Where were you?
September 11, 2001. Most people will remember where they were when they first heard about the attacks on America.
Maybe you were listening to the radio? Perhaps you saw the live pictures on the television as fires raged in the Twin Towers after the attack on New York? Wherever you were, whatever you were doing, we'd like to hear from you.
On Five LIve Breakfast we are planning a special programme for the morning on September 11, 2006. Five years on we are keen to hear people's stories about that day - about how you heard the news, how you reacted and what you think about those events now.
It could be that you knew people working in New York, Washington or Philadelphia that day. Perhaps you were visiting the United States - or perhaps you live in America and want to tell us your story?
We'll be featuring some of your stories on the programme on September 11 - you can leave a comment here or email us at breakfast@bbc.co.uk
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Comments
I well remember Simon Mayo breaking the news of the first "explosion at the WTC" (as it was initially reported) at around 1:50pm our time, and the vivid descriptions of what was being shown on TV. The broadcast was I believe Simon's finest work on Five Live, and some of Five Live's finest output fullstop. The return of programmes to ground zero in NYC over the past four anniversaries have also been handled with great skill. I heard the traumatic news five years ago first on Five Live, driving somewhere along the M1. Well done for still being there with the best radio breaking news service anywhere.
I was at work, we have a number of websites, one of our consultants was talking to a man in New York who told him that a plane had just hit the WTC tower. He told us because the man he was talking to ended the call suddenly. We all went to the AOL website and saw the second tower hit LIVE on our screens. The office went quiet and we all sat in disbelief, why would anybody do that?? The world changed that day and will never be the same again!!!!
I was at work. I found about the 911 Attack from another employee. I did not believe it. I saw the TV. My wife called me on the beeper and we talked. My wife stated that she would pick up our duaghter from school [which she did]. I also reestablished contacts with people in New York [Family and Friends] after a long absence. They told me that they were OK. Afterwards, I left work to spend time with my wife and daughter.
On the Short Wave Radio, I heard a debate from A West Virginia Radion Station. In this debate there was a Republican, Democrat, and Libertarian Politician. The Republican and Democrat stated that "USA should have a government like Libya, Cuba so that the terrorist question should be resolved" The Applause was great. The Libertarian Politician stated "We should abide by the Constitution". There were boos. The Republican and Democratic Politicians with heavy applause in the background suggested: "We must flush our Constitution down the toilet".
I had just returned from a trip to NYC in August and had only been back in school at the University of the South in Tennessee for about 2 weeks.
I was walking back from a philosophy class when I heard someone crying. As I was passing by a dorm, I looked up and saw maybe twenty people crowded into the second story commons room and they were all crying and standing there with a look of utter shock on their faces.
Before I could even begin to fully take this scene in and try and find out what was going on, I noticed students running to the chapel located on campus.
I then began sprinting towards my dorm completely ignorant of what was going on but knowing it could not be good.
I arrived in my room to find my three roommates crowded around the TV and when I asked what was going on they told me a plane had accidentally hit the WTC. I coyly remarked with something to the effect of come on, what's really going on when the second plane hit.
I suddenly felt like the world had become a much bleaker place. Everything was in slow motion and I immediately called my girlfriend to see if her dad was ok (he had an office 4 blocks from the WTC).
Everyone I knew felt really apprehensive in the days following the attack. Tennessee is far from NYC but the kinship that wasn't always so noticeable in the time before the attacks was instantly emblazoned on the heart of all Americans. We knew we had suffered a life-changing wound and hoped that it was over, though no one was quite sure no matter what kind of front they put up.
I work next door to the White House. The Pentagon is only a few miles away across the Potomac river.
On 9/11, the reports of the towers being struck and the south tower collapsing were known to us via the internet. However, once the tower collapsed, the internet just froze. So, though we were in DC, we had no idea of what was happening at the pentagon. We knew something had happened when an explosion (what I have come to learn was a secondary explosion from the crash at the pentagon) shook our office windows. When we heard the blast, our Office Director told us to get out of the building.
Outside was chaos. The police had closed the roads to traffic. People were talking into cell phones that didn't work. Parents held children snatched from near-by day care centers. Meanwhile, the Secret Service Agents were emerging from the White House and blocking off the area around the White House. I remember thinking it was so strange to see hundreds and hundreds of people walking down the middle of 14th street.
