911

Well, its been 9 years since the attack.   I just thought I'd create a thread to talk about it.  I ask, out of respect for the day and the lives lost on it, that this thread remain serious. 

I was off from work that day.    I woke up after the first plane had hit the world trade center.  My mom called me from her work place to tell me what was going on.   By the time I had turned on the tv, both towers had been hit.  I answer my mom's phone call in my dad's office.  I turn on the tv in  there and remained in his office for the next 2 hours or so.   The images of the towers on fire, of the pentagon on fire,  will forever be burned into my mind.   But the image that really sticks out is the first tower collapsing.   It took a few seconds to hit me.   I had just watched thousands of humans die, live on tv.   It wasn't some movie, it wasn't some tv show.   Thousands had died, live on tv.    I then feared the 2nd tower was going to do the same, I left the room.  I didn't want to see it.   I waited, outside of dads office for a little while.   But I went back in before the second tower fell.  I saw it fall on tv.   It, is also burned into my mind.   After that, I got dressed.   I had my lunch.   I had already scheduled with the red cross to give blood that day.  So, I went out to the blood drive to give blood.  When I got there, the blood drive was packed.    I guess people were looking for a way to help, giving blood was a way to help.    After my father got home from his work place,  I asked him "was this like what was pearl harbor was"? (he was about 7 when the attack on pearl harbor happen)  He said "no, this is worse"  I will never forget his answer to my question.  I was deeply affected by what had happened for days afterwords  For some reason, it had me scared, really scared.  I didn't even know anyone that died in the attacks.

anyway those are my memories of the day. I just thought I'd share.    

edit: please keep conspiracy talk out of of this thread.   Thank you.

I'd gotten off of work that morning at 6 a.m., was sitting in my room of an apartment I shared with by older brother. I was flipping the channels when I saw the news alerts about the first plane hitting the tower. I kept wondering how the hell an airliner could hit the World Trade Center, I actually thought it had to be on purpose. I laid down in bed when I called my girlfriend (now my wife) as we did most mornings. She lived in Waco and was getting ready for her college class, I lived with my brother in an apartment close to where I used to work south of Dallas. We started talking about the plane hitting the tower, because she was watching the news as she was getting ready, and we both happened to be watching Fox News just when the second plane hit. We both sat silent for a moment and I remember exactly what I said, "We're under attack!" We were both in shock, not exactly sure we should believe what we had seen. Finally, she decided to get off the phone so she could go to school, she got there and found they were watching the tv in class, they told her she could stay or go, so she left. I stayed up most of the day watching the news, seeing the towers fall, etc. I had to be at work that night at 6 p.m., so I did sleep from about 2:30p-5p, but it wasn't really sleep. My wife had drove up to my apartment and had gotten in bed with me, we watched together. Of course, I went to work that night and we just crowded around the tv. I remember for several weeks after that, my job was never easier.

I was working for a major insurance company at the time down in Southern England.

September tends to be a more quiet time in the Insurance trade (being on the other side of the spectrum from the hectic end of financial year, where activity becomes chaotic) so it was a rather slow paced day.

The first indication we had that something out of the ordinary was happening just after the lunch break.

They had a large communications centre on the top floor which passed financial information to all the different IFAs and department heads and in the middle of an uncharacteristic flurry of trading chaos they had briefly lost the feed to NY and the IT people were trying to figure out if this was an internal computer problem.

Our group manager who used to work on the IT team was one of the few people to have an external internet feed (dial up remember) and he was the one who passed on the news which he uncovered while trying to figure out the problem upstairs.

Initially there was some confusion as to if it was a bomb or an accidental fire because all we see was the smoke coming from the building (still pictures were all we were getting back then) and people couldn't make out any information about what had started it because we were not able to have the sound on (it had been disabled to reduce office noise). We all remembered the earlier bomb so many of us assumed this was a second attempt.

It then became a morbid game of Chinese whispers as the day progressed, as people clustered close to the internet machines would pass on updates via the internal message boards which sometimes got distorted.

By the time the Pentagon impact was announced stories of planes flying into buildings all over the world were being spread around the building.

Some of our office workers were sincerely expressing worry about being in an office building and many of our workers had friends and former colleagues who worked in the towers and were obviously distressed.

By the time I had got onto the train (filled with office workers passing information down the carriage from radio) and got home the scale of the attack became clear.

The towers became almost like a pair of prayer candles (a side effect of the abstract simplicity of the tower design), it went beyond any morbid fascination or rubber-necking.

It was more like people were willing those fire crews and office workers to safety which made the collapse of the towers all the more terrible.

I had been up to the top of South Tower in the early nineties and my memory of the height and sway of those majestic buildings and the shear scale of them (coupled with working in an office block myself) really brought the plight of the victims home to me.

We had been brought up with stories of the Blitz (the 70th anniversary of which is round the same time as this 9th) and we were very familiar through IRA attacks with acts of terrorism but the Blitz was almost mythical (being passed down from our grandparents) and the IRA attacks though frequent and horrific were not on the same scale. 9/11, was in terms of lives lost two IRA campaigns on one shocking day.

