9/11 - where were you guys when 9/11 went down?

mole'

we were talking about this today at work. wanted to see if you guys remember where you were and what you were doing when you first heard/saw what was going on?



i was on deployment/Westpac (navy on a Submarine) in Guam at the time. one of the guys had the tv on and it was on the news. the first tower had already been hit and we saw the second one get hit. was just crazy.....speachless at the time.

dorokusai

Home Depot, didn't even know about it until like an hour later when my boss called me to tell me to get ready for Emergency Relief Deployment to NYC for the event. It was a rough couple weeks and I breathed in enough dust to fill a vaccuum bag. We were cleaning cell site screens of the fine soot for the whole time and trying to get what we could back on-air.

DollarDave

Abilene Texas waiting for a training class to start for a custom reporting package. The instructor was a contact worker and had worked in building #1 until they had re-located about 6 months prior. He knew people that were murdered that day. Needless to say, we didn't really ever get started on the course work.

halo71

I was in the Kellogg plant in Lancaster, PA. Was on my last week of a project up there.

mole'

we were in an upkeep. they cancelled it and sent us out to sea. we had no idea WTF was going on for like 2 weeks. had us on alerts ready to launch at any moment. then we pulled into Japan and saw the aftermath on the news and in the papers......

Drenis

I was eating breakfast watching TV before heading to class that day. I stayed home and watched the whole thing. Didn't leave home that day. Freaked me out when they even closed our airport.

brgman

Standing in a Nestle Purina plant in Mechanicsburg PA.
The first guy came into the office of my customer and said a plane hit the WTC.
Not knowing any better my customer said that they should have never gotten rid of that big monkey they had that swats the planes away.
We went up into another guys office that had a little 9" screen television and watched the 2nd plane hit.
Then i went home.
Another eerie deal was the fact that i live close to Camp David and all i heard for days was military jets circling around and around.
Never forget!

brgman

dorokusai wrote: »

Home Depot, didn't even know about it until like an hour later when my boss called me to tell me to get ready for Emergency Relief Deployment to NYC for the event. It was a rough couple weeks and I breathed in enough dust to fill a vaccuum bag. We were cleaning cell site screens of the fine soot for the whole time and trying to get what we could back on-air.

My hat's off to you for doing such a job.And all of the others that had to endure the task at hand.

txcoastal1

In the air from Houston to Dallas for a day trip to deliver a security DVR at Cingular Wireless Regional headquarters...airlines kept that DVR for 2 days, I had no close or car and had to have someone drive up from Houston to pick me up 4 days later.

Walked into Cingular and was commisioned to rig up a make shift antennae for a TV as we fired it up the second plane hit the other tower...devistated

steveinaz

Bev & I had just gotten up, and getting ready for work---at that time they were just reporting that tower 1 was on fire, I thought "ok, bad fire that sucks..." When I arrived at work, we got the whole scoop, and the Pentagon had just been hit. They promptly sent all federal employees home, and locked down Ft. Huachuca.

Only mission critical personnel (identified by a list provided to the provost marshall) were allowed on the post that week.

BlueFox

Asleep. When the clock radio went off I was listening to the announcers and after slowly waking up I was going "WTF are they talking about". It was a rock radio station and they were never serious about anything. Turned on the TV, and again it was "WTF!".

heiney9

Had the day off and was on the golf course shortly after it happened. At the time the planes hit it wasn't too clear this was a terrorist attack. I remember the entire golf course a buzz about it.

bobman1235

I was at work (same building I work in now, actually). A girl I worked with came in and said "someone flew a plane into the World Trade Center," and I pictured "someone crashed a prop plane into the one in Boston" or something, and I chuckled and thought "what a dope, that guy's in big trouble." Then I went to boston.com to get the story. My whole company ended up crowded around a tiny old TV in a conference room for most of the day.

agfrost

Teaching at my high school. Had an off hour, was pulled in to watch on tv as the first building was on burning--terrible accident. Then second tower was hit; now it's obviously no accident. Realized the first building was coming down a few seconds before it was noticed by the on-air broadcasters--What a feeling of disbelief. Strange atmosphere at school that day. Didn't try to teach anything, but my students didn't really want to talk about it either. A lot of parents came to take their kids home mid-day.

steveinaz

Surreal day for sure. Goddamn I was angry.

[Deleted User]

Polk's main conference room, everyone was shocked.

Jstas

I was just pulling in to the parking lot at work in my brand new 2001 Ford SVT F-150 Lightning getting ready to show it off when Howard Stern starts talking about some idiot that flew a plane in to the World Trade Center. I parked the truck and then everything got real somber on the radio show and Stern was trying to get more info about what went on. They were giving a blow by blow 'cause they could see the towers from their studio at the other end of Manhattan.

I walked in to the office and women were wailing out loud and every body had this look of fear. My GF was blowing up my cellphone and desk phone to find out if I was alright. That didn't make much sense to me but whatever.

Rest of the day was spent watching cnn.com, rigging makeshift antennas up to conference room TV's or sitting in the "Virtual Environment Theater" with a news feed on the panoramic screen.

We were told that the facility would be on lock down for the rest of the day because we were a target. The navy brought in reservists and parking lot barriers and set up camp for the next two weeks checking all ID's and vehicles in or out. All guards were immediately armed too.

I got home and called the squad Captain of the ambulance squad I ran with to see if we were going up to help. Found out that the squad's 1st Lieutenant already took both rigs and a 4 man crew up so we couldn't even run duty shifts because of that boneheaded stunt.

devani

home in Palisades Park across from GWB....then it smelled for months...

codyc1ark

Driving a 1 ton city dump truck across the train tracks about 200 yards from our shop. KRNA (a SE IA rock station) broke from a song and announced that we had been attacked. I didn't go to school that afternoon, instead sat around an old console TV and watched the aftermath.

thsmith

Was walking into work when a fellow outside smoking told me. Being in communications (wireless) tech support at the time we set up a war room. The rest is history.