It was a long walk back to my home north of Georgetown, so I went with my co-worker to his condo in the Dupont Circle neighborhood. On the way there, we learned from others that the Pentagon had been struck. We reached his place and went to the roof of his building to see if we could get a glimpse of what was going on. When we reached the roof, there was a man kneeling in prayer in the direction of the Pentagon. Over the rooftops, we could see the black smoke rising from across the river.
for once i didn't have the radio on, but very shortly after the first plane went in my husband phoned me from work to tell me to put the telly on. i then sat and watched it all happen. my four year old daughter was playing. oblivious, thank god. when the second plane went in i was so shocked. as it went on i just went numb. i had been to new york about five years before but could never imagine such horrific scenes. when the first tower went down my dad phoned and just said "did you see that?" what more was there to say. that night i had arranged to go to the pub to watch the arsenal game. i went but, for once, i didn't care. it didn't matter anymore.
in the five years since, september 11th has been trotted out as a catchphrase by bush and his cronies to excuse their attacks on all "freedom haters". they have given it iconic status. many of my fellow lefties use the term september 11th with a snear in their voices as though it was just some george bush dreamt up event. i will never forget that day and when anyone mention sept 11th to me it still conjours up the image of all that human devastation and carnage. all those mums, dads, brothers, sisters, husband and wives that had their lives ripped from them. i know it's a cliche but i am now off to hug my kids that bit tighter and hope like hell that i never have to witness such traumatic events again.
Hello, I was doing my studies at Columbia University (New York) at that time. I happened to witness this (see below the story). I also have some pictures (they are available here). Actually, this story is accompanied by these pictures. A year after 9/11 in collaboration with US Consulate General in Yekaterinburg (Russia) I orginixed an exhibition to tell the people about this horror.
Anton Burkov
PhD candidate in law
Wolfson College
University of Cambridge
Down Broadway toward…
or
The Tragic Events through the Eyes of a Russian Volunteer
Where do people go when they visit New York? – To watch the city from the top of the 110-storey twin towers of the World Trade Center (WTC). So, on August 25 I too went and took pictures of New York, as well as some gorgeous pictures of the “twins,” from the incredible height. I finished the same film on September 11, with photographs of the terrifying ruins.
I did not see this “movie”…
September 11th. Morning.
My “temporary home” is located in Manhattan close to the Columbia University Morningside campus – a two-hour walk away from the WTC, as I was to learn. As usual, at 9:30 my class started at the university. After the lecture my German classmate Andrea came over and in an emotional tone described a scenario in which planes attacked the WTC. I answered, apologizing that I had not been watching TV the previous evening, and therefore could not share my impressions of the film.
Ten minutes later I understood that she was not speaking about a film, but about the actual events taking place in New York this morning. I began receiving emails from Russia that the WTC had collapsed.
What’s happening?
Noon. Classes at Columbia University are cancelled. All students are asked to call home and say that they are okay.
1:00 p.m. I could not just sit around watching the news. And it was hard to get any information from the web: the web servers were constantly overloaded and kept giving me the message “web page unavailable”. I put on my shorts and sandals, grabbed my backpack, my camera, and my tape recorder - which I usually use to make sense of my lectures – and went down Broadway toward the WTC. The The only thing that reveals that something unusual has happened are the faces of confused New Yorkers and the traffic jam on Broadway in the uptown direction. The lane in the opposite direction is absolutely empty. I could take the subway or the bus downtown, but I chose to walk in order to be able to see what is going on.
Occasionally I see a line in front of a pay phone.
On the way I am listening to my pocket radio. One unusual expression keeps confusing me: “… where the World Trade Center was… was… was….” What does that mean – “was”?
88th Street: all is peaceful. Only a single fire engine makes a turn in the downtown direction.
A military plane flies above with a roar. The expression of fear on the face of a woman near me tells that she thinks there will be another attack. A terrifying thought.
73rd Street. The same silence as before.
Later on: two more military planes.
61st Street. I am approaching the first skyscrapers. Silence.
I’m listening to my pocket radio again – they are asking doctors and nurses to come to the ground zero. Another military plane flies by above the top of the skyscraper. The loud sound echoing from one building to the other evokes the feeling of the possibility of a new attack. This explains the attentive glances of people walking by. But I think nobody really believes yet what has happened. No, this is not real; it is just the nation-wide advertisement of the latest “Independence Day” thriller!? It is impossible to perceive the events as reality, because as far as 70 blocks from the site life still remains the same.
50th Street. In the distance, between the tops of the skyscrapers, only a small cloud, looking like a rain cloud, disturbs the image of an otherwise clear blue sky. But everyone understands that this is not just another rain cloud.
Military planes fly overhead.
44th Street. There are traffic jams in all directions.
43rd Street. The first police unit. People ask questions. A policeman is directing the traffic – the traffic lights cannot handle such large number of cars.
42nd Street. I am injured! I bumped into a woman, while watching the skyscrapers. Nothing happened to the woman.
2:55 p.m. The streets are not closed off, but nobody is going in the direction of downtown. Again, all is quiet.
28th Street. Nothing, except the “cloud,” reminds me of the ongoing events.
