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I had just woken up (it was about 6am here)and was checking my e-mail, and saw something about a plane hitting the WTC...thought it might be a prank, so I wandered up to the telly and switched on CNN.....saw the second plane hit, and stood transfixed in disbelief and horror for about 3 hours, as I watched the towers collapse, and the aftermath.

Ok, Ok, just one more post...this is my friends story, not my own, but very powerful.

My friend went to school that was 2 blocks away from the World Trade center. The school day had just started when lots of kids saw a plane hit the tower (they could see it from the library.) No one in the school really knew what to do. It went on as normal, but then the second plane hit. Everyone started to panic. Kids were sent to their homeroom to find out what to do next. All of a sudden, a huge cloud filled the whole entire school. That was the first tower falling down. No one could see anything. By then, it was a mad rush to get out of school. Kids were being hit by fall debris. Some got pretty banged up.

My friend just started running. After getting out of the cloud that engulfed the neighborhood, she started to walk uptown to her home. It took her a couple of hours to walk home, but she eventually got there.

She couldn't go back to her school for a couple of months, because it was being used as a triage (am I spelling that correctly?) station.

I have lots more to add to my story and to what happened that day. I don't know if everyone wants me to go on. If you want, you can send me an e-mail (it is in my profile).

Let me add to my story a bit:

The weekend before 9-11, both my mother and I forgot our keys to our apartment. We felt really really stupid. We were locked out. So, we decided to go to our local fire department. We told them our sad and pathetic story, and they were more than happy to lend us a hand. They came over to our building with their truck ladder. They entered our window, and opened the door for us. The whole neighborhood watched. (It was kind of embarrasing). We thanked them so much, and they just laughed in amusment.

Then next day, Monday, September 10th, my mother bought over lots of doughnuts and goodies for them as a thanks.

Of course, the next day was Septemeber 11th.

Later in the week my mother went over to see if any of the guys that were so kind to us were still around. She asked one of the firefighters at the desk. He said, "I don't know, I'm a replacment."

It turns out that something like 9 out of 10 died that day. Just to think a couple days before they had been carefree and had a good laugh.

What a waste of life.

Oh that's terribly sad


Yes, triage is the correct spelling...

I had been laid off my job the month before so I has grown nicely accustomed to sleeping late (I'm not a morning person anyway). That morning, I awoke at the unearthly hour of 6AM and for some reason flipped on the TV. My first thought was "Why are they showing a movie instead of the morning news"? I checked the clock, flipped through a couple of channels and a few sobering minutes later I realized it was not a movie being broadcast across all stations and there I sat for the rest of the day shaking in disbelief.

I remember watching as the second plane hit the tower then as the buildings fell. I remember the fear that set in when I heard a report that fighter jets were escorting an airliner into our airport as they were unable to establish contact and were fearing the worst. I remember watching the sky over the city and the eerie feeling at seeing no planes in the sky. I remember my daughter, who was just 2 at the time saying "mommy, why did some bad men fly the plane into the building on purpose? (this was before we even knew it was "bad men" or "on purpose".

I remember watching the outpouring of love and grief for missing loved ones and being overwhelmed but at the same time feeling guilty for being thankful it wasn't me or anyone I knew. It was a few days later when I remembered Michael worked on the 101st floor of the WTC. I learned a couple of weeks later he knew he wasn't going to make it out and called home to say good-bye to his wife and two small children. I also learned a little while later that a friend's sister also didn't make it out. My friend is travelling to NY now as she has every year at this time to attend a memorial service.

Echoing (in a way) MrWelvrig, I was also going through a lot of personal struggles when this happened - mine was an abusive spouse and I had been trying to decide what to do about the situation. Watching the real-life stories of love and heroism which resounded in the days following the events of September 11th really helped put my life into perspective. I realized life was just too short to live in fear and misery and it gave me the strength to deal with my situation.

As gartenzwerfe quoted, I have a variation on my MSN profile "The past is history, the future is a mystery, but today is a gift so use it wisely." The other quote I like (and there are variations): "Dance like nobody's watching; love like you've never been hurt. Sing like nobody's listening; live like it's heaven on earth."

I now work in a highrise building in the heart of downtown Vancouver and every time I hear a low plane overhead or firetruck on the street, it causes me to pause and my thoughts immediately go back to that day almost three years ago.

A guy I work with who is also a very good friend was at Ground Zero within a day of 9/11 doing search and rescue. He is very worried about his and his dog's health, which I can't blame him for. He doesn't talk much about the whole thing, it was a very tramatic experience for him.

Steph

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I used to be Snow White, but I drifted.
~ Mae West

In one of my posts I said that I walked to the World Trade center a day or two after September 11th. Well, I'll just expand on that.

In the middle of the afternoon, my mother and I decided to walk down. I remember lots of helicopters and jet planes constantly partrolling the city. As we kept walking we started to see more and more soot. We walked down a small side street, and what struck me was that there was no noise. This is NYC, to have no noise is something that does not happen! All we heard were our footsteps along the street, and a radio that was playing in someone's apartment.