WilliamM2

On vacation at our place on Walloon lake. Had just come in from my morning swim, and heard that a plane had hit the WTC. They had no idea it was a terrorist attack yet, and shut the TV off.

We went in town later in the evening, and wondered why gas had gone up $2 a gallon, with lines at all the stations. When we returned to the lake it was all over the news of course.

kuntasensei

I was on the way to work when the first plane hit, then when I got to work, our entire office was huddled around a TV and watched the second plane hit. And then I started dialing my brother's number like mad to make sure he was okay... because 1) he was at the bar on top of the WTC the night of 09/10 (he still has the printed program from that night) and 2) he had a job interview in the WTC that week. I was just praying that he wasn't there.

He finally got through to me after the towers had collapsed and the first thing out of his mouth was, "I'm pretty sure I'm not getting that job." Morbid as it may seem, we both needed the laugh.

kawizx9r

In school (I'm only 26).

It was all I needed to hear to convince me to join the Marine Corps. 10 years later now I'm a disabled vet with 3 tours to Iraq. Do I regret it? Hell **** no, I'd go back again if I could.

maximillian

At work. No TV. Wife kept calling me to tell me what was going on. Internet was a virtual standstill. Got some videos from washingtonpost.com. Not sure if they had better servers or there was simply less traffic. Boss told everyone to take it easy using any equipment since he didn't want someone getting hurt while distracted. Not many people were working anyway. Everyone was pretty much in shock.

nooshinjohn

kawizx9r wrote: »

In school (I'm only 26).

It was all I needed to hear to convince me to join the Marine Corps. 10 years later now I'm a disabled vet with 3 tours to Iraq. Do I regret it? Hell **** no, I'd go back again if I could.

And may God bless you for your service brother.


I was in the car on the way to work at the time i heard the news broadcast on the radio. Once I got to work, the owner of my dealership came in and unplugged the tvs and told everyone to get back to work. It was "New York" problem and it didn't concern us" was his quote of the day. There were ZERO customers that day in sales and about the same amount for the service department. I quit that day after we were told to call our customers and tell them to come on down ad drive their new Honda's home.


I quit that afternoon.

Joe08867

Talking to the librarian at the law firm I worked for at the time. We didn't see anything live at that point and thought it was a smaller plane.

I wired up a TV in the Break room about 15 minutes before the second plane hit.

One of the guys I worked with stayed at my house that night. He lived on Staten Island and couldn't get home.

I just remember being so angry and bringing up the faces of the Firefighters I knew from being a volunteer firefighter. Now they were gone. I still can't believe how much loss we went through that day.

This Sunday the Barbershop Chorus I sing with will be part of the memorial service at the Lebanon Township Memorial Park NJ.

polrbehr

I was on my way to service a clients house, and I stopped at a local deli to grab a delicious eggnbacon sammich (they made the best ones I ever tasted); I remember that part because I normally did this house on Wednesdays, but switched to Tuesday that week.

Anyway, Ted, the deli owner, was all nervous and pacing around, telling everybody what happened (He had a small TV in the back). So, on to the house I went, not really understanding the enormity of what had happened til I got to the house and turned the TV on. It was strange because the owners were not home at the time, they were actually in the process of moving to NJ. So, I just sat there alone trying to choke down my breakfast, watching in disbelief. I did eventually get started with the task at hand, but I kept finding myself peeking in the living room to see what was going on. It was like getting punched in the gut when I came in and only saw one tower still standing... damn.

Needless to say, the sammich only got partially eaten, and the house did not even get close to being done that day, as I ended up leaving early to pick up my daughter at pre-school...hey, who knew what else was going to happen that day.
The next few days are kind of a blur, just reeling from the idea that the towers were no longer there, not to mention the destruction and loss of life. :mad:

Jstas

polrbehr wrote: »

I was on my way to service a clients house,

My ex's friend ran her own cleaning service out of Tom's River. She had a few clients up in the Jersey City/Newark area. She went to work that day to clean some condos up that way. While she was cleaning one guy's condo, she was watching the news. The phone was ringing off the hook and there were like 45 messages on his answering machine. Then she saw his name come up as unaccounted for on a list on the local news. His mother was in the middle of leaving a message when she must have seen it and she broke down on the answering machine. Then she hung up and called back and left the message "Sorry to bother you, I just wanted to hear your voice on the machine...oh God, what am I saying?" and hung up again.

That had to have sucked.

Joe08867

Jstas wrote: »

My ex's friend ran her own cleaning service out of Tom's River. She had a few clients up in the Jersey City/Newark area. She went to work that day to clean some condos up that way. While she was cleaning one guy's condo, she was watching the news. The phone was ringing off the hook and there were like 45 messages on his answering machine. Then she saw his name come up as unaccounted for on a list on the local news. His mother was in the middle of leaving a message when she must have seen it and she broke down on the answering machine. Then she hung up and called back and left the message "Sorry to bother you, I just wanted to hear your voice on the machine...oh God, what am I saying?" and hung up again.

That had to have sucked.

Thanks, now I am all teary. :frown:

steveinaz

Wow, that is downright bone-chilling.

kuntasensei

An interesting story: Actor Steve Buscemi returned to the firehouse he used to work at before becoming an actor, suited up, and joined in the search for survivors at ground zero on 9/11. It's a minor bit of heroism on a day chock full of heroes... but the man permanently has my respect for doing that.