27th Street. All the shops are closed, with their blinds drawn.
20th Street. The “cloud” has turned into a dark blue mass of smoke. And so weird: something is glittering all over it, like camera flashes. What is it?
13th Street – The first doctor arrives.
8th Street. I am at the park. Again all is peaceful. But the calm puzzles me. People are just sitting around, talking, drinking soda in the sun, watching the fountain, and occasionally turning their heads… toward the mass of smoke – as if watching a new thriller being advertised nation-wide at this moment. How diverse this city is! Or maybe they actually do not realize what is happening and think they are watching a drive-in movie. Less than a mile away thousands of people have died, but here everything and everyone is are unaffected. It seems as if this happened not in Manhattan, but somewhere else, in another country, far away.
I keep walking. I’m facing a police car that has just come from “ground zero.” It is covered by inches of dust and concrete debris. No, it is not a movie. It is reality. But what is happening there?
In front of the International Trade Court building, people are making stretchers. People are crowding the plaza – they are looking for volunteer work. All the policemen are wearing masks. And after 5 minutes I understood why. I’m looking down at the ground. It is covered by dust and concrete debris. It is impossible to breathe without a special mask. I’m feeling the taste of concrete. It is crunching in my teeth. I take off my shirt to use it as a makeshift mask. I can breathe now. In the dust and concrete debris there are a lot of papers, documents and pictures. Is it the last day of Pompeii? What is going on here? Is it nuclear winter?!
“Winter” in Downtown
Gray dust and concrete debris are everywhere. Roads, cars, everything is covered by heavy gray August “snow”.
At the Brooklyn Bridge there is a police barricade.
“Snow” is everywhere: in my hair, eyes, nose, and ears. Now I understand what was flashing in the dark blue mass of smoke – it was “concrete snow”. Everything is gray. The air is heavy with debris, which is dangerous for the lungs. It does not settle because of the strong wind.
Close to Brooklyn Bridge there are a lot of policemen and fire brigade. I’m going with a volunteer group. Signs requesting blood donations are everywhere.
Everyone was given a special mask. On one street the concrete debris is mixed with water. It is becoming difficult to breathe even through the mask.
This is winter, 100 degrees Fahrenheit, with “concrete snow”. And smoke. “Snow” scrapes my camera’s lens.
On the famous Wall Street there is no movement. I’m in sandals and shorts. I’m gray-haired because of the ash and dust.
There are 15 of us.
So weird! In the shop's doors there is a homeless man sleeping peacefully as usual. We are asking him “Are you alright?” Yes, he is fine.
There are 2 blocks until “ground zero.” We can see only a wall of dust and ash. What is there behind the “wall”? We are entering the darkness. Winter and darkness. Suddenly an abandoned coca-cola truck appeared. We are at the epicenter – mountains of debris, glass fragments and crushed cars.
“One Liberty Plaza”
The time is 4 p.m. Our volunteer team is on the ground floor of the “One Liberty Plaza” building where the emergency hospital is located. I remember that two weeks ago very close to “One Liberty Plaza” I was trying to photograph the “twins”. It was incredibly difficult because of the unbelievable height. Two weeks back I did it.
There are so many rescue workers harmed because of dust and exhaustion. Dust blinds them – there are not enough protective glasses. We are put to work making eyewash. The rescue workers are coming by themselves; others are helping some of them. They are placed in the office chairs. We use droppers with water. Water, napkin and medicine drops – it takes only one minute. Then they go back to fight. Doctors are taking the pulse of those who have badly suffered from smoke and giving them oxygen. During these medical procedures cell phones are ringing - relatives are worrying. They hear only very short answers – “I’m okay, don’t worry, I got to go.”
Suddenly we hear a scream, “Leave the building” – a fire alarm has rung. Evacuation begins. Five minutes later we got the command “Stop evacuation” – the fire was stopped.
It is getting absolutely dark. Emergency lights work from gas generators. Powered floodlight projectors light the site. The rescue work doesn’t stop even for a minute.
Against whom was This Crime Committed?
I have become acquainted with our volunteer team. They are the guests of the city. We have called our team an “International Team”. I have remembered only some of the names and eyes, which were lit with willingness to help – the faces were covered by masks: Nelly and Din from England, Kelly from Scotland, Boris from Germany… Someone came to New York for a vacation, someone to study. Here is the question then: Against which country and its citizens was this crime committed? New York is a multinational city where people from all over the world live. The WTC is an “Open for public” building. This is a crime committed not only against American citizens but also against the people of the world. This is a crime against all of us. This is a crime against Nelly and Din from England, Kelly from Scotland, Boris from Germany… which could have been “here” at the time of the attack (as the city’s guest) but came “here” 7 hours after the WTC collapse (as volunteers).
