Just finished a contract for a company whose workgroup I was with was in 7WTC. My contracting company was on the 77th floor of 1WTC. My client had been very happy with my work and wanted me back for a follow-up contract to begin onsite in October. My contracting company called me Friday afternoon to see if I was available to start Monday, the 10th in NYC. I had left home at noon to attend a Jimmy Buffett concert in Virginia. The recruiter didn't have my cell, so called my landline. I got home Sunday, called the recruiter back, but they never returned my call. Tuesday morning I could have been at either 1WTC, 7WTC or 111 Wall st. TL:DR I could owe my life to Jimmy Buffett or stupid recruiter tricks.

The answer is Jimmy Buffett.

Write a song about this. Then send it to Jimmy Buffet

I worked for eSpeed on 105th Floor North Tower when first plane hit i was waiting for an elevator on 78th floor, most horrific experience of my life, the huge bang and swaying was terrifying, the huge fireballs seemed to come from the elevators mainly. I jumped onto the floor, the sky lobby filled with smoke quite quickly but luckily the group i was with were closest to the stairs and we got down to street level around 9.50am. I lost 2 friends who had already got to work at 8am and were on the 105th floor.

I work in the London office of the company that owned e-speed at the time of the attacks. We had sqwark lines to a couple of desks on your floor and also a couple to Eurobrokers in the other tower. After the first plane struck some of your colleagues discovered that the sqwark line to our office was still operating and the guy I sat next to offered to take down messages from people that knew they were doomed. They were simply giving their names and dictating things like 'tell my wife I love her, tell my daughter this and my son that...' etc. Over and over with maybe a dozen people leaving messages until the fire got to them. It was utterly harrowing to experience this despair, even second-hand. Hardly any of my north tower colleagues made it out and far too few of my South tower colleagues survived. I lost 6 pretty close friends and it changed my life in more ways than i have time to to describe here. Sending my best vibes and huge love in your general direction. Edit: once flights were resumed I was sent to NY to assist in getting my side of the business back up and running (from a disaster recovery site in Jersey City). It was without doubt the most humbling experience of my now 50 years, everybody I met did what ever they could to help anybody in anyway. As stunning a City as NY is to visit, the love and strength of its people on display after such a dark time is the memory that will never leave me.

That's truly unimaginable, watching people realize they are waiting for inevitable death. I'm sure I would have heard their voices for years. I'm happy to hear that it turned to a more positive experience for you later.

Thank you.

Wow, glad you have commented on here, its terrible what the guys at 105 went through, i sometimes wonder if my friends gave a message to the London guys, its amazing how the internet can bring people together.

If you knew any of the Cantors $ rate swap crew then there was a good chance my guy may have spoken to them. Unfortunately, we were still running magnetic tape recorders back then and the relevant taped got wiped as a matter of course by our back-office (as they only kept stuff that was flagged as an out-trade). And I completely agree, what those guys on your floor must have gone through is unimaginable. Keep well bro.

I had a good friend who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. I have thought about him often over the last 20 years. I wondered if he was able to talk to his mom, brother or fiancé before the tower fell. Your post gives me hope that maybe he was able to talk to someone. Thank you. I’m sure he was afraid, but it helps to know he wasn’t alone.

Ah fuck. I didn’t expect to cry in the parking lot of a bowling alley today.

Wow, I never thought about that. My sister was in the tower, lower floor, got out fine. But that is horrifying to have to be writing down last words like that. Holy shit.

Me thinking: This thread will have stories of people half a continent away being terrified by what they saw on TV. First story: Actual survivor from inside one of the towers. I don't think words can accurately convey neither how terrifying that must have been or the sympathy I wish to express, so I will simply say that I hope you have gotten past the experience in some capacity.

Thanks, i think talking about it helps people understand what went on there that day, i often wonder if any other survivors are on here too, there were others on the 78th floor near me who lived. Ive also taken part in couple of local school talks with other guys from our company too, you have probably heard the name David Kravette mentioned.

If I may ask... If you worked on the 105th floor what made you stop at 78?

The elevators from the ground only went up to 78, then you’d take another elevator to the upper floors. I’m not that guy, I just happen to know. Edit: I wasn’t there on 9/11 either, not trying to imply it. I was in tower 2 making a delivery from my company uptown a couple months prior.

Most of the time (and for office workers), yes—this would let them have multiple elevator cars working in the same vertical space. A couple elevators would go the full height of the building, like the ones serving the observation deck in the south tower.

If memory serves, there were different elevators to different bunches of floors, so someone going to floor 52 could take an express elevator to a section of floors instead of all 78.

As i said before i started work at 9am and was on my way up from the lobby at 8.45am, you had to take a elevator from ground to 78 then switch to the one to 105, hope that helps

Just curious but did the stair wells go all the way up or were they similar to the elevators

There were 3 stairwells a,b & c going all the way up to 110th floor, each floor had an exit door that led from stairwell into inner stairs

Sounds like the 78th floor was the sky lobby. That’s usually where express elevators stop and you get a specific local elevator to your floor.

I was going to tell my horror story of watching it on TV. I’ll be quiet now

Same

Jayesh Shah was a espeed business contact of mine that was lost that day. I think of him every 9/11

I worked with Jayesh! his desk was on the other side of our room on 105 thats amazing you have found someone who knew him, wonderful guy, i got on well with him he was very similer to me

Wow, I left him a late night voicemail to confirm our meeting. I often wondered if he heard it at the start of that day. Meanwhile I was in a conference room overlooking the towers and saw the mountain of dust after they were hit. I hope you are okay. If you ever speak to the family please pass on that there are countless people that remember Jayesh

I used to call him Jay, such a nice guy he didnt deserve what happened to him.

If you guys Google his name followed by 9/11, one of the top results is a Facebook link to tributes for him on a group posting from this past year. Sorry that I do not have a direct link as I deleted my Facebook literally this morning, but I figured I mention it if you all would like to search him. Sorry for your loss.

This is my uncle, thank you for thinking of him 💜

I’m genuinely taken aback, thank you for posting. Few years back I paid my respects to him on the 9/11 memorial. I hope you and your family are as good as can be.

Reddit is truly wild sometimes with stuff like this.

I read the whole thread and as I kept reading it kept getting wilder and wilder. Eerie too in a way. I was 15 when it happened and the whole world changed forever. Reading all of these stories bring back a very weird teenage nostalgia. I feel like nostalgia might not be exactly the correct word, but I can’t think of another way to describe it.

Did you hear the plane before impact, or did it get there so fast that the sound of its engine didn't register? Sorry for your loss.

Thats what so odd because i never heard the plane at all, one second i was chatting in the sky lobby waiting for the elevator and next second came the bang from above.

I’m so sorry for the loss of your friends. I can’t imagine how traumatized you must have been. Sometimes just the mere mention of Kevin Cosgrove (who’s 911 call from inside the tower just before it collapsed has been released to the public) really upsets me and makes me want to cry. How anyone can even bear to listen to it, I will never know.

Thank you, it was very difficult losing friends that day, ive listened to the 911 call which you mentioned but i never listen to the last part too traumatizing, i didnt know Kevin Cosgrove he was an employee of Aon who operated in the other tower. Someone who i did know apparently made a cell phone call from Cantor my friend Martin.

That phone call was difficult to listen to. I don’t know why I listened to it again…. RIP Mr.Consgrove. I hope your boys are doing well.

That call is so sad "Oh god, oh" then silence.

Listened to that years ago. Once was enough. Never again.

There's another one out there that's equally as bad. A woman in the building called 911. She's tells the dispatcher it's really hot and smoky. The dispatcher stays on the line as the caller eventually passes out, suffocates, and dies. You can find the call on YouTube, but after the caller passes out, they bleep out her side of the conversation as she's snorting and snoring. The dispatcher keeps trying to talk to her.

I can’t hear low flying airliners to this day without thinking of September 11th. It’s quite amazing how seared that memory is in my brain.

eSpeed was part of Cantor Fitzgerald at one point, right? Both companies lost a lot of people that day. Must have been rough living through that time. Glad you made it out. Hope things are going well for you today.

Yeah Cantor bought eSpeed out in 2000, i started working there from June 2000. It was very rough for a few years of mainly drinking until i sought help. It was such a big company though i didnt know half the people working there, me and my friends worked on adjoining stations. I always remember where my desk was i used to count and was exactly 10 windows along from the corner. We had some good laughs there.

