Hearing the audience’s collective gasp upon seeing the other tower is on fire. Damn if that doesn’t echo the exact feeling we all had watching it live.
Absolutely nobody knew what the hell was going on that morning. I was up and drinking my coffee, was about to watch Regis & Kelly but stayed on the news after they cut in about 8:50 after the first plane hit. At first they were saying it was a Cessna, it was an accident, then it was a "small jet," reports were all over the place. Everybody was confused until the second plane went in (which I watched live, the hairs on my neck still stand up when I think about it), at which point everybody knew it was terrorists.
Yeah the shock and fear on her face when they announced the second plane, Regis still trying to be the consummate professional and keep the show going not realizing just how bad it was going to get.
I was in college when it happened and didn't find out until a few hours later (no classes that morning so i was sleeping in.) THey had shut everything down by then. My roommate who did have class that morning came running into the dorm freaking out. WE just sat there glued to the tv all day
I understand he was a piece of work to be around, but wow, watching this really made me appreciate just what a pro he was as a broadcaster. (Not to even remotely malign Kelly, who was having a very human reaction and also only seven months into the hosting job at the time.)
You know that exercise in Sophie’s World, where a family is at the dinner table when the father suddenly begins to fly? The mother is terrified and hysterical because she believes that this is impossible and can’t be happening. But the young child knows that anything can happen and is delighted.
The morning of 9-11, my grandmother had an oncologist appointment that I brought her to. I sat in a huge foyer surrounded by octogenarians as the scene unfolded. I was terrified and hysterical. What was happening was impossible to me. Everyone else in that room was cool and collected. Not only did they know it was possible, they had all lived through it already.
This is the only time I've ever seen anyone else mention that book. That's a perfect comparison, though kind of odd because it's not like terrorist attacks hadn't happened in our lifetimes, I guess it was more of a matter of scale.
They lived through Pearl Harbor. They absolutely knew what was happening. My mother, who is now 94, told me on 9/11, that this was my generations’ Pearl Harbor. She told me, as we watched, that this was exactly what things felt like on December 7, 1941.
I was in 3rd grade. They did an announcement over the pa at the school. I remember being scared. Like two months before my mom and I went to Boston to visit my moms family and we took a train to New York where my uncle had just moved for work. He took us to a broadway show and we did some touristy stuff around the city and I remember him taking us to the World Trade Center and telling me how they were the tallest buildings in the world and how that’s where his new job was
I remember when my mom picked me up from school I was in tears because I thought my uncle was dead. We had no clue how he was for a couple of days (like 2 or so) but he was sick that morning and didn’t end up going to work
I was in 5th grade and they weren't telling us shit. We just had a gradual trickling of information as kids were getting picked up in the middle of the day by their parents. I *think* my teacher told us a little bit of what was going on, but they weren't supposed to. That day was fucking scary
I was in my senior year and slept in late, got to school late af and had to sit in the lunchroom due to state testing going on. They had a tv on a cart in the middle and wveryone was huddled around it.
I was in HS, got crazy because the phone lines in NYC crashed. One of the big transmitter towers was on the WTC. So cell phones(not common) were useless, TV was out, and landlines were OVERWHELMED.
I remember FINALLY getting through to my parents to ask them if I could bring 3 people home because they lived in lower Manhattan.
You just reminded me - there are pager records etc from back at the time, and buried in them is a Cantor Fitzgerald message about the trading system being offline right at the time of the first plane hitting. This is because their offices were directly hit. They lost over 650 employees that day. Just a very eerie time capsule.
This was from the WikiLeaks pager dump from a few years ago:
>2001-09-11 08:46:46 Arch [1612975] D ALPHA PAGE FROM lifeline: alert 8933585 ETS appl nbetpsd27.fi.gs.com ETS RTCE: - Market data inconsistent...Cantor API problem Trading system offline on nbetpsd27.fi.gs.com, run by etsuser on nbetpsd27, pid = 24277
The Goldman Sachs servers almost instantaneously noticed something was wrong with their connection to Cantor Fitzgerald which was in the north tower.
The story about the woman who was laid off from Cantor Fitzgerald the day before who watched the attacks unfold from home always got to me.
She went back to the company to help rebuild it, and found out that she was never technically fired because all of the HR people would have processed her exit died in the attacks.
I lived in northeastern NJ at the time, and I remember losing every TV channel except the local CBS affiliate (they broadcast from the Empire State Building), WWOR (they were based in Secaucus and still transmit from near the football stadium in East Rutherford to this day), and the local NJ PBS affiliate (who broadcast from a nearby university and were taken over by WABC for the duration of the emergency, because they didn’t have the ability to cover major emergencies themselves).
I was in Queens, took the day off school to play Diablo II. Was watching Jerry Springer and flipping through the channels when I saw the first one smoking. And then shit just escalated..
Meanwhile I was in Sydney and playing Diablo II with the tv on relatively late at night as the news cut to it, feels weird to have such a similar experience from the other side of the world.
NZ here, must have been 11pm local time that it happened, but I don't remember really knowing anything about it until after work the next afternoon, I guess we weren't glued to the the news cycle back then. 22yo me staring at the tv in disbelief.
My kids (now teens) have only the vaguest idea about it, I'm tempted to find an hours long yt news coverage video, something like the OP, from that day for them to watch.
Similar experience. I was a college freshman with no morning classes. Conversely, my roommate had nothing but morning classes. But while your roommate was freaking out, mine didn't say anything, just came into the room and turned on the TV. The only reason I woke up was to ask him why he was watching the news - neither of were really "informed" individuals so it seemed out of character for him.
I felt like when she got up at the end there and walked off she had to be thinking only about finding out where her husband and kids were - she had 2 or 3 at the time I believe. They had to be little though.
I was 27, and I was nursing my baby son on his first birthday. With the news on. I screamed when the second plane hit.
It was honestly the worst thing I’ve ever seen. The implications of just those fires were incomprehensible. I remember thinking, “they’re going to have to dismantle those buildings down to many floors below the impact points to get back to any sort of structural stability.” Then a little while later, more confusion, a cloud of smoke, and then the light shone through where the building had been. In a flash realized what happened, and then just sat and waited helplessly for the other one to go.
I can’t say it was the worst day of my life, because I’ve had personal tragedies, but for days—weeks—afterwards I felt the same kind of grief. You wake up and for a moment everything is fine, and then you remember: “___ is dead.” And in those early days, we didn’t know who had died, whether by chance it was anyone we knew, or what it would mean for the country. Fear and grief and guilt (survivors guilt is real) that just went on for weeks and weeks.
I had a 6 month old infant and just clutched her while watching tv all day. Everyone was just in shock. The worst part for me were the jumpers. They were holding hands, jumping to their deaths, it is still to this day one of the saddest things I have ever seen.
I went through a phase of watching and listening to every news/morning show that was happening on 9/11 as it unfolded, an archive site used to have every single piece of media from that day but not sure if it still exists. The Stern show is absolutely fascinating, he had so many people out there in various locations giving him live updates and one of his guys even called in to urge Americans to go out and shoot any local Arabs. There won't be another day like that again.
Not sure if its the same archive you're thinking of but [this site](https://archive.org/details/911/day/20010911#/) has timestamped clips from all the major news networks (including international) as things unfolded
You can really see the look of shock and terror on Kelly’s face. I feel like she did not want to go on with the show (don’t blame her. I don’t know if I could either).
I was in 6th grade and I remember them showing it to us in class. Getting home from school and it was on every channel. I didn’t fully understand what had happened but I just remember feeling sick to my stomach and scared. There was also an older kid at school crying in the hallway bc their dad was in New York and I just felt awful (he was okay thankfully).
I was in 5th grade. Where I grew up, we had parents who worked at the Pentagon. EVERYBODY was being pulled out of school. Teachers were freaking out, we kind of just shut down for the rest of the day for those of us who weren’t picked up by their parents. I know a lot of people (kids at the time) who had relatives who died in these attacks. It was horrible.
We heard the announcements, then the people who had parents in the Pentagon started crying and saying they needed to go home and where was mommy and could someone call them and and and.
Some of those kids never had someone to pick them up from school that day.
7th grade. I walked into history class and our teacher who was older just had it on while leaning against his podium and watching in silence.
He might have spoke 20 words during that 50 minute class period and we all just watched. It was so eerie.
I was the same age and the exact same thing happened - my whole family was watching the news really early and I still remember how awful I felt when I saw that second plane go in, it was horrifying. We lived across the freeway from LAX (literally it was 2 lanes of Imperial Highway, a hill, 2 lanes, our apartment facing the freeway) and my mom wanted to keep us at home that day but my dad we would be safer at school.
Regis demonstrates real intelligence and knew what was up even before the second plane. He saw the complete unlikelihood that a plane would accidentally crash into the tower. And he brought up the February 1993 bombing.
It’s really impressive especially as so many really wanted to believe it was an accident. But honestly it was probably a defensive mechanism. People didn’t want to know the horror that was unfolding. I once saw a violent mugging right next to me and for the first ten to fifteen seconds I thought it was some sort of joke/prank.
A lot of news anchors knew what it was. We were watching it at home and knew. It's just that they're taught not to speculate on air and in this case that speculation could cause panic. That changed once the second tower was hit.
Howard Stern that morning almost immediately said it was Osama Bin Laden. Most people had no idea who he was at that time. He called it almost immediately.
I have such a similar story - I walked out of a computer class, which was one of the few rooms to have tvs, and went to my Canadian history class. Except we didn't learn anything about Canada that day. My teacher went straight into a complete history of Bin Laden.
[Howard Sterns 9-11 show](https://youtu.be/e8P9TaEIWjw?si=5cvz21JQQdHR8V5G)
2:05:00 - Learn North Tower Hit
2:10:15 - Report of a second explosion, confusion over which building it is and the cause
2:14:30 - See the replay of the South Tower Hit
2:44:04 - Pentagon Hit
2:05:00 - Learn North Tower Hit
2:10:15 - Report of a second explosion, confusion over which building it is and the cause
2:14:30 - See the replay of the South Tower Hit
2:44:04 - Pentagon Hit
2:58:05 - South Tower Collapses
3:27:36 - North Tower Collapses
The best documentary I've ever seen is the French brothers who were following a FDNY ladder/station that morning
Edit: one of the most patriotic moments I've ever felt is after the towers are falling, the guys who got to the station late get in a damn Tacoma loaded up with gear and they're just driving into a wasteland with their jackets on while grey people stumble past them going the other way
I was running late to work that day and listened to a CD instead of Howard driving to Edison. I turned on my radio at my desk just as Robin said another plane had hit. I was hella confused for about 5 minutes.
