Here in the USA it is now early in the morning Sept 11, 2007. Where were you when you heard the news of the terriorist attacks on the United States of America? What were your thoughts? What were your reactions?


As for me....As a night worker I was driving home from work. At the time I worked at HOU. I live on the North side of Houston, and as I was passing near IAH I noticed a very low flying aircraft heading in the general direction of IAH. I thought to myself that this was not normal, but dismissed the thought. A minute or so later the radio station broke in with the news that a "small" plane had hit the WTC tower. Then as I continued home the story began to unfold. The true horror began to manifest itself as more news reports came in. I got home and woke the family. We all watched as first one tower, then the other collapsed onto itself. I watched for a while mesmerised by the destruction I was seeing. Finally I went to bed around noon, knowing I had to work that night. I turned on the TV in my room and put it on mute. I kept waking up often and would un-mute the TV for a few minutes. Needless to say, I got little sleep that day. As I got ready for work that night I somehow knew that my industry in general and my vocation in specific had been changed forever. I'll never forget the shock of seeing armed guards encircling the control tower at Hobby. The tower is located a block off the field and we had to pass by it to get to our parking area. We were stopped by the guards and had to show our Id's before proceeding. When we got to work our supervisor, instead of passing out the nights work, had us gather in one of the break rooms. He gave us an update from the company, then told us to take it easy, and try to relax a bit. He was well aware that little or nothing would be accomplished that night. I think we finally got a little bit of work done after lunch that night. It truly is a day I shall never forget. Nor do I want to for that matter. On a similar note, when I saw coverage of the rescue teams raising a United States flag from the destruction that was once the WTC It brought tears, yet a great pride that no matter what some evil people do to the USA, we WILL RISE AGAIN. We may as a country get kicked in the butt, we may falter, we may stumble about, dazed for a time, but WE WILL NEVER FALL. Out of the ashes and tears our great nation will right itself. We will bury our dead, and honor our heroes. We will not quit, nor give in to the evil ones EVER!

So.............................Whats your story?

Michael

Doing my Exam at school. I remember it clearly, was shocked to watch it on the TV before the exam. In the exam room that day we had a moments silence for the people affected.

I was in school, knew nothing about it until I got home  

I was at home in Dubai, at 6 P.M saw it in the news, and was shocked at the news.

I was in bed, after I had worked the whole night. A friend of mine called me, he told me, someone had flown 2 planes in WTC, and that it doesn't exist anymore. First my sleepy head didn't realize what that means, and I thought I should go back to bed, but then I turned on the TV and saw those horrible pictures. I couldn't understand why those people did that, I was scarred and I thought, I would like to help, but I was in Germany.I felt with all those people that died or lost someone. And I still do..

I was in school, we were told about (not much info through) and it was a relax day with no work.

i can't believe it was 6 years i was in 5th grade

michael

Watching it all in the ops room of a major airline at LGW. When the news came through we all piled up there to see what was happening, as the place went into meltdown around us.

Funny how we went back down to our desks after a while and carried on working for about half an hour on the project we were doing. Then the two of us stopped, looked at each other and said that it was pointless carrying on; the world had just changed completely. So went home and spent the rest of the day watching the news.

I was at BA HQ at Waterside, watching the TV in stunned disbelief, and trying to get through to my sister-in-law who was in NYC at the time. CNN.com and BBC.co.uk were unreachable due to volumes. Then reports came in of the flights being diverted to YHZ and YYT etc, and from then on it was chaos. LHR bunged up completely with all the trans-Atlantic flights turning back or not being allowed to leave.

And, ironically or otherwise, on this anniversary I'm in Jeddah. Hmmm.

Blind drunk in a bar in Marbella, never sobered up so quickly in my life!

I was in the National Library in Luxembourg City. I was totally unaware of anything until I got home (about 8 hours after the attacks) and listened to a ton of recorded messages on the phone urging me to turn the TV on. Well, we had just moved in the flat then and we had no cable yet, not to mention the internet. I grabbed a standard antenna and hooked it up to the TV. Alas, the house was in a deep valley and all I picked up was a vey faint and blurry Kissinger doing a live interview in German. I got better luck with the radio but the agitated reports were confusing and I couldn't quite picture what was going on. Then Kissinger disappeared and the footage of the attacks was rolled out. I could barely see anything with the fuck-awful reception but what I saw felt like a kick in the stomach.