No water. On the way to get water we saw rats leaving “One Liberty Plaza”. There are tons of them. Thoughts – “A sinking ship? Will one more building collapse?”
The concrete debris mixed with the water from fire hoses becomes a heavy mass. I realized even before that that I had made a mistake by wearing sandals.
5:00 in the morning – I’m dead tired. Legs are hurting. Newcomers are replacing us – we call them “fresh”. The ground floor is crowded with firefighters. We are trying to find a place to sleep on the higher floors. On the next floor there is an expensive clothing boutique. But it doesn’t matter now. We just want to sleep. Everything in the shop is dusty because all the windows are broken. Without caring about the prices of the items, which are $ 400 each, I take three topcoats and drop them into the dust. It will be my bed for tonight. Falling asleep in a moment. I’ve never slept on such an expensive bed before. I have just had an opportunity to remove my mask.
September 12th, 8:00 in the morning. Dawn. The fire at “ground zero” is still raging. I’m watching the site through the broken window and… Where are the awe-inspiring “twins”? Nothing is there…only debris, broken columns, and the armature, which used to serve as a decoration for the building. The first “twin” is ruined completely. Some burned levels are all that remain of the second “twin.”
Anton Burkov
Visiting Scholar of Columbia University School of Law (Citizen of Russia, Yekaterinburg-city) Manhattan, New York, USA
September 2001
This story in Russian here
I was in Bradford, West Yorkshire and at work. One of my colleagues always had the BBC site open and all of a sudden he just said (in a high pitched unreal voice)'A plane has just crashed into the twin towers, I bet its been hijacked'. We all gathered around his desk to see what was going on and then we saw the next one. The whole building was in silence, shock...what an awful day.
I was at work at The Metropolitan Museum of Art the morning of 9/11. My husband, whose office was just blocks away from the WTC (and which was visible from his windows), called my office just moments after the second plane hit. He and his entire office were in complete shock over what they had just witnessed, and unsure about how safe they were. Shortly after this, the director of the Museum ordered an evacuation of the building, and I lost touch with my husband.
Unlike the majority of inhabitants in the city, we had a plan in place in the event of moments such as this, to meet at a friend's flat in case of an emergency. After many hours of walking, listening to jetfighters fly low overhead, quarreling with law enforcement to go beyond the police line that was erected along 14th Street, and winding my way through a circuitous route which actually took me very close to Ground Zero, I found my husband at our friend's flat, hugged him, and refused to let him go. We shed heavy tears on our 3-hour trip back to our flat in Queens that evening, after the city restored partial train service to the boroughs. I learned much later that he had witnessed the second impact, watched people jump from the buildings, and saw the buildings fall.
We have since left NYC, to continue our healing, and to continue piecing our lives back together. We are still unable to view images of that day without bursting into tears, and still suffer panic attacks when we hear and see jetfighers in the sky. We have no plans to see the recent string of films about that day. It is too soon, and there may never be a "right" time to see them. It has permanently changed our lives, and has spurred on both of us to follow long dormant dreams, and experience things in our lives we had normally taken for granted. And we have expressed our appreciation for each other every day since 11 September 2001.
I was at work as a Finance Director of a company located at a place that seemed like a million miles from New York City (South Manchester).
I was keen; an early-bird who often got into the office at around 06:30. Consequently I had developed a good relationship with the security guard (a nice guy called Terry), who let me in each morning and always had a word about the previous night's football or some other "chat" topic...
I was fortunate to have the only television in the building in my office, with the excuse of keeping track of exchange rates (which I never did!).
On the morning of the 11th September 2001 Terry "crashed" into my office (in itself unusual; we only really saw each other at the beginning and end of a long day)and said that the radio had reported an aircraft had hit the World Trade Centre and could he watch it on TV...
Irritated at being disturbed but a bit surprised and intrigued by the news, I reluctantly agreed and turned on the TV... and will never forget the absolute chill that I felt with what I saw... smoke and flames billowing from Tower 1. I had been to the WTC on several occasions and knew it well. I also knew immediately that this could not have been an accident, as the TV seemed to be indicating at the time, and that everyone in the tower was in mortal danger.
By now a further collection of colleagues was beginning to build-up but I was oblivious to this, with my mind racing as to who? what? why? this could be happening. Also, were my American friends safe?... To me it was obvious immediately that this was going to directly and indirectly impact a lot of people...
Then, more fear as the second aircraft hit Tower 2.... The gasps the expletives, the silence... What the hell was happening? I was absolutely numb. I had been in a car-crash a few years earlier and, in hindsight, I can now say that the feeling was similar...