Then we walked down a street close to the river. What we saw struck us. Hundreds and Hundreds of cars lined the street. Some were banged up, and some were unrecongnizable. Some were regular cars, some police cars, taxis, and firetrucks. I remember one police car looked fine in the front, but in the back, the paint had been removed completely and was smashed in.

In the blocks very close the the towers, we saw shop keepers trying to remove the 8 inches of soot off their awnings. Everyone was just trying to clean.

And then we finally saw the towers. We had taken such a long time to get there, that the sun had started to go down. The facade of the towers was still up. I can remember it so well...I just can't describe it.

I said it before, but the smell was overwhelming. It closly remsembles fireworks. There were fires in the rubble untill december, and it smelled untill december.

I had gone to a concert in the World Trade Center Plaza about 8 days before september 11th. My dad was joking and tried to push me into the fountain there. Now, I see the same fountain, but it is banged up and quite unrecognizable. It is a statue in a park nearby the world trade center.

"What were you doing on September 11, 2001 when you heard the news?"

I was at work... teaching 2 yr olds at preschool. I had gotten to work early that day, as the school year had just begun for us and I needed to set up for the morning so I had just missed the news on the radio. Parents started bringing the children in at 9:20 so it was from one of the moms that I first heard the news. My assistant was quite frantic, as her husband was supposed to be flying somewhere that morning. Luckily, he was safe but there were some tense moments as she waited to get in touch with him. Once the children went off to Music I turned on the radio for a few minutes but it was too horrible to have that on once they came back in. All of the teachers tried very hard that day to not let the children see that we were upset and scared.

Then when I got home and turned on the TV, about 1 pm or so, it really hit me. Then my phone rang and my dearest friend was in labor, probably brought on by all the stesss of that day so I ended up watching her 3 yr old the rest of the afternoon. Her daughter was born the next morning, thank God.

Anyhow, there is a really awesome kids book that I got at the Scholastic Book Fair last year about the attack on the WTC. It's entitled "September 12th: We Knew Everything Would Be All Right" and it's written and illustrated by the kids in a first grade class. It's very simple but it has such a wonderful message. I bought it for my daughter for when she's a little older and also got a copy for my friend's daughter since she was born at the same time as this horrible tragedy. Just an FYI.

Thanks for posting this...
-Beth

p.s. Side note, for those of you who are a little older... what were you doing when the Challenger exploded? I was in 3rd grade and my teacher was almost the one on that shuttle-how scary is that!

where was I...

...sleeping
a bit after I woke up, I was playing a video game on my computer online, and all these people were like screaming and going "AHH WE ARE GOING TO DIE111!!!" very, very confused
Then I watched tv and found out what was going on...

...then I had to go to school and that might have been one of the only days we said the pledge of allegiance

I was on my conference period and had just walked into the office where they had the news on and were watching it. I went up to my room and turned on the tv there and it was there that I saw the second plane hit. I remember getting ahold of my best friend and telling her at another campus in the school district and telling fellow teachers. It was all very shocking, even to me as an adult. By the end of the day most of the students had been picked up by parents, and we were basically running an empty school. Very understandable due to what was happening and that I live in the Houston area, and the school is less than 5 miles from several major chemical plants...

"I've got a great ambition to die of exhaustion rather than boredom." Thomas Carlyle

At the time, I was supervising folks at Duke -- and I can't remember if I saw on the internet, or if someone with a radio alerted me -- but I then called one of our IT guys who I worked closely with to tell him and at first he thought I was joking. Then, embarrassingly, I spent the rest of the day trying to get my folks to focus on their jobs, and work! (but, that's the atmosphere there!).

I can remember calling round at my neighbours in the afternoon for a cup of tea, and she already had the t.v news on. Watching in disbelief as a plane steamed into one tower.. bursting into flames.. and then another. Feeling very distressed seeing people who chose to throw themselves out of a top floor window, rather than wait for the terrible fate that would grab them otherwise. That really got me. My heart cried for those people in those buildings, and as I watched 'live', those real buildings with real people in them collapsed, the scale of which was difficult to comprehend straight away.

I can certainly understand that to *observe* the horrific events that day in the US, was nothing like living in the communities they affected - the communities they quite literally demolished. While everything is relative - and I believe that no one person can claim their suffering is/was worse or less than another's - to live in the very cities attacked, to know those lives lost, to smell the devastation every day, to see a landscape changed forever, to touch the dust that you once knew as a solid place, to now live in the alien world that once was so comfortable and familiar; now that I could not expect to be anything other than life-changing.

May we spare a moment for every person who lost a loved one that day; for we can never know their heartache.

xXx

I remember when the news hit where I was I was living in England. I was in my yearbook (after school) class and our advisor got a text message from someone. She thought it was some cruel prank, saying something about the World Trade Center and the Pentagon being hit. Then there were a lot of the school staff walking around between classes. We ended up in one room where there was a TV so we could see what had happened. Stayed there until it was time to go. I think I used up a whole box of tissues. I was worried about a friend who lived in Washington DC at the time. And just seeing such a huge building come down and knowing there would be so many people killed right then struck me, and I knew I couldn't do anything about it. But those of us in that room right then were all feeling about the same way, it seems, and I don't think we ever did before or maybe ever will again.