Very, very bad days followed.

Was in bed at home (it was around 10:30 pm I think), when I got a call from my cousin telling me to switch on the TV. Saw the 2nd tower being hit live... will never forget that image  

Working in the UK. The mood at work was already quite strange, as our UK offices were about to close down (2 weeks later) and a lot of us would not see each other anymore as half of us would be going to France.

Anyways. During the afternoon I got an email telling me that "the Palestinian had crashed two jumbojets in the WTC" (terms of the email).

Not a lot of work was done that afternoon, as we spent our time monitoring the information websites.
I also recall ICQing a friend who was working in SJC at that time. He had just woke up, and I think I merely told him to "switch on CNN".

Another memory of that week was the wedding of my sister the next saturday (the 15th) in Paris. I had an Eurostar ticket for the 14th, but all train traffic got suspended from the friday noon to the saturday afternoon. So I bought an 'emergency' BA ticket from LHR to CDG. The security line had never been that long at Heathrow, and IIRC, the flight was 4 or 5 hours late (mostly due to security delays). I don't think anyone complained though, everybody was still quite shocked.

Cheers,

707

Sitting at my desk. A co-worker came by my office and told me that a plane had hit the WTC. We both figured it was a small plane, and an accident. I put on a little 13" TV and saw what was really happening - just as the second plane hit. I called my Travel Manager into my office and showed her what was happening. We spent the rest of the morning finding our travelers, and making sure they were OK. Fortunately, we only had one anywhere near the trouble areas, and they were not affected thankfully.

I remember as a little 8 year old getting up and turning on the telly, only to be confronted by images of a once mighty building having had its spine mercilessly ripped out and crumbling in on itself. The only thing I could think about was the people in the planes and the people who were running down those stairs as fast as they could. Scared the day lights out of me but as 8 year olds do, I forgot about it pretty quickly. Until every night the news would be almost entirely devoted to 911.

The thing that will stick with me the most is one image of a man, an ordinary New Yorker, standing on top of a pile of rubble sifting through with his bare hands. And the look on his eyes is something I will probably never forget, the absolute desperation he was feeling. 911 did some powerful stuff.

EDIT: Airplane Crashed Into The World Trade Center. (by Hustler Sep 11 2001 in Civil Aviation)

Posted 6 years 21 hours ago...

[Edited 2007-09-11 12:47:45]

Sitting in my class room looking out at the WTC from my classroom in Jersey City, NJ. The sun was in my eyes so I asked my teacher to close the blinds...

At work at out local SPCA....trying desperately to forget that I was turning 45 and hoping that nobody would tell my coworkers. My mother called to tell me about the first plane (thinking at the time it was an accident) and we turned on the little tv in time to see the second plane go into the tower.....no further work was done that day, besides the animal care....

Later on in the day, my mother called one of my coworkers to see how I was doing and let it slip that it was my birthday....next thing I know, there's the world's largest strawberry cheesecake on my desk from the gang...weird day all the way around....we ate cheesecake and watched tv until it was time to go home, in between making phone calls to all our families just to say "I love you."

I was in school and it took hours to get the whole story. Some teachers told their kids everything, mine didn't say a word. Then, we were sent to the cafeteria and finally home. A very weird day indeed.

Quoting Kmh1956 (Reply 15): my birthday...

Happy birthday!! 



  





  

We were sponsoring a hole in one on a local golf course. We were sitting on a buggy handing out towels with our logo on as people as players went through. It was cloudy and a bit windy and no-one was getting anywhere near the pin. At about 4pm, the course director came up and said something had happened but he didn't know what, and so after the last player had gone, we headed back to the office, which is in a shopping centre. People were crowded round the TV in the pizza place next door, and at first glance it looked like they were watching a disaster film.

No-one won the prize by the way, which was ... 2 first class tickets to New York.

I was in grade 5 and just sitting in class. We just continued class like normal. I didn't find out about any of it until I got home.

