9/11/2001

[swiftdog2.0]

I was at work in a meting with my boss. Her husband called and she didn't believe him at first. Then we heard the people on our floor start to buzz about what was going on. My company let us all go home around noon. Spent the rest of the day watching the news coverage. My feelings went from shock, to horror, and then shot into the deep red anger zone. Just thinking of those events puts me back in that red-zone


SwiftDad was still on the Boston PD at this time. He called my Mom that afternoon and said that all police were on manadatory 12 hr shifts. He spent the next week working his regular shift and then another shift after that each day providing police presence at potential targets (gas and oil storage tanks, banks, etc.). Spent that week extra worried as Police and Fire personnel would be on the frontline if anything else happened. It was the first time in all of my life that I worried about my Dad getting killed in the line of duty.

The band I was in at the time did a benefit show about a month afterwards for the families of NYPD and FDNY members that had been killed on that day. We packed the venue and raised a few thousand dollars. I was glad we could contribute even if it was a small amount. This was also the first time that my Dad had ever seen me play live and I know that he was proud that we were helping his brothers in blue.

Every time I see the news footage from that day it makes me extremely sad and angry. I wish I could believe that something like that could never happen again. Sadly, I know deep down that something like this can, and probably will, happen again.

 

[AnnaMarie]

I was doing dishes. My youngest was watching Treehouse TV. My oldest was getting ready for work. He came out saying some fool had flown a plane into the WTC. I asked if it was on purpose. He said...no probably some idiot with a private plane. He came out a few minutes later white as a ghost and said another plane hit the other one.

I went up to the laundry mat, and they had the TV set to CNN. I walked in, loaded my machines then turned to the tv and saw one tower go down. It may have been a repeat of it, I'm not sure. People walking past were coming in to look at the tv. Nobody talking, just watching.