Work was completely forgotten as by now most of the occupants of the office stood in my room (very crammed by now) in a hushed silence. Further chills, gasps, expletives as each Tower collapsed. The group debated loss of life, with estimates ranging from 5,000 to 25,000 (fortunately all over-estimated). One guy mentioned several terrorist groups of whom, in my ignorance, I hadn't heard. He got it right before the TV said it...
As the day moved on I felt a complete solidarity with the Americans, one that was strong anyway but never as strong. I wrote e-mails to every Amercian I knew sending regrets; seems ridiculous now but I felt as if I had to do something to show I was on their side... This was not just an attack on the people in the WTC or America it was an attack on civilisation generally.
5-years later I still remind myself how I felt on this day to help me through the numerous negative implications for us all, for which I have a strong disregard;
- The awful (doesn't seem a strong enough word)Iraq and, more generally, Middle East situation;
- The inconvenience that I regularly encounter at airports;
- The potential introduction of ID cards; etc, etc....
The World changed irreperably that day. We now live in very, very dangerous times (much worse than when I was "growing up" in the 70's and 80's and goodness knows these seemed bad enough at the time with the constant threat of the "mushroom cloud"). What happened in NYC on 9/11 will never be forgotten and must never happen again...
Finally, the World seemed a much smaller place by the end of 9/11. South Manchester no longer seemed that far from NYC...
On 9/11 2001 I was on the MSA Euroclassic run in my 1969 Corvette, going up the Stelvio pass which has about 100 hairpins. We got to the top which is at 10,000 ft for lunch and is obviously a winter sports place later in the year we heard the first slightly confused reports about the World Trade Centre. Coming down the other side into Trento in Italy by the time we got to the hotel there were the staggering films of the planes and the buildings collapsing on local TV in the hotel bar. Not speaking Italian I had to wait for the weekend back in the UK to find out the full story.
I was alone at work when a friend rang and asked if I had seen the news. I said I hadn't and she told me some planes had hit the world trade centre and it was on all the tv channels. She told me it was that start of World War III. I rushed to a nearby tv and saw the second tower collapse. My stomach turned and all i could think was "Did everyone get out?" I couldn't comprehend that there were people still in there.
Not long after I had to go and run an after-school club. The children were aware something had happened but they didn't really know what. For the sake of the children we had to just try to carry on as normal. When the parents came to collect the children they were visably shaken. I remember speaking to one parent by the door when a plane flew overhead. We both looked up to the sky and I know we both thought the same thing. We didn't say a word - we just looked at each other.
My wife (Kate) and I were in Paphos, Cyprus, for a week’s holiday to celebrate our wedding anniversary, which fell on 12th September 2001.
We had spent the day relaxing on the beach and had come back to our room to shower and freshen up before going out for a meal. As was usually the case, we flicked on the TV and Kate was half watching it as I made us a coffee.
The TV in our room seemed to have a default channel setting of a Greek/Cypriot station when it was first turned on and I glanced up a couple of times as normally, Kate or I would immediately tune in to one of the English or American channels as soon as it came on. I was aware that the TV channel hadn’t been changed and asked Kate what she was watching. She replied that some skyscraper was on fire – I now looked properly at the TV for the 1st time and remarked that it looked like the WTC but it couldn’t be, as there was only 1 of them – it was at this point that we flicked onto CNN and saw footage of the whole story.
The first thing we saw was the 2nd plane hitting the South Tower and then the South Tower collapsing – this was obviously a recording of what had previously occurred. We then watched in stunned silence as the North Tower collapsed; to this day, I don’t know whether we saw this live or whether this too was a recording.
Obviously, the whole terrible event must have seemed surreal to everyone watching it unfold on TV, but for us there was a weird extra dimension of being on holiday and having nothing ‘normal’ to grasp onto to help put these catastrophic events into a realistic context.
I remember standing at a taxi rank later that evening and listening to other Brits discussing the attacks and for the first time hearing the name ‘Osama Bin Laden’ as the person most likely responsible. I like to think of myself as someone who is reasonably au fait with current events, but this was the first time I’d ever consciously heard the name – which seems incredible (to me) now.
I was in the yearly "Business lan Meeting" for my hotel bases at Manchester Airport. We had a call from our GM's wife telling him what was happening. We watched what was going on and the business stratergy changed in a big way...
I first heard the news at work when someone heard the news on the radio. We did not pay too much attention at first as we thought it was just an accident. We did not realised something bad was happening until the second plane hit that we realised that someone was deliberately flying in to the World trade centre. We were stunned and crowded round a television set we had found to see what was going on. My first reaction was shock and I instinctively phoned home to talk to my parents to see if they had heard the news. No much work was done that afternoon as we awaited further developments and the office was very quiet and sombre.
At work, in DC, in a government building, being evacuated, quite scary......a lot of us Brits went to the pub to watch the coverage on TV.