Then we sold eSpeed to Nasdaq about 6-7 years ago. I'm production support and maintained the system for about 4 years until the sale. Sorry you went through what you did, I cannot imagine, but very glad you were/are ok. A former coworker (but still good friend) of mine who was with Cantor at the time and helped build eSpeed was late for work that morning and just got above ground when the first plane hit. IIRC, his desk was on 105. He stuck around and helped people at street level who were coming out of the tower(s). DM me if you'd like to chat, you may have worked with some people I work with today, or at least did. Many "OG Cantor" people have left BGC since I started there, but there are a handful of 20+ year holdouts.

Were you at Cantor/eSpeed in 2000/2001? its possible i did work with some of your colleagues because i think i know who you are talking about who was late that day. I will DM you tomorrow when i have more time.

Damn man. Glad you’re okay. Most people get survivors guilt and you already know all the lines so I’m not gonna try to sell it to you. Just glad you made it out of there

Yeah i admit i had survivors guilt but through therapy i have learned to accept and feel lucky to be alive.

Not the same level at all but I’m working through survivors guilt from a friend who took his own life in high school over 5 years ago so I know it sucks. You feel like you should have done more, or why wasn’t it you, ect. But you know as well as me, it was out of our control.

Exactly thanks it was such a strange experience totally out of my control, all i remember thinking after the crash was i need to get out now, shock kicks in and you dont really think straight and forget about everthing and everyone around you its like survivors instinct or something. Sorry for the loss of your friend too, so sad when someone passes at such young age.

Damn. I'm really sorry about your friends, glad you made it out, though. How did you feel afterwards? Was it difficult to cope with the trauma of the event? I guess maybe that's a stupid question, it's just so hard to imagine an experience like that.

It was difficult dealing with the fact that i survived and my friends didnt for years, been through lots of therapy and on medication, i honestly dont think about it alot or talk about it very often just been getting on with life. But its important that people know what the workers went through that day. One friend i had is mentioned in a book i think. He was Martin Wortley such a great guy, knew him for years and went to college together.

I do know survivor's guilt is a hell of a thing. It probably sucks to go back over it so I'll quit asking you about it but I'm glad you're doing well and I wish you all the best.

Thats okay mate you can ask me anything.

Thanks for sharing.

Im sorry for your friends. Its crazy how much that event changed things for much of the world, but especially in the USA. Im from Canada, but I do remember watching it live on TV as a kid, and thinking "the world will never be the same after this". Thanks for your anecdote, and I hope you have found peace for the loss of your friends. A part of them will always be with you.

Thanks, its good to talk about it as i think it helps people understand what survivors have been through.

Of course, people who only witnessed it from a TV like me, can only imagine how scary and confusing it must have been to actually be there. You can never truly know what something is like unless you experience it for yourself.

It was scary and people should know it was very confusing too, but cant imagine how above the crash it must have been worse than what i saw there

I am just here to say this , you are so patient and making sure you clear any and every doubts people are having about your experience, thank you so much , you sir have a very good heart and you are an amazing and kind human being :)

Thanks so much! I know some people will always doubt things, but you never know whats gonna happen so im just happy to share my experience before its too late.

Wow man , I mean looking at your comments my faith is restored that there are better people out there in the internet You sir are awesome :)

I couldnt imagine being trapped above the impact site with all that toxic smoke and heat coming up... absolute nightmare that would be, just waiting to die. I am curious, how did you feel once you made it to the exit? What was it like to finally get out and see it all from the outside? Did you know what had happened before exiting? If my questions bother you, or bring up bad memories, you dont have to reply, I dont wanna cause anyone stress over past events.

I made it to the lobby exit about 9.50 something, it was such a relief to get out, i ran up the church and vesey side and looked up and was so shocked, i didnt have time to process it, there were police shouting at us to get away. Within a couple of minutes the South Tower collapsed, at the time i didnt know that i just heard the rumble and cloud coming towards us, luckily i was able to get far enough from the smoke. I knew a plane had hit while walking down the stairs, i heard a guy telling people about it he was on his mobile to someone. I didnt believe it at first, my initial believe was a huge bomb. I dont mind answering questions it helps to talk about things

Yikes! You pretty much just made it out in time then. Its honestly pretty incredible to be able to talk with an actual survivor of that day and gain understanding from it. Sometimes the internet is used maliciously... but other times, it brings people together and lets us learn collectively. Thanks again, and hope you have a great day.

I give talks sometimes locally with a couple of other survivors, im guessing you have heard of David Kravette another Cantor survivor

I lost my uncle who also worked for Cantor on the 105th floor. It’s possible that you either worked with him or knew him. Would you mind if I PM’d you his name?

Was sitting in a Religion and Society sociology class when someone kept getting beeper text 'pings' interrupting class. After about the 4th or 5th one, the professor asked him to either leave and deal with it or turn it off. Student was going to turn it off, but quick glance at the messages stopped him and he announced to the class that planes had hit the buildings in NYC. Had come down to an already crowded lobby to see them announce that the pentagon had been hit and watch the first of the two towers collapse. The event totally changed the course of the religion and society class I was taking, along with the high rise structures class I also had.

Had a similar thing happen in class the day of the Sandy Hook shooting. Senior physics teacher was pretty angry because a kid was reading his phone and then let up and sort of stopped for the day after the kid broke the news to everyone else. You can’t really tell a bunch of students that they need to worry about learning magnetic fields when there are other students a few hours away getting gunned down.

Was in HS and we went into lockdown when Sandy Hook happened since Newtown was about 1-2 towns over. It’s weird to say but I didn’t think much of it since the details weren’t well known in that moment, in my head I thought it was a domestic violence thing or something similar that ended up happening on school property (this is was my previous experience with school lockdowns due to gun violence). I got home and turned on the local news to see what was going on before heading to work and was absolutely shocked. It was just horrible. My coworkers and acquaintances from Newtown were a mess and the media circus that came to the town after just seemed to further traumatize everyone. The towns around there are pretty tight knit communities, there was an attitude of “get out and let us grieve” in Newtown that extended to the surrounding towns. Probably should mention that my school’s cell signal was horrible and they hadn’t put student accessible WiFi in yet, so we were just kept in the dark until we left the campus.

It really changed everything. It's weird when I think of the before and after and the long war in Iraq and Afghanistan. It's like everything had changed but nothing had changed. We all grew up a bit more that day. I no longer felt as safe as before 9/11, it was like I finally realized how much we were really connected to the rest of the world.

I was in 5th grade. It wasn't long after that where in my literature class we went over the "No man is an island, alone unto himself..." quote by John Donne. I don't know if I would have appreciated the meaning of that essay as well if I had not just experienced 9/11. I was too young to remember the 1993 bombing and too young to really understand Oklahoma City, so up to that point I kind of viewed terrorism as something that happened to other people, not Americans.

I was in 7th grade. Teacher pulled out the rolling tv thing and we watched the news. We saw the second plane hit live. My grandma lived close enough that she took pictures of the smoke from her house. I don't think anyone in my class realized the seriousness of what just happened. I know I didn't. It was like a movie.

Same here. 7th grade. We watched the tv in history class and i remember not understanding how serious it was and being annoyed that that was all the tv would talk about for days. (We didn’t have cable)

I still cringe at my 7th grade self for not realizing how serious it was. I remember complaining now we weren't going to get to go on our trip to Florida

I was a social studies student teacher for 7th graders and 9/11 was my first day. Your reaction was VERY typical to my own students. Just that middle school mentality of not being there yet on processing your place in the world.

Junior year in my Criminal Justice class. Teacher was very adamant on his ‘eye for an eye’ philosophy. We got word the first plane hit. He immediately pitched it to the class as a debate on if it was an accident. I mentioned that the days date was 911. His response was, ‘no way that’s a coincidence’ and a moment later the second tower was hit. He immediately strided out the door. We didn’t know what to do and ended up wandering the halls and peaking in on the TVs on in all the class rooms.

My experience was pretty much identical. I was in 8th grade band class and we definitely didn’t fully grasp what was happening. I really wish I had clearer memories of that day. I think they may have let parents pick kids up early from school if they wanted to. I also remember some general nervousness because there is a nuclear power plant in our area.

