…
But we are getting out of the was for the Deep state.
I was on the friggen George Washington bridge. STUCK.Nothing moving.Came out of Long Island after unloading at a grocery warehouse.Was supposed to drop the empty van trailer and swap it for a flatbed spread axle.Was headed to Oswego, N.Y. to pickup a load of aluminum rolls to bring to the port of Long Beach. STUCK!
For how long?
I was typhoon evacuated to Kunsan, Korea. Man, that night was a mess…we were evacuated back to base due to a “bomb threat”. My crew was smart enough to take taxis back to base so we managed to get on base without all the security checks that people had to endure later on into the early morning trying to get back to base. We gathered in the recreation center and watched the television for hours while the base personnel were trying to figure out where they were going to billet all of us. Cots but no blankets in one of the disused buildings (old NCO club). I always packed a pillow when I went TDY to Korea because their pillows at hotels suck. It was a habit that served me well. It could have been worse, looking back. For a few days we watched that damned typhoon circle around our home base.
I was sitting in an HEB grocery store parking lot in San Antonio when my husband called to say some plane just hit the WTC. I was supposed to go downtown to do some research at the central library that day, but they were shutting off access to downtown. I went home and started watching the Today Show. I remember talking again to my husband on the phone and mentioned how the building looked weird, something was happening and then watching in horror as the first one came down. And then saw the second one go down. It was just horrific. I will never forget.
Utopian American Stupidity.
Lets Anyone in the Country
“Just sign right there swearing you’re not a Bad Guy, then come on in, don’t worry Working American Taxpayers will support you and your Family.”
Try to resist the urge of criticizing me instead of the Insane Policies.
It makes a difference at this point
I was uptown Manhattan working at Sloan-Kettering. Never will forget it, had to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge later that night to get home, the view of the devastation is etched in my mind. The towers, an ever presence in our daily lives were gone, crumbled, smoke and flames, police and fire whistles non-stop, debris in the air everywhere, people in shock. It was an eerie feeling, like an atom bomb had exploded downtown. Friends and relatives either in the building or just missed going there, friends that lost loved ones, my supervisor witnessed people jumping from the buildings. My kids had ash and debris in their schoolyards in Brooklyn. Funerals lasted for months and we could here taps played out every so often. Pictures were posted everywhere of the loved ones that were never found, never recovered. We were in shock for days.
The pictures of loved ones lost that were posted around town were the most upsetting to those I know who lived there.
It was just too sad to see, especially knowing they were holding out a thread of hope of still finding them after weeks.
I lived in Denver and worked downtown in a small building mostly occupied by State government and Federal military recruiting offices near the State Capitol. I worked for a seismic data processing company, which had mostly Oil Companies for customers.
We were in the early stages of making seismic data integral to the search for oil and gas reservoirs by mapping the direction of fractures in shale layers. Hydraulic Fracturing (fracking) had been the order of the day to enhance production volumes in marginal wells up until then. We opened a pathway for finding new producing reservoirs for exploitation by finding such well sites ahead of time I am very proud of having participated in the technology that created an energy independent USA. We were all excited just to go to work every morning.
I commuted on public transportation and did not find out about the first plane crash until after I had been in the office for a short while. A co-worker told me to watch the small TV in his office. We surmised it could be a terror attack, but did not believe it until the second plane hit. All hell broke loose in our building because the US Government immediately started shutting down every building that employed Federal workers. We were ordered to leave the building about the time flight 93 was discovered to be still in the air.
All I can remember is wanting the responsible gang to be found and destroyed. I had never really liked much about New York City but I felt terrible for all those people who ended up jumping to their death instead of being incinerated in the fires. When the buildings collapsed I was distraught and remember having a serious talk at God about it. How could evil be this extreme? I still don’t understand, but at least now I understand that Collectivist claptrap can lead to unmitigated destruction.
I think about all those innocent people almost every day, and I always will. I still wonder if I would have had the courage to do the things the men on flight 93 had to do. I believe God has a special place for all good men who must die as heroes, and for the women who made them so strong.
May God be with all of those families, forever.
“Like” because of what you said about Flight 93. Awesome heroes.
I was heavily pregnant with my first child, set to have my office baby shower that afternoon. Living in TN, but originally from New England, so I was familiar with the NYC area. Like most, at first, I thought it was an accident, but then the second plane hit, and then the Pentagon, and then another plane crash in PA. It was like something so benign as an airplane was suddenly a weapon. I was so emotional at the thought of bringing a child into the world, as it felt like a part of my innocence was taken that day. Needless to say, we postponed the baby shower.
