Where were you when you first heard about what happened on 9/11?

[jnalpak]

i was coming out of the wall street station as the 2nd plane hit.

[Jaskohouston]

My own story isn't all that interesting - I was supposed to fly from Houston back up to Oklahoma to do recruiting for Dynegy, the company I worked for at the time. Obviously the flight didn't happen, but my mom was pretty freaked, knowing I was supposed to fly. Her answering machine message woke me up, sort of mom-frantic about where I was and what was happening.

The story about those that were on the trade floor at Dynegy is pretty chilling. Dynegy is/was an energy trading company with a fully functioning trade floor. If you haven't been on one, it's a setup where several traders have phone setups where they talk to other traders and brokers over a speaker system they click on and off to live lines (also known as "the box"). Well one of the companies Dynegy worked with was Tradespark, a division of Cantor Fitzgerald (if you remember the CEO that promised to take care of all the families of his employees, etc), and they were on the 105th floor of the first tower.

So things that are said over the box are not really private, as they are usually loud enough to hear from several seats away. As I understand it, a tradespark broker was on the box at the time the plane hit, and you could hear a "What the hell was that!?" sort of exclamation, enough to get people's attention, followed by a "holy [censored], something just happened here". (the talk between these guys wasn't always PG). The line only stayed open a few more seconds, while they could hear people rushing about and some other exclamations. A few minutes later it was shown on the TVs what was going on. Some of the guys in the office were pretty distraught, as we had some guys from NYC that had moved to Houston to work for us.

[Roybert]

[ QUOTE ]
1,000 years from now.... I wonder how the history books will refer to it. The spark that ignited the "Great American Middle Eastern Crusade"? Depends on who's writing the history books in 3006, I suppose.

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I imagine the history books will remember it as a primary catalyst for the decline of the Great American Empire.

[BretWeir]

I was living on the 14th floor of an apartment in Hoboken, NJ, about 1 mile away and directly across the river from the Twin Towers.

I woke up to the phone ringing -- my dad telling me to turn on the tv, because something had hit one of the towers. I turn on CNN, but at the same time, look out my living room window, and see one of the towers on fire -- the windows of many of the upper floors red with flame, and black smoke billowing out.

I'm talking with him, CNN's saying that a plane had hit the tower (at this point, I'm thinking it's some Cessna that had been sightseeing along the river), when I look out my window and see a huge explosion in the second tower. I don't know if it's a bomb or what -- turns out it's the second plane hitting. At this point, I think to myself, "I guess we're at war now."

I hang up and try to call my wife at her office. She works in downtown Manhattan, and takes the PATH train into work through the World Trade Center station. Thank god, she answers the phone. She had left the first tower about 10 minutes before the first plane hit. We find out later that the plane had hit above the exit where she left the building, and had she been there at the time, she probably would have been hit by burning jet fuel.

Her office is sending around e-mails about how everything is under control, and everyone should remain in their offices (she's a state employee). I tell her to get the hell out and start walking north. She hems and haws for a while, but finally says she's getting out.

She calls to say she's leaving at about 10 a.m.; I'm still looking out my window when I see the first tower collapse, and then the other.

I try to reach her on her cell phone, but phone lines at this point are completely overloaded, so I can't get through. I start getting calls from her mom and her sister (from upstate NY) asking if she's ok -- all I can tell them is that she wasn't in the Towers when the planes hit, and that I think she's ok.

At around noon, I get a Blackberry message from my secretary (some e-mail is still functioning); she tells me that my wife has made it safely to my office at 50th and 8th, and is trying to find a way to get back across the river. I thank God, and hope she gets back before there's another attack.

I take the dog out for a walk, and wee fighter planes flying over the city in formation. People are on the street crying (Hoboken is a major commuter site for NYC, and thousands of residents worked in the WTC).

My wife finally makes it home at about 7 p.m. that night. She had gotten out early enough to avoid the dust cloud (which reached her office) then walked all the way up from Chinatown to our friend's apaertment near Lincoln Center (about 80 blocks), stayed there until the Hudson River ferry started running, then walked down to the ferry site to get back across the river. As she disembarked, there were emergency personnel wearing chem suits hosing everyone down. Very eerie.

A couple of hours later, a friend arrived at our apartment who had been staying at a hotel across from the WTC and had been caught in the cloud. All her clothes, her passport, etc. were still in the hotel -- which, for week afterward was a "frozen zone" -- and she was basically a refugee. She was immensely grateful that was all she had lost.

Amazingly, nobody we knew well was killed in the towers (though a couple of distant acquaintances were, as well as another acquaintance who was aboard the flight that crashed into the Pentagon). I went into work in Midtown the next day (pretty stupid, but I was in a "we can't let the terrorists win" mindset at that point), and I remember walking up the middle of 8th Avenue from Penn Station to 50th Street -- basically through Times Square -- and not seeing a single car on the road, or hardly a store open. For two weeks afterward, the whole city of Hoboken smelled like burning rubber, and the only air traffic overhead was miliary fighter patrols.

