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

Rivrrat

I was working with a couple of other techs installing equipment for enhanced 911 circuits in Wilcox Az. We were in the Wilcox PD when one of the dispachers came into the room we were working in and said we think you need to see this.

disneyjoe7

I was in Orlando International Airport, while we where walking down the terminal.... We could hear people / Staff of OIA talking about the crash. We seen are friends board a plane, when I seen the second plane hit watching the TV in the terminal. Right about there I tell you things changed. AK47's everywhere, everyone there just about **** their pants. Something I'll never forget. It took another week for your friends to trip home, they took a train back.

HHStuart

On vacation in Florence, Italy - the one and only time I have been over seas. I was walking by an outside restaurant and they had a TV on outside which was unusual; I went to look at it for some reason. I think I saw it before the second tower got hit. A weird feeling being out of the country when that happened. We were stranded but we were supposed to fly out of Frankfurt. We flew up there and stayed with a German family who graciously took us in. We mostly endlessly watched TV like after JFK's assassination. It was a while before we could get a flight back. Security was tight.

obieone

I was working at Wheaton college campus bookstore, in S.E. MA, 4 months into my HVAC apprenticeship. When the senior tech I was with, came down stairs and said 'We're under attack!' I was like, 'Huh?' he said it again, and I said 'WTF are you talking about?'
At 1st, I thought he was pulling my leg, but he wouldn't let up, so I went upstairs, and they had the radio on,..... and a lot of the girls in the store were crying and freaking out.
When I actually believed what I was hearing, I got real cold, and nauseous.
We kept working for about another hour, then went to a bar up the street. The place was packed, but no one was eating, just sitting or standing at the bar, watching the t.v.
I watched those images for about a minute or two, before I lost it, and started yelling 'Nuke the motherf*ckers! Nuke every last one of them!'
And no, I wasn't just overreacting, I literally wanted to start sending TLAMNs into every major city in the mideast.

lanchile

Well, I was in bed! I had a hard late working night the night before. I woke up and I turned on the TV and I saw one building smoking and people saying, it was an error of the pilot...but later I saw the other one hitting the other building and then people said....We are under attack!!!. I was shocked. I live in Queens, New York. but I work in Manhattan. so I could not go to work in a couple days. It was a nightmare!

Tony M

I'm always thankful to our military for our freedoms!!
I was to old to inlist after this attack, otherwise, I would have!

I was driving to a job site with framing materials to be boomed up to a second story phase of this one house at the beach. I was listening to a portable radio ( my truck didn't have a radio) and was listening to an edgey duo when they were told by their director that a plane hit one of the towers.

They were thinking like alot of us, a small plane. They were comedic and cutting edge commentaries, and as news and videos filtered into their studio via a small tv also, they realized we were being attacked by a serious force of well organised men. The news of the pentagon even became speculation on the show.

I arrived at the job site and relayed to the carpenters we were probably being attacked and it was very, very serious. They listened to my radio for a few minutes and then went on back to work with concern but they had a job to do. Whether or not their boss came later and let them go home, I don't know. I had to work until abot 7:30 that night as usual and saw the horrible videos when I got home.

PS.
I remember the one comedic commentator saying what a bunch of crap his program was compared to our nations safety now and that he thought of hanging up the mike and getting real and about haveing a purpose instead of commenting on stupid issues. I haven't heard of those guys since. They might have gone satallite though too.

PrazVT

I was at Squires Student Center at school (Virginia Tech) between classes, getting some breakfast. Everyone was staring at the TVs because one of the towers was on fire. At first, I was thinking man that's a freaky accident and then the second plane hit ...

greyford1979

I had the day off on that day and was just sitting at the computer checking my emails. I caught a glimpse of the TV out of the corner of my eye and thought to my self that this couldn't be real, that it had to be some kind of movie and then the second plane hit. I just sat there the rest of the day just in complete shock:eek:

Fongolio

I was at a hospital having a nuclear bone scan done and I heard the two technicians talking about how on the news they heard the both the towers had been hit by planes and that both had toppled. It was early in the morning pacific time. I thought they had both been two close to the machines for too long. I went home turned on the news and found out it was very sadly true. Weirdest day I can ever remember. The fabric of my reality was torn a little that day. It still feels sureal.

rromeo923

I was in Dunkin Donuts and this guy comes in and says " Someone just flew a plane into The World Trade Center" From there I went to work an watched the 2nd plane on the tv. Soon after I drove to my kids schools and picked them up. Definitely a day to remember.