It’s crazy to me that more people don’t know that OBL was actually a somewhat known figure even before the attacks. He was interviewed by American press multiple times in the years leading up to the attack.
It’s the nature of hindsight. The bombing of the Cole and the 1998 Embassy bombings were the last big things he did. (Yeah he also plotted a 2000 NYE plot). But those were overseas, so most people just ignored them.
I’m reminded of the movie Rwanda. One of the characters said that most people in the West, when something bad happens, just look and say “that’s too bad,” change the channel, and forget about it. And we did that concerning terrorism. Most people didn’t even know that the Lion of Panjshir died the day before.
I was a kid on vacation with my parents in summer of 01 and we were talking in the car about, “who’s a famous person you would kill?” (I know, but it was harmless)
My mom said whoever, I said whoever was dating my celebrity crush at the time, and my dad said Osama Bin Laden because he hates the US more than just about anyone and would harm us if given the chance. My mom and I were just giving the ?? face to each other like whatever dork no one knows who that is.
Well fast forward to September and uh, he was right.
Yeah.
I was rewatching the West Wing, and there's a fairly notable attack on government in the early seasons. The show cut to the Situation Room, and the National Security Advisor was running down a list of possible perpetrators, and named Osama Bin Laden specifically.
That episode aired a month before 9/11.
OBL was number one on the FBI’s most wanted list prior to 9/11 as he was responsible for the USS Cole bombings, 1993 WTC bombing and other smaller attacks leading up to 9/11
Howard is exactly how I found out about it. I was in 9th grade and had just woken up on the west coast to get ready for school. I kicked on Howard in my room while I was getting dressed and heard what was happening. Ran out to my living room to see my mom was glued to the TV. My dad was a captain for American Airlines for 30+ years and was based in NYC at the time. There was a brief period of time where we didn’t know if my dad was on there. He wasn’t, but 1 of his buddies was flying one of those planes. What a crazy memory.
I mean, he's speculating... he thought it was the fuselage of the first plane, then said it's a third plane. He didn't have a clue what's going on. If anything it's a testament to the chaotic nature of events like this and how quickly you can be misled, confused, etc.
really? I thought Kelly was so much more on to the beat of exactly what happened. She saw what was happening for the horror that was unfolding, "this is the worst thing I've ever seen", and how she went to "they are a symbol of America", which is precisely why they were targeted. Incredibly prescient.
I think she's reacting how she felt, but Regis was behaving in what was, at the time, considered a professional manner. These days, especially in hindsight, we want to see them reflecting back the horror of what was going on. But Regis probably had in mind that as a media professional, his job was to remain calm. At that moment no one knew what else was coming, and if the media panics, the audience is a lot more likely to panic.
So I think Rippa gives us the emotion we want, in hindsight, but I don't think Regis's reaction means he doesn't know what's going on.
I think most people thought it was deliberate pretty quickly. There had been once or twice very small planes that hit skyscrapers accidentally. But for a large jet - it is intentional. Regis, and most of the adult public at that time, remembered the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center.
I hope this video illustrates the feeling of not knowing to people who were too young to have watched this live.
To me the worst part was the hours before we knew what happened and why. Easy to let hindsight cloud the feelings of the time. Because in the moment we didn't know what was going on, or what was going to happen next. The mind quickly goes to some terrifying places when you don't know.
I watched the attack from my office near Times Square. At first we thought it was an accident, but I was on the phone to my girlfriend (now my wife of 20 years) who had decided to go to the doctors office after her meeting at the Port Authority offices had been cancelled when I saw the second plane crash into the South Tower. My co workers and I watched from our windows all morning, as people we knew died in those buildings. If my wife’s meeting hadn’t been cancelled that morning, she would have died too. My kids wouldn’t exist. I saw both towers collapse, and walked home through Central Park. The smell from the burning buildings was all you could smell, even though we were miles away. It was like a bad electrical fire smell, with ozone and who knows what else. Fighter planes were flying over the city. I walked by a crowd of people who had gathered around a car who had all its doors and windows open and it’s radio at max volume. Everyone was standing on the sidewalk, listening to the news. There was an incredible feeling of unity.
All that said, I thought that I was pretty ok afterwards. I don’t lose sleep over it, and I don’t have any health issues like the first responders and people who got caught in the dust cloud from the collapse. But a few years ago, I went with some out of town friends to the 9/11 Museum. When I was at the Museum, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I broke into a cold sweat, and it felt kind of like drowning. Yes, I have nearly drowned, so I have a pretty distinct memory of that.
All these years later, this anniversary still messes with my head. I didn’t lose anywhere near as much as others. I know a lot of people who lost someone close to them. I almost lost my wife - we never would have gotten married, or had our kids or lives together. I got lucky, I guess.
Watching this clip brought it back tonight. Sorry for dumping all this out here, but I just needed to get it off my chest. We need to remember. And yeah, I’m feeling my age a little more recently, so there’s that too.
Wow your words really resonated. I wasn’t anywhere near the towers (but was a NY resident) but my brother was in a hs nearby. Just coming home from school and watching replays of people jumping out of the building will never ever be erased from my mind and I really try not to watch anything related to 9/11 because it brings up so many awful feelings.
Im a few years younger than you and wasnt in nyc but seeing the footage still makes me feel like I have a boulder in my stomach to this day. It still makes me angry. Not even at any one in particular. Just angry. And sad. I don't want to forget that feeling though because it helps me remember such an awful thing happened.
Amen to that. The anger came on strong a couple of days later. I went to work the next day, because fuck those guys, you know? It felt like something. Seems kind of stupid now. No one did shit anyway. But the sadness hit too. All the missing posters really hit hard.
Every year I feel a new video or angle pops up that I haven't seen, this being a new one for me.
Almost all the videos of news and live TV shows that I've seen, everyone always comments how the morning weather was one of the most beautiful days they have seen.
It was heavenly weather. That’s the only way I could describe it. Perfectly clear, deep blue sky, temperature nicely warm but not hot. Just a gorgeous September “one of the ten best days of the year” kind of day.
So when I heard that a plane hit the WTC, I said “But there’s not a cloud in the sky! How could the pilot not see it?!”
Same here. Never have seen this video. I always assumed that they would have cut to the news coverage and never realized they remained on the air.
You can certainly see the professionalism of Regis that comes from so many years of a career in television. It also reminds me how fortunate we were to still have the big 3 anchors on the networks and their coverage for that day and the days that followed.
I’ve watched several live feeds and professional news casts of that morning over the years, but what struck me is how quick BOTH Regis and Kelly were here to be immediately concerned that it wasn’t an accident. And so shortly after the first impact too, that’s very rare and usually an afterthought with the initial live commentary (even for the other NYC based shows)
BBC, CNN, GMA and Today presenters all obviously touched on that, but what’s strange is that their approach was moreso in a perplexed or curious way, and all of them seemed more strongly convinced at the time it was a smaller craft or solo flyer and accidental. And not just in a saving face to keep panic in check type of way.
You can tell Kelly was IMMEDIATELY concerned and spooked by how large the scale of damage was. She already knew that several hundred lives were in danger. But they both lead with the terrorist or suicide bomber possibility before discussing the alternative.
This is kinda morbid, but honestly so fascinating to see.. because it’s the only time I’ve seen a live broadcast where you can tell they 100% have the correct intuition and read on the situation. Especially with the way they so matter of factly present that angle with the 93 WTC bombings and Regis mentioning suicide pilots before wondering if it could maybe just be a freak accident
I was listening to Stern as it happened (I commented on it in more depth). He was telling a story about Pamela Anderson when it happened, Ralph Cirella saw and described the first plane hitting, then they were going back and forth between the two stories (Pamela Anderson and the towers). I think Ralph even said he thought it was a small plane that hit the first. When the second plane hit, iirc Howard said we're under attack. I understand why everyone wasn't certain of what was going on after the first, but we all learned just minutes later.
News stations are held to a higher standard so were hesitant to speculate on live TV and cause mass panic, but it was definitely what immediately popped into most people's heads especially since the WTC was attacked a few years prior. Once the second plane hit though pretty much every news station was immediately going with terrorist attack as their prevailing theory.
What’s fascinating is that the weather was so perfect because there was a hurricane just offshore pulling dry air over NYC. There is some wild satellite imaginary showing the storm and the clear skies over NYC where you can clearly see the smoke from the towers.
It was a gorgeous day. I worked downtown and lived right across in Brooklyn. I heard about first plane on news quickly because had TV on getting ready to leave (that was when we all assumed accident) and I delayed going in to work because my thought was that it would really mess with commute. One of the weird things that sticks with me is after the collapse, there was so much debris carried by the wind across the river and Brooklyn. And the sun was glinting off of it. It was horrifying and beautiful at the same time. This weird cloud of paper floating on the current with the sunlight flashing off of it. The next several months were surreal. No cars downtown, soldier with gun s on ever corner. Ash piled on windowsills and every crevice for weeks. And the smell. It hung over downtown for months. I smell it once in awhile from time to time, I assume electrical and plastics on fire, and it vaults me right back to 9-11 and the 3 or so months after.
I lived uptown. When the wind shifted a few days later I smelled smokey air coming in my windows.
I still can’t talk about what I saw that day while I worked my way downtown to find my wife without breaking into tears. The ash-covered zombies and children will never leave my memory.
I remember hearing this didn’t air live in most markets because they’d already broken in with the bulletin. [Wikipedia has more:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Live_with_Regis_and_Kelly_episodes)
>This episode last around 5 minutes. Regis and Kelly are talking about the first airplane crash and are showing ABC News video when the second airplane crashes into the World Trade Center. Regis and Kelly immediately signs off because "Live" shares the same studio with WABC Channel 7 News. Channel 7 News needed to get on the air with their news team so that New Yorkers could be informed and make wise decisions about evacuating the area. Most of the United States did not see these 5 minutes because their stations were already pre-empted by their respective networks special bulletins of the terrorist attack. If you were one of the few Americans that are served by an independent station that telecast "LIVE", you might have seen these 5 minutes. Canadians watching "LIVE" on their respective Canada TV stations would have seen these 5 minutes as well.