9/11 was a weird day for me , i was visiting a place i was injured in a bomb attack ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shankill_Road_bombing ) 8 years earlier . I was was with my wife this time and we were looking at the comemorative plaque remembering the innocent dead and i was telling her about my experience of what happened on that day. My wife and i were beginning to walk away when people started crowding around a next door shop listing to the radio , and we heard about the first tower coming down , when you hear something like that on the radio it doesnt sound real , to be honest it sounded something like the old War Of The Worlds broadcast from the thirties . After getting into the car in disbelief we turned on the radio and every channel had the attack on their stations , total shock and disbelief , how could this happen ?. By the time i got home the Belfast Telegraph had a picture of the attack on its front page . Every news channel in the U.K. had the attack live on t.v. .

 Thats my experience of that day.

I first thought this was a thread about calling 911 from the title. Doh!

I remember watching TV and my friend rang me and told me to change channel.  I couldn't believe what I was seeing.  It just didn't seem possible.

I was in middle school at the time.  They told us nothing, so I didn't know anything until long after the attacks had actually happened (around 3:00 in the afternoon when I got home, when the attacks had happened at around 7:30 in the morning if I recall correctly).

I remember being very surprised that two airplanes would crash into two buildings, right next to each other.  It didn't occur to me that it was an attack until my parents explained everything to me after I'd spent about an hour watching the planes hit the towers on CNN over ... and over ... and over ... and over ...

I was at work and every body rushed to see that on the boss's TV. I stuck on my desk working. I didn't want to see this neither when it passed on TVs again and the first time I watched those "famous" planes was years after, through the courageous investigations of the victims's famillies (notably four women) who were not satisfied at all with the government & authorities explanations. Their pressure is at the origin of the government's effort made to give this laughable report which obviously tries more to hide any responsabilities than showing evidences. There are too much evidences revealed since then of the interests of powerful men behind this no matter what is still said today, and I can only bow to those people who sacrified their time, skills, and intelligence fighting for Truth.

I was at work listening to sports radio and they cut in a few times before it was clear what was happening.  At some point they switched to a network news feed and the reports starting getting worse and worse.  I called my wife at home (she worked nights back then and was sleeping) and woke her up so she could see it on TV.  I had to wait until that night to see any clips - there was no TV in the office at all.

skyjedi2005 said:

.... and rebuild .....

This is the part which infuriates me the most. After 9 years, we still have not built a successor to the twin towers. Both towers were fully constructed in 6 years. We built the Hoover Dam (Boulder Dam) in five years, the Empire State building in a year and a half, and the Burj Khalifa in five years. Yet, the red tape and bureaucracy has constricted the WTC successor. It is shameful and should be a primary focus of America.

My personal take (and I appreciate the sensitive nature of the situation) would to have rebuilt the towers exactly as they were as soon as possible.

It would have been the ultimate signal to whoever was responsible that whatever they hoped to achieve had failed.

Over here two raised fingers means more than just victory and the two towers reborn would have been the ultimate tribute to the resolve of New Yorkers and defiance of Americans against those who wish to oppress them.

Over here we got more CCTV cameras, pointless and probably counter productive security measures in airports, millions wasted on a scrapped ID cards scheme, de facto militias arresting people for taking photographs in public spaces and involvement in at least one war with people who had nothing to do with the attacks against the will of the countries that make up our Kingdom.

None of this happened when the IRA were shooting and bombing us on a weekly basis, and the few sacrifices to personal freedoms we had to endure when the Nazis were raining hell on our cities for eight months were returned to us immediately.

The whole response to this terrible crime stinks as much as the crime itself.

ferris209 said:

skyjedi2005 said:

.... and rebuild .....

This is the part which infuriates me the most. After 9 years, we still have not built a successor to the twin towers. Both towers were fully constructed in 6 years. We built the Hoover Dam (Boulder Dam) in five years, the Empire State building in a year and a half, and the Burj Khalifa in five years. Yet, the red tape and bureaucracy has constricted the WTC successor. It is shameful and should be a primary focus of America.

why is it so important to you to have successor at ground zero?   Why not just leave the ground as is? 

You said it, C3PX.  And now all this bullshit going on surrounding the mosque ... it seems every year I get more and more fed up with my country's bullshit.

On September 11, 2001 or nation reeled at the sight of a true tragedy, and that brought us together.  For the next few months, it seemed that everyone was truly proud to be an American.  I know I was.

But I'm not anymore.  And I haven't been for quite some time.

C3PX said:

  They did break our spirits, the towers did stay down, and their archaic ways succeeded in ways I would have never imagined possible at the time.

in what ways do you think they've succeeded.

C3PX said:

They are the clear victors in all of this, and we have done just slightly more than nothing to rain on their parade.

what do you think we should have done to rain on their Parade?   I'd love to get Bin Laden, but it seems the only way to do that would be to invade Pakistan.   Invading Pakistan, a country with nuclear weapons, could be disastrous.  

ChainsawAsh said:

But I'm not anymore.  And I haven't been for quite some time.

it is getting more and more difficult.  

C3PX said:I was expecting something of even greater magnitude to be hitting any day (as I am once again at this very moment),

what are you expecting?

C3PX said:

and was actually fairly relieved as the death toll continued to shrink. It could have been a lot worse.

3000 is not what I call a small death toll.  

C3PX said:

I got angry emails from my old friends back home,

if its not too personal, why were they angry at you?

C3PX said:

... This wasn't our first terror attack from the now infamous Al Qaeda.

I can't believe what I'm reading here... I haven't seen the least evidence of it.

As further reply though I could only suggest people taking a look at the courageous and serious investigation work(s) I have mentioned in my first post above. Not something I'd discuss here (due to my poor language, and also due to the original purpose of this site). I'm only throwing the bottle.