International Where was you / what was you doing when 9/11 happened?

[SKYNET]

The night before was a normal night, nothing special. I watched the MNF football game after work. Vikings & Moss vs Packers & Favre. My ex gf came over, we had sex for a few hours until we both fell asleep she stayed the night and stayed in my bed as I got up for class the next morning.

I was still going after my bachelors and I had an elective music appreciation class at 815am. A classmate went out to the restroom midway thru the class and came back and asked the professor if he had heard the news about a plane crashing into the Twin Towers. Oh, another attack on the WTC like in 1993, I thought. Everyone was chit chatting and gossipping until he gathered everyones attention and finished the class and let us out around 9:30am.

I walked to the center pavilion by the library and there were about 3-400 students like myself crowded around the center watching 3 to 4 small monitors maybe 23 inches wide showing the news coverage. All I remember seeing from my viewpoint was a helicopter filming the dust from high above the NYC skyline as the buildings had both collapsed. Someone had mentioned they had fallen but I was like hell no, bullshit. I couldn't fathom what was happening. I hauled ass home and watched the news all afternoon until I went to work.

Only time I remember the whole nation in a funk like that was Reagans assassination attempt in 1980, The Challenger Explosion in 1986 and 9/11

 

[StoneColdSteveAustin]

I was in an early morning college class. I live in north jersey very close to NYC. Professor explained what happened and all classes were cancelled. It was pretty frantic in my area. Thousands of people from the area took a commute into the city for work on a daily basis. Lots of people all over couldn’t locate their loved ones or get right home back into jersey

 

[terrapin]

i was getting ready to teach a tai chi class at a massage therapy college. the school wanted me to say a few words to the students and i had nothing. thats when i realized i was not psychologically or spiritually prepared to deal with serious adversity on a country wide scale.

that event marked a very serious and monumental transformation in my psyche that lasted over ten years. i realized i had been avoiding suffering rather than learning to use it for personal growth and betterment. it was massive and life changing and while i dont think 9/11 caused all of that is certainly felt like it.

 

[pinger]

I was living in Sydney watching the late news telecast and we were part way through SportsTonight when they cut back to shit just as the second plane hit.

Was glued to the TV for a couple more hours.

 

[terrapin]

I was working in Manhattan on a detail when the first plane hit... we were all at one world trade when the second plane hit ...i sounded like godzilla just roared.. it was so loud like deafening.. i was about 1 block away from the debris field when the first building went down ... after it fell it was silence ... just dust and silence .. like the entire world ended or something just really eerie .. people stumbling around cars just flattened and big tears in buildings... there really aren't words for it .. decimation maybe?

we started looking for injured and survivors and the second building fell .. at least we were backing people up etc..

i really dont remember much of it .. its just a mass of screaming and death and stumbling around looking for someone to give us orders and trying to help where we could .. i think i ddnt sleep the first 2-3 days after.. we were too busy looking for people in rubble .. i slept on the floor of a fire station along with 20 other guys using coats and hoses to sleep on .. it was the worst thing i have ever seen ... we spent a month there looking through the rubble for anything we could identity a person with .. a shoe... what looked like pants or a shirt maybe with blood on it for DNA etc...

it was terrible ..i wont get into specifics except for crushed body parts or spots of blood we marked off for testing etc ... sometimes the shoes still had a foot in it etc...

the one thing i will never forget is all of the camaraderie... we werent cops or firemen anymore we were all just people doing a job and trying to get through it together... i made some lifelong friends ... and buried twice as many after from all the cancers and diseases they got .. i think the only thing that didnt kill me was i had my fire dept gear in my car and wore it those first 2 days and then my MSA mask afterwards... who knows .. i might have cancer in me right now .. i hope not

I had a friend get 6 different types of cancer afterwards just horrible things... watching all my friends wasting away..

they didnt tell anyone that DOW chemical had like 5 subfloors where they were doing all kinds of testing on bio weapons or some bacteria shit ... and when the buildings went down all that went into the air

the cloud stayed for months..

no one was ever held accountable and we were told not to talk about it to the press or our families...


yeah it was hands down the worst thing i went through... worse than having to take someones life by far...

that's one of the most intense things ive ever read online and believed. it sounds terrible.

do you think the leaked chemical part was just buried forever? i would think there would be groups trying to being that knowledge to light.