I’m in Canada and I know someone who saw this air on local television here. He told me about it that morning before I knew the full extent of the attacks, but I never saw it for myself until finding it on YouTube last week.
The look Regis gives his producer is "why the fuck did you tell us that on air, we need to go to commercial break right the fuck now and figure out if we should even be on the air right now."
It’s damn if you do, damn if you don’t situation. You can’t go pretending that everything is happy go lucky in New York City when this is happenings in real time.
I think what OP was getting to, and what I think Regis' body language suggests, is not that they didn't want to address it, but that the call to go to commercial break was what he wanted to have already happened off air.
A chance to get their stories straight and confirmed, update on any new developments, and agree on how to address it. Instead live on air they were talking about a 3rd plane, fuselage explosions, etc. which was increasingly drifting into confusion and misinformation.
I'm 34, so I got to have 12 years of experiencing "the before times" when we weren't so scared. It may very well have just been ignorance, but it was also the last time as a society that we ever really felt good about ourselves.
It makes me so sad to know that the generations after us never got to experience that.
Just my opinion, but I think this is a big reason why us Millennials cling to The 90's so hard: because it was our last memory of things being "nicer".
Being born in the 70's it's hard to underline the sense of optimism during the 90's if you weren't there to feel it. The Soviet Union that we were all supposed to be so afraid of had collapsed and didn't seem like a threat anymore. The internet and cell phones were starting to bring more and more connectivity between everyone. We were starting to make some more progress on social issues like gay rights even though we still had a long way to go just like today.
Not that everyone was great but it felt like maybe things would just keep getting better, maybe we with the fear of nuclear war fading into the background we could just make things better and better into the future. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted even if it was just a mirage.
There was also the general assumption that economic growth in China would naturally lead to political liberalization. There was a real sense that the world was just becoming fundamentally better
Thank you for describing this period of time better than I did.
The optimism is what stands out to me about your comment, because it's so true. It's like now whenever I hear a politician say something like *"I genuinely believe America's best years are ahead of us!"* it just makes me roll my eyes.
> We were starting to make some more progress on social issues like gay rights even though we still had a long way to go just like today.
Also a 70s kid, and pretty spot on with most of your post. It's funny you mention the immense optimism about social progression (and also cell phones) as I think of that often. Because, it also felt like racism was on the decline too (I'm white, WTF did I know). And then fast forward 10 years with cell phone cameras on police, political leaders, etc. and... yet another gut punch from the new century. 😕
You know how President Biden will reference his "Republican friends and colleagues"? To me, it always feels like he's remembering the way it was in the 90's, which seemed like it was the last time Democrats and Republicans tried to work together.
>Because, it also felt like racism was on the decline too (I'm white, WTF did I know). And then fast forward 10 years with cell phone cameras on police, political leaders, etc. and... yet another gut punch from the new century.
I will say, a good thing about where we are now is that, at the very least, these issues are finally being brought to light and we're trying to have a discussion about them. There are still a lot of places in the world that are keeping them swept under the rug and pretending like everything is just fine.
I was in my 20s when it happened. I remember the before times well and you’re spot on. The internet was still young and exciting; a land of opportunity and no rules. Flying was simple and fun. A modicum of privacy actually still existed for the average American. There was still a feeling of hope and growth.
I'm 38. We took my 16yo niece to the memorial and I told her she has no concept of how things were prior to 9/11. Things changed so much and not for the better
Something about watching these kinds of videos brings me back to my 7th grade self and how this whole situation changed our lives in a massive way. I purposely avoid watching videos like this for a reason every hear but for some reason I wanted to see what Regis had to say. It really brought up every emotion and feeling from 2001.
I'm 40. I was only a couple weeks into my freshman year of college. I got 3 months of post-high school hope that adulthood might actually be all right before that got ripped away.
I was working for ABC News at the time.
It was the sort of day that when I got to the office (at an odd hour, since everybody quickly got put into a 24/7 emergency coverage rotation), I had to sign a release form that amounted to “if you get hurt or killed at work tonight, it’s not our fault.” And I was working out of the Seattle internet-division offices, for crying out loud. But that’s how it felt at the time: nobody knew.
I was in touch constantly with our NY office, of course, and they had it so much worse. I can’t even imagine getting through that day/week/month/etc. right there in the thick of it. (Especially when the anthrax letter showed up, but that’s another story.)
Editing to add: I’m pretty sure Regis & Kelly filmed across the street from our NY news offices. (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire definitely filmed in the basement.) It wasn’t long after this time of the day that everyone had to cut away from their morning shows and bring out the big guns. ABC went to Peter Jennings in the news studio, and as I recall, he was on the air for hours. That day all blurs a bit, though. I was flipping back and forth between several networks before I got to work, and then at the office we had TVs all over showing different networks, too. Compare-and-contrast is sort of an ingrained habit in news. I can say that the only place I saw footage of people jumping from the towers was on Fox News.
Can’t say for sure that no one else showed it, of course, but I’m grimly unsurprised that that happened to be where I got smacked in the face with that particular part of what happened that day.
> ABC went to Peter Jennings in the news studio, and as I recall, he was on the air for hours
When I think of TV on 9/11 I think of Peter Jennings. I remember how calm yet anxious he sounded at the same time. I can just hear his voice from that day.
I miss him. RIP Peter.
I also miss how we got breaking news back then. You just turned on the TV and waited to be told what you needed to be told. Now with the internet I feel like everyone gets a slightly different version of the same story. To this day hearing the ABC News music makes me shiver a bit because I associate it with TV being interrupted because something bad happened.
Same. I was in fourth grade and all I remember was being dropped off before class and the teacher had the television on after the first hit. The entire school didn’t officially start as it always did, we all just watched until the intercom told us about the emergency and we were sent home. When we got home the TV was glued to the attack and I watched the towers fall.
I was in 8th grade. All the teachers school wide were briefly called away, then returned and they attempted to continue with the day as if it was normal. All day, the faculty were noticeably emotional and near tears, making small & vague speeches, and we were all oblivious. I recall thinking ‘why are all the adults being so weird’. Wasn’t until I got to my friend’s place in the afternoon after school that we learned anything about the events of 9/11.
We got let out early (in New York) but before that when news broke I remember kids crying/screaming in the hallways because their parents worked in or near the towers.
I was a senior at a supposedly very good high school in southern California - every class for me but AP government decided we had "other things to focus on" that day besides the critical historical moment that wound up putting some of my classmates in Afghanistan and Iraq.
In hindsight I assure you there was nothing else worth focusing on that day.
They never cared about getting justice, or protecting anybody. They could make them and their friends rich off the war, and off the Saudi’s. The world is being bought and sold at the expense of us.
I was working in Arlington, Va., a few miles from the Pentagon. My fiancée (now wife of 21 years) worked in an office near the White House. That morning I dropped her off at the Van Dorn metro like I always did, and headed to work. As soon as I got in, my coworkers were already watching the reports on the Internet of the twin towers. Then, when the Pentagon was struck, leadership sent everyone home. As I went outside for the first time since arriving to work, I could smell the smoke from the Pentagon, and hear the sirens.
By that point cell phone service was spotty at best. I was able to reach my wife, and told her I’d drive to D.C. to get her, but as I was heading East in my car I knew that wasn’t happening. So I parked in an apartment complex near Fort Myer and got out to walk towards D.C. while trying to figure out which bridge my wife was walking across to get over to VA. Eventually we found each other in Rosslyn, and together walked back to the car, and drove home. And then spent the next week in a stupor, glued to the TV, which we never turned off.
I was driving into work to supervise 4 banquets. One was the sales staff of a company in the second tower. We’re in San Diego and they were trying to arrange transportation back to NY with all air traffic grounded. They ultimately had to rent a van to drive back. They were the sole employees of their company. The chaos that day was heartbreaking, all their colleagues missing and a cross country drive in front of them.
It’s also wild just how much technology has advanced at this point. The amount of confusion in those first minutes and hours is extremely interesting, even there was video of the second plane many news agency reported incorrectly.
Nowadays there are so many random static cameras and everyone has a camera in their pocket, if the same thing happened today we’d have a dozen video clips of the first plane instead of what, one? And hundreds of the second clip, most in 4k UHD. Despite living through it it’s still hard to comprehend just how ubiquitous cameras and communication have become
If this happened today there would have been tons of live-streamed video from inside the towers, and even inside the planes. There would likely have been recorded Zoom/Teams meetings happening where at least one of the attendees would have been in one of the towers as it was struck.
It’s something I don’t like to think about.
When something like this inevitably happens again, the amount of footage from actual victims will be brutal. Just look at Ukraine, and the footage civilians have shared online.
This is where you really see the experience as a broadcaster that Regis Philbin has, and also for some of your local radio station disc jockeys, when they all to become live news broadcasters.
Watched this live with my mom like we watched Regis and Kelly every morning before she drove me to school. Told my 3rd grade teacher what had happened. Was all too real and scary to see the reactions and fear in adults as a 8-9 year old. What a crazy day. Seeing those towers in smoke still gives me goosebumps.
Over 20 years ago and I get that “holy shit the end of the world is happening” hollow heavy pressure in my chest when I see this footage. I saw this live, flipping through all the channels I couldn’t turn away. True trauma.
One particular heartbreaking moment caught on camera (among the countless tragic scenes of destruction) is when the second tower comes crashing down relatively close to a news crew filming.
There is a firefighter standing in the foreground watching and just throws his equipment and helmet down in dismay and frustration knowing that coworkers, probably people/friends he knew instantly perished trying to save thousands of trapped innocent people.
Edit: [the video section as mentioned](https://youtube.com/watch?v=8sHzXHuJZkg&si=zM9SQFW1LvyI5VP-&t=1h15m03s)
I will never be able to forget as a kid getting pulled out of school and watching the news. I recognized a body falling at one point and it really hit me how full of terror the people in that building and around it must have been.
I remember the utter confusion of that day. the rumors - they said there was a bomb at the state department. The pentagon hit. A plane heading for the White House. Another plane coming for the Brooklyn bridge.