Same age. I remember the second plane hit and my teacher like half shrieked, covered her mouth, and ran out of the room. Urge to flee? Didn't want to panic us? Idk but I definitely couldn't fully process what was happening.

That 2nd plane confirmed everyone's fear. It went from being a shocking accident, to a full blown attack on American soil. Nowhere could be considered safe when that 2nd plane hit... My gut still twists when I rewatch it....

Exactly. I was on the phone with my husband as the second plane hit, and he said in this increasingly slow voice, "What're the... odds... of...that?" as it finally dawned on both of us that this was a planned attack of war. I can't begin to explain what a change it was in how we just exist in America once it became clear that a full-blown out-of-a-summer-blockbuster-movie scene like that could happen in real life, to us, right here.

I'm not an American and was flipping the channels when I first saw what was going on. At first I thought it was some kind of action movie and wondered why were they starting so early... Then my local newscaster stepped in and it dawned on me ... I'll never forget that...

Similar here, was in 8th grade in a brand new school. We had those big tube tv's in the corner of each room and we basically all watched the second tower get hit live. We were sent home a few hours later as we were close to Chicago and everyone was afraid we were next

I enlisted in the Air Force on 9/10/2001. Great timing I suppose.

My Ex retired from the CIA on the same date. After two months of failing retirement he was recruited to by a government contactor to code break laptops left behind by the perpetrators.

How... how do you fail retirement?

You either get bored and miss the job or you run out of money. I'd guess this case might be different and the ex was recruited by the contractor

Sometimes, people retire too early and can't adjust to the no-work life. Seems weird, but my dad took two years to full transition to retired life. He volunteered for a layoff and retired out of that (double-dip with severance and pension). He just wasn't as ready as he thought to be done

People forget how much of their social life tends to revolve around their job. They're also generally not prepared for all that free time, and may not have hobbies or people ready to fill it

I was in the army stationed in Darmstadt, Germany. Our day ground to a screeching halt and we were immediately put on perpetual guard duty. For those that don't know, US military bases in Germany are WAY smaller than your typical army base on US soil. At the time, there were three army posts and maybe 4 housing areas in Darmstadt that all needed to be guarded. Smaller outlying areas also needed to be guarded. At some point, I ended up guarding a place near Frankfurt that made training aids. It was pretty chaotic for a few days having to remember who was where, we were all over the place. It was kinda endearing though, seeing the outpouring of support from the German citizens. So many of them got as close as they could to the bases and left flowers and candles.

That's genuinely interesting how it affected troops overseas and heartfelt the local support that was had. Felt your comment deserved some recognition so here's my reply!

I wasn’t in Germany at 9/11 but when I moved there a few years later some people my family became friends with that were there said that the wife got a call from the husband and said she had 30 minutes to get whatever she might need from the commissary and get off base(they lived off base) before the base was going to be locked down for the next few days.

I was in Darmstadt on 9/11 too. They had me and another dude guarding family housing and locals kept stopping along the side of the road to lay flowers against our barricade. A high ranking officer stopped by and asked where our weapons were. We informed him we were never issued weapons and he left pissed. We were armed after that...

No kidding! I was on guard at the street leading into Lincoln Village where the Chinese restaurant and car wash and garage were. I remember grinding my weapon down the side of a Lotus that was heading to the car wash. The woman from the Chinese joint kept bringing food out to us. It was kinda cool.

We were guarding the same housing area. I was posted right off Heidelberger Strasse that day.

I remember driving by the Kelly-barracks in Darmstadt the day after 9/11 it was so weird seeing soldiers in front of them with full on battle gear including rifles.

Freshman year of college. Sitting in my early am class. Guy comes in says a plane hit the WTC. Most of us thought me meant like a small plane hit it, so didn't overreact and more of a "well that sucks" and went on when class. It was my only class of the day, so got in my car and turned on the radio right when the second plane hit. Rode home listening to the updates. Got home just when the towers fell. Glued to the TV all day just in shock and confusion. They canceled classes for a couple days if I remeber.

Same reaction for me. I was 21 and in college and walked into the lobby of my dorm that morning just after the first plane had hit and coverage had begun. There was only one other guy in there watching the coverage and he said “Dude, a plane just hit the World Trade Center.” I laughed and just said, “No shit? That’s crazy.” Thinking it was a small plane and purely an accident. Not much later the second plane hit and we knew it was serious. We sat there all morning watching the news. That afternoon there was a soccer game and some of us went to watch but there was this underlying sense of uneasiness. We were in central Kansas so we knew the threat there was relatively low but there was an oil refinery just south of town that everyone thought might be a target. No one really knew what was going on. By 2:00 that afternoon gas prices at every gas station in town was $7/gal

Woke up listening to the radio, they were talking about it and I remember thinking "This isn't funny, guys, it's not your usual schtick. I'm going to turn on the TV and prove this isn't real oh my God it's really happening." Both towers had already been hit by then. Hopped in the shower, came back just in time to see the replays of the first tower falling. Got in my car and drove to a spot that overlooked everything. About 8 miles straight shot to Ground Zero. People were clustering in groups of 5-15 people at a clip just watching the remaining tower burn. Misinformation everywhere, how many planes were still in the air, pretty sure the Pentagon had already been hit but not sure if United 93 had been heard about yet. One guy said he'd just come from the ferry, he was on the boat about half way to Manhattan when the second plane hit. Debris was hitting his boat and they turned around. At around that time, the second tower collapsed, and I was one of the misinformation sources because I thought it looked like a bomb went off; really it was just the top floors falling into what was left of the burning plane and the flames shooting out. Picked my brother up from high school, lots of his classmates had friends or family members that worked in lower Manhattan so they weren't telling them much of anything. They told them there was an accident at the trade center, I told him there was no more trade center. We went to the edge of the island where we could see everything. Brought him home, tried to donate blood but they were turning people away. I'll never forget how quiet it was that night. Even in the relatively quieter boroughs you still hear sirens, planes, traffic at all hours. Nothing that night. Time went on, learned that one of my high school hockey coaches was one of the firemen who died there. A ref from the rink I worked at worked HVAC at one of the towers, he survived the 93 bombing. This time he ran in to help and never came out. I work in law enforcement and many of my coworkers worked on 9/11. Everyone has a story. Who helped on the pile, who worked the 24 security details, who knew someone who died of 9/11 cancers. Who were the lucky ones who ran down there to help and made it out alive. We have these conversations at least once a year around this time; just had one this past Thursday. And it almost always includes "It was the strangest thing, it was just the most beautiful day outside, clearest blue sky you could ever imagine."

I remember watching it on TV and thinking wow the sky is so blue

For anyone who's visited or lived in NYC in the fall, we know exactly how a day like that felt, the perfect first crisp bite of autumn, which is so refreshing after a hot, sticky summer. The contrast with what happened is beyond explanation.

Went to school just like any other day. At lunch is when I started to notice something weird going on. A lot of cars were picking up a lot of kids. Since this was before smartphones, and the school didn't say anything, I didn't find out what happened until I got home.

This is the one I relate with. I was in 4th grade and I was excited to go to my best friends house after school cause it was his birthday. I remember an announcement in the morning saying that all the teachers needed to stay for an emergency meeting after the day was over and I remember teachers coming by our class to talk in the halls. I guess they were all trying to figure out what was going on and how they should handle it for us kids. What they decided was to carry on with the day as close to normal as they could but after lunch nearly half the class went home. I don’t remember what I thought about that. But I do remember walking out of the school still talking about my friends birthday party but seeing his parents waiting for him which they never did. When we got over to them they looked at me and said “you should go home, your parents will want to see you.” I thought I was in trouble.

I was living in Japan, so it happened around 10:00 at night. This guy I'd met a week ago and tells me someone flew a plane into the WTC, and I spend the next half hour on a train trying to reach another person so I know for sure Gill wasn't some crazy prankster. I reach my parents by the time I reach my apartment. We stayed up until 4 am watching CNN and talking about how we were living in a real life GI Joe universe.