 

[fordman7795]

I was 19 years old working at Ace Hardware in the paint department. That morning I was mixing up some paint. It was in the shaker machine which runs on an internal timer. As I was standing there I could see thru the seam to the timer and it was counting down 4….3….2…1 I said to myself “it’s a bomb, osama is gonna kill us all”. Half hour later a customer came in and told us to turn on the news. We all sat there and watched tv for the whole day. It was a crazy premonition that I will never forget.

 

[Blayt7hh]

I was in High school. My school was on the Hudson River. I’m pretty sure I saw one of the plane that hit the towers. I remember it distinctly. I looked out the window and saw a plane flying low and hadn’t seen one flying low like that before. Later that night I remember a report saying that one of the planes had followed the Hudson to get to NYC.

 

[Beechwood]

I was at work when some people came into my office to say an airplane had crashed into a building in New York. It wasn't known what had happened at this point. Most of us thought it was an accident.

It was an unhappy time for us in the family as we had recently sold our company the previous year and as we came to learn the corporate buyers were horrible managers. My other family members had been fired/quit from the new company, unbelievably, and I was the last remaining. (The economy had quickly turned sour due to the tech bubble bursting. The new buyers expected high sales regardless of economic conditions. Sales didn't meet expectations so family members were either let go or quit) So after the terrorist attack I left the company myself. I called my parents who happened to be going on a vacation trip. They were driving to an airport 3 hours away. 9/11 is their anniversary. I told them what happened in New York. They came back home soon after as all airline flights had been canceled.

 

[The_Renaissance]

In Wales, UK, making breakfast in the house alone - I was around 19. Remember it well, as I was going to University for the first time a few days later and that day was my final all-day boozing session with all my mates - we all took the train up to a art college, that mates attended. It felt surreal, by the time we got to the arts college, the TVs in the bar were playing 9/11 news all day so we got to see things really unravel as the day went on.

 

[BIKES!]

It was a rare day I happened to be up early in a 3 bedroom apartment and actually watched live the plane fly into the second tower. My final year of undergrad and class eventually got canceled the rest of the day. I was scared for the first time in my life thinking we could actually be attacked on our soil. I didn’t have a gun and arsenal back then. I solved that problem.

 

[machidafan99]

I was living on the other side of the East River. I was home that day. I walked down to the water and pier and saw giant plumes of smoke to the south. I was shocked and disgusted as I saw two Japanese tourists posing with smiles in front of the not-so-distant destruction.

 

[method115]

In Physics class. My teacher started crying because her husband was in NY and she couldn't get him on the phone. Not sure if her husband was ok or not but I think he was. Feels like I would have remembered if something did happen to him.

 

[Boxiana]

Working an office job in London. We’d got back from a pub lunch and heard the news. There were about 9 of us in a room watching live on a laptop screen. When that second plane hit I remember my stomach sinking, realizing it wasn’t an accident.

Another thing I really remember is on the tube home that night some Rasta high as shit, probably on crack, was singing “America got bombed”. Fucking prick.

 

[KAZSoliloquy]

I was living on the other side of the East River. I was home that day. I walked down to the water and pier and saw giant plumes of smoke to the south. I was shocked and disgusted as I saw two Japanese tourists posing with smiles in front of the not-so-distant destruction.

i mean, i cant blame them <Lmaoo>

 

[KAZSoliloquy]

i was in 3rd grade. the teachers called us all to the school library on the top floor and had us listen to someone read us “Hatchet” by Gary Paulson while the teachers and aides watched the TV in horror, which we weren’t allowed to look at.

most of our parents, mine included, picked us up from school that day. i spent the whole day on the computer, with very little knowledge of what was actually happening. my sister is pretty sociopathic and abusive so she just kept telling me people were gonna invade the country and kill our parents and there would be fighting in the streets. pretty weird day.