Needless to say, I am not a big fan of OBL.

[nuggetz87]

9th grade science class with a really weird teacher. There was also a kid with a really big mohawk (the spiky kind) that he told me he styled using glue. Actual glue.

We got to watch the whole thing, saw the 2nd plane hit and saw both towers fall. We didn't get let out of school though [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] (I live in Maryland).

[MaxPower]

I was driving in to work that day and I was about to go through the toll for the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. I was listening to the Howard Stern show and they mentioned that a plane had just hit the WTC. I assumed it was a small plane or something. I knew that as soon as you go through the toll booth, there is a good view of the WTC. So I went through the toll both, looked up, and saw a the massive inferno. I was in shock.

As I am driving through the tunnel I hear on the radio that the 2nd tower had been hit. Now I was terrified and didn't know what to do. When I got into the city all I hear was sirens and all I saw was people standing on the street corners looking up in the sky.

I got to my office which was on Hudson and Spring, not too far from ground zero. There was always a great view of the towers from in front of the building and I stood there and watched both towers burn for a while. The street was packed with people and everyone was in shock.

I went up to my office and everyone was watching CNN and trying to figure out what to do. I was looking out the window at the towers and telling my co-worker that I didn't think there way any way that the fires could be put out. I thought they would consume both buildings entirely, but was not expecting the collapse.

We were standing around discussing whether we should stay or go and we heard the massive rumble of the first tower collapsing as well as screams of horror from people on the street.

There is a lot more that happened that day as well, but the worst part was what happened in the next few weeks. I was a total mess for 2 to 3 weeks.

[supercomputer]

I turned on the TV between the towers falling. Since the tv cameras were all there and the buildings were smoking, for some reason I didn't think about there being people inside. I just thought, wow that is a big fire. Must have started overnight. And then they fell, and I thought "wow that is f-ing incredible." It never occurred to me that I was watching thousands of people die. It wasn't until after the fact that I saw the replay of the planes going in, and started to understand what was going on.

[guids]

[ QUOTE ]
I was driving in to work that day and I was about to go through the toll for the Queens-Midtown Tunnel. I was listening to the Howard Stern show and they mentioned that a plane had just hit the WTC. I assumed it was a small plane or something. I knew that as soon as you go through the toll booth, there is a good view of the WTC. So I went through the toll both, looked up, and saw a the massive inferno. I was in shock.

As I am driving through the tunnel I hear on the radio that the 2nd tower had been hit. Now I was terrified and didn't know what to do. When I got into the city all I hear was sirens and all I saw was people standing on the street corners looking up in the sky.

I got to my office which was on Hudson and Spring, not too far from ground zero. There was always a great view of the towers from in front of the building and I stood there and watched both towers burn for a while. The street was packed with people and everyone was in shock.

I went up to my office and everyone was watching CNN and trying to figure out what to do. I was looking out the window at the towers and telling my co-worker that I didn't think there way any way that the fires could be put out. I thought they would consume both buildings entirely, but was not expecting the collapse.

We were standing around discussing whether we should stay or go and we heard the massive rumble of the first tower collapsing as well as screams of horror from people on the street.

There is a lot more that happened that day as well, but the worst part was what happened in the next few weeks. I was a total mess for 2 to 3 weeks.

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How important are you at your job? Unless Im the pope, there is NO possible way Im going into work after seeing one fo the towers burning. That must have been surreal. What was going through your mind as you drove to work? What didd you guys do after the tower fell?

[stigmata]

I was in work. I came back up to the office & a French guy I was working with had changed his desktop to a picture of the WTC with smoke coming out of it.

He thought it was pretty funny that some moron had somehow crashed his light aircraft into the WTC, which was the story going around at the time. Like you, I immediately thought, no, this can’t be an accident. This is the work of OBL.

I had to go into central London after that, and the mood was pretty edgy. Like New York, we're a big city and a big target. Everyone was talking on their mobile phones & texting each other about it. It seemed like every conversation in the street was about the news events that day. I overheard that the second tower was hit.

I got back to work and we basically watched the events unfold on TV for the afternoon, almost in disbelief. It felt like WW3 was starting and I was scared for the future……

[BriMc]

I got off the PATH train from Jersey City at 33rd st and 6th. I was working in the Empire State building at the time. I had my walkman on so I was oblivious to what had hapened while I was under the Hudson River. It wasn't untill I got to the ESB and they wouldn't let me in that I found out. I looked down 5th Ave in horror and realized that I had just left my Ex-Wife (we were still married at the time) in the Grove St Station, she took the WTC PATH, I took the Midtown. All the phones were jammed up, so I didn't hear that she was alright till the afternoon. Luckily they stoped her train and turned it back to Jersey before it made it in to the WTC.