  

Six years ago, I was in between classes at George Washington High School back in Philly. My 3rd period class (American Government, and the teacher was Mr. Datz) hadn't started yet, so I was talking with some friends in the hallway. He had the TV on, and poked his head out and told me that I might wanna come in and watch. When I looked at the screen, I looked over at the teacher and said "Holy $h!t! Mr. Datz - this isn't a movie, is it?" At which point, his eyes started filling up, and he said, "No Marc, I wish it was." Next period was lunch, and I left my friends in the cafeteria to go up to the MG room to watch continuing coverage. About 20 minutes later (I'm guessing about 11:20 - I don't remember the bell schedule from that day), we found out that we wee all being sent home at noon. I got home, and the first thing I did was call my CO in Civil Air Patrol to find out if we might be activated. Her exact words to me were, "If there was ever a time for us to be activated, it would be today." Well, Civil Air Patrol was activated, but my unit was not.

I will never forget where I was and what I was doing on 9/11/01. Hell, I still have the t-shirt I wore on that day. I refuse to get rid of it, and I try not to wear it much.

Marc

I was working normally in the office. One of our employees complained that the internet was no longer accessible (we then only had one access for up to 3 persons). I then sent him off home arguing not to see much sense in him waiting 5 minutes per entry (in reality just wanted to get rid of that complaining voice !), and when I after his dep. tried it I succeeded just to read that "a sports airplane had flown into the WTC in New York". Later I had to transfer a wheelchair from the wife of a colleague to a specialist near my home, and when driving and changing the radio station all the time, learnt more and more. And when having done the delivery went into a restaurant where they had the TV on .......................

Woke up to my phone ringing and my mom telling me to turn on the news. I think the thing I remember most about that day was how incredibly sunny it was and what a nice day I thought it was going to be. My mom and dads house lies under a major air intersection so I was used to looking up at night while walking my dog and seeing strobes and beacons all over the place. I can remember how vividly dark the sky was that night. Not a single plane in the air. I think thats what sticks with me most to this day.

I was working and in the pro shop at the club I worked at. It was ladies day and we had ours on the course in a tourney. A member came in and told us a small plane hit the WTC. I switched our TV to the news and saw he was very wrong. As soon as the ladies heard they came off the course. A few had husbands there and thank God they all got out. One of them who was lucky to get out early on drove back to the club and told us the most horrific stuff. All of our members were accounted for except for one who worked for Cantor & Fitzgerald. We knew he was gone. Another members daughter was also in that building and died. He spoke to her on the phone after the plane hit before it collapsed. A very bad day.

R.I.P all.

[Edited 2007-09-11 15:40:31]

I was at the Vince Lombardi Service Plaza on the Jersey Turnpike, about 5 miles north of the towers. I had just delivered a load of breakfast cereal in Hunt's Point (Bronx, NY) that morning.

Ugh, this is difficult to even think about today.

I had just graduated from college and was working in Washington DC at Washington Harbour right on the riverfront. It was a gorgeous early autumn day and I had gone in early that morning to get some overnight work finished and was sitting in my office when an attorney rushed in and said that a plane had crashed into the WTC. As news spread everyone in the office rushed to the main conference room and turned on the TV. That conference room had a panoramic 270 degree view of the Potomac--down past the Watergate/Kennedy Center and up to the Key Bridge. Of course, as we were watching, we saw the second plane on the TV and it was clear that it was not an accident.

I immediately realized the consequences. I grew up in Northern NJ just outside New York in a quaint suburban commuter town. Our next door neighbor worked at the WTC along with a few other people in the neighboorhood, and I knew about 15 other people that worked there as well, including some people that my dad and I played golf with on a regular basis going back just about my whole life. My dad goes through the WTC PATH station in the mornings. I rushed back to my office and tried calling home, but couldn't get through.

I returned to the conference room, and at about that moment, we saw the explosion across the river at the Pentagon and the smoke billowing up over the river. We knew that was the Pentagon and DC was under attack. People in our DC office had spouses/loved ones that worked at the Pentagon, and one of the husbands at the Pentagon called and told his wife that he was OK but to get somewhere safe because other planes were headed towards Washington. I'll never forget the moment of everyone going to our big conference room windows and looking out to see if we could see planes coming. It was totally surreal and for a moment we almost forgot about what was happening in New York.