 

[KnightTemplar]

I was at work. My manager came up and asked if I'd heard that a passenger plane had hit one of the Twin Towers. I hadn't, and like almost everyone else, my first thought was a tragic accident. Maybe the pilot had suffered a heart attack.

About twenty minutes later we heard about the second plane, and obviously realised it was a terror attack. When we got the news of the Towers collapsing, and the plane hitting the Pentagon, it seemed surreal, like we were living in a movie. I remember talking to a soldier who was surprised the Pentagon apparently didn't have any anti-aircraft systems to defend itself.

I went home and turned on the TV. They were showing the shot of the huge dust cloud. The BBC stopped all scheduled programs and just broadcast live until around midnight UK time.

 

[KnightTemplar]

I was working in Manhattan on a detail when the first plane hit... we were all at one world trade when the second plane hit ...i sounded like godzilla just roared.. it was so loud like deafening.. i was about 1 block away from the debris field when the first building went down ... after it fell it was silence ... just dust and silence .. like the entire world ended or something just really eerie .. people stumbling around cars just flattened and big tears in buildings... there really aren't words for it .. decimation maybe?

we started looking for injured and survivors and the second building fell .. at least we were backing people up etc..

i really dont remember much of it .. its just a mass of screaming and death and stumbling around looking for someone to give us orders and trying to help where we could .. i think i ddnt sleep the first 2-3 days after.. we were too busy looking for people in rubble .. i slept on the floor of a fire station along with 20 other guys using coats and hoses to sleep on .. it was the worst thing i have ever seen ... we spent a month there looking through the rubble for anything we could identity a person with .. a shoe... what looked like pants or a shirt maybe with blood on it for DNA etc...

it was terrible ..i wont get into specifics except for crushed body parts or spots of blood we marked off for testing etc ... sometimes the shoes still had a foot in it etc...

the one thing i will never forget is all of the camaraderie... we werent cops or firemen anymore we were all just people doing a job and trying to get through it together... i made some lifelong friends ... and buried twice as many after from all the cancers and diseases they got .. i think the only thing that didnt kill me was i had my fire dept gear in my car and wore it those first 2 days and then my MSA mask afterwards... who knows .. i might have cancer in me right now .. i hope not

I had a friend get 6 different types of cancer afterwards just horrible things... watching all my friends wasting away..

they didnt tell anyone that DOW chemical had like 5 subfloors where they were doing all kinds of testing on bio weapons or some bacteria shit ... and when the buildings went down all that went into the air

the cloud stayed for months..

no one was ever held accountable and we were told not to talk about it to the press or our families...


yeah it was hands down the worst thing i went through... worse than having to take someones life by far...

Thank you for your service.

Not being sarcastic. That's some above and beyond shit right there.

 

[Otto!]

I was in Germany, coaching my son’s soccer practice. It was late afternoon there, and parents started arriving to pick up their kids early, some crying. Saw the news as soon as I got home.

Seeing people jumping from the towers really fucked me up.

 

[KnightTemplar]

I was in Germany, coaching my son’s soccer practice. It was late afternoon there, and parents started arriving to pick up their kids early, some crying. Saw the news as soon as I got home.

Seeing people jumping from the towers really fucked me up.

Yeah, no matter how many time I see the Falling Man shot, it always makes me shiver. How fucked up is that choice: burn to death or jump to your death? Harsh AF

 

[Steelers4life]

I will never forget it.

I was in grade 11 , at my locker getting ready to go to Biology class when my friend came and told a group of us.

That afternoon after lunch we spent the rest of the day watching the news in the library. I remember thinking this was my generations Kennedy assassination.