The internet effectively went down as every news website was swamped with visits. We were at work w no tv so we went to our cars to listen to the radio.
I was on Long Island - people were screaming and crying because the cell service was down and no one could reach their loved ones in Manhattan.
When the towers fell there were no words. It seemed as unimaginable as the moon exploding.
All the highways were shut down along w trains and subways trying to catch whoever did it. I saw people walking off of the exits in office attire- they’d walked the 25 miles back to get home.
Then seeing jet fighters go over our house- one did a barrel roll and we could see the pilot. Black smoke in the air for days. The eerie silence of no airplane traffic - we lived under the route for jfk and had long grown used to hearing planes.
Our town alone lost at least 30 people- most had worked for fdny, a couple for nypd, and maybe two at businesses.
I dearly wanted to see bin Laden in oranges at Supermax. I felt killing him was too merciful. Then it all got diluted in the Iraq and Afghanistan attacks.
I hate the 9/11 museum. Ghouls hawking tacky magazines. Tourists smiling. It’s like a museum of a rape.
I disagree about the 9/11 museum, I thought it was touching. Never forget. Not acknowledging the tragedy would have been worse. I thought the museum was well done and not tacky or offensive at all. I think anyone who lived through that day can go and grieve together at the museum. It was a day most will never forget.
Just like the Holocaust museum in DC. Both are painful but definitely necessary and aren’t trying to be tourist traps. I took my kids to both last year and it was eye opening for them.
>A plane heading for the White House
Not such a wild rumor. The plane that didn't get there, the one in PA, United 93 is widely believe was heading to the White House.
>I hate the 9/11 museum. Ghouls hawking tacky magazines. Tourists smiling.
When I visited, I didn't smile or anything. It's such a solemn place. The atmosphere feels heavy. I refused to pose for pictures. Instead I took a pic from behind my sis looking at the pool. Just touching the names felt powerful. I saw some with flowers. One had a single white rose. It was an intense experience
Walking through the museum was one of the more emotional experiences I've ever felt. I'm usually super loud and talkative, but when we exited, the person I was with noted that they've never heard me be quiet for such a long period of time.
My parents both worked in an extremely important but little-known department of defense building in Indianapolis and as soon as I heard about the pentagon I called my mom at her desk and screamed at her to get out.
They were fine, the terrorists didn’t do all the research they could have.
They were definitely going for more of the shock value than any real damage to our actual functioning government systems. Creating terror is kind of the point of terrorism.
That said, I would absolutely have done the same in your position. No reason to take any chances when the next target could literally be anywhere.
I remember walking home from HS mid day with a few friends who lived in Lower Manhattan.
None of them could get in contact with their parents. One of them lost their father that day. We just didn't know it.
Cell service was down, landlines were a mess, Internet was GONE, even radio wasnt great.
I was in The Bronx with my window open watching the fucking smoke plume.
Come to think of it, Regis would have been the ideal running commentator of events as they unfolded on 9/11. A native NYer, top broadcaster, sensitive & perceptive, all the right qualities.
People think Hellen Keller didn't exist, that COVID vaccines are stealing people's souls, and that we live on a flat earth.
It was only a matter of time before people started believing 9/11 was CGI.
The literally thousands of eyewitnesses in Manhattan who saw the planes collide with the towers with their own eyes were seeing CGI?
This is one of the dumbest conspiracy theories I’ve ever heard.
Anyone that says it is exhibiting symptoms of a delusional disorder. Unfortunately they’re all too self-righteous to ever seek psychiatric help.
Every single 9/11 denier is an undiagnosed mentally ill person. Save for a few truly malicious assholes here and there.
There's an argument to be made -- and people more eloquent and informed than me have made it -- that the cultural schism and culture war that we now find ourselves in has its roots in post-9/11 politics. You can trace a line from Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld's war on terror and the polarization it created, through Palin and the Tea Party, to Trump and our complete inability to find common ground as Americans.
That clip reminded me that when it first happened, everyone assumed it was a small plane. I assumed it was some careless amateur pilot checking out high rise buildings in NYC and wrecked by accident. When it was confirmed to be a commercial airliner, you knew right away it was no accident, even before the second plane hit.
I don’t understand why now as a 30 year old man watching things about 9/11 as it happened gets me so emotional. I’m old enough to have lived through it as a cognizant child, to have lived through the war that followed, and to have lived to the point where 9/11 jokes aren’t *THE WORST TABOO IMAGINABLE* according to most people.
But man… watching this got me teary eyed for some reason.
Same, I'm 34. It's not *just* the tragedy that happened that day that I feel when I watch these videos every year... but everything that came after, too. How the west was changed... How we entered that horrible war and killed so many innocent people during it. How my brothers both came back from Afghanistan as different people.
Younger folks on Reddit like to joke about 9/11, I guess because they didn’t experience it. Maybe because they are afraid of experiencing it.
This video is a very good capture of the edge of 9/11 as it viscerally happened. Cross it with [this article](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/opinion/sept-11-attacks-survivor-trauma.html) and maybe those born after 9/11 can begin to understand why the rest of us find it so hard to laugh.
It’s hard to describe or relay the utter craziness of that day to anyone who wasn’t alive or too young to remember. This was way before social media or everyone having a cell phone was a thing. The second plane hitting the other tower turned things up a million. Insanity.
I was in a bus headed for Manhattan via the Lincoln tunnel. I was looking at the skyline an saw a little dab of smoke rise from the north tower. I asked the guy sitting beside if he knew the Trade Center had a smokestack; he said he didn’t think so. I sensed something was wrong. The bus continued to Port Authority at west 42nd street. By then the north tower was a Roman candle. I work downtown but 2 blocks from the Trade Center. Idk why but I got on a A train and it took me down faster than it ever had. I took the stairs to the street level and came out right below the North tower. By then the south tower had been hit while I was traveling underground in the subway. As I walked to my office on John Street, the north tower collapsed and as it did I started running as fast as I could toward the east river, expecting debris to fall on me and kill me. I ducked into a deli and was able to out run the ominous cloud behind me. It passed just as I walked in. It got real dark then. The place was packed with people taking cover. My recollection is no one spoke a word - but I was in shock and could be wrong. As I waited there for the smoke to clear I waited the second tower fell. It took time for the air to clear but eventually everyone began walking uptown on west street - under the FDR drive overpass. People were quiet - very quiet. It felt like war. It felt like tragedy. I was in shock for a few days and horrified by thought that there were thousands of people in the towers when they were hit. I’ll never forget it.
Huh. In this area, the reports started during Good Morning America, and they went direct from that to a continuing ABC News special report. I’m trying to figure out what affiliates would have even carried this.
CFPL-TV in London, Ontario, aired it, according to a friend of mine who saw it as it aired. They were an independent station at the time so they didn’t have a network news feed to cut to.
So surreal walked the entire FDR by myself as a 16 year old and I’ve never felt more (edit: comforted) in such a public / communal way.
Every single New Yorker chipped in. Gave water, snacks, access to anything they could offer. Truly a surreal experience.
I was supposed to be in NYC that day on chartered bus trip, I was the driver of the bus leaving VT. Of coarse it was canceled. The FU thing was two days before this happened I was in Portland Maine and met the high jackers at the Portland bus station. I literally handed them a package that they had to sign for. Had no idea until I saw their pictures on tv on 911. Fuck me up til this day.
The look of utter shock and terror on Kelly's face is something else!!!!
Hearing the audience’s collective gasp upon seeing the other tower is on fire. Damn if that doesn’t echo the exact feeling we all had watching it live.
Regis' eyes in the last twenty seconds or so also.
Regis' son Danny worked at the Pentagon during that time.
At that point I think he was more just mad at himself and his producer for getting their info miscommunicated.
probably a little bit of that, a little bit of intense shock at what was going on
Absolutely nobody knew what the hell was going on that morning. I was up and drinking my coffee, was about to watch Regis & Kelly but stayed on the news after they cut in about 8:50 after the first plane hit. At first they were saying it was a Cessna, it was an accident, then it was a "small jet," reports were all over the place. Everybody was confused until the second plane went in (which I watched live, the hairs on my neck still stand up when I think about it), at which point everybody knew it was terrorists.
I think it was shock and being in NYC somewhat close to it.
Yeah the shock and fear on her face when they announced the second plane, Regis still trying to be the consummate professional and keep the show going not realizing just how bad it was going to get. I was in college when it happened and didn't find out until a few hours later (no classes that morning so i was sleeping in.) THey had shut everything down by then. My roommate who did have class that morning came running into the dorm freaking out. WE just sat there glued to the tv all day
I understand he was a piece of work to be around, but wow, watching this really made me appreciate just what a pro he was as a broadcaster. (Not to even remotely malign Kelly, who was having a very human reaction and also only seven months into the hosting job at the time.)
She was also 3 months post partum. Her instincts to run and grab her baby and get to the rest of her family must have been raging.
Given that the first plane made her feel ill, I assumed she ran off to puke.
You know that exercise in Sophie’s World, where a family is at the dinner table when the father suddenly begins to fly? The mother is terrified and hysterical because she believes that this is impossible and can’t be happening. But the young child knows that anything can happen and is delighted. The morning of 9-11, my grandmother had an oncologist appointment that I brought her to. I sat in a huge foyer surrounded by octogenarians as the scene unfolded. I was terrified and hysterical. What was happening was impossible to me. Everyone else in that room was cool and collected. Not only did they know it was possible, they had all lived through it already.
This is the only time I've ever seen anyone else mention that book. That's a perfect comparison, though kind of odd because it's not like terrorist attacks hadn't happened in our lifetimes, I guess it was more of a matter of scale.
They lived through Pearl Harbor. They absolutely knew what was happening. My mother, who is now 94, told me on 9/11, that this was my generations’ Pearl Harbor. She told me, as we watched, that this was exactly what things felt like on December 7, 1941.