Five years later, I was at World Financial, on a business trip, talking with coworkers who lost friends and family members at World Trade. The windows had blown out of the World Financial building including a huge glass dome over the lobby All was rebuilt by then, except the gaping hole that used to be buildings at World Trade.
Nineteen years later, my strong, healthy child is a strong healthy young man, heading into college in the midst of a pandemic. His senior year of High School completely upended by yet another black swan event. I marvel at the resilience needed by these young people. I still get sad about 9/11, but am in awe of the strength of our country. Very proud and blessed to be an American.
I will never forget that day. I lived in Brooklyn and worked in Weehawken NJ at the time. I used to take the Battery Tunnel and exited onto Trinity Place which turns into Church Street and then make a left onto what I think was Fulton, right onto the West Side Highway, travel north and take the Lincoln Tunnel to Weehawkin . It is weird how some memories are so clear. That was a beautiful day from a weather perspective.
I had the windows open on my Mustang. I remember it was about 8:30am and I was stopped at the light right in front of the Towers on Church Street. There is the Cortland Street subway stop on Church Street for the “R” train and another on Broadway, I believe for the “2” and “3” trains. People commuting to the WTC by subway cross Church Street right there. As I was waiting at the light, I was people watching and admiring the beautiful women crossing the street in front of me on their way to work in the Towers. Light changed and I was on my way.
Fast forward to a little before 9am which is when I pulled into my office parking lot. i went upstairs and everyone was watching the TVs. I was told what happened. I could see the WTC burning from my office. The first plane must have hit the building when I was in the Lincoln Tunnel. I don’t remember seeing the second plane hit. We were sent home in the early afternoon. I couldn’t get home because most of the bridges and tunnel’s were closed. Somehow I found my way to the Garden State Parkway South and drove to my grandparents home in Lakewood NJ. I stayed with them for a few days.
To this day, I occasionally think back to that scene etched in my mind waiting at the stop light watching the people cross in front of my car on their way to work in the Towers. I wonder how many of them died that day.
Something stinks…..
https://youtu.be/mcWT2lQszEE
**Good reminder. I was going to post separately, but it seems better to reply to your post…**
Like most, I was driving to work. Like most, I’ll never forget. May we also never forget that to this day we still don’t know what exactly what 9/11 was really about, or even even what exactly happened. Those who died deserve that these things be eventually found out.
That’s an understatement, something stinks.
I have seen so many things that defy the explanation we were fed that it’s preposterous. Most people have no clue unless they go into the depth of review that I have.
Ask Barbara Olson’s attorney husband who kidnapped her then…
Because they were wrong.
lol…. that’s the wreckage? Looks like a movie prop.
lol, idiot.
In a Boston office building a block from Fenway Park.
I was in my office working and one of my staff popped her head in and said a plane just crashed into the WTC. When she confirmed it was a commercial plane, I knew we were under attack!
This same women had a sister that worked at the Pentagon and could not get in touch with her. I spent the morning consoling her. Later that night we learned she was ok.
It was one of the most relieving phone calls I’ve ever received.
Never Forget!??
I was Chief Structural Engineer; watching the Towers burn, with around 30 colleagues.
After watching for about 20 minutes, I pointed to a particular point on the tower and told the group that the towers were going to come down and that was the first point of failure.
We all watched the collapse begin at that spot.
We knew and could do nothing to warn them.
Burned in memory.
So were those buildings designed to go down like that? Almost like a synchronized controlled demolition? Could you shed some light on how exactly that happens?
Some of you may remember seeing interviews with Donald Trump at the time. He said it was impossible for the buildings to come down like they did – that they were reinforced with steel on the inside and would not give way to a plane made mostly of aluminum. Search out the video on youtube to hear his remarks.
I’m mad and sad people died…. but what on earth is this?
Paris, France for Language submersion. Got out of class, went to a corner pub & EVERYONE was gathered around the one TV. At that time the Bldgs had not yet collapsed. Later on in the night I ran into an American Woman on the Metro that was really distraught. I still didn’t know at that time that the Bldgs had collapsed. I got her to where she needed to be. The next morning I bought an Irish Newspaper and it hit me. I was the only American in the 4 classes I was in, I didn’t go back to class for 3 day’s & I was in constant contact with my Unit back at Ft. Bragg during those 3 day’s.