We watched the coverage as the Towers fell--I was pretty much in disbelief and literally in shock and everyone began hugging each other and quietly crying. I kept trying to call home but never got any answer and started to panic. I remember screaming at the telephone and at nobody in particular that I had to get through. At about 1130, people decided that it was best to go home--we could see hundreds of people walking across the Key Bridge since the Metro was closed. I had driven in that morning, and it took 4 hours to get back to my apartment (I lived about 2 miles from the Pentagon, and the AA 757 passed right over my apartment I'm told). I didn't have a cell phone then, so I couldn't try to call while in the car. That was my biggest fear, that I couldn't talk to my parents and they couldn't talk to me. What I remember most about listening to the radio and sitting in the traffic is just how quiet it was. There wasn't much panic, just kind of a blankness on people's faces, including mine. I'm sure there was plenty of noise all around, but all I remember is silence.

After I got home I finally was able to get through to my family. Thankfully, my dad had had meetings in NJ that morning and hadn't gone into the office that day, and my close high school friends that also passed through the WTC were OK and safe. But our next door neighbor would not come home, neither would 2 other people in my hometown, and neither would 9 other people that were close personal friends of me or my family. My best friend's father was killed at the Pentagon, and another college friend's father was injured there but OK. To this day, it is hard to imagine the personal loss that I've experienced, and the pain experienced by people close to me. I know I haven't really come to terms with it, it's a part of me that I don't delve into much. My friends, family and co-workers were the best and helped me and everyone else get through it.

Was sleeping late after a late night. I keep the phone receiver in another room so it won't roust me, but I heard the soft bleep of my answering machine. I would normally just roll over and continue sleeping and answer it ( or listen to it ) later but for some reason I got up to hear the message. A guy I work with didn't get into details, he just said flatly: "Put the news on, put the news on...you won't believe what just happened". I did and the 1st tower was already down, the 2nd was on fire. We all know the rest. I was angrier than hell and at first wanted to see the whole middle east vaporized, so irrational my 1st reaction.

It was my 1st day off from work as an aircraft mechanic on my "weekend", but when I returned the day after the next, there were airplanes jam packed everywhere on the field ( major hub for my airline ) and for many days it was a real mess. Not flying, so we tried to catch up on MEL's and such while we had the opportunity.

[Edited 2007-09-11 15:58:43]

I found out about the 9/11 attacks on this very forum.  

It was around 5:50 am when I entered Airliners.net's General Aviation forum when I saw the post about an airplane crashing into one of the WTC towers. Needless to say, I immediately turned on the TV and was glued to Fox News Channel until 10:30 pm that very night.  

At work listening to the radio when news started to come in of an aircraft hitting one of the twin towers. Thought it was a light plane.

When the second impact was reported it sounded a lot more serious so I got a tv and watched the horror unfold.

When the first tower collapsed I just couldn't believe it. Our secretary had just gone out of the office and when she came back I struggled to get the words out... "one of the towers has just collapsed." Then the second tower came down....

On a plane on my way to Harrisburg, PA for training for my first airline job....once we landed and I got in the taxi to go to HQ, the news was on the radio. I was supposed to be there for a day--ended up stuck there for four. There are worse things though!

I was home from school, and had just been at a friend's house to borrow a video game.. when I got back home I passed the tv which was turned on showing the WTC but I thought it was a movie I think because I didn't really notice it. Then the friend I had just visited called me and told me to turn on the TV and that was when I realised what had happened, but that was after the second plane hit. I didn't do anything else that day besides watching tv, and it did indeed make me feel very uncomfortable as no one at the time knew who was behind the attack, and because I had never considered terrorism to be any threat really or even thought about it before that.

I was doing exactly what I am doing right now... Working on airplanes !!

May I just say , how much I admire our country ! and the countries around the world who have not cowered or been intimidated by these crazy people.

I have traveled the world over the past 6 years , we have worked on aircraft going to many countries. The countries are growing and prospering despite the threats. People around the world have rejected Bin Laden and his dark vision. They want to live , they want to have stuff ! they want to travel they want to live their dreams.

Bin Laden has failed !