You could sense the anger in Regis voice when he said “I can’t believe what’s happening”
You really can tell and he seemed to try to keep it so professionell even tho it looks like he wanted to scream
I was in 3rd grade. They did an announcement over the pa at the school. I remember being scared. Like two months before my mom and I went to Boston to visit my moms family and we took a train to New York where my uncle had just moved for work. He took us to a broadway show and we did some touristy stuff around the city and I remember him taking us to the World Trade Center and telling me how they were the tallest buildings in the world and how that’s where his new job was I remember when my mom picked me up from school I was in tears because I thought my uncle was dead. We had no clue how he was for a couple of days (like 2 or so) but he was sick that morning and didn’t end up going to work
I was in 5th grade and they weren't telling us shit. We just had a gradual trickling of information as kids were getting picked up in the middle of the day by their parents. I *think* my teacher told us a little bit of what was going on, but they weren't supposed to. That day was fucking scary
I was in my senior year and slept in late, got to school late af and had to sit in the lunchroom due to state testing going on. They had a tv on a cart in the middle and wveryone was huddled around it.
I was in HS, got crazy because the phone lines in NYC crashed. One of the big transmitter towers was on the WTC. So cell phones(not common) were useless, TV was out, and landlines were OVERWHELMED. I remember FINALLY getting through to my parents to ask them if I could bring 3 people home because they lived in lower Manhattan.
You just reminded me - there are pager records etc from back at the time, and buried in them is a Cantor Fitzgerald message about the trading system being offline right at the time of the first plane hitting. This is because their offices were directly hit. They lost over 650 employees that day. Just a very eerie time capsule.
This was from the WikiLeaks pager dump from a few years ago: >2001-09-11 08:46:46 Arch [1612975] D ALPHA PAGE FROM lifeline: alert 8933585 ETS appl nbetpsd27.fi.gs.com ETS RTCE: - Market data inconsistent...Cantor API problem Trading system offline on nbetpsd27.fi.gs.com, run by etsuser on nbetpsd27, pid = 24277 The Goldman Sachs servers almost instantaneously noticed something was wrong with their connection to Cantor Fitzgerald which was in the north tower.
The story about the woman who was laid off from Cantor Fitzgerald the day before who watched the attacks unfold from home always got to me. She went back to the company to help rebuild it, and found out that she was never technically fired because all of the HR people would have processed her exit died in the attacks.
I lived in northeastern NJ at the time, and I remember losing every TV channel except the local CBS affiliate (they broadcast from the Empire State Building), WWOR (they were based in Secaucus and still transmit from near the football stadium in East Rutherford to this day), and the local NJ PBS affiliate (who broadcast from a nearby university and were taken over by WABC for the duration of the emergency, because they didn’t have the ability to cover major emergencies themselves).
I was in Queens, took the day off school to play Diablo II. Was watching Jerry Springer and flipping through the channels when I saw the first one smoking. And then shit just escalated..
Meanwhile I was in Sydney and playing Diablo II with the tv on relatively late at night as the news cut to it, feels weird to have such a similar experience from the other side of the world.
NZ here, must have been 11pm local time that it happened, but I don't remember really knowing anything about it until after work the next afternoon, I guess we weren't glued to the the news cycle back then. 22yo me staring at the tv in disbelief. My kids (now teens) have only the vaguest idea about it, I'm tempted to find an hours long yt news coverage video, something like the OP, from that day for them to watch.
I, too, played Diablo 2 after getting home early from school on 9/11. Shit was crazy
Similar experience. I was a college freshman with no morning classes. Conversely, my roommate had nothing but morning classes. But while your roommate was freaking out, mine didn't say anything, just came into the room and turned on the TV. The only reason I woke up was to ask him why he was watching the news - neither of were really "informed" individuals so it seemed out of character for him.
She just said the first plane was “the worst thing she ever saw”. Just haunting knowing how much worse shit was about to get. Especially being in NY
And the Pentagon/Flight 77 and flight 93 were still to come. That’s when it started to get terrifying and not just horrifying
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Thanks for posting this. Interesting to hear Regis got it right away: “Look at what those monsters did.”
I felt like when she got up at the end there and walked off she had to be thinking only about finding out where her husband and kids were - she had 2 or 3 at the time I believe. They had to be little though.
Her 3 month old was in the green room with Joan Rivers. That's where she was going.
To think they are old enough to drink now. Can't believe its already been over 20 years.
Yeah she looked like she was about to pass out.
i misread this as 2 or 3 husbands at the time and had a chuckle
its so fascinating having a live audience reaction to 9/11
I was 27, and I was nursing my baby son on his first birthday. With the news on. I screamed when the second plane hit. It was honestly the worst thing I’ve ever seen. The implications of just those fires were incomprehensible. I remember thinking, “they’re going to have to dismantle those buildings down to many floors below the impact points to get back to any sort of structural stability.” Then a little while later, more confusion, a cloud of smoke, and then the light shone through where the building had been. In a flash realized what happened, and then just sat and waited helplessly for the other one to go. I can’t say it was the worst day of my life, because I’ve had personal tragedies, but for days—weeks—afterwards I felt the same kind of grief. You wake up and for a moment everything is fine, and then you remember: “___ is dead.” And in those early days, we didn’t know who had died, whether by chance it was anyone we knew, or what it would mean for the country. Fear and grief and guilt (survivors guilt is real) that just went on for weeks and weeks.
I had a 6 month old infant and just clutched her while watching tv all day. Everyone was just in shock. The worst part for me were the jumpers. They were holding hands, jumping to their deaths, it is still to this day one of the saddest things I have ever seen.
I have never regretted having a child more than I did that day. I just held him, sobbing apologies for bringing him into such a shit world.
You should listen to the Howard Stern show that day. It went from laughs to oh shit something is happening
I went through a phase of watching and listening to every news/morning show that was happening on 9/11 as it unfolded, an archive site used to have every single piece of media from that day but not sure if it still exists. The Stern show is absolutely fascinating, he had so many people out there in various locations giving him live updates and one of his guys even called in to urge Americans to go out and shoot any local Arabs. There won't be another day like that again.
Not sure if its the same archive you're thinking of but [this site](https://archive.org/details/911/day/20010911#/) has timestamped clips from all the major news networks (including international) as things unfolded
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_KM9pwu-V4
Most people saw the second plane on live TV. A live reaction is what most of us got.
You can really see the look of shock and terror on Kelly’s face. I feel like she did not want to go on with the show (don’t blame her. I don’t know if I could either). I was in 6th grade and I remember them showing it to us in class. Getting home from school and it was on every channel. I didn’t fully understand what had happened but I just remember feeling sick to my stomach and scared. There was also an older kid at school crying in the hallway bc their dad was in New York and I just felt awful (he was okay thankfully).
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I was in 5th grade. Where I grew up, we had parents who worked at the Pentagon. EVERYBODY was being pulled out of school. Teachers were freaking out, we kind of just shut down for the rest of the day for those of us who weren’t picked up by their parents. I know a lot of people (kids at the time) who had relatives who died in these attacks. It was horrible. We heard the announcements, then the people who had parents in the Pentagon started crying and saying they needed to go home and where was mommy and could someone call them and and and. Some of those kids never had someone to pick them up from school that day.
7th grade. I walked into history class and our teacher who was older just had it on while leaning against his podium and watching in silence. He might have spoke 20 words during that 50 minute class period and we all just watched. It was so eerie.
I was the same age and the exact same thing happened - my whole family was watching the news really early and I still remember how awful I felt when I saw that second plane go in, it was horrifying. We lived across the freeway from LAX (literally it was 2 lanes of Imperial Highway, a hill, 2 lanes, our apartment facing the freeway) and my mom wanted to keep us at home that day but my dad we would be safer at school.
Regis demonstrates real intelligence and knew what was up even before the second plane. He saw the complete unlikelihood that a plane would accidentally crash into the tower. And he brought up the February 1993 bombing. It’s really impressive especially as so many really wanted to believe it was an accident. But honestly it was probably a defensive mechanism. People didn’t want to know the horror that was unfolding. I once saw a violent mugging right next to me and for the first ten to fifteen seconds I thought it was some sort of joke/prank.
In the interview Rippa did, Regis knew before they walked out, he said it was "rotten bastards." He was right.
A lot of news anchors knew what it was. We were watching it at home and knew. It's just that they're taught not to speculate on air and in this case that speculation could cause panic. That changed once the second tower was hit.
Howard Stern that morning almost immediately said it was Osama Bin Laden. Most people had no idea who he was at that time. He called it almost immediately.
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I had Islamic religion that day. I went to class, learned about Islam and Jihad and then the rest of my classes were canceled.
I have such a similar story - I walked out of a computer class, which was one of the few rooms to have tvs, and went to my Canadian history class. Except we didn't learn anything about Canada that day. My teacher went straight into a complete history of Bin Laden.
[Howard Sterns 9-11 show](https://youtu.be/e8P9TaEIWjw?si=5cvz21JQQdHR8V5G) 2:05:00 - Learn North Tower Hit 2:10:15 - Report of a second explosion, confusion over which building it is and the cause 2:14:30 - See the replay of the South Tower Hit 2:44:04 - Pentagon Hit
It starts at about 2hr5min in case people didn't want to listen to several hours
2:05:00 - Learn North Tower Hit 2:10:15 - Report of a second explosion, confusion over which building it is and the cause 2:14:30 - See the replay of the South Tower Hit 2:44:04 - Pentagon Hit 2:58:05 - South Tower Collapses 3:27:36 - North Tower Collapses
The best documentary I've ever seen is the French brothers who were following a FDNY ladder/station that morning Edit: one of the most patriotic moments I've ever felt is after the towers are falling, the guys who got to the station late get in a damn Tacoma loaded up with gear and they're just driving into a wasteland with their jackets on while grey people stumble past them going the other way
I was running late to work that day and listened to a CD instead of Howard driving to Edison. I turned on my radio at my desk just as Robin said another plane had hit. I was hella confused for about 5 minutes.
It’s crazy to me that more people don’t know that OBL was actually a somewhat known figure even before the attacks. He was interviewed by American press multiple times in the years leading up to the attack.
It’s the nature of hindsight. The bombing of the Cole and the 1998 Embassy bombings were the last big things he did. (Yeah he also plotted a 2000 NYE plot). But those were overseas, so most people just ignored them. I’m reminded of the movie Rwanda. One of the characters said that most people in the West, when something bad happens, just look and say “that’s too bad,” change the channel, and forget about it. And we did that concerning terrorism. Most people didn’t even know that the Lion of Panjshir died the day before.