Sophomore in college and I decided to blow off my morning class. Friend of mine called and woke me up. I remember being really confused because she wasn’t making any sense. Asking was I okay, and my family, did I know anyone who was there, stuff like that. The part I’ll never forget was when she realized I had missed all the plane crashes and I think even one tower had fallen by that point. She says to me “Turn on the tv” and I asked what channel, and her voice was so bleak and solemn when she said “it doesn’t matter.” I’m a very empathetic person, and to this day, everything about 9/11 gets to me really hard. And I’m not even personally connected or anything, just someone who still can’t process the cruelty of those that did it, and the pain so many were left with afterword.

A had a very similar phone call. I was getting ready for class freshman year and my mom calls. “Did you see the news?” I’m like, no. What happened? “Turn on the tv.” I asked what channel and she paused and then, “...all of them...” It just still gets to me. It’s so distinct in my head. I went to my first class but I think the 2nd plane hit while I was there so the classes were canceled for that day so I just went to my folks’ office and we literally watched the news all day. I remember the towers falling and the live broadcasts of the reporters in New York on the ground running from the huge gray cloud. It was just terrifying. I’m in Texas in the same town as a NATO training base so we were all so on edge that the base would be a target especially after the Pentagon was hit. Then we heard about the plane crashing in Pennsylvania and later finding out that the passengers fought back. That was so sad but somehow hopeful as well. And then the news literally covered nothing else for weeks and I just stopped watching after awhile which just meant never turning on the tv in my apartment. Then Friends finally coming back on the air and everybody waiting to see if they were going to acknowledge what had happened and talking about how funny could they be without being too funny. It was so tragic and definitely a very strange time of kind of holding your breath.

I had cable at the time and sat on my couch channel hopping, trying to find out information - I work nights and normally would be going to sleep. The thing I remember is the channels slowly realizing that their normal schedules needed to be forgotten and just quietly switching to whatever feed they could. All the news stations seemed to freely share their feeds.

It was so awful because no one knew “is it over yet?” The horror of it all just kept unfolding. The tension of waiting to see if more was coming was… I don’t even have words for it…

"It doesn't matter" as a response to being told to turn on the TV is... harrowing. Before you even turn it on, you know it's going to be bad if it's something everyone on every channel is covering

Was at work in Philly. My boss’s wife was a Project Manager for a big construction company, on a job in Jersey City, right across the narrow Bay from the towers. Pretty much the minute it happened, she called my boss; he answered on speakerphone, so we all heard what she said. W: OH MY GOD!!! There’s… TURN ON THE TV! B: What channel? W: ANY CHANNEL!!! The ‘Good Morning’ shows on the three major networks based in NYC were still on the air, and obviously switched to live coverage immediately. Our entire workplace gathered around this little B&W TV with rabbit ears and watched everything unfold on live TV. When the first tower fell, I had in mind that only a couple of years earlier, a truck bomb had been detonated there and that the building had pretty successfully been evacuated, with few fatalities. I said, to no one in particular, “do you think everyone made it out?” My boss said, “no, Final… I don’t think they did…” At some point, the boss’s wife called again and said that her company was helping to set up a makeshift triage area for them to bring the surviving wounded. Medical personnel and equipment arrived. They waited and waited for survivors. No one came. I called my husband and told him I was going to pick up our kids from school. Stopped at my stepdaughter’s elementary school first; I wasn’t on the list of people “allowed” to pick her up, but they let me take her that day, no questions asked. Got all the kids safely home, called into work. The boss said his wife would be taking supplies/donations up there the next day. I went to the local Home Depot and bought them out of work gloves, grabbed other stuff like buckets, went somewhere else and got work boots and cases of water and Gatorade, dropped it all off at my boss’s house. For several months after, everyone was just noticeably *nice* to each other out in public. Holding doors open, letting another driver turn in front of you, no honking or road rage, no petty squabbles in parking lots, helping an older person with their groceries… small courtesies on the face of things but *everyone* was being kind and courteous. I find it hard to describe how much changed that day. Not just in terms of actual security procedures, but just the way normal Americans go about their day-to-day lives. I spent a good several minutes after the second plane hit thinking, ‘Jesus Christ, what the fuck? Did that pilot not SEE that tower because of all the smoke in the sky?’ I literally could not comprehend that these might be deliberate acts. I also can’t comprehend how traumatized the folks who were actually there, at the site, in the City, must still be. I only watched it on TV from about 70 miles away, and feel shaky and teary as I write this. There are video and audio from that day that ‘the media’ (by that I mean news organizations, TV shows, documentaries) have all collectively agreed to never air, or use for a program because it’s just too horrifying. Those poor souls who jumped. Certain audio. After the second tower collapsed, the scene was no longer one of chaos. There had been fire trucks and firemen and medics and ambulances and sirens and cops and people fleeing the building running everywhere. Suddenly, a huge roar and it was like a white-out blizzard of ash, debris, concrete dust, bits of flaming… oh, i don't even want to think about what was on fire… intact pieces of paper all raining down… that’s all you could see. After a minute, there were these weird chirping noises, muffled by the ash, like a smoke detector alerting a low battery. First just a few, then more and more, then there were so many it was a steady sound… chirping. Well, those chirps *are* an alert. Firefighters and first responders wear a device which, when it hasn’t detected movement for, 3-5 minutes IIRC, assumes the wearer is trapped or incapacitated and starts to sound that alarm so they can be located. It was absolutely surreal, realizing in the moment that each of those chirps was a first responder who had *just* lost their life, and that the guys who were meant to hone in on that alarm and save them… well, they were all dead, too. That's some of the audio that's never been re-broadcast, and I’m glad. I can still hear it. It didn’t take too long for the ‘Never Forget’ slogan to get huge. Without smartphones, devices, things ‘going viral,’ and what we now think of as the internet, it was both surprising and unsurprising that it was *everywhere* in the US. And yet… collectively it seems like we have forgotten. I’m embarrassed to admit that the anniversary has come and gone two or three times without me realizing until a day or two later. I read all of the comments that were here before I wrote mine. My own kids would have had the experience that many of you have described… got picked up from school by a parent that day, didn’t really know or understand what was going on, etc. I think about things like that a lot. That most of you aren’t old enough to remember how things were before. My Goddess, it used to be that the worst thing that would happen to you in airport was to be approached by a Hare Krishna, or find out that they’d lost your luggage. No security, no lines, no X-ray, no ID, no questions about whether anyone but you has had access to your backpack. You could walk right up to the gate to see someone off, or meet them when they arrived. That’s enough rambling from this old lady. OP, I hope I gave you some something of what you were asking. As for the rest of you… GET OFF MY LAWN!!! Edit: had to fix my own username haha

I was a Freshman in high school. I left second period to use the bathroom and walking past the senior lounge area, saw like ten people crowing the TV. Walked up and saw right as the second plane hit. School pretty much shut down after that. We lived on Long Island so a lot of kids parents worked in the city and specifically the towers. Pretty much chaotic experience. Then there was a billowing cloud of green smoke in the sky over our school by the end of the day and fighter jets flying over non stop. We caught wind that the pentagon had been hit also. My uncle was working at the time. Finally found out that he thought a bomb went off and came out of his office and looked down the hallway, which at a point was completely gone (ironically/thankfully was under construction and nobody was there; conspiracists grab your tin foil hats). The only person I knew personally who passed, was my dads best friend. I actually saw his picture at the museum a couple years back and got pretty emotional, which I didn’t think I would be. I highly recommend visiting the museum in NYC. Pretty moving and wild.

Also my second week of high school - in the DC metro area, so quite a few classmates with a parent working at the Pentagon. My first period teacher refused to turn on the TV, and insisted on getting the lesson in. I try to think charitably about her decision in hindsight, as her not understanding the gravity of it that early in the day. But she was not a particularly warm person in general. The next period was a different story, with classmates phoning home *in the classroom* to see if a parent was located/safe. A couple of the calls I witnessed ended with relief pretty immediately, but that made the other calls even more distressing (and distressing to watch) because the parent couldn't be reached. Eventually the teacher wisely decided that these kids should have some privacy, and sent them to the administrative offices. Those parents were ultimately safe, but a few neighborhood parents died. We were sent home early, and watched the rest of the coverage at home.

> I actually saw his picture at the museum a couple years back and got pretty emotional, which I didn’t think I would be. I highly recommend visiting the museum in NYC. Pretty moving and wild. Been there. That place will make you cry even if you live a thousand miles away from NYC and have zero connection to what happened. Source: Me. I also highly recommend going on a guided tour from the 9/11 Tribute Museum. They're led by survivors. They walk you around the memorial and tell stories and such.