Because of an early morning doctor’s appointment, I was late getting to work. I was crossing the 14th St. Bridge into DC when I heard that the 2nd plane hit, and knew instantly it was a terror attack. Arrived at my office at 17th and Pennsylvania to find all my colleagues gathered around TVs. When we heard a plane was headed for the White House we moved away from windows.
My daughter worked in DC also, and my husband was due at the Pentagon at 10 am. I couldn’t reach either of them. Rumors of the third plane grew as well as rumors that the metro was closed and rumors that both the White House and State Department were targets.. Beside myself with anxiety over my husband and daughter, I left work and headed home. Seeing military with automatic weapons on the north edge of Lafayette Park nearly did me in. Streets in DC were clogged with people trying to exit the city. I was the last of the three of us to make it home. Husband had a minor catastrophe at home before leaving for the Pentagon, and the time it took to deal with it caused him to not be on the parking lot when the plane hit.
Meanwhile our son in California was unable to get a call through, so he spent many hours not knowing if he lost his sister and both parents. We all spent the rest of the day glued to the TV, and the next weeks living in the eerie silence of not hearing planes overhead.
We remember those who died, and we give thanks for those who were spared.
I was in a rural Maine village (Kezar Falls, ME) searching for a client of mine who lived a somewhat nomadic and barbarian type life-style. I was standing on the back porch of an elderly friend of the clients, and could see the elderly gentleman asleep in the living room chair. He had the TV on and it was very loud. I stood on that man’s back porch transfixed on the TV screen for well over ten minutes. The first plane had hit but the second was not yet realized. I went out to my car, turned on the radio and just sat there for over 45 minutes listening. It sounded like the War of The Worlds album from my generation. I took the rest of the day off, drove the fifty miles home and sat in front of the TV for the next two days.
I was in my office in Fort Lee,NJ… my son was driving home from his NYPD night shift… He called told me a plane hit the World Trade Center.. Both of us thought it was a small plane crash…
Windows in my office overlooked the Hudson River… eventually you could see the gray smoke billowing
Well the rest goes without saying… as a born and bred New Yorker, along with millions of others, I literally cried for days (still do when reflecting)… Went to 2 funerals of FDNY friends (1 Captain, 1 Lt) :(:(
NEVER FORGET…
I was eating cereal upstairs getting ready for school in 9th grade… I tuned in to see the building on fire and not fully realizing the gravity of the situation as nobody had details yet.
I did not follow news or politics at the time as I was simply uninterested… I somehow looked up to see the infamous footage of the 2nd plane impact and my entire life was changed.
I developed empathy in an instant as a slow tear dripped down my face whilr realizing what I had just witnessed. In what seemed like both hours and seconds, witnessed the tower collapse. At this point my father and I decided to stay home… My mom was calling us in tears seeing San Jose airport fully grounded and people on a mass state of fear.
I started following current events and politics soon after. I went from being a democrat in the bay area of California to a hated freshmen conservative in high school within months of learning and formulating my own opinions.
9/11 was one of the most heartbreaking days I can remember and because of it I also found faith in god & humanity as we united to recover as a nation. I will always be proud of America for that…
God bless every person and family member that lost someone. God bless the brave souls in Benghazi on this day as well.
I will NEVER forget.
Sorry for the lack of punctuation and typos above… I was somewhat emotional reliving it and just started texting. Thank you for everything that you do Sundance and the rest of CTH.
God bless
It was perfect. Thank you!I
Thank You, Father, for the blessing You created, Roor. We are blessed.
Never Forget POS Traitor Paul Ryan, whose response on bringing in War Zone Muslims with zero capacity to background check.
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2015/11/18/paul-ryan-no-religious-test-refugees-house-bill/
Our Freedom Religion is the Loophole that is used against us.
Ideology masquerading as a Religion.
The resulting red stains remain the same.
I was in midtown Manhattan for a morning meeting and then I had to go to the World Financial Center to assist a co-worker on a job. When I went into the meeting my phone rang and I quick shut it off. After a few minutes the meeting was interrupted by the announcement that the building would be evacuated. I turned on the phone and I now had 35 messages. Cell towers were overloaded and you couldn’t make a call. My family was desperate to find out what happened to me and everyone was trying to call me.