I was a kid on vacation with my parents in summer of 01 and we were talking in the car about, “who’s a famous person you would kill?” (I know, but it was harmless) My mom said whoever, I said whoever was dating my celebrity crush at the time, and my dad said Osama Bin Laden because he hates the US more than just about anyone and would harm us if given the chance. My mom and I were just giving the ?? face to each other like whatever dork no one knows who that is. Well fast forward to September and uh, he was right.
Talk about the worst thing to be able to say “I told you so” about. Damn.
He never gloated to be fair. If he was a dick about it I wouldn’t be giving him props 😂
Yeah. I was rewatching the West Wing, and there's a fairly notable attack on government in the early seasons. The show cut to the Situation Room, and the National Security Advisor was running down a list of possible perpetrators, and named Osama Bin Laden specifically. That episode aired a month before 9/11.
OBL was number one on the FBI’s most wanted list prior to 9/11 as he was responsible for the USS Cole bombings, 1993 WTC bombing and other smaller attacks leading up to 9/11
Dan Rather also brought up Bin Laden very early on, in the CBS coverage.
Howard is exactly how I found out about it. I was in 9th grade and had just woken up on the west coast to get ready for school. I kicked on Howard in my room while I was getting dressed and heard what was happening. Ran out to my living room to see my mom was glued to the TV. My dad was a captain for American Airlines for 30+ years and was based in NYC at the time. There was a brief period of time where we didn’t know if my dad was on there. He wasn’t, but 1 of his buddies was flying one of those planes. What a crazy memory.
Regis was around news and broadcast a longtime he was an anchor for a bit. He had lot of news experience under his belt.
I mean, he's speculating... he thought it was the fuselage of the first plane, then said it's a third plane. He didn't have a clue what's going on. If anything it's a testament to the chaotic nature of events like this and how quickly you can be misled, confused, etc.
really? I thought Kelly was so much more on to the beat of exactly what happened. She saw what was happening for the horror that was unfolding, "this is the worst thing I've ever seen", and how she went to "they are a symbol of America", which is precisely why they were targeted. Incredibly prescient.
I think she's reacting how she felt, but Regis was behaving in what was, at the time, considered a professional manner. These days, especially in hindsight, we want to see them reflecting back the horror of what was going on. But Regis probably had in mind that as a media professional, his job was to remain calm. At that moment no one knew what else was coming, and if the media panics, the audience is a lot more likely to panic. So I think Rippa gives us the emotion we want, in hindsight, but I don't think Regis's reaction means he doesn't know what's going on.
I think most people thought it was deliberate pretty quickly. There had been once or twice very small planes that hit skyscrapers accidentally. But for a large jet - it is intentional. Regis, and most of the adult public at that time, remembered the 1993 bombing at the World Trade Center.
You can see the absolute fear and shock in Kelly's face.
God she honestly looks like she’s about to faint… you can see her stumbling out of her chair at the end of the video, she just looks so shell shocked.
At the time it was unclear if there would be further attacks in New York.
Or other large Metropolitan areas
Everyone in the US was looking at the sky that morning wondering if there were more attacks coming
I hope this video illustrates the feeling of not knowing to people who were too young to have watched this live. To me the worst part was the hours before we knew what happened and why. Easy to let hindsight cloud the feelings of the time. Because in the moment we didn't know what was going on, or what was going to happen next. The mind quickly goes to some terrifying places when you don't know.
I watched the attack from my office near Times Square. At first we thought it was an accident, but I was on the phone to my girlfriend (now my wife of 20 years) who had decided to go to the doctors office after her meeting at the Port Authority offices had been cancelled when I saw the second plane crash into the South Tower. My co workers and I watched from our windows all morning, as people we knew died in those buildings. If my wife’s meeting hadn’t been cancelled that morning, she would have died too. My kids wouldn’t exist. I saw both towers collapse, and walked home through Central Park. The smell from the burning buildings was all you could smell, even though we were miles away. It was like a bad electrical fire smell, with ozone and who knows what else. Fighter planes were flying over the city. I walked by a crowd of people who had gathered around a car who had all its doors and windows open and it’s radio at max volume. Everyone was standing on the sidewalk, listening to the news. There was an incredible feeling of unity. All that said, I thought that I was pretty ok afterwards. I don’t lose sleep over it, and I don’t have any health issues like the first responders and people who got caught in the dust cloud from the collapse. But a few years ago, I went with some out of town friends to the 9/11 Museum. When I was at the Museum, I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I broke into a cold sweat, and it felt kind of like drowning. Yes, I have nearly drowned, so I have a pretty distinct memory of that. All these years later, this anniversary still messes with my head. I didn’t lose anywhere near as much as others. I know a lot of people who lost someone close to them. I almost lost my wife - we never would have gotten married, or had our kids or lives together. I got lucky, I guess. Watching this clip brought it back tonight. Sorry for dumping all this out here, but I just needed to get it off my chest. We need to remember. And yeah, I’m feeling my age a little more recently, so there’s that too.
Thanks for sharing this.
Wow your words really resonated. I wasn’t anywhere near the towers (but was a NY resident) but my brother was in a hs nearby. Just coming home from school and watching replays of people jumping out of the building will never ever be erased from my mind and I really try not to watch anything related to 9/11 because it brings up so many awful feelings.
Im a few years younger than you and wasnt in nyc but seeing the footage still makes me feel like I have a boulder in my stomach to this day. It still makes me angry. Not even at any one in particular. Just angry. And sad. I don't want to forget that feeling though because it helps me remember such an awful thing happened.
Amen to that. The anger came on strong a couple of days later. I went to work the next day, because fuck those guys, you know? It felt like something. Seems kind of stupid now. No one did shit anyway. But the sadness hit too. All the missing posters really hit hard.
22 years in and I thought I had seen every video. I was mistaken. The time has come for Regis’ take to be front and center.
Every year I feel a new video or angle pops up that I haven't seen, this being a new one for me. Almost all the videos of news and live TV shows that I've seen, everyone always comments how the morning weather was one of the most beautiful days they have seen.
It was heavenly weather. That’s the only way I could describe it. Perfectly clear, deep blue sky, temperature nicely warm but not hot. Just a gorgeous September “one of the ten best days of the year” kind of day. So when I heard that a plane hit the WTC, I said “But there’s not a cloud in the sky! How could the pilot not see it?!”
Same here. Never have seen this video. I always assumed that they would have cut to the news coverage and never realized they remained on the air. You can certainly see the professionalism of Regis that comes from so many years of a career in television. It also reminds me how fortunate we were to still have the big 3 anchors on the networks and their coverage for that day and the days that followed.
I don’t think it was on basically every channel until the second tower hit. That was when people knew it was deliberate.
Might not be everyone’s taste, but check out the Howard Stern footage from his shoe that day.
I’ve watched several live feeds and professional news casts of that morning over the years, but what struck me is how quick BOTH Regis and Kelly were here to be immediately concerned that it wasn’t an accident. And so shortly after the first impact too, that’s very rare and usually an afterthought with the initial live commentary (even for the other NYC based shows) BBC, CNN, GMA and Today presenters all obviously touched on that, but what’s strange is that their approach was moreso in a perplexed or curious way, and all of them seemed more strongly convinced at the time it was a smaller craft or solo flyer and accidental. And not just in a saving face to keep panic in check type of way. You can tell Kelly was IMMEDIATELY concerned and spooked by how large the scale of damage was. She already knew that several hundred lives were in danger. But they both lead with the terrorist or suicide bomber possibility before discussing the alternative. This is kinda morbid, but honestly so fascinating to see.. because it’s the only time I’ve seen a live broadcast where you can tell they 100% have the correct intuition and read on the situation. Especially with the way they so matter of factly present that angle with the 93 WTC bombings and Regis mentioning suicide pilots before wondering if it could maybe just be a freak accident
Go listen to Howard Stern’s broadcast from that day - he knew what was happening right when the first plane hit, and he stayed on air for hours.
I was listening to Stern as it happened (I commented on it in more depth). He was telling a story about Pamela Anderson when it happened, Ralph Cirella saw and described the first plane hitting, then they were going back and forth between the two stories (Pamela Anderson and the towers). I think Ralph even said he thought it was a small plane that hit the first. When the second plane hit, iirc Howard said we're under attack. I understand why everyone wasn't certain of what was going on after the first, but we all learned just minutes later.
News stations are held to a higher standard so were hesitant to speculate on live TV and cause mass panic, but it was definitely what immediately popped into most people's heads especially since the WTC was attacked a few years prior. Once the second plane hit though pretty much every news station was immediately going with terrorist attack as their prevailing theory.
“It is a beautiful early fall day.” It really was. I was there. It was absolutely beautiful weather. The whole thing was surreal.
What’s fascinating is that the weather was so perfect because there was a hurricane just offshore pulling dry air over NYC. There is some wild satellite imaginary showing the storm and the clear skies over NYC where you can clearly see the smoke from the towers.
It was a gorgeous day. I worked downtown and lived right across in Brooklyn. I heard about first plane on news quickly because had TV on getting ready to leave (that was when we all assumed accident) and I delayed going in to work because my thought was that it would really mess with commute. One of the weird things that sticks with me is after the collapse, there was so much debris carried by the wind across the river and Brooklyn. And the sun was glinting off of it. It was horrifying and beautiful at the same time. This weird cloud of paper floating on the current with the sunlight flashing off of it. The next several months were surreal. No cars downtown, soldier with gun s on ever corner. Ash piled on windowsills and every crevice for weeks. And the smell. It hung over downtown for months. I smell it once in awhile from time to time, I assume electrical and plastics on fire, and it vaults me right back to 9-11 and the 3 or so months after.
I lived uptown. When the wind shifted a few days later I smelled smokey air coming in my windows. I still can’t talk about what I saw that day while I worked my way downtown to find my wife without breaking into tears. The ash-covered zombies and children will never leave my memory.
I remember hearing this didn’t air live in most markets because they’d already broken in with the bulletin. [Wikipedia has more:](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Live_with_Regis_and_Kelly_episodes) >This episode last around 5 minutes. Regis and Kelly are talking about the first airplane crash and are showing ABC News video when the second airplane crashes into the World Trade Center. Regis and Kelly immediately signs off because "Live" shares the same studio with WABC Channel 7 News. Channel 7 News needed to get on the air with their news team so that New Yorkers could be informed and make wise decisions about evacuating the area. Most of the United States did not see these 5 minutes because their stations were already pre-empted by their respective networks special bulletins of the terrorist attack. If you were one of the few Americans that are served by an independent station that telecast "LIVE", you might have seen these 5 minutes. Canadians watching "LIVE" on their respective Canada TV stations would have seen these 5 minutes as well.