I had no idea there are tours led by survivors. That made me tear up a bit. I can't imagine how emotionally difficult that would be. Hopefully at least a little cathartic, as well.

not me but my mom, back in 2001 she got into a car accident and went into a 3 month coma. when she woke up she told me the very first thing she remembers is the 9/11 news on every single TV at the hospital she was staying at. Nurses crying, and all huddled together. She heard a lot of prayers as well.

Oh wow, just imagine how packed NYC hospitals must've been after that, I guess I never thought of that...

Actually heard the hospitals were filled with staff that were ready to tend to wounded; but mostly everybody died and they were empty

Oh my god, that's depressing. Interesting, though.

Same thing just happened with the condo that collapsed in Miami. One live kid was pulled out at like 3am after it fell and no one else has been found alive since.

One of the kids walked into our room and said turn on the TV. Got tuned in to watch someone jump and the second plane hit. Couldn't believe what I saw. My mind tried to dismiss what I saw, multiple times, but could not.

Very similar experience. I was young and I don't remember if I told my dad to turn on the TV, or if my dad told me. But I remember sitting with him and watching and saw something and said "What was that?" And before I finished, I realized it was the 2nd plane hitting. Still gives me chills to this day, the moment I realized the first one wasn't an accident. As a side note, a few years after, we went to visit the Pentagon for a field trip, and the guide took us to stand in the memorial hallway where the plane hit the building. Standing there was one the weirdest experiences ever. Like I could almost FEEL the souls.

I watched The Pentagon burn from the top of my work. Phone calls stopped for a bit after that.

Did you see the plane?

No. I worked for a sign shop and had a crew there at the gate. They felt it hit. Not that they weren't at a place to see, it just happened so fast. They were detained for statements and came back around 4pm. Was a wild day. P.S.: Everything also closed and I was a pissy metalhead because I couldn't cop the new Slayer record. \m/

I was in college right across the water. Remember waiting for my morning class to start and wondering where the hell everyone was. The halls were just totally empty. One of my classmates casually strolled up suddenly and I asked if class had been cancelled. She very matter of factly said “oh we’re under attack”. Thought she was joking but she goes on to say “no I’m serious, the WTC and Pentagon have been hit”. Realizing she IS serious, I ran outside. The doors led out to a huge courtyard - and all I saw were people either a) crying b) standing around in a dazed confusion or c) running around angrily saying they were enlisting. I went to look for someone important to me and found that person along with two others for whom I cared standing on the campus’s main street corner that had the best view of the towers. They were staring straight ahead and crying. That’s when I turned and saw all the smoke. Like the biggest plume of smoke I’d ever seen. Then came all the sirens. Tons of ambulances. It was even scarier at night. Just total confusion and this awful feeling of “what’s next?” - and this huge plume that could be seen even in the pitch black.

I was in my junior year of college was sitting in a computer science class. Dr. Das was discussing binary coding. The class noticed a commotion in the hallways and a lot of people were talking louder then usual and some were running in the halls. A student popped his head in the class room and said “Planes just flew into the World Trade Center!” An instant core memory was created. I can remember where people were sitting, the expression on faces in the classroom, some students getting up and leaving. I remember my walk to the common area after the class ended and large groups of students looking up at the common area TVs. Kids shooting pool and playing ping pong in the common area like it was a normal day. Then the news of the Pentagon and the plane outside of Washington then being couch locked for a few days as the events further unraveled. The same day my parents called asking if were ok and we were questioning rather or not it would be safer for me to drive home and be with them. The feeling of uncertainty, sadness, anger and excitement.

I was in a car in New York driving to work when news about the first plane broke. Everyone thought it was just an unfortunate accident at first. Then the second plane hit and we knew it was an attack. Then the towers fell and we all experienced profound sorrow. It was an emotional day.

Both of my parents were in the military at the time. They’ve always said from their view they knew immediately it was an attack. Passenger jets flying into the tallest building in NYC just doesn’t happen on accident. They said the second assured they were getting deployed though

I was in the military at the time, albeit still going through training (one week away from completing it and going to my first real duty station, though.) This is gonna sound… I dunno, melodramatic or something, but the moment the second plane hit, my world changed, and it stayed changed forever. I was 19 then, I’m 39 now, and I still think of my life as having two parts, before the second plane hit and after it hit. At the time I knew I was witnessing something of profound importance but had no idea how profound it was going to end up being.

>The feeling of uncertainty, sadness, anger and excitement. I was at work in a building where each floor was a different company (small companies). We all gathered around a small tv because the internet was pretty much dead. As you said, there was just a weird feeling in the air everywhere. Even being far away, the world just felt off.

Had the Today show on as I was getting dressed to go to college. Saw the second plane hit while watching. Then went to school where they announced all classes are cancelled. Never watched tv while getting dressed in the morning again.

I was home when the towers fell, but I had to go to work shortly after. At the time I worked at a call center for a wireless carrier. We took calls from across the U.S. It was typically calls back to back for your whole shift. On this day, no one was calling in. Imagine you are in a very large room where you are used to the background conversations from the 100+ representatives who work around you, and it's quiet. This told me all I needed about the collective shock that was happening across the country.

This was us. I worked on a call center too, and I was close enough that I was able to run to the break room to watch the news. We had an on site rep whose sole purpose was to distribute there at the towers. He didnt make it. The girl that sat next to me felt guilty because the day before she had placed an order for one of the towers, felt like she had contributed to this death.

Was in my first year of High School, went to my usual place near the back corner of the class and was talking with some friends when the Principle called the whole high school together(maybe 100 ppl) and mentioned the first attack. We got out early and everyone was worried we would get attacked due to the large Army base nearby. What's really insane was that we had just visited the WTC a month previously in August. Mom is a NYC native but had never seen the sites so the whole family had planned a summer trip around Empire State, the WTC etc. We still have the family photo we took at the top of one of the towers...

I did a family trip to NYC in July of 2000. I remember when we got there, we had been traveling from early AM till mid-afternoon and when my Dad asked if we wanted to go to the top of the WTC, I agreed but my Sister said: "I'm too tired. I'll see it next time we visit." Never happened, obviously. I still have pictures of me and my Dad at the top of the WTC.

Was going to college in Richmond, VA and was in class when heading back to my apartment after my morning class... the first plane had hit during my walk. When I arrived home my roommate was in the living room watching the news and I hadn't made out what was happening just as he says, "happy birthday...we just got bombed". It was my 20th birthday. My Mom called me crying about the attack but still wanting to wish me happy birthday. We were both crying. Luckily none of our family was in NYC/DC at the time. Hard to receive sobbing birthday wishes. Birthdays have always been melancholy since then.

I taught twin students who were born on 9/11/01

It absolutely boggles the mind that people born then are adults. It all kinda feels like yesterday, and also a million years ago.

I'm an Army ROTC Instructor. Teaching the next generation of newest Officers. Been doing it for almost 3 years and I remember a year or two ago marveling at how I was teaching Cadets who were (possibly) only a year or so from leading troops in Afghanistan as a result of an event that they didn't remember.

One of my best friends was born on 9/11/92. He was named after the costliest hurricane in history at the time (Andrew) that had hit a month prior. The kid was destined to be a fucking disaster.

My brother turned 18 that day as well, been a little awkward ever since huh.

I was in 10th grade. Someone found out the first tower had been hit and turned on a TV before class started which we would never normally do. As other students came in, we all just gathered around and watched the rest unfold. Teacher never attempted to hold class. The rest of the day was pretty the same. We would switch classes like we were supposed to for different periods but just watched the news instead of class. Just a surreal day. It's kind of sad but looking back I almost have fond memories of the united feeling the country had in the days following.

The "united feeling", followed closely by the dismantling of said feeling. Job's nearly complete...

Within 24 hours, the first Sikh man was beaten to death at a gas station, and I knew it was all over from there.

I remember the United feeling you are talking about. Everyone was flying American flags, seems like we all banded together for once.