My colleague at the World Financial Center fared worse. He drove into Manhattan and parked at the WTC underground garage. He saw the second plane hit. He saw people jumping out windows. He evacuated the building and got caught in the dust cloud when the tower collapsed. He walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to a friend’s place as his car was parked under the tower. Weeks later he got a letter that his car was in an impound lot in New Jersey. Very dirty but without a scratch.
I waited outside Penn Station most of the day waiting for trains to run. I saw armed guards with automatic weapons protecting buildings in NYC. On the train home the guy standing next to me broke down and said he worked in the towers and his job and company were gone. What could he do. I spent the train ride trying to tell him things would work out. I never thought life would return to normal again.
It was a tough time but we survived.
I had just reached my office in downtown Chicago when one of the traders ran in and told us a plane had hit one of the Trade Center towers in NYC. After watching the 2nd plane hit, rumors began spreading that the next plane was headed for the Sears Tower, directly across Wacker Dr from our building. The decision was made to exit the office quickly. Most of us went to Union Station to catch a train, but the crowds were unbelievably large and we had to wait over an hour for an available train back to the north suburbs. I watched the first tower fall on TV in the basement coffee shop at Union Station. Later, getting on one of the packed trains, a man with a radio kept us up to date about what was happening – the Pentagon getting attacked and then the Pennsylvania plane going down.
Later that week I learned that 40 or so people I knew personally from the business died in one of the Towers. I also learned that one of the people from that firm was able to escape one of the damaged elevators but was the only one from that elevator to make it out alive. think of those people often, especially on 9/11. Such a terrble tragedy.
Tragic loss, I know it still feels like yesterday.
In Austin Tx at a sales training. We all just stood there watching in disbelief of what was unfolding right before our eyes. Stunned and saddened was the course for the day.
WHAT A WEEK THAT WAS.
Out here, PST, we woke up, turned the TV on and saw one of the towers on fire…. while I was brushing my teeth, the other one got hit. My son was concerned, I told him not to worry that the white “smoke” was steam from the fire sprinklers and everything would be fine. Took the kids to school and got on the freeway, turned on the news radio… just as I was South of Camp Pendleton, the first tower imploded.
Got to work, second tower imploded, everything was shutting down. The Escondido City Mall was closing. “WTH, I said, like those people know where the hell Escondido is?
All flights got shutdown.
You see, my sister was getting married on 9/15/01… Saturday, and the whole family was supposed to gather up in Seattle. We had plane tickets to go from Thursday to the next Monday. Now, no planes. I called up Sen. Feinstein’s office. “Why the hell are you shutting everything down?”. To no avail.
So, on Wednesday after school, I grabbed the wife, kids, the stuff, we hopped on the Odyssey and drove 1200 miles non stop to Seattle.
Many of my brother in law’s party were coming from the East, Including his best man. They got stuck 2500 miles away.
So, I sort of did one of them SNL Jamaican Family thingies… I did a LOT. In the van, over the cell phone, we arranged for the backyard tent, chairs, tables, etc. Changed our reservations (stayed at my sister’s place instead). My sister and cousins attended to the food. Friday finalized the caterer and hall, got the cigars and the good red wine set up.. On Saturday I walked my sister to the altar, then took a step right and took over as best man. I even had to give two toasts.
Oh well, it ended well, for us. Sort of. The wedding was outdoors. Everybody still happily married, we all get along very well.
I recall that coming back, on another non stop drive back home, we left Seattle at 5PM on Sunday and got here on Monday noon or so…. there was very little traffic on the I5 and there was no moon. Driving on the mountain segments in Oregon and Shasta was absolutely being in the dark. YOU try driving around Shasta Lake with no lights other than yours.
Quite a week that was.
Flashback: Donald Trump Visits Ground Zero the Day after the 9-11 Attacks and Asks How Can He Help
https://twitter.com/gatewaypundit/status/1304444153695285249
I love that – Trump’s first instinct, after expressing his horror, is rebuild quickly as great as it was before. And get the people who are responsible and make them pay.
I have spent the past hour reading the recollections of those who shared them. .. Thank you all…
.I will never forget that day either.
I was in Bridgeport, Connecticut working at a power plant. For many weeks afterwards, I went up on the roof of the plant and could see the rising smoke from the Twin Towers some 90 miles away across the Long Island Sound.