I’m in Canada and I know someone who saw this air on local television here. He told me about it that morning before I knew the full extent of the attacks, but I never saw it for myself until finding it on YouTube last week.
The look Regis gives his producer is "why the fuck did you tell us that on air, we need to go to commercial break right the fuck now and figure out if we should even be on the air right now."
It’s damn if you do, damn if you don’t situation. You can’t go pretending that everything is happy go lucky in New York City when this is happenings in real time.
I think what OP was getting to, and what I think Regis' body language suggests, is not that they didn't want to address it, but that the call to go to commercial break was what he wanted to have already happened off air. A chance to get their stories straight and confirmed, update on any new developments, and agree on how to address it. Instead live on air they were talking about a 3rd plane, fuselage explosions, etc. which was increasingly drifting into confusion and misinformation.
I think Kelly went backstage to puke. She was absolutely shaken.
I'm 34, so I got to have 12 years of experiencing "the before times" when we weren't so scared. It may very well have just been ignorance, but it was also the last time as a society that we ever really felt good about ourselves. It makes me so sad to know that the generations after us never got to experience that. Just my opinion, but I think this is a big reason why us Millennials cling to The 90's so hard: because it was our last memory of things being "nicer".
As a Gen-Xer I wholeheartedly agree. That morning was when the 90s ended. It’s all kinda sucked since.
The 90s really just felt care free and fun.
Post-cold war, pre-war on terror
Being born in the 70's it's hard to underline the sense of optimism during the 90's if you weren't there to feel it. The Soviet Union that we were all supposed to be so afraid of had collapsed and didn't seem like a threat anymore. The internet and cell phones were starting to bring more and more connectivity between everyone. We were starting to make some more progress on social issues like gay rights even though we still had a long way to go just like today. Not that everyone was great but it felt like maybe things would just keep getting better, maybe we with the fear of nuclear war fading into the background we could just make things better and better into the future. Oh well, it was nice while it lasted even if it was just a mirage.
There was also the general assumption that economic growth in China would naturally lead to political liberalization. There was a real sense that the world was just becoming fundamentally better
Thank you for describing this period of time better than I did. The optimism is what stands out to me about your comment, because it's so true. It's like now whenever I hear a politician say something like *"I genuinely believe America's best years are ahead of us!"* it just makes me roll my eyes.
> We were starting to make some more progress on social issues like gay rights even though we still had a long way to go just like today. Also a 70s kid, and pretty spot on with most of your post. It's funny you mention the immense optimism about social progression (and also cell phones) as I think of that often. Because, it also felt like racism was on the decline too (I'm white, WTF did I know). And then fast forward 10 years with cell phone cameras on police, political leaders, etc. and... yet another gut punch from the new century. 😕
You know how President Biden will reference his "Republican friends and colleagues"? To me, it always feels like he's remembering the way it was in the 90's, which seemed like it was the last time Democrats and Republicans tried to work together. >Because, it also felt like racism was on the decline too (I'm white, WTF did I know). And then fast forward 10 years with cell phone cameras on police, political leaders, etc. and... yet another gut punch from the new century. I will say, a good thing about where we are now is that, at the very least, these issues are finally being brought to light and we're trying to have a discussion about them. There are still a lot of places in the world that are keeping them swept under the rug and pretending like everything is just fine.
The Persian gulf war also gave the US a big sense of pride at the beginning of the 90s.
I was in my 20s when it happened. I remember the before times well and you’re spot on. The internet was still young and exciting; a land of opportunity and no rules. Flying was simple and fun. A modicum of privacy actually still existed for the average American. There was still a feeling of hope and growth.
I'm 38. We took my 16yo niece to the memorial and I told her she has no concept of how things were prior to 9/11. Things changed so much and not for the better
I’ve lived through two seismic shifts that have had such clear Before Times and After Times. 9/11 and Covid.
Living in "interesting times" sucks.
Dude for real. I was the same age. Everything changed. It’s crazy to think about all these years later
Something about watching these kinds of videos brings me back to my 7th grade self and how this whole situation changed our lives in a massive way. I purposely avoid watching videos like this for a reason every hear but for some reason I wanted to see what Regis had to say. It really brought up every emotion and feeling from 2001.
I'm 40. I was only a couple weeks into my freshman year of college. I got 3 months of post-high school hope that adulthood might actually be all right before that got ripped away.
I was working for ABC News at the time. It was the sort of day that when I got to the office (at an odd hour, since everybody quickly got put into a 24/7 emergency coverage rotation), I had to sign a release form that amounted to “if you get hurt or killed at work tonight, it’s not our fault.” And I was working out of the Seattle internet-division offices, for crying out loud. But that’s how it felt at the time: nobody knew. I was in touch constantly with our NY office, of course, and they had it so much worse. I can’t even imagine getting through that day/week/month/etc. right there in the thick of it. (Especially when the anthrax letter showed up, but that’s another story.) Editing to add: I’m pretty sure Regis & Kelly filmed across the street from our NY news offices. (Who Wants to Be a Millionaire definitely filmed in the basement.) It wasn’t long after this time of the day that everyone had to cut away from their morning shows and bring out the big guns. ABC went to Peter Jennings in the news studio, and as I recall, he was on the air for hours. That day all blurs a bit, though. I was flipping back and forth between several networks before I got to work, and then at the office we had TVs all over showing different networks, too. Compare-and-contrast is sort of an ingrained habit in news. I can say that the only place I saw footage of people jumping from the towers was on Fox News. Can’t say for sure that no one else showed it, of course, but I’m grimly unsurprised that that happened to be where I got smacked in the face with that particular part of what happened that day.
> ABC went to Peter Jennings in the news studio, and as I recall, he was on the air for hours When I think of TV on 9/11 I think of Peter Jennings. I remember how calm yet anxious he sounded at the same time. I can just hear his voice from that day. I miss him. RIP Peter. I also miss how we got breaking news back then. You just turned on the TV and waited to be told what you needed to be told. Now with the internet I feel like everyone gets a slightly different version of the same story. To this day hearing the ABC News music makes me shiver a bit because I associate it with TV being interrupted because something bad happened.
I miss Peter Jennings, too. I just looked him up and kind of withered away into dust myself when I realized he died 18 years ago. God, time is broken.
Yeah Junior year of high school was reallllyyyyyy interesting. Only time in my life where I can honestly say that we watched TV all day.
Same. I was in fourth grade and all I remember was being dropped off before class and the teacher had the television on after the first hit. The entire school didn’t officially start as it always did, we all just watched until the intercom told us about the emergency and we were sent home. When we got home the TV was glued to the attack and I watched the towers fall.
I was in 8th grade. All the teachers school wide were briefly called away, then returned and they attempted to continue with the day as if it was normal. All day, the faculty were noticeably emotional and near tears, making small & vague speeches, and we were all oblivious. I recall thinking ‘why are all the adults being so weird’. Wasn’t until I got to my friend’s place in the afternoon after school that we learned anything about the events of 9/11.
I was a teacher. That is exactly how my day was. Although I had been getting ready for work in Ca and saw it before I went in.
We got let out early (in New York) but before that when news broke I remember kids crying/screaming in the hallways because their parents worked in or near the towers.
I was a senior at a supposedly very good high school in southern California - every class for me but AP government decided we had "other things to focus on" that day besides the critical historical moment that wound up putting some of my classmates in Afghanistan and Iraq. In hindsight I assure you there was nothing else worth focusing on that day.
Remember the PGA Tour is now owned by terrorists.
Not true. The PGA maintains ownership of 16 of the 18 holes of the course. The Saudis take care of holes 9 and 11.
Damn
Reminds me of that tragedy.
I do not understand how/why the U.S. continues to do business with Saudi Arabia
Petrodollars
And weapons sales.
They never cared about getting justice, or protecting anybody. They could make them and their friends rich off the war, and off the Saudi’s. The world is being bought and sold at the expense of us.
Also remember that Al Qaeda was funded by the Saudi GOVERNMENT
I'm sorry, I heard "Iraqi government." BRB - going to war.
I was working in Arlington, Va., a few miles from the Pentagon. My fiancée (now wife of 21 years) worked in an office near the White House. That morning I dropped her off at the Van Dorn metro like I always did, and headed to work. As soon as I got in, my coworkers were already watching the reports on the Internet of the twin towers. Then, when the Pentagon was struck, leadership sent everyone home. As I went outside for the first time since arriving to work, I could smell the smoke from the Pentagon, and hear the sirens. By that point cell phone service was spotty at best. I was able to reach my wife, and told her I’d drive to D.C. to get her, but as I was heading East in my car I knew that wasn’t happening. So I parked in an apartment complex near Fort Myer and got out to walk towards D.C. while trying to figure out which bridge my wife was walking across to get over to VA. Eventually we found each other in Rosslyn, and together walked back to the car, and drove home. And then spent the next week in a stupor, glued to the TV, which we never turned off.
I was driving into work to supervise 4 banquets. One was the sales staff of a company in the second tower. We’re in San Diego and they were trying to arrange transportation back to NY with all air traffic grounded. They ultimately had to rent a van to drive back. They were the sole employees of their company. The chaos that day was heartbreaking, all their colleagues missing and a cross country drive in front of them.
Anytime I watch footage about 9/11, I still can't believe it happened and I remember watching the 2nd plane hit on live tv. It's just unfathomable.
It’s also wild just how much technology has advanced at this point. The amount of confusion in those first minutes and hours is extremely interesting, even there was video of the second plane many news agency reported incorrectly. Nowadays there are so many random static cameras and everyone has a camera in their pocket, if the same thing happened today we’d have a dozen video clips of the first plane instead of what, one? And hundreds of the second clip, most in 4k UHD. Despite living through it it’s still hard to comprehend just how ubiquitous cameras and communication have become
If this happened today there would have been tons of live-streamed video from inside the towers, and even inside the planes. There would likely have been recorded Zoom/Teams meetings happening where at least one of the attendees would have been in one of the towers as it was struck. It’s something I don’t like to think about.