God bless the troops , the firemen , the police and all the security organizations around the world. I am one person who is grateful for their efforts.!

On 9/11 I had dropped off the other half at DTW to catch an AA flight to ORD. I came home and was having coffee when the news of the attacks started to filter in. I called him at the AAdmirals Club at O'hare where the news was on and the information was just being digested.

Long story short, I did a round trip to Chicago from Detroit by car to pick him up.

I arrived in the loop in the late afternoon and it was strangly quiet. We arrived back home in Detroit around 9 or 10PM.

Quoting RayChuang (Reply 29): was glued to Fox News Channel until 10:30 pm that very night. Wow!

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what I found particularily bad on that afternoon and evening was that Swiss radio stations tried to continue their normal programs with jokes and music and happiness, simply ignoring their own news . It was absolutely not appropriate. The restaurants in the afternoon either had CNN on, or one of the German TV stations (suppose ARD) .
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I was a a F/A for American and at JFK ready to leave for London. Of course the flight was cancelled. We were very scared and feared for our fellow employees who were in those planes. I lost a very good friend of mine in Philadelphia.
What a terrible way to die, that goes through my mind time after time. I retired from flying in 2003 and after working as a F/A since 1979 I was always scared to get on the planes after 9/11 but it was my job and I had to do it.

I was in Edinburgh on a business trip. I got a text from my wife (who was in NY on business) when it was all going down and me and the people I was working with immediately switched on CNN. A minute or so later, the second plane hit and I remember us all looking at each other and all realizing at the same time that this was an act of war.

I was due to leave that evening but of course spent four more days in Edinburgh before I could get a flight back to CA. I spent that evening first at EDI looking at some of the widebodies that had been diverted there, then in the pub with some friends.

The thing I remember so clearly in the aftermath was the sense of unity and solidarity on a global scale. We don't have that anymore, but I'll always remember that in the face of tragedy, humanity has the ability to stand together, even if for a moment, no longer consumed by our petty differences.

I was sitting in F on a NW 757 from MSP-BOS. A coworker and I decided to take that Tuesday and go make a day trip to Boston. It was a nice day out, scored F seats, breakfast was good, flight crew was pleasant, and then we started doing circles in the sky around 9am. We landed in DTW, stayed for 3 days then found the last rental car in all of Detroit to drive back to MSP. We went with the clothes on our backs, that was it.

Quoting Dougloid (Reply 38): That afternoon I remember seeing long lines at gas stations-which I found unsettling.

Why would that have been unsettling? People didn't know anythng. Getting a full tank seems to me they were getting prepared for who knows - not a bad idea.

Quoting Dougloid (Reply 38): I seriously considered dragging some asshole out of his SUV and asking him if he understood what had just happened-but I didn't.

Why? Can you elaborate?

Quoting Dougloid (Reply 38): I'm not sure you can really feel what this was all about unless you're American.

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It very swiftly became obvious to people far outside the USA that what had happened would most severely influence other nations. US-Americans in many places are very important tourists, their staying away had enormous impacts in many ways. The breakdown in NorthAtlantic airtravel was THE major factor in the end of Swissair and Sabena. In mid 2002 I could stay in the Ramses Hilton in Cairo, usually a 200$ per room hotel, for just 60$ per night, as that hotel was totally geared for US tourists. Civil aviation wise, in places in Europe and the Arab World it was a setback of 5 years or more.
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True, you think about human lifes lost. But in Europe, people have become used to such losses which percentage-wise were on the same level .
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Quoting ORFflyer (Reply 40): Why would that have been unsettling? People didn't know anythng. Getting a full tank seems to me they were getting prepared for who knows - not a bad idea.

That was the first thing they thought about...not their fellow countrymen, nothing except putting gas in the Explorer. I wanted to slap somebody and ask them if they had any idea what had just happened.

Maybe that was the effect on me.

Well...at this moment (8:39pm South African time) I was probably at home, after having dinner in a restaurant called Il Capo and watching the drama unfolding on TV. I heard about the first strike on the radio at work, then we put the TV on in the office and saw the second strike on CNN. Later my wife and I went for dinner and the restaurant was deathly quiet with everyone watching the TVs.

It still seems unreal.