I was working on a construction site in Hoboken New Jersey right across from the Twin Towers when the first plane hit I was on the phone to my brother who was in the Bahamas. I was convinced they were filming a movie and exclaimed to him that Hollywood was at it again. This was of course until one of the guys on the site told me what was happening.
We spen the next two hours watching the entire events take place including the second plane slam into the other tower. With in hours we were doing whatever we could to volunteer doing whatever we could to help.
I was at a funeral for a work colleague.
Blissfully unaware of the catstrophe and lost in my own sadness, I left the church to Sinatra singing "New York New York" - this had been chosen because of a really memorable visit a few months earlier and the family planned to return.
I didn't know anything of the tragedy until my return to the office.What was already a grey day took another emotional twist.
The media coverage that evening was extraordinary.
The tune New York New York stayed with me for several days.
I am a market research area manager & I was running a hall test in a hotel on Princes Street in Edinburgh. We had a room full of respondents being interviewed when one of the interviewers received a call on her mobile from her daughter in America. The line wasn't clear & the interviewer told us all that a train had crashed into one of the Twin Towers. It caused a stir but it didn't seem that important at the time. It wasn't until I got into my car to drive home in the afternoon that I heard on Radio 5 what had really happened but it just didn't seem possible & then I saw the television pictures & I realised what a world changing event had taken place.
My husband was on business in Portugal and called me to tell me to put the TV on. I was in Oxfordshire with our then 3 year old twins and watched the second plane hit with my husband on the phone and my son asking me to change the channel to Bob the Builder. He won the fight so I went upstairs to listen to the story unfold on Five Live while he watched Bob the Builder and my daughter enjoyed her nap.
My parents were on holiday in Canada about to travel to Chicago and my best friend and her husband were in New York on honeymoon.
A day that I will never ever forget.
Simone
Essex
I was in the back of a taxi, going from Lyons airport to Grenoble. The taxi had tv in it, and I couldn't work out what was happening for a while. When I got to the hotel, the people I was meeting with were mainly Americans, in France for three days, and all were really upset. Our 3-day meeting went ahead, but most people weren't concentrating. None of them knew how to get home, and one or two were terrified at the thought of getting on a plane.
I work for a Travel company and i recieved a call from a colleague that a "small plane had hit the towers" I switched on the TV fully expecting to see New York shrouded in fog as I assumed the only way a plane would hit something that big would be if fog. From the moment I saw the crystal clear blue sky I knew something was very wrong and then the secound plane hit and we all knew. I felt helpless, I should be doing something making calls or arranging seats to bring people home, but all i could do was watch. It struck me a while later that not 1 phone in our offices had rang for hours everyone just watched in horror. When the towers fell. I could not comprehend how many people would still be in the building. I thought they'd all be out, surely there must be an escape plan "everyone out in 20 minutes" i'd assumed All through the evening I watched the news channels and when to bed knowing the world had changed forever.
At around 8:20am on 9/11 I was walking down the West Side Highway, from 14th.(NYC) Street toward home lugging a large peice of butcher block back to my Studio. I looked down town and saw smoke coming from one of the towers, thinking is that smoke coming from the World Trade Center ?. I rushed back home, running into my studio shouting to my girlfriend, there's smoke coming from the towers. We turned on the TV, to see what was happening, the reports were sketchy, nobody at the time seemed to know what was going on. We ran up to our roof, were our neighbor was looking downtown toward the towers, more smoke was coming from the tower. Then we saw another explosion come from the second tower, Rushed downstairs to see what the local news was making of what was happening. Then things started to become clearer. They repeated what looked like a large plane flying into the 2nd. tower.
The following week NY became a very quiet place, Security zones being set up from 14th. Street to downtown. People seemed stunned and dazed, everyone wanted to help but felt helpless. The hospitals were overwhelmed with donations for blood. But the strange absence of casualties was obvious. Doctors and emergency staff just waiting for the injured to appear and they never arrived. It was very quiet except for the occasional siren from fire engines and police cars. The following week the city seemed stunned and many people started to congregate in large groups on the West Side Highway, cheering the rescue workers as the came and went from ground zero.
I was driving in Northampton,I was listening to radio five live ( as I always do between calls), I remember Simon Mayo saying we have reports of a light aircraft hitting the wtc, at the time it didnt seem that significate, I remember him saying something like how can you not miss the WTC, the radio programme carried on as usual if I remember, then he said thats strange we have reports of another plane hitting the wtc, thats when it all started with me, the whole events, I can remember everyone ringing everyone, saying it's like a movie, I could'nt see anything as I was still on the road, I dropped in on a supplier and the factory was at a standstill, everyone was around the tv, I remember everyones faces, when the first biulding collapsed I remember speaking to Ben, "Shit, what's America going to do"
I was in a French lesson at the time. The Spanish teacher came in from next door and said that there had been a major disaster in America with thousands of people killed. After the lesson ended I went to my bus and the bus driver told me that the Pentagon was on fire and that planes had hit the twin towers. At the time it did not click that the twin towers were the World Trade Centre's which I had stood on top of just 18 months earlier. It was not until I got home that I realised the true extent of what had happened. I just sat down on the carpet with my coat and bag still on, watching in horror as the events were unfolding. What hit me the most was that on that day there were tourists standing on top of that building, the same as I had 18 months earlier, that had lost their lives. It was a day that I will never forget.