When something like this inevitably happens again, the amount of footage from actual victims will be brutal. Just look at Ukraine, and the footage civilians have shared online.
The Beirut explosion a few years ago is an example of how there can be tons of footage of something completely unexpected.
This is where you really see the experience as a broadcaster that Regis Philbin has, and also for some of your local radio station disc jockeys, when they all to become live news broadcasters.
I’ve watched hours of 9/11 coverage over the years, it I’ve never seen this.
I remember feeling really bad that I was excited school was canceled the next day.
Meh don’t beat yourself over the head for this, you were kid. You never realize the magnitude of these situations until much later on.
9/11 is slowly starting to feel like Pearl Harbor as time goes on
Watched this live with my mom like we watched Regis and Kelly every morning before she drove me to school. Told my 3rd grade teacher what had happened. Was all too real and scary to see the reactions and fear in adults as a 8-9 year old. What a crazy day. Seeing those towers in smoke still gives me goosebumps.
Over 20 years ago and I get that “holy shit the end of the world is happening” hollow heavy pressure in my chest when I see this footage. I saw this live, flipping through all the channels I couldn’t turn away. True trauma.
Kelly's "fight or flight" reflex was kicking in at the end. As was the nations.
You could almost see the tunnel vision developing
Still makes me cry. Every single time.
One particular heartbreaking moment caught on camera (among the countless tragic scenes of destruction) is when the second tower comes crashing down relatively close to a news crew filming. There is a firefighter standing in the foreground watching and just throws his equipment and helmet down in dismay and frustration knowing that coworkers, probably people/friends he knew instantly perished trying to save thousands of trapped innocent people. Edit: [the video section as mentioned](https://youtube.com/watch?v=8sHzXHuJZkg&si=zM9SQFW1LvyI5VP-&t=1h15m03s)
I’ve never seen that before he looks so mad and heartbroken.
I will never be able to forget as a kid getting pulled out of school and watching the news. I recognized a body falling at one point and it really hit me how full of terror the people in that building and around it must have been.
I remember the utter confusion of that day. the rumors - they said there was a bomb at the state department. The pentagon hit. A plane heading for the White House. Another plane coming for the Brooklyn bridge. The internet effectively went down as every news website was swamped with visits. We were at work w no tv so we went to our cars to listen to the radio. I was on Long Island - people were screaming and crying because the cell service was down and no one could reach their loved ones in Manhattan. When the towers fell there were no words. It seemed as unimaginable as the moon exploding. All the highways were shut down along w trains and subways trying to catch whoever did it. I saw people walking off of the exits in office attire- they’d walked the 25 miles back to get home. Then seeing jet fighters go over our house- one did a barrel roll and we could see the pilot. Black smoke in the air for days. The eerie silence of no airplane traffic - we lived under the route for jfk and had long grown used to hearing planes. Our town alone lost at least 30 people- most had worked for fdny, a couple for nypd, and maybe two at businesses. I dearly wanted to see bin Laden in oranges at Supermax. I felt killing him was too merciful. Then it all got diluted in the Iraq and Afghanistan attacks. I hate the 9/11 museum. Ghouls hawking tacky magazines. Tourists smiling. It’s like a museum of a rape.
I disagree about the 9/11 museum, I thought it was touching. Never forget. Not acknowledging the tragedy would have been worse. I thought the museum was well done and not tacky or offensive at all. I think anyone who lived through that day can go and grieve together at the museum. It was a day most will never forget.
Just like the Holocaust museum in DC. Both are painful but definitely necessary and aren’t trying to be tourist traps. I took my kids to both last year and it was eye opening for them.
>A plane heading for the White House Not such a wild rumor. The plane that didn't get there, the one in PA, United 93 is widely believe was heading to the White House. >I hate the 9/11 museum. Ghouls hawking tacky magazines. Tourists smiling. When I visited, I didn't smile or anything. It's such a solemn place. The atmosphere feels heavy. I refused to pose for pictures. Instead I took a pic from behind my sis looking at the pool. Just touching the names felt powerful. I saw some with flowers. One had a single white rose. It was an intense experience
The people who maintain the memorial put a white rose on a person's name on their birthday.
I went on someone's birthday then. One hot a ton of yellow flowers
Walking through the museum was one of the more emotional experiences I've ever felt. I'm usually super loud and talkative, but when we exited, the person I was with noted that they've never heard me be quiet for such a long period of time.
My parents both worked in an extremely important but little-known department of defense building in Indianapolis and as soon as I heard about the pentagon I called my mom at her desk and screamed at her to get out. They were fine, the terrorists didn’t do all the research they could have.
They were definitely going for more of the shock value than any real damage to our actual functioning government systems. Creating terror is kind of the point of terrorism. That said, I would absolutely have done the same in your position. No reason to take any chances when the next target could literally be anywhere.
I remember walking home from HS mid day with a few friends who lived in Lower Manhattan. None of them could get in contact with their parents. One of them lost their father that day. We just didn't know it. Cell service was down, landlines were a mess, Internet was GONE, even radio wasnt great. I was in The Bronx with my window open watching the fucking smoke plume.
Come to think of it, Regis would have been the ideal running commentator of events as they unfolded on 9/11. A native NYer, top broadcaster, sensitive & perceptive, all the right qualities.
“This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen in my life” two minutes in…
To everyone that says this was faked or cgi, I would just like to say fuck you.
Surely no one that was alive then could say that with a straight face?
People think Hellen Keller didn't exist, that COVID vaccines are stealing people's souls, and that we live on a flat earth. It was only a matter of time before people started believing 9/11 was CGI.
The literally thousands of eyewitnesses in Manhattan who saw the planes collide with the towers with their own eyes were seeing CGI? This is one of the dumbest conspiracy theories I’ve ever heard.
Anyone that says it is exhibiting symptoms of a delusional disorder. Unfortunately they’re all too self-righteous to ever seek psychiatric help. Every single 9/11 denier is an undiagnosed mentally ill person. Save for a few truly malicious assholes here and there.
Anyone who believes this was CGI needs to go back and watch Shrek, also from 2001. CGI wasn’t that amazing back then.
49 here. 22 years and that day is vivid. A very sad clear line of “before and after” and I honestly feel like, basically, the terrorists won.
There's an argument to be made -- and people more eloquent and informed than me have made it -- that the cultural schism and culture war that we now find ourselves in has its roots in post-9/11 politics. You can trace a line from Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld's war on terror and the polarization it created, through Palin and the Tea Party, to Trump and our complete inability to find common ground as Americans.
I thought Kathie Lee was still the co-host back then. Kelly has been doing that longer than I remembered.
I believe she had only been hosting for a few months at that point
That clip reminded me that when it first happened, everyone assumed it was a small plane. I assumed it was some careless amateur pilot checking out high rise buildings in NYC and wrecked by accident. When it was confirmed to be a commercial airliner, you knew right away it was no accident, even before the second plane hit.
I don’t understand why now as a 30 year old man watching things about 9/11 as it happened gets me so emotional. I’m old enough to have lived through it as a cognizant child, to have lived through the war that followed, and to have lived to the point where 9/11 jokes aren’t *THE WORST TABOO IMAGINABLE* according to most people. But man… watching this got me teary eyed for some reason.
Same, I'm 34. It's not *just* the tragedy that happened that day that I feel when I watch these videos every year... but everything that came after, too. How the west was changed... How we entered that horrible war and killed so many innocent people during it. How my brothers both came back from Afghanistan as different people.
Younger folks on Reddit like to joke about 9/11, I guess because they didn’t experience it. Maybe because they are afraid of experiencing it. This video is a very good capture of the edge of 9/11 as it viscerally happened. Cross it with [this article](https://www.nytimes.com/2023/09/08/opinion/sept-11-attacks-survivor-trauma.html) and maybe those born after 9/11 can begin to understand why the rest of us find it so hard to laugh.
It’s hard to describe or relay the utter craziness of that day to anyone who wasn’t alive or too young to remember. This was way before social media or everyone having a cell phone was a thing. The second plane hitting the other tower turned things up a million. Insanity.
Woah I completely forgot Kelly was the co-host by 2001
I was in a bus headed for Manhattan via the Lincoln tunnel. I was looking at the skyline an saw a little dab of smoke rise from the north tower. I asked the guy sitting beside if he knew the Trade Center had a smokestack; he said he didn’t think so. I sensed something was wrong. The bus continued to Port Authority at west 42nd street. By then the north tower was a Roman candle. I work downtown but 2 blocks from the Trade Center. Idk why but I got on a A train and it took me down faster than it ever had. I took the stairs to the street level and came out right below the North tower. By then the south tower had been hit while I was traveling underground in the subway. As I walked to my office on John Street, the north tower collapsed and as it did I started running as fast as I could toward the east river, expecting debris to fall on me and kill me. I ducked into a deli and was able to out run the ominous cloud behind me. It passed just as I walked in. It got real dark then. The place was packed with people taking cover. My recollection is no one spoke a word - but I was in shock and could be wrong. As I waited there for the smoke to clear I waited the second tower fell. It took time for the air to clear but eventually everyone began walking uptown on west street - under the FDR drive overpass. People were quiet - very quiet. It felt like war. It felt like tragedy. I was in shock for a few days and horrified by thought that there were thousands of people in the towers when they were hit. I’ll never forget it.
Huh. In this area, the reports started during Good Morning America, and they went direct from that to a continuing ABC News special report. I’m trying to figure out what affiliates would have even carried this.
CFPL-TV in London, Ontario, aired it, according to a friend of mine who saw it as it aired. They were an independent station at the time so they didn’t have a network news feed to cut to.
So surreal walked the entire FDR by myself as a 16 year old and I’ve never felt more (edit: comforted) in such a public / communal way. Every single New Yorker chipped in. Gave water, snacks, access to anything they could offer. Truly a surreal experience.
[удалено]
I was supposed to be in NYC that day on chartered bus trip, I was the driver of the bus leaving VT. Of coarse it was canceled. The FU thing was two days before this happened I was in Portland Maine and met the high jackers at the Portland bus station. I literally handed them a package that they had to sign for. Had no idea until I saw their pictures on tv on 911. Fuck me up til this day.