jonicont

Driving to work. News radio "a plane has hit the WTC". Live to the copter "A SECOND PLANE HAS JUST HIT TOWER 2". Get into Queens and see columns of smoke rising from Manhattan. Had plans to make house calls. Checking the BP of a 96 yo in her living room, saw the first tower go down on her tv. Saw the second tower go down at the next patients house. Back to the empty office. Send the employees home. Giuliani asks for physician volunteers. Me and 2 partners pack up my car with supplies and head for Manhattan. Show our credentials to the cops and they let us on the expressway. We're the only car. It's eerie. Get to the tunnel and can see a cloud of smoke over lower Manhattan. Cops must have radioed ahead. We're waived right through. Into Manhattan. National guard everywhere. Trucks and Jeeps with big **** guns. Couple of canons. Nobody stops us but we're directed by guys with machine guns. Get to St. Vincents. Register on one line. Next line for assignment. They take the guy in front of me, then tell about 30 of us to go home. "We'll call you if we need you, but it looks like we won't be needing anybody".

Post Script

---

9 months later

Late 40's female patient. Says "Thanks for saving my life". WTF? Saw her 9 months ago. Had shingles. Had been my patient for 10 years. Never took a sick day. Had to actually argue with her to take a few days off. Had seen her on Sept.10. She worked on the 101st floor of tower 2

danger boy

the first plane had already hit by the time i was awake.. West coast time it was before 7am.. as soon as I woke up i turned on the morning news... and as soon as I found out what happen.. I immediately went into work... and watched with the other news people in the office as the second plane hit.

It was one of the busiest days of my life... worked a double shift and the following week was nearly as busy. Although we were as far away from NYC and DC, we were very busy. In the office we have at least 6 TV's turned to all the networks news and CNN... we were stunned at what we were seeing.

Side note: 7 weeks later my job as a news photojournalist took me to ground zero. Even though we are a local TV station.. we had some limited access behind some barriers where most of the public wasn't allowed just a block from ground zero.

I got to meet and talk to several exhausted law enforcement, firemen and women and shake their hands. It was without a doubt the best most life changing event I have ever photographed. Seeing the aftermath on TV for months after did not even measure up to seeing the twisted metal from the towers in person.

So this Sunday will be a day for me to reflect and pause for a minute on what the 10 yr observance means. Last year 16 foot chunk of the twin towers came through our area... and I had to go see it.. talk about touching. if you ever get the chance to see something like that.. do go see it.

mantis

I was at work in Phila Installing a Home theater system in a Basement that was just remodeled.
B&K Ref30 with a 7270 amp , Vienna Acoustics speakers , 50 inch Pioneer Elite Plasma , Pioneer Elite DV38A DVD player , Pioneer Elite 300 dic CD , Monstercable HTS5000 power center , all Monstercable wiring , Mitsubishi S-VHS , etc.

I was getting ready to hang the TV on the wall and went upstairs to get the wife for approval on height. She was watching her Kitchen Tv Sony 19 inch tube and the first tower was already hit. I didn't know what was going on and she was somewhat in shock . I asked her to come down stairs for approval and she pointed out what was going on in New York.
As we watched the news for a bit we watched together the 2nd plane hit. I got a call from my boss to pack up and go home New York was under attack. New York is not that far From Philadelphia so it was a pretty scary day for me. Nobody knew what the hell was happening and being so close to New York had me very worried.
My partner Liv4fam at that time (His real name is Mark) just got out of the Army 2 years ago at that time and was also worried he was going to get called back for Duty. If he didn't he had plans for our families for protection and he started laying out what we where going to do if we got invaded.
I hated that day and that week.

tryrrthg

I was at work in a department meeting. At the end of the meeting the VP of my department told us a plane had hit one of the WTC towers, and no one was sure what had happened. Got back to my desk and spent the rest of the day on the internet and watching the TV in the cafeteria.

One of my old bosses didn't hear about 9/11 until a week later. He was on one of his "vacations" where he had a helicopter drop him off in the middle of nowhere and he does a surviverman type thing for a week, or so. Towards the end of his "vacation" he called into work to see if he's missing anything and the guy he called was like "have you heard what happened" and my old boss was like "hear about what?" It was a week later and he had no idea what had happened.

deronb1

I was working the counter at Grainger near Cincinnati at the time. We were usually busy as hell all day long there, but after the attacks, nothing. No calls, no walk ins , nothing.

Everyone did stay til the end of the day, but I think we did less than 100.00 bucks that day.

wayne3burk

I was working as a contractor at a Navy Technology Office in the Wash. DC. Metro area.