I was in the sacristy of my church, the Cathedral Basilica of Saint Augustine, in the tiny town of St. Augustine, Florida. I was preparing to preside over a mid-morning funeral. Our sacristan told me, "A plane ran into the World Trade Tower." No big deal to me at the time, as (a) the image I had was of the tiny little planes that occasionally do run into the big towers, incl the Empre State Building and (b) I was really, really focused on the funeral, the decedant (an old friend), the homily for the Mass, etc. As we finished up the Mass and prepared to go to the cemetery, the same sacristan, this time a little shaky, told me, "A second plane crashed into the second tower. They were both big commercial craft. And there's been a plane crash into the Pentagon. And a plane crashed in Pennsylvania. The people on TV say we are under attack." I still was very much "compos mentis": I mean, we had a burial to do, and the hearse was waiting. Only when I returned from the burial, when I entered our quiet church at about noon, and I saw a church full of people, alone or in little groups of two and three, on their knees and in prayer, did I catch on that this was "something big." As I walked up a side aisle to return the funeral book and the vestment to the sacristy, a friend -- a very solid citizen who always had everything under control -- grabbed my arm. There were tears in his eyes. "Pray for our country, Father," he said. "I think we are at war."
I was working that day, five years ago, and always have that clear memory of not quite being able to understand the scale of such an attack. I had heard the details through a colleague, new how iconic the Twin Towers were, and it wasn't until I got home that the magnitude of the attacks became clear.
Having only visited NYC after the collapse of the Twin Towers, I still can't imagine what effect this had on New Yorkers, but my heart goes out to them all on this anniversary.
I was on holiday in Blackpool at the time and all I could think of was this, This will stir up a hornets nest and that Al Quaida was awaking a giant from it's sleep and that giant was America and that we will feel the effects for years to come. On a more emotional level I felt and still feel very sorry for the men, women and and children who lost loved ones 5 years ago, also for the survivours I feel that some of them might never get over the pain of surviving the attack and yet others didn't.
I send my best wishes and condolences to the the survivours and those that are left behind.
Emlyn
I work from home.
I was working upstairs when I heard my wife screaming "Oh my God! Oh my God!"
I went downstairs and she was watching
BBC News 24 having been listening to the radio a few minutes earlier. The first plane had hit and the fire was raging.
By the time the second plane hit and the speculation moved from an accident to an act of terrorism we both began to cry.
Why I can't explain, but we shared a good weep for about half an hour before we came down back to pure disbelief.... and horror.
My memory of 9/11.
When people ask where were you on Sept. 11th. I remember quite vividly.
I had arrived in Washington with my wife at about midnight on Sept. 9th.for a two week
vacation.
The vacation plan was for three days sightseeing in Washington, then a drive to Harrisonburg, Va. to join the Skyline Drive at Waynesboro, taking a leisurely drive over the Blue Ridge Mountains. Then to carry on to Lancaster County, Pa. in order to visit the Armish community. Drive to New York for 3/4 days doing the usual touristy things Statue of Liberty, World Trade Center, Empire State Building, Times Square, Broadway, Central Park and then drive back to Washington for the final few days before catching the flight back to UK.
That was the plan, how different reality is.
For both of us this was our first visit to Washington, so early on the 10th Sept. we called at the Visitors Center in Pentagon City where the staff gave us directions and instructions of the best way to view all the sights of Washington, this included a parking voucher for the day. We managed to get around by Metro, bus, and on foot to most of the central sights and thoroughly enjoyed the day and marvelled at what a beautiful city Washington is.
