Where Were You On 9/11?

[Steve-arino]

Originally Posted by stokes1971

"So many other memories; thousands of "zombies" walking north on Lexington Ave." Zombies? Those were survivors fleeing the disaster.

Not just survivors. Millions of people work in the City. Lexington Ave is a North/South main road. Everyone in the City had left whatever office they were in, no matter where in NYC, and went outside and just knew to go north, away from the WTC.

[stokes1971]

When you said zombies I assumed you were close enough to see the bloodied, crust covered people that were in the area. If they could walk they were directed to go north. I am fully aware of the direction Lex ave runs and how many people were involved in the exodus.

[mr. beaumont]

I was in college...I left for class minutes after the first plane hit, not really knowing the gravity of the situation. It was a beautiful day, I drove to campus with the windows down and music blaring-- Ben Folds' Five's first record, I think.

By the time I arrived on campus the second plane had hit and what was happening was clear. The rest of the day is honestly a blur.

[Talk2Me]

Where was I? Well I'd spent that Friday in the WTC towers. Come that Tuesday I was luckily no longer in the buildings. I was just working in lower Manhattan NYC watching people jump to their deaths to avoid the flames. Not a day I'll soon forget.

[Steve-arino]

Originally Posted by stokes1971

When you said zombies I assumed you were close enough to see the bloodied, crust covered people that were in the area. If they could walk they were directed to go north. I am fully aware of the direction Lex ave runs and how many people were involved in the exodus.

I am truly sorry if I offended you in any way. You were one of the hero's that was actually there helping. I can't thank you enough. I sit here still heartbroken.

[Steve-arino]

Originally Posted by stokes1971

When you said zombies I assumed you were close enough to see the bloodied, crust covered people that were in the area. If they could walk they were directed to go north. I am fully aware of the direction Lex ave runs and how many people were involved in the exodus.

I am truly sorry if I offended you in any way. You seem to be one of the hero's that was actually there helping. I knew a few folks that died that day and one friend that ran down 90 flights of stairs and just made it out in time.

[Glennwillow]

I was driving to work out here on the west coast when the first plane hit. We start work at 07:00. As I came into the office one of my associates told me that one of the towers at the World Trade Center had been hit. We didn't have any TV in the office so we listened to the radio. Then the 2nd plane hit the 2nd tower. You all know the rest.

It was a very bad day, full of deep sadness and anger.

- Glenn

[Earl49]

Anchorage, where I lived at the time. My in-laws were visiting from a cruise ship and it soon became obvious they were not getting back to AZ as expected. They stayed an extra week.

I was working in my basement office when someone called my work number and mentioned the attacks. I first said, "You've been reading too many Tom Clancy novels". No this is real. So I ran upstairs and turned on the TV. My first instinctive reaction was pure anger. "It is time to spin up some missiles and make large sections of the desert into irradiated green glass. We can drill for that oil in fifty years where the rad count goes down again". (Thank God I am not in charge). I am still sad and angry and will NEVER forgive or forget.

I happened to have a noise monitor in place that day near the Anchorage airport, logging data each hour. It was really odd to see the data the next day. Once the FAA shut down all flights that morning, the background sound settled into nighttime levels. There was very little road traffic too. Being in Alaska, having flights grounded was truly weird. There were a number of hunters out in the bush that day, and flying back home in Super Cubs and similar planes, many without radios. So they had no way of knowing -- until the F-15's met them on the way back into town. It was also weird seeing F-15's flying combat air patrols high over the city all day. Elmendorf AFB was on high alert, as was my CAP (Civil Air Patrol) unit. We searched for and turned off several ELT emergency beacons on the ground that day to keep the system clear. It felt odd driving around town in my flight suit all day.

[mr. beaumont]

Originally Posted by Earl49

I happened to have a noise monitor in place that day near the Anchorage airport, logging data each hour.

At the time I lived a few blocks away from Chicago's Midway Airport, in the shadow of the "Orange Line" (elevated public transit trains) and the silence for the next few days is something I'll never forget.

[Earl49]

I often thought about writing up the noise profile that day in a technical paper, but never did.

Similarly, I was walking around an abandoned downtown SF right after the 1989 Loma Prieta / World Series earthquake. My wife worked for the power company and we took the ferry into town as she was a "critical employee". I was her escort / bodyguard. It suddenly dawned on me that buildings with multiples of four floors were damaged, but not those with odd numbers of stories. 4, 8, 12, 16 - yes. 3, 5, 6, 11, etc - no. Something about the frequency, direction, and motion of that earthquake caused certain buildings to go into resonance. I read a paper by a structural engineer several years later about this very topic, so it wasn't just me.

[rllink]

At that time my day job was a police detective. I did thirty years on the police department. I don't think I've revealed that here before. We were working a case and had everything spread out on a table in the briefing room. There was a TV in there and it was going 24/7 on CSPAN or some news station. Three or four of us were engaged in the investigation. So one of the detectives was watching the TV and he said, " They keep showing some airliners over and over flying into a skyscraper somewhere." We all turned to watch. It was crazy, almost unbelievable.

I was also working part time at the municipal airport, so when I got off work I went out there and we watched it on the TV for hours waiting for updates. It was so unbelievable that the only thing that really resonates is that we didn't get any work done that day at either job.

[Gunny]

I was on the rifle range at Camp Lejeune with 210 Marines. Myself and a few other Staff NCOs were in the ready room waiting for our Marines to qualify. They had a TV in the corner tuned to CNN (that was about all they had back then) when the story developed live. It was surreal and thoughts and emotions were swirling. I was 3 months from retirement and had already moved my family to a new state and home. The young Marines on the range were unaware of events until the end of the day. Whole lotta craziness for the next good while.

[Dirk Hofman]

Nothing remarkable for me, I was living in Seattle at the time, I just flipped on the news in the morning and the first tower had already been hit. Assumed terrorism of course, but the second one was still just as much as a shock as I've had watching an event on TV in my lifetime.

Next day my girlfriend at the time was supposed to fly to Peru. That got cancelled of course. I found that instead of talking to her, I kept wanting instead to talk to my ex-girlfriend about it.

That told me a lot. My "ex-girlfriend" has been my wife now for the last 20+ years.

[AmericanEagle]

I was at work in Cambridge Mass. A coworker saw the news of the first hit on his pc and told the rest of the office. We had thought it was maybe a bad accident, until the second plane hit. Then we knew. Someone found a small tv and we started watching. There was chatter that maybe Boston was next as we have two tall buildings: The Prudential Center Tower and the John Hancock Tower. As Boston is right next to Cambridge, we were told to go home. As I was driving home, fighter jets roared over my head. I was in shock, full of sadness and anger.

[M19]

On a flight from MSP to San Francisco for my Mom's Memorial. Plane was diverted to Denver. I had to take a Greyhound bus back home. It was a most surrealistic time in my life.