Quoting Dougloid (Reply 43): That was the first thing they thought about...not their fellow countrymen, nothing except putting gas in the Explorer

Now that's a stretch. Did it occur to you that just maybe they were filling up to go and get their loved ones out of harms way? Maybe they were cops or firemen trying to get to their duty station. Maybe they wanted to fill up in case they had to flee something. Something unknown maybe......

Quoting Dougloid (Reply 43): Maybe that was the effect on me.

Maybe - I think it was damn prudent to fill up. Be it an Explorer, or a Golf.

Had just woken up and showered, got back to my dorm room and signed online. My friend Emily IM'd me, "omg, turn on the tv." I didn't have a tv so I tried to get onto nytimes.com. That didn't work so I went to the 5th floor lounge and turned on the tv. Didn't understand what was going on at first. Charles Gibson, I think, was talking with a woman on the phone who was describing the scene from the Brooklyn Bridge. She started screaming something like, "NO, NO! TURN AWAY!" He asked her what was going on and she told him a plane had just flown into the 2nd tower. He was confused by this and spent a minute trying to sort out the information. Glued to the tv. Watched the first collapse then headed to class. Dropped my books off in class and went into the secretaries' area. They had a small black and white tv. I showed up in time to watch the second collapse. Walked back into class where the class asked what had happened and I told them. Then the professor came in. He was an Iraqi Muslim talking about the peaceful religion (which I truly believe it is). But that was not really the time or the place to have any kind of reasonable discussion on the subject. He canceled the rest of class and we went back to watch tv. I can still remember almost every conversation I had that day. Before going to class, right after I turned on the tv actually, my friend Sarah ran upstairs. She watched out for me since the first time we met in college. She was making sure I was ok and not about to do something stupid. And then it was quiet above the skies of St. Louis other than the Missouri Air National Guard fighters taking off and landing.

Texan

I was coming bakc from a small cigarette break just before class started at school. At first, i didn't really believed the news when I heard it, and even later, I didn't fully understand what really happened until I got back home from school and watched the videos of the attacks and the commentaries on the subject on CNN again. Hell, our school was right next to the US Embassy compound, so indirectly, even we were in danger. The road passing in front of the embassy was closed for days, and a total mess broke out. The worst part for my parents, is that this happened on their wedding anniversary, so they couldn't even celebrate it because of this horrible tragedy.

I'll never forget that day. May all the victims of 9/11 rest in peace.

Senior year of high school. I was getting ready for school when the first (maybe both, I can't really remember) tower was hit; the towers fell shortly after I arrived on campus but before the school day officially started [I was the news producer/station manager for the campus TV 'station' so we were prepping for our morning live show when it happened.]

I remember four things very distinctly about that day,
1) That a week earlier at exactly the same time ("What is it with Tuesdays?", I remember thinking) there had been a high-speed tow truck police persuit that was going around my dad's place.
2) That a relative was soposedly suposed to be on one of the flights but wound up not making it (I can't remember why -- oversleeping, plans changed, something)
3) The PA Announcements at school all day "Teachers are reminded that Televisions SHOULD NOT be on in classrooms...please continue with normal instruction"
4) Watching the news in my English class a firefighter came up behind some talking head, asking her to move several times before grabbing her and saying "Ma'am you need to move. Now.", abruptly ending the live shot.

It's amazing what you remember, isn't it?

I was at school on a computer when I saw the news on the BBC website. I had no idea what the WTC was at that age but it was all over the news and our teachers were talking about it quietly, trying to keep it from us so we all knew it was very serious. I spent the rest of the afternoon looking out the window at all the aircraft flying into LHR, some of them were very low. When I got home we watched it on Sky News for the rest of the night.

I logged into AD.com and all I saw was, "whats happening" from one of the mods, a few minutes later the site was
shut down, so I registered here instead.

I was asleep in bed-didn't hear about it until that afternoon since I didn't turn on the TV or radio until then. Only reason I did that was I wanted to see what was going on before calling my parents to wish them a happy anniversary.

Quoting Torquewrench (Thread starter): Where were you when you heard the news of the terrorist attacks on the United States of America?