A U of M college intern came running to our floor where his office was and told us a plane had hit one of the world trade center towers.

All 40 of us on the went to the main conference room where the large screen tv hooked up to the cable and video teleconference system was and were glued to the screen for the entire day. I think the only thing anyone could say was a collective and repetitive "Oh my God".

We were all in utter and complete disbelief. My direct supervisor and I had been visiting an office in the Pentagon just the week before.

When i went to work that morning i was struck by how clear and blue the skies were and how crisp and cool the day was for early september.... I had never seen a bluer sky - strange.

as a postscript - as a retired enlisted member of the US. Air Force, and someone who had visited the Leesburg, VA regional air traffic control center, I still am "skeptical" how 3 planes could deviate off course for 45 + minutes, and fly directly over the white house, without any F-16s making visual contact with the cockpits of the "potentially" hijacked aircraft. It defies reason. Say what you will.

you can delete my post if you will - but it still is what it is.

just sayin.

wayne burk

steveinaz

We lost one of our own in the Pentagon hit, Dave Laychak. Bev worked with Dave quite often in the DOD budget arena. There's a local memorial here in Sierra Vista, for Dave:

http://www.9-11heroes.us/v/David_W_Laychak.php

Jstas

wayne3burk wrote: »

as a postscript - as a retired enlisted member of the US. Air Force, and someone who had visited the Leesburg, VA regional air traffic control center, I still am "skeptical" how 3 planes could deviate off course for 45 + minutes, and fly directly over the white house, without any F-16s making visual contact with the cockpits of the "potentially" hijacked aircraft. It defies reason. Say what you will.

you can delete my post if you will - but it still is what it is.

just sayin.

wayne burk

Dude, really?

As a guy whose worked with radar before, it's not as impossible as it seems. 3 good reasons:

1.) Crowded airspace. It's hard to find a plane in a mob of hundreds of planes. Traffic controllers don't pay much attention unless your course deviance takes you to an unsafe spot. It took about an hour to clear the airspace and clearly see the ones that weren't responding.

2.) Inoperative transponder beacons. No transponder, no fuselage ID or flight info. Radar sees you but you're a blip. Individual radar in fighters isn't strong enough to track you down by itself so if they can't get data from the transponder, you're not that easy to find.

3.) Response time. Even if the fighters are on base and prepped, they still have to be scrambled, take off and get there. At most, 15 minutes on the ground, at least 30 in the air high tailing it to where it's gotta get to. Even if fighters are already in the air, the odds, in all that airspace, of being anywhere near the threat to rapidly intercept are slim. They still gotta chase down a plane moving at 400-600 miles an hour.

Entirely possible that planes could have gotten anywhere, unabated, for at least 2 hours while a threat situation was assessed and if an armed response was determined necessary and mobilized. Especially if no radio contact or announcement was made that a plane, or 6, had been hijacked. Like I said, nobody is going to notice until the plane changes areas of control between airspace zones and doesn't respond, if at all, to communications and ID requests.

Don't dump on this thread with assholish conspiracy theories.

Joe08867

Jstas wrote: »

Dude, really?

Don't dump on this thread with assholish conspiracy theories.

What John said,

m00npie

I worked at a facility right in line with the take off pattern at BWI. Over the years, you get accustomed to the constant noise of jets taking off every couple of minutes. I recall the days after how quiet our workplace was. Only Military jets circling above could be heard occasionally. Another interesting thing was in the cul-de-sac of office buildings where I worked, no one seemed to know what half the buildings were until after 9/11 when concrete barriers seemed to appear over night and armed guards standing in front of them.

After the event occurred, I called my father's cell phone and to my surprise, I got through. His company was doing all of the trim on a construction project in Crystal City and he told me while he was on the phone ordering supplies, he saw the plane coming in and crash right into the Pentagon. I got my wife from her work place, and we headed back to PA where I grew up. When I was passed by Site R, the mountain was alive again with activity after almost 10 years of being silent. It has been active & expanding ever since.

Shizelbs

I was getting ready for class. Just had started grad school. In short, I don't think we learned much that day.

brgman

Maybe newer members care to add thoughts to this old thread.

jeremymarcinko

I remember I was at work on the Ohio River near Parkersburg, WV, loading steel pipe onto a barge. We started early that morning and when the news came over the radio we all at first was stunned thought this was just a tragic accident. However, when we heard about the second plane it became very clear what was happening. I remember it being a beautiful day and looking up to see if I could spot any planes after hearing they all have been grounded. I had just turned 20 years old and for the first time became worried about the future of our country. There were so many thoughts that was going through my mind, from going to war or war coming here and Imagining the horror that thousands of people were facing at that very instant was very saddening. So many loved ones lost and so many children growing up without their mother or father still brings tears. Prayers go out again today on the anniversary of that tragic day.