><>

I didn't mean to say that Manhattanites were affected more than others...all I meant to say was that it was different...I hope I didn't offend anyone in my comments.

I just get very strange when this topic comes up, and I guess my emotions get the better of me. I didn't mean to come off like that. It is still kind of like an open wound, and I guess I start getting really weird. Sorry!

Yes, let's hope everything here stays civil, it is very interesting to hear everyone's experiences with that day.

EDIT: Oh, and by the way, kitty, that is a beautiful cross stich.

[span class="edited"][Edited by SolubleFish 2004-09-04 08:50][/span]

Come on everyone, don't let your opinions and emotions get the better of you. Dani has asked twice, very nicely, to keep writing the thread how it was intended to be written.

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And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

LAST chance guys. If I or any of the other moderators have to edit this thread once more for anything its locked.

please

are you editing and just deleting the "edited by...." bit on the post or are you just threatening if you need to edit? It's just i havent seen much evidence of editing going on??



[span class="edited"][Edited by tiny_clanger 2004-09-04 07:38][/span]

just because there is no evidence provided to you does not mean there has been no editing done. -Lindy



[span class="edited"][Edited by Lindy 2004-09-04 09:45][/span]

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I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

LAST chance guys. If I or any of the other moderators have to edit this thread once more for anything its locked.
Stick to the topic (most of you have so far)

What were you doing on September 11, 2001 when you heard the news?

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Before you criticize someone walk a mile in their shoes. That way you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

I was somewhere probably very few of you lot were - in Cuba at the time. It was amazing. i was staying in a family house, and because tourists pay for these in dollars, they were one of the riches famnilies in the area. They had a TV, one of very few in the village, and when Castro made a speech about it, they opened the door of their house and let people pile in to watch.

CAstro speaks very accented, fast Spanish, which was completely out of my league. Someone sitting next ot me, who couldnt speak English, would take important sentences oout of the speech and repeat them to me in slow, clear spanish so I would understand. The upshot of this was I learnt something that very few people realise, including many Americans. When it first occured, there was really no idea of casualty numbers, and the US appealed for medical supplies from the EU and its allies around the world. Cuba responded by offering as much blood as the central bank could spare, plus 100 doctors and 100 nurses, most trained in the UK (so trained well!). The offer was declined.

In Cuba, many people were frightened that it would be used as an excuse to go after them. Remember, there were people who still remember the Bay of Pigs, and what it was like to have a terrorist incursion into your own state. They were very sympathetic to ordinary Americans, aware that the attacks would lead to retailation, fearful that it woudl be against them, but fairly confident it would be towards the Middle East.

I travelled to Havana the next day to catch my flight, with $20 left, not knowing whether my flight was going to arrive. I planned to get to the UK Embassy and stay there or borrow money if the plane was cancelled, I didnt know what else to do. I rang my parents and told them, and they arranged to pick me up from Heathrow rather than have me catch the train.

It was only really whne I go to Heathrow and it was empty, with police with sub machine guns outnumbering passengers and relatives, that the real seriousness of what had happened hit. In Cuba, it had been seen as inevitable, they weren't too affected by it, I had no idea of the degree to which states in the Western world were being consumed by paranoia over it.

So - there you go

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I like to think that whoever designed marine life was thinking of it as basically an entertainment medium. That would explain some of the things down there, some of the unearthly biological contraptions

I visited the WTC on the 12th sept 2000, on a tuesday morning, just as the fateful day a year later.

Being here in the UK we were just past lunch when it happened.

I was employed at the time as a laboratory technician in a testing company, we were having a bit of a slow day so several of us were clearing papers in the warehouse. Traditionally when we do that we take a radio in for some background music.

The first thing I heard was when one of the lads told me that there had been a bomb at the WTC. My first thought had been that this had happened before and though people had lost their lives there had been no severe damage to the building.

Then someone came and told us it had been a plane which had hit the tower, my first thought was that it had been a terrible accident and probably not a terrorist attack.

When I heard 15 mins later that a plane had hit the other building I knew it was terrorism and hearing that they didn't know how many planes were unaccounted for I thought of my dad who was vacationing at the Luxor in vegas and how things could escalate.

So I got my phone and went to the warehouse to call my partner to tell him to turn on the TV and then I listened for much of the afternoon to the reports coming in. Hearing that the pentagon had been hit too.

At 4.30 pm I went home and turned on the TV and saw the terrible images playing over and over, hearing the early estimates of the numbers of casualties in the tens of thousands and watching in disbelief.

To this day there is a part of me that refuses to believe that this event happened. In my head I know it happened, but there is still that part which will not be convinced till the day I visit ground zero.

A few months later I did a cross stitch picture of the statue of liberty with the towers in the background which I have attatched below. I also have a number of photographs I took from the liberty island ferry of the towers on a beautiful clear blue day which I will treasure always
kitty attached this image:
[img]http://www.fishprofiles.net/attachments/426576.jpg"]