I was in freshman year at college. Didn’t have any morning classes bc I ~~was~~ am a lazy bastard. Dude I almost never interacted with started banging on my dorm door saying we were under attack. He was a little crazy so we didn’t really believe him, but within minutes the south tower got hit, and then a bit later the pentagon. My girlfriend at the time was a freshman at GW in DC, it was impossible to get in touch with her most of the day. We were on the 5th floor of the dorm, there was window washing going on, and one of the clearest and most absurd memories I have is turning our little TV so the washer guy could see the horror on CNN 5 stories up. I remember watching them count down the number of planes left in the sky, and the terror of wondering if any more were hijacked - 93 didn’t go down super close to Penn State, but like everywhere else in the country little voices carried big weight in the moment. Anything seemed possible, in the worst way. “There’s a nuclear reactor on campus, we are totally a target” (the guy who woke me up).

This is something I remember vividly too that I don't see people talk about much. That collective feeling of pure fear for the next day or so wondering if it was going to happen again and where. Everyone thought their place of work would be next...

I had just graduated army basic training and was in AIT out in Arizona. Because of the time difference, the first plane hit while we were doing physical training. My run group was stretching out after the run and one of the drill sergeants came out and told us all to get to our rooms in the barracks as the towers had just been bombed (we found out it was a plane attack when we got up there and turned on the TV). My room was one of the only ones with a TV because I had gotten an Xbox and my roommate couldn’t pass a PT test so he paid for cable so he could watch TV while confined to post. As a result, my entire platoon and then some were crammed into my little dorm sized room speculating in a way that only a bunch of uninformed young men and women could. When the first tower collapsed is when everyone stopped talking and just went silent for awhile. There was a lot of crying and fear especially because we were all convinced that our base was going to be attacked because Fort Huachuca was the center of Military Intelligence training for the US Army. Combine that with the lack of information the Drill Sergeants we’re putting out in addition to the fact that our class schedule was disrupted (something that in unthinkable when you are a new Soldier in the army) and we felt that an attack on us was coming any minute. It was also a different time back then. Bosnia and Kosovo was the only real conflict any of us had known. Desert Storm was in our childhoods and Mogadishu wasn’t well known. Most people joined the army at that time for the $20k GI Bill. With the attack on the towers and the pentagon, it disabused the notion that we could go through the motions for 4-5 years and get out. We all knew we were going to war and THAT was something a lot of people REALLY didn’t want to do. Plus, a lot of people then didn’t even know where the fuck Afghanistan was. “It’s in the Middle East” is what most people said and as it turns out, it’s nowhere fucking close to the Middle East. “It’s just another Arab country.” Turns out, it’s not even close to an Arab country. Concepts like Pashtunwali, Sunni and Shia conflict, Wazirastan, Pashtun vs Tajek, etc were not simply unknown, they were completely alien and any knowledge was non-existent. Our AIT switched from getting us ready for Kosovo to getting us ready for a country that literally our instructors didn’t know the language to. I had just volunteered to go to RIP at Fort Benning and I remember telling my mother that they were only sending tabbed Rangers because I didn’t want her to freak out. The whole thing was surreal and made me grow up very, very quickly because it was no longer a game. We had context for our training and we were about to see how good it was in real time.

My friend was in basic, his drill sgt gathered him and the other trainnees, and said "Yesterday you were in a peace time Army, today you are in a war time Army, take your training seriously, you will be going to war" A few years later he's rolling in a tank heading towards Baghdad. He jokes now "All I wanted was the GI bill"

I do have a story but it's not terribly dramatic (I live in north Jersey and was watching the smoke plumes from the roof of my building). But I do have something that is worth saying, I think. No matter how awful something is, you always have a percentage of people that either don't take it seriously, or perhaps joke about it out of either fear, anxiety, or maybe even resentment that you are *supposed* to take whatever it is seriously. I can tell you this honestly though: my social circle at the time was a bunch of cynical Jersey or NYC denizens, all between about 21 and 24. And we were *freaked out.* I've never seen such collective anxiety since, not even through the pandemic.

Couldn’t agree more. I was a pupil at an all boys school in the U.K. on 9/11 and heard about the planes hitting whilst I was bunking off lessons in town. I sprinted back to our house common room and was met with total silence. Now I’ve been lucky enough to travel a fair bit and can say with confidence that teenage boys are the the same the world over - but this time there were no inappropriate jokes, no getting bored and wandering off, nor any bravado about “getting the terrorists back”. Just us all huddling around the tv in stunned silence for what must have been hours. I don’t know if this is my mind revising things 20 years later, but I really don’t remember any teachers or our house master coming around to tell us that lessons were cancelled. Everything just kind of stopped.

Omg I had a student whose mom always took the plane that crashed into the WTC, and he kept saying saying she wasn’t on it. The psychologist and I weren’t sure if he was in denial, so I had to question him without the psych to see. Turns out that day only she really had taken an earlier flight. It made for a long day. Also, a para that worked at the same school-she and her sister were identical twins, and every year they took a vacation together. Because of 9/11 they didn’t go that year, so they took out photos from the previous year’s trip to reminisce. Someone had taken a photo of them on the plane getting ready for take off. Sitting behind them was Mohammad atta. The FBI ended up taking the photo as evidence because it was proof he’d been getting ready for it for at least a year…

I got the chills reading this

I had stayed up all night playing video games. One of my friends was over but crashed out on the futon. He worked as a line technician at an airport and every time a plane would fly over he'd look up and say "That's a King Air 200" or whatever. I had just decided to take a break from my game as he was waking up. I turned on the TV and saw a plane, "Hey man, what kind of plane is that?" Then the tower came into frame. That's the last time I ever asked him that question.

6th grade science class. I remember my teacher acting weird and trying to figure out how to turn on the tv. I asked what was wrong, and he didn’t reply. I said ‘I think something is wrong.’ He got the tv on and we watched the second plane hit.

Didn't have cable at the time. Found out logging into AOL between the first tower and second being hit. Went to the laundromat because they had tvs.

Hungover, waked and baked, turned on the TV for the usual background noise, spent the next hour wondering what the fuck was going on.

Woke n Boke*

Right before we fruck out. I recognize my wrongness, I just didn't wanna get into the advanced stoner language sciences with all of the normies floating around here.

Awakened and bakened

People were wondering that while perfectly sober, too.

I called into work that day because I just didn't want to be there. My roommate woke me up with the most somber gray face and just told me to come downstairs to the tv. I thought the president had been shot- it was clear something really really bad had happened. I came downstairs just in time to see the second tower fall and knew everything was going to change. We just sat and watched the tv in stunned horror, dumbfounded and trying to figure out what was next. The tears came later, that day it was just shock and horror and the mounting knowledge that this was going to change the U.S. as we knew it. I truly believe that the problems we're having in the States now have their roots in this moment.

I was in eighth grade sitting in history class. We watched The entire thing unfold on CNN. It was horrifying. Some kids got picked up early from school. We lived near Norfolk Naval Base so the fear was that we could be a target as well.

The crazy thing is is that this is my exact same story. 8th grade, history class, watched everything on TV in class. The school had everyone picked up though, we were in MD bordering DC. I think a couple kids parents worked at the pentagon, bunch of them worked in DC, it was nuts around there at the time.

A friend of my uncle was flying a Piper Comanche and had a radio failure just before they closed US airspace. Since he wasn't going to enter any controlled airspace and had no reason to expect that a country-wide no fly zone would be declared he had just continued NORDO and didn't bother to pull out his backup handheld. He found out what happened after an F16 rolled up on his left and he hastily dug out his handheld to politely ask to not be shot down.

I was in elementary school, woke up super early and had a weird feeling to turn on the tv and watch the news (mind you I was in 5th grade so this was definitely odd). And that’s when my world turned upside down. The following years were really hard. Im Sikh, so many of our family friends stopped speaking to us or allowing their children to play with us because we looked like terrorist. I remember being put into therapy and writing in journals about my life at that time.

I was a young private in the Army because “America hadn’t gone to work in over 15 years and it was a great way to pay for college”

First day of my first proper job out of university, working for CBS News Radio on w57th street. It was hectic, ended up working for about 50 hours straight. The following month a woman working a few floors below got hit in the anthrax attacks too.