Msabot1

I have just over 1k posts here,so that makes me a noob still...I remember the day like it was just hours ago....We were prepping components for an outdoor network cutover....building parts..Dave yelled..Hey..A airliner just crashed into the WTC in New York!!...I thought ...What the hell?? Those buildings have a large no fly zone around them...My next thoughts were for the people at the impact site...When the second one hit...I said..this is no accident ...something is very wrong about this...I remember getting a chill,but the morning was bright and warm..also noticed that a strange silence overtook everything..even the birds became silent..strangers just stared at one another like in a shock...no..I will not ever forget that day...It is a feeling that has close similarities to when and where I was when Kennedy was shot in Dallas...And had I have been alive,Pearl Harbor .......

ZLTFUL

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gPHnadJ-0hE

I was at work running a landscape nursery about a half mile from the Des Moines International Airport.
I had noticed that there was no planes taking off or landing and after unloading a truckload of trees, went into the office to give the invoice to the office manager. Her and the 2 landscape designers were sitting upstairs in the lounge area watching the TV. All 3 were crying. I asked them what was going on and they told me.
I immediately thought of my cousin, his wife and their kids who both lived and worked in lower Manhattan. I immediately called their home and got a busy signal. I didn't have their cell numbers so I called my aunt, his mom, and asked her if she had heard from them. Fortunately, she had and they were out of town at their vacation home on Cape Cod.

I asked to have the rest of the day off as I was still in the Army National Guard at the time and wanted to spend some time with my girlfriend just in case we got called up.

badchad

I had just started graduate school in Buffalo, NY.

I was at the gym, working out between classes. A friend of mine came up to me and said: "Did you hear, someone crashed a plane into the WTC." For some reason, I had the impression someone accidentally crashed a small cessna or something.

When I got back to my apartment the TV was on, and I saw the replay.

Sherardp

Okinawa Japan, stationed there while serving in the USMC. Shortly after we were packing up gear, counting bullets, and headed out.

jflail2

I had just went back to college after a 6 year hiatus, and was staying with my grandparents at their house near campus. My grandmother came into the spare bedroom that morning and rather matter of factly told me, "get up, we're going to war." So I dragged out of bed rather confused as to what she was talking about. I walked into the living room, and stared at the first tower in disbelief. I think about 5 minutes later, the second plane hit, and I knew right then she was exactly right; this was NOT an accident, and things just got real.

Campus was rather insane that day. I was in my late 20's, so I was probably more serious about life in general at that time. But I was blown away by how somber everyone was. The state of shock, even among a bunch of young college kids, was eye opening. Classes were technically still on, but we had discretion to not go if we didn't want to. Everyone spent all day just talking things out, trying to make some sense of what had happened.

I'll never forget Congress singing "God Bless America" on Capitol Hill that night. It literally brought me to tears.

My cousin (my closest cousin who might as well be my little brother) was in the USMC at the time and on a float in the Med. Sea on the USS Bataan. I remember him going radio silent via email for a week or 2, and then a little communication, and then nothing for a couple of months. If I recall correctly, his "unit" or whatever (2nd MEU?) were some of the first Marines in Afghanistan.

I've never been dialed into TV coverage for something like I was for 9/11. I think I watched TV for 2 day straight, as much as I could. I remember feeling almost shell shocked after a couple of days, so I can't imagine what the folks in NYC and DC felt.

God Bless America.

oldmodman

Asleep at home. I always turn on the TV when I wake up so I was watching when the second aircraft hit the second tower.
By that time I was on the phone with friends. We had a one week plan within just a few seconds. I tore out of the house and hit my local Costco and stocked up on all the necessary stuff to stay in the house for a few weeks if required.
One of my friends was tasked with buying all the ammo he could get his hands on.
Surprisingly there wasn't anyone else doing the same thing. He got us about 20K rounds of all the different calibers. And at bargain prices too. It wasn't until after the curfews were over that all the ammo in California was sold out.
By the next day pretty much everything was closed for the rest of the week around here.
I have never seen Los Angeles more paranoid.

voltz

I got up early for some reason as I normaly get up at noon for 2nd shift, when I turn on the tv and was switching channels and they just cut in about the 1st plane. next thing I knew the phone rang it was Alice who work 2nd shift with me she was shook up and did not want to go in for work. I still can not believe I got up early and caught it from the start -weird.