This guy came in to fill the pop machine and didn't immediately notice the crowd...just went to work. As he walked past he looked up at the tv and asked where's that? Someone said the World Trade Centre. He said....aren't there two? Where's the other one? And that's when the second one went down. He asked what happened. Someone said two planes hit them. And he said "who would do such a thing?" And one person looked right at him and said "terrorists". And I saw the look of fear in that man's eyes. He was East Indian. I think that is the moment I knew the world had changed.

~~~

My husband was away on business and couldn't get home. He was in one of the first planes to land at Pearson when they started flying again.

 

[not_nadine]

I was working at Mars and going to to the caf. for break. The lady in the company store told me that a plane hit the WTC. I thought tourist plane, horrible. The TV was on in there. We were all watching coverage. Shocked. That's when I saw a news helicopter and the size of the next plane come in. Saw it.

I was just sick in my stomach. Those people were waving way up top, black smoke rising all around them. I knew they were dead. I did not know how to feel. We just all watched. Tower fell. Someone said, "We are now at war"

We went back to desks, with a boss telling us about the others. Scared ****less, I had a neice at U of V who was in Georgetown at the time. Could not get ahold of her. It took 2 days to reach her with the phone lines. They were in lock down and she could see the smoke from the Pentagon.

I lived in a flyover to Dover AFB. The only thing in the sky were endless war looking planes flying there. so scary. I was afraid of the sky.

 

[GNTLGNT]

 

[Tiny]

I got off of work a 7AM that mourning. I got home at just before 9AM
I whent to bed and turned on HOWARD STERN as I did every mourning/

I listen to the whole thing unfold... as told by him and the guys from the show.
they were about 4 miles away.

They could smell it ; that mouring.

 

[not_nadine]

I listened to that later. Not a big Stern fan, but that was really great. He held it together the whole show and did not leave.

 

[ghost19]

I had just went off shift at 2am that morning and hadn't gotten to sleep until around 5:30am. My wife called me right after the first plane hit, I got up, turned on the TV, was watching live when the second plane hit. The next phone call was the shift supervisor at the PD, he simply said "All hands on deck, report to the PD immediately". Pretty much rest of the day is a blur. I got assigned to the radio room due to the 911 phone lines being overloaded. Talked to a lot of scared people that day.

 

[Lepplady]

I have the utmost respect for Steve Buscemi. He was a NYC firefighter briefly when he was a young man.

(he's on top of the truck)

When 911 happened, without any hail or glory, he rejoined his old station and spent days sifting through rubble. He didn't give interviews or pose for pictures. He was there for the job.

Some time later, HBO did a feature about Steve, being a firefighter, an actor, and 911.

 

[GNTLGNT]

...very cool, had not been aware of that bit of unsung heroism....

 

[not_nadine]

Thanks, I did see before, forgot. very cool.

Look forward to watching the HBO doc later.

 

[Lepplady]

Thanks, I did see before, forgot. very cool.

Look forward to watching the HBO doc later.

What I like about the HBO piece is that Steve made it about the firefighters, not himself. And he interviewed them. Firefighters don't open up easily to "outsiders" because others just can't understand. But Steve's one of them, so he did it. They weren't putting on a show for the camera, they were talking to a brother in arms about the life they live and events that impacted them all. There's a loyalty, a brotherhood that just doesn't go away.
The more I learn about him, it seems like Steve's not an actor who used to be a firefighter. Seems more like he's a firefighter that sometimes acts.

 

[FlakeNoir]

My memories of the day... I awoke to the news, it happened on the 12th for us. (though it's always been Sept 11 in my mind)
My alarm was the clock-radio back then and it was news time. Two minutes later my partner called me from work to ask if I had the news on, he was just finishing his night-shift on ambulance control.

I got up and put on the TV, one plane had hit and as I watched... another hit the second tower. I was cold all over and sat holding my baby and was thinking to myself that the world as we knew it was about to change.

We were late for school, everybody was that day... after I took the boys to their classrooms, I stood at the gate talking with friends, it was like we were in shock.
A plane flew over... and we ALL ducked... the sound of planes going overhead have never been the same for me since that day, there is this teeny little voice way in the back, that says... 'what's he gonna do?'

 

[Spideyman]

Was watching the morning talk show as I did critter chores. Heard the report of the first plane, watched the second. By this time was calling my mom in NJ- she was alone and knew she'd be fearful. Called a good friend to stay with her. More calls to relatives in NYC- many in the NYPD. More reports of the Pentagon and then the PA crash. Total disbelief. Knew the world had changed. Living in the flight plan of a major airport the next days of no overflights gave such an eery feeling.

 

[CoriSCapnSkip]

My dad, who was disabled following three strokes, in 1991, 1997, and 1998, had nurses who arrived each morning about 8:00 a.m. to get him up. They had the same routine every day, set him in the armchair with CNN on. This was before I got a white noise machine so the TV would sometimes partly wake me up. First thing I heard was about a plane, and bodies. Oh, I thought, a plane crash, that's terrible, and went back to sleep. Next I heard two planes, lots of bodies. I thought, two passenger planes must have collided, that's terrible, how could they let such a thing happen? I was asleep or partly asleep when I heard the anchor say about the towers of the World Trade Center, "they are no longer there."

It was the third time in my life I came awake that fast. The first was when my sister got a phone call that John Lennon had been shot, the second was when the same sister turned on CNN and I heard that debris of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane had been found, but no bodies. On September 11 I went from almost sound asleep to wide awake running for the TV. Due to his strokes and medications, Dad had some difficulties speaking and was struggling to say, rather faintly and breathlessly, that we had suffered a terrible disaster.

Of course we had to call relatives back east, particularly in New York. At last we received a call back from my cousin that her older brother was at home and did not realize anything was happening until he looked out a window and saw one of the towers collapse. He grabbed his son, who was about a year old, and he and his wife had to hike out of town across a bridge packing a baby. They later moved to a place where they were much happier.

Four days later was the local historical festival at the restored train depot, a very subdued gathering with people huddled in little knots speaking softly. Owners of the Abraham Lincoln, a Pullman car which belonged to Abraham Lincoln's son Robert Todd Lincoln, had brought it. A local pastor who did historical reenactments stood on the car's platform and gave the Gettysburg Address. You could have heard a pin drop. I took pictures which I posted on the wall next to Dad's bed. Dad is now gone along with my friends Steve Edwards, George McCoy, and others with whom I spoke at the festival, but the pictures are there to this day.

 

[blunthead]

In 2001 I still lived in Michigan with my now ex-wife. I worked 3-11p shift so for me to still be in bed at 9a, when my ex came in and said, "You need to get up and get out here. They're dropping bombs in New York, or something", was not unusual. Later that day at work I was impressed by how depressed everyone seemed. We all seemed weighed down, far fewer conversations were heard and those that were tended to be about what had happened. One of my fellow workers asked who was thought responsible, and responding I found myself telling her about a guy I'd heard about named Ben Layden, or some such mispronunciation, and went on to make a statement which the next day W quoted nearly verbatim. It was a unique day.

 

[ZNPaaneah]

It's hard to believe that it has been 14 years.

Where were you on that day?

I was in Manhattan working at a stock brokerage firm. The TV was on so we saw it immediately. Someone said "what a terrible accident" and I said "accident, that can't be an accident, it is blue sky, clear, that was a passenger plane, they aren't allowed to fly over Manhattan". A bunch of people started complaining "how do you know", etc. Then the second plane hit and they all wanted to scatter and run out into the street.

There was no way to get home and the phone didn't work. I had to walk out of Manhattan (subways were not running). It was like a CNN shot of someplace in the East, tens of thousands walking across the bridge with two big pillars of smoke in the background.

When I did get home (about 20+ miles away) my kids were studying. They were homeschooled and clueless that anything had happened. I told them to stop what they were doing and turn on the TV.

September 13th I was involved in planning a march at the UN concerning the holocaust in Sudan. This was our second year, we had done the same thing the year before. The march was cancelled because of 911. However, the year before the argument had been that we need to care about what happens in Sudan (this was a direct result of Sharia law, they try to drive out the non muslim population until they can pass Sharia law and become part of a muslim coalition which gets favorable financial assistance from the rich countries like Saudi Arabia) while it is over there otherwise it will be over here.

 

[not_nadine]

A plane flew over... and we ALL ducked... the sound of planes going overhead have never been the same for me since that day, there is this teeny little voice way in the back, that says... 'what's he gonna do?'

Yes. And like Spidey said it was scary NOT to see planes in the sky. I still give them a side-eye.

 

[CrimsonKingAH]

I was at my Mothers.. we were getting ready to go to my cousin's funeral. My husband called and said turn on the news. I did, and saw the second plane hit. All I could do was stare and cry.

 

[Lepplady]

I have an original sheet of stamps issued by the post office with this picture on them.