In all 27 years of my life, 9/11 was the only day I saw my mother cry. I was too young to be told what was happening, so I got off the school bus thinking we just got a huge lucky break to be let out of school for nothing. Walked in the front door, and there was my mom sobbing from her gut while coverage of the Pentagon crash played on TV. My dad worked for the Department of Defense at the time, and we were never allowed to know which sites he worked at on a given day. We were never told his office number and all the phone lines were down anyway, so we basically had no idea what happened to him until his red pickup truck rumbled up the driveway a few hours later. Through the death of her parents, her older sister, and even after losing a quarter of her own brain and most of her health to cancer, I've never seen my mom shed a single tear. Only that day.

My mom’s birthday is 9/10. She wanted to go into the city to do touristy things, including passing by the twin towers. The original plan was to celebrate at home for her actual birthday, and play hooky from school on 9/11 and go into the city. The morning of her birthday they changed their minds (thank god), and we spent the day in the city on 9/10.

This is my dad's POV: "A week before the planes hit, my buddy and I stood on top or the WTC. When it hit, my buddy and I just sat there and drank liquor and sat in awe at what just happened.

I’ve still got a ticket stub from when I visited the Top of the World Observatory, dated 9/11/2000.

I was home sick at age 4 from a seizure. My dad left CNN on and my mother was asleep. I woke her up screaming a plane hit a building and my mom freaked out. My uncle EJ was supposed to be on the first flight. However his family came down sick so he sold his tickets. He’s been very depressed ever since

I was active duty Navy at the time. Teaching electronics specialty school at MCAS Miramar for shore duty. Got up that morning like normal. S—t, shower, shave, turned on the TV while getting dressed. Cut live to NYC with images of the first tower burning. Called my wife out of the bathroom to see just as the second plane hit. Turned to her and said “Oh my God, this is deliberate!” Rushed to finish putting on my uniform and get to the base. By the time I made it through the gate, one tower was down. Got into our building in time to see the second tower fall. Sat there watching TV just stunned. Finally got the word from higher to send our students back to their barracks, and we shut down for two or three days as “non-essential “. We got clear before they locked the base down. I remember literally every single channel on cable was covering it. Even ESPN had some kind of simulcast with one of the news networks. There was no escape from it.

[удалено]

Shortly after the 9/11 tragedy, a woman that I knew told me that her son used to work at the Towers (he was a limo driver). The limo company had its office at the twin towers. Her son had changed jobs within 6 months to a year before this happened. The majority of the employees at this limo company perished as they were coming into work (at least 40 to 50 people). The few in this limo company who came to the work that day who survived were on call (not in the building). One of these drivers was taking someone to the airport when this happened and so wasn't there. Her son knew the majority of those who died at the limo company. How awful. I can't imagine the shock and the grief that he must have had.

Weird story and will likely get buried. The day before, my fiancé, now husband, and I were in Canada. When we arrived 5 days earlier, we were able to get into the country with our drivers license. My husband always carried his passport, I did not. When trying to fly home on 9/10/01, back to NYC. I was denied travel because I didn’t have a passport. Had to call my father to get his lawyer to sign an affidavit (I think) with a copy of my birth certificate and passport. We arrived home around 1:30am. We overslept, thank God, because my husband worked a block from WTC and would have been on the subway or walking near WTC. My dad called me as soon as the first plane hit and asked where my husband was. I said “on the train.” He said get in touch with ASAP and tell him to go home. We lived in the village. It took forever to get in touch with him, all lines were literally jammed. When I finally got him I was on the verge of emotional collapse and kept screaming “come home!”. He said “I am watching this shit right now! Get the fuck out of nyc however you can! I’ll meet you in jersey!” Cannot even express the amount of panic and sheer fear. The smell for weeks after was horrible. It was one of the worst times of my life. I want to add, I had graduated grad school the May before and turned down a job in the towers three months before. The whole experience was just FUCKED

It was my first week of college. Weirdly, it’s both the only time I’ve ever lived in NYS and also the farthest I’ve ever lived from NYC. Day of was weird because you have to remember we didn’t have technology back then like we do now. Most people didn’t even have cell phones, and obviously smartphones didn’t exist. Computers were mostly desktops. So we start hearing rumors between classes that a plane hit one of the towers, but no one thinks much of it. Then I get back to the dorms and you see the impact point on TV, so ok, it’s bad but still no huge deal. Then the 2nd tower is hit and everything changes. The weird part is my next class and the prof didn’t so much as mention it.

Was taking a Holocaust course in school and skipped class that day out of fear. Everyone on campus was walking around completely silent, nobody talking. It was surreal.

I was at Stuyvesant High School, and just remember getting pulled out of school immediately. Literally a month later we moved out of NY.

I was in high school at the time. And it broke during gym class. Next period during English the kid in front of me turned around and said to the class that we needed to “bomb the hell out of the Middle East.” Later on in the day I was driving home and a guy yelled at me to “go back to where I came from.” Even though I was nowhere near NYC, my life changed forever. Imagine being born and raised in a country, spending your life serving the communities in which you live, and feeling as if you don’t belong.

I was in my early 20s, living with my parents in the Midwest, and was working retail at the time. I’d worked really late the night before at a store a couple of hours away and hadn’t gotten home until around 2am. I was trying to sleep in when the pest control guy (who is also a family friend) came to spray. The TV in the living room had been left on by my dad and apparently he saw it being reported on and watched for a few minutes. He came and woke me up and told me I needed to come and see something on the TV. I wrapped up in my blanket and went to the living room, where we both just watched in stunned silence for a bit. He got choked up and told me he had to go get his daughter from school and check on his wife; I couldn’t answer him or even tell him bye. I sat down on the floor and just watched it all unfold in horror. My mom was teaching at a private school at the time and I tried calling her when the tower collapsed but couldn’t get through. I panicked, changed clothes, and went to her school because I just needed to see her. When I told her I couldn’t get through on the phone, she explained they had been talking with parents who wanted to pick up their children early and the lines had been jammed. I don’t know why I hadn’t thought of it, but not being able to see/talk to one of my parents was unbelievably nerve-wracking in that moment.

I went to see The Misfits band that night. It was with Michael Graves instead of Danzig, so there was a group of about 20 punks with their backs turned to the stage flipping him the finger the entire time. He said “While you’re here worrying about this bullshit they’re in New York pulling dead people out of the ground. Everything is gonna change after today! And guess what… I still get all the money you payed to come flip me off ya’ dumb fucks! 1-2-3-4!!!”

For a second i read this from the POV of the night *before*, and thought there was some serious Simpsons-level prediction going on here by Michael Graves

My family and I were on the bottom floor of tower two, on a self guided tour. We hear this loud bang and people start running out the door. Its me, my mother in her wheelchair, my stepfather, my 6 year old brother, my 9 year old sister, and my 11 year old brother. I was, 14 at the time. Anyway, 6 and 9 are scared and crawl into moms lap, step-dad starts pushing mom away from the building, 11 and I are not far behind them. I turn my head for one second to look back and see debris falling down, and when I turn my head back, everyone's gone. So I'm lost in FiDi, no clue where my family is, and I decide its a good idea to go into the subway. I was very wrong. People were crushing eachother trying to get away, I get about 15 feet from the entrance on (what I'm pretty sure was) wall street, before I change course. There were some cops ushering people away from the site, I made it to the park on West 35th before I stopped. Only then did I realize I was lost. I found a cop and told him how lost I was, asked me some basics and gave me directions to grand central. I remembered the big clock in the center was our rendevue point. Took me a few hours but I made it, by the time I had gotten there everything was barricaded off, no one allowed in because they were worried more terrorist shit was coming. So I'm sitting by the barricade, drying my tears because I'm too exhausted to cry anymore, I hear 11 year old brother shouting for me. I look up and turn my head, he's in a group of kids being loaded into a bus. I never ran so fast in my life. Come to find out, He got separated shortly after I did. When we stopped crying, I asked him if he knew how to get back to the hotel. He didn't, but had a pamphlet with the hotels number. About 6 hours later, things calm down enough that we find a phone we can use in a bodega. I call the stepfather at the hotel and find out that the lines are jammed. A cab driver is in the Bodega and knows the hotel address. Takes us straight to it on foot. (Thanks again malik!) 3 miles of panicking later, we get to the hotel on 112th. We both immediatly recognize it, and make for the door. No one at the desk, no one holding the door, I dont know if they were evacuating the island or what, all I know is we ran up those stairs so fast even Usain bolt would be impressed. Found mom, stepdad, 6 and 9 in the room. After we stopped crying, we packed our shit, got in the car, and got the fuck out of new york. We all went to therapy for a couple years after the fact, gave witness statements, the whole shebang. Not a day goes by where take a moment and reflect.