I was working at a prison operated on behalf of the Federal Bureau of Prisons as a Corrections Officer. The first thing I remember was when I put on my watch. It displays the date as MM-DD, so on this day it indicated 9-11. I remember thinking to myself "I hope some jackass doesn't start something during my shift, because of the date." My shift started at 0700hrs, so I arrived at the facility at 0646 (mountain time, 0846 eastern). I remember thinking something wasn't right, but dismissed it as just being a bit nervous.

Once my shift began, I was tasked with escort duty. Today I would be escorting an employee from the company that maintains our vending machines. Our first stop was the employee lounge. Non Security staff usually begin arriving about 0730 or so, and typically congregate in the lounge to begin loading up on coffee. The first arrivals had heard about a plane crash in NYC, but didn't seem to worked up about it. When someone mentioned that the Warden (whose office was just down the hall) was watching something about a plane crash, I thought it was odd that he would be watching a movie in his office, especially at this hour. I quickly learned is wasn't a movie. Since I was getting all my information second hand, I really didn't have as clear a picture of what was happening as those who were watching it on live TV. When word circulated that a second aircraft had hit, I knew it had to be part of some sort of attack, but a terrorist attack didn't cross my mind. Nor did the fact that those aircraft had been hijacked.

By the time the vendor and I left the employee lounge (around 0830 local), footage of the second impact was being replayed again and again. I stopped briefly outside the Warden's office to see that. Word of air traffic being grounded was making the rounds in the offices, as well as several aircraft being viewed as potentially hijacked still in the air with unknown intentions.

I continued with my duties as best I could. Working in a prison, you can never let you guard down. You must be keenly aware of what is going on around you, no matter what is going on outside the walls. It was around noon local time that I first had more than a few minutes of time in front of a TV. Each pod in the Inmate Housing Units has a TV. All across the facility, each TV was tuned to either CNN or one of the Spanish language channels (our facility has a large amount of illegals from south of the border). I have never seen the Inmates in my unit so quiet before, or since. There were a few that that would go on about their normal daily activities, but that was it.

When my shift ended at 1500, I looked up at the sky and noted not a single contrail in the sky. I drove past a truck stop, expecting it to be full, as I expected the interstate to be closed. Nothing appeared out of the ordinary. I expected National Guard troops to be patrolling the streets, but did not see them. I expected police on every street corner. I didn't see that, but did notice more than the typical number of patrol cars on the road.

A call to my college was made, to see if classes would be held. The Dean answered the phone, and said everyone at the university was being asked to stay home.

I had the next two days off (Wednesday and Thursday). All I can remember from Tuesday night is watching the news, CNN, MSNBC, CNBC, FNC, and all three local news stations, sitting there in utter disbelief. I don't remember being angry until maybe the next day or so, once the enormity of the situation started to sink in.

Quoting JetJock22 (Reply 22): I can remember how vividly dark the sky was that night.

That also sticks out in my mind. Not only the night of 9-11, but the following few days as well.

was working in Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn about 6-7 miles from ground-zero the whole city was gridlocked i remember taking the side streets to get back home to Bayridge. I could only imagine how backed up the Belt Pkwy was. My wife was stuck in Staten island because they closed down the Verrazano Bridge so I had to go pick my daughter up from daycare and we just waited. I didn't have to be back to work til 2 days later.

I also remember going out on a friday night shortly after with friends we went late at night or a few under the Brooklyn Bridge to the promenade you could smell the burning weeks after it happened. The smell burned my eyes and nose even from farther away but that stench was unforgettable, it was the most surreal thing I have experienced.

One of my most vivid memories of that day was that 30-45 mins after the 1st tower collapsed there was this extremely fine ash that started to rain down on us in Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn I went out of the office to the road where everyone had stopped wherever they standing and were looking up or around one lady said to me I guess were going to war. I remember even from that distance away there was a smell of burning paper being destroyed in an incinerator as if it was

It was very shocking to say the least. the whole city had this eerie feeling for months. I remember taking countless drives on the FDR around Manhattan for my usual scenic drive and starring off at the skyline but there was that empty felling w/o the WTC in view anymore.

I also remember the increased patriotism in NY by mounting the American flag to a plastic flagpole on the cars everywhere it seemed.