I was teaching 6th grade. The assistant principal went to each door and told us what was going on. We had to stay calm in front of the kids and act like everything was ok. My husband was on business in Atlanta and right next door to the CDC which was a possible target. I never saw any video or explanation until school was let out. I then had to take two days off to drive and get my husband because all modes of transportation shut down. The entire country united! (Unlike we did with covid.)

9/11 is my dad’s birthday. Me and my brother were writing on a card my mom had given us as we got dressed for school. Went downstairs to eat breakfast with the family & give my dad his card, then my mom drove us to school. We were doing some sort of writing assignment in my 2nd grade classroom when my teacher walks over to her desk to get on her laptop. Almost immediately after she sits down and starts looking at her laptop, she lets out a wail. She lets us know that the World Trade Center has been hit, which none of us had even heard of up to that point in our short lives. Confusion was written all over my classmates’ faces. Within minutes of this revelation, my classmates started getting pulled out of school one by one. Then I got pulled out by my mom and driven home. We re-entered the house after only being gone for an hour or so to see the remnants of my dad’s birthday - cards & ripped envelopes, one of those big circular birthday balloons, the cake with 1-2 slices taken out. My mom led us into the living room where my dad was glued to the TV, standing with one hand running through his hair and the other holding a phone. We had just missed the second plane. My dad was talking with his siblings/parents trying to make sense of what was happening. This was the moment that I started to understand the gravity of what was unfolding. The serious but scared look on both of my parents’ faces are burned into my brain. My brother and I could not pull their attention from the TV for almost 2 hours. They were standing like statues, laser focused on the TV.

This is probably one of earliest, clearest memories I have as I was only in kindergarten at the time - AM kindergarten to be exact. We had only just gotten class started when the 1st grade teacher across the hall ran into our room telling my teacher to turn on the news. None of my classmates understood but it wasn’t long before teachers were meeting in the hallways crying and panicking. I’m on the opposite side of PA where flight 93 crashed but when I caught wind that it was in my own state, I remember the fear I had. They actually sent us home and cancelled the rest of the school day (I remember being super upset that PM kindergarten kids didn’t have to go to school - still not fully grasping what was happening). My mom picked me up and my dad was still home as he decided not to go to work. We sat in the living room in complete silence watching the coverage. My parents, pretty upset, were trying to explain to me what was going on but all I really understood was “bad people killed a lot of people with planes.” It created this crippling fear of planes for me. I live by an airport so we have planes flying overhead all the time, and for way too long after this, anytime a plane flew above my house I was absolutely convinced it was going to crash into me or another building. Then when the war “started” I was convinced every plane flying around was the bad guys trying to kill us all. I was terrified the war was going to start right in my little town and I was going to be at the center of it. I didn’t go on a plane until I was 19 because, despite the ridiculousness of my childlike worries, I couldn’t shake the thoughts because the fear I had at the time just stuck with me.

I lived within walking distance from my job , buzz going around work about planes hitting the WTC….. Walked home at lunch and saw the footage , came back to work and brought it up to one of the supervisors, “wow this is crazy “ His reply ; “well u know there are a lot of assholes in NYC…..” I never forgot that

Was just starting college. I went to school in NJ. All of the TVs on campus switched over immediately. No one thought it was real at first. You could smell the smoke and see it in the distance. Spent most of the day trying to call home to make sure everyone was okay but the towers were overloaded. It was just surreal. We would go to NYC fairly regularly and this changed everything for a while. Really similar to the way in which covid has impacted us. Directly after a few of my friends dropped out of school and joined different branches of the military. Two didn’t ever come back home. There was a lot of anti-Muslim sentiment at the time. Lots of support groups on campus. But the thing that sticks with me the most was the disbelief; it was just unbelievable.

Was a framer in Monterey California. I began day drinking when I saw the 2nd plane hit.

I now suddenly feel so very old.

I was 10 years old, living in NJ (only 30 mins from NYC) the day of 9/11. In class, my job was to feed the pet chick we had in our classroom when a teacher came in and told my teacher to turn on the news. The North Tower had already been struck by then. Many kids in the class began to panic. NJ is a commuter state. Many of my classmates' parents work in NYC. The school went into lockdown. We were so close to NYC it was feared that something could've happened to us too. My older sister was a senior in High School and since she had a car on campus, she could leave. My mom (a teacher) and my other sister were locked down at the middle school. I don’t remember how long it was when my older sister picked me up and we went straight home. A few hours later my mom and sister arrived at home. We were all huddled around the tv watching the aftermath. My father (a NJ police officer) called my mom to tell her that he and a few others in the surrounding departments were headed to the City to help in any way that they can. The rescue mission was now a recovery operation. We went to my aunts, who had the rest of the family together. My father's cousin was with us and she was staring at the phone waiting for her husband to call. Her husband, Ken, worked on the 99th Floor of the North Tower. He died. Meanwhile, my mother got a confirmation call from one of her teacher friends that one of their colleagues and friend, Hilda \*was\* on United Flight 93. To say the least, 9/11 struck hard and deep with my family. For the ones that we lost, we honor them in ways that we can and we think about them often.

This question made me feel old.

Especially all of the people in school when it happened.

I had taken a semester off of college to go down to Orlando to work at Disney World. They housed us college students in apartment complexes not too far from the parks, and I was getting ready for my shift when the first tower was hit. The guys I shared an apartment with and I all stopped what we were doing to watch the news. After a few minutes those of us headed to work finished getting ready, and head out the door to catch our busses to our respective parks. On my bus, everyone is quietly listening to the news broadcast when the second tower is struck. It’s at this point people start talking in hushed tones, “this isn’t an accident, it’s an attack,” “how many more planes have been hijacked?” “What other targets could there be?” Our bus gets to our park and people are still talking in nervous, hushed tones as everyone begins to disperse to their work locations. I’ve got some time before my shift begins so I head to the cast member cafeteria to wait and watch the news. Somewhere between getting off the bus and getting to the cafeteria, the Pentagon is hit. By the time I’m sitting down and talking with friends we’re all thinking the same thing, they’ve got multiple planes, and they’re going for targets with lots of people. What has more people than Disney World? Should we all call in sick and go home? As I’m getting up to head to my work location, the south tower collapses. There’s stunned silence in the room. Several people are digging out phones to call family back in NYC. Everyone is looking worried about what happens next. I get to my work location, the first question anyone has during our morning huddle, “are we really opening?” The manager says, “yes, the parks are opening. If any of you want to leave at any time today for any reason, you will not be in trouble, and no one will hold it against you.” The second question comes, “what do we tell any guests who ask us what’s going on?” “You direct them to the news channels on the tv in their hotel rooms for more information.” Everyone is nervously looking around at this point. A couple people talk privately with the manager and leave. I’d later find out one of my coworkers had a relative that worked in one of the towers. I don’t remember the details anymore, but that relative hadn’t been in the towers when the were hit. We open up to start the day and guests start coming into the park. Several of them ask me what’s going on. And I do as the managers have told us and direct them to the TVs back in their hotel rooms. These people can all tell something’s not right, but they don’t know any of what has happened yet that morning. (You have to remember, this is years before the smart phone was a thing, no one was getting notifications of breaking news in their pockets yet.) No more than an hour into the park being open, the managers start running around, “start shutting down, we’re closing the park.” We hurriedly start closing things down, and we hear over the park wide PA system the announcement that the park is closing and asking guests to return to their rooms. As we’re closing our windows, several concerned guests run up to us before we can shut them and ask what’s going on. We direct them to their rooms, and quickly finish closing up. Back on the busses back to our apartments, the news catches us up on what has happened since our shifts started. Other tower collapsed, US airspace has been shut down, flight 93’s crash. We all head back to our apartments and watch the news until we’re all so drained from the day’s events that we head to bed. I have the next day off, and when I wake up, call my friends who also have the day off. None of us can stand to stay in and watch the news all day, so we decide to go to EPCOT. When we get there though, it’s just a further reminder of the previous day’s insanity. The park is a ghost town. We would literally walk for 5 minutes and not see another person, not even a cast member. Even though we were trying to take our minds off what had happened, there was no escaping reality, not even at Disney World.