On the 11th Sept. we drove into Washington with the morning traffic, looking for the turn for Pentagon City in order to park at the Visitor Center again. I turned off the freeway only to discover that I was now in the car parking area for the Pentagon itself. This was not the exit for Pentagon City, I drove around the car park area to find the exit back onto the freeway. As we drove back onto the freeway a passenger aircraft went past at high speed and at too steep an angle for landing, but at that moment, what I had witnessed did not make any sense, I then turned off the freeway for Pentagon City. Off the freeway we approached an intersection with stop lights, some guy was running up the middle of the road waving his arms, shouting and pointing behind us. My first reaction was that I must be on the wrong side of the road or that we were travelling the wrong way in a one way system, then, across the stop lights came the fire truck from the Pentagon City fire house, at this moment it all began to make some kind of sense. I turned to my and wife and can remember saying to her that the aircraft I had just seen must have come down. We decided that we should move out of the area as being strangers we would probably get in the way of the emergency services. We now turned to go back up to the freeway to head into central Washington, only to be confronted with a view of the Pentagon with the tell-tale column of thick black acrid smoke rising up. I then tuned in the radio to hear reports of a plane crash, but couldn’t understand how the radio station could be reporting this crash when it had only happened 30 seconds earlier, and then slowly we began to realise that the radio reports were reporting the New York incidents. By this time we were now caught up in the traffic chaos with emergency vehicles speeding around, hence we could only go with the flow, during the next few hours we found ourselves in central Washington grid locked outside the Capitol Building , Union Station and almost every road, at the same time all Government buildings were evacuated adding to the confusion and as we were total strangers we did not know where to head for, what road or freeway to take to escape from Washington.
At about 2.00pm we found ourselves in the Georgetown area, managed to find a side street and parked up, by this time we had been in the car for about 6/7 hours without a break, we had a much needed walk and found a diner that was open. This particular area seemed light years away from what we had witnessed earlier, we waited for the traffic to quieten down before proceeding to find the freeway to take us to south and out of Washington.
After numerous attempts we eventually managed to get a phone line back to the UK to tell our family that we were safe and sound.
On the 12th Sept. we returned to Washington, it was like being in a ghost town, but we managed to visit the Smithsonian, walked around the outside of the Capitol building, went to Union Street station and was then amazed to find out that the tours of the White House had gone ahead that day, unfortunately for us we had assumed that they would be cancelled, so we settled for a walk around the outside of the railings, with the intention of booking the tour on our return to Washington at the end of the vacation (the tours were cancelled by the time we returned so we never did see the interior of the White House).
The intended trip to New York we delayed and went to Niagara Falls instead, stayed a few days and then drove east to New York, by this time the Manhattan area had been sealed off, the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building were closed, but in the main New York was returning to some kind of normality.But in all honesty one felt as though you were intruding on others grief, so after a couple of days we drove down to Jamstown and Georgetown, Virginia and finished the vacation in that area.
Even now I can still see quite clearly that aircraft heading towards the Pentagon, it is a picture I will never forget. Just a difference of 30 seconds and I may well have been at the impact area, and not recounting my memory of 9/11.
One day we will return to see the White House interior and the rest of the city.
K. Smith
I recall being at work in Kilmarnock just after lunch when one of the ladies I worked with returned for her afternoon shift and broke the news.
That evening myself and another colleague flew from Glasgow to Luton.
The airport was chaos and my lasting memory was a lunatic refusing to put his laptop through the baggage scanner. This individual was obviously wrapped up in his own importance and was ignoring the consequences of the world changing events which were unfolding in New York.
Upon arrival at my destination I was advised the meeting scheduled for the following day was cancelled. Consequently I was faced with a car journey home as all flights were now grounded. Listening to the Radio 5 coverage, as I returned to Scotland, brought it home to me the magnitude of the events played out the previous day. But to this day day my lasting memory of 11/9/01 is the madman ranting at airport security, after all the saftey of his laptop was the most important thing to happen that day!
( I hope the individual concerned recognises himself and realises how
foolish he remains to this day )
My daughter and I walked into the dentist's waiting room when a few people in there were talking about it. It was just snippets of information that were coming in. At first I thought a plane had accidently crashed into a bulding but when there was a mention of 2 planes it just didn't comprehend in my head it was a terrorist attack. I just remember people walking about stunned and when I got home I think I sobbed continiusly with disbelief that anyone human could have done this to so many people.
I was at home listening to Simon Mayo. He announced that a plane had hit one of the World Trade Centre Towers. I turned on the TV and put it onto BBC 24 to see what was going on. Whilst watching, I phoned my girlfriend to tell her the news, assuming it had been a small aircraft that had hit it. As I was speaking to her, the second plane hit the other tower. At first, I thought it was a helicopter that had hit it. Then I realised that it was too big and quickly realised something to do with terrorists. The other abiding memory I have is feeling sick and almost crying whilst watching the first tower collapse.
It seems ironic now that I had only just completed a postgraduate course about International Relations. My dissertation had been about the security interests of the US and the European Union. Little did I know how much the issues I had been writing about just two weeks earlier would change from that day.
I knew nothing about it for two days! At 8am on Tuesday September 11th 2001, I left Rattagan Youth Hostel on the banks of Loch Duich in the Scottish Highlands, heading for Alltbeithe YH in Glen Affric. It was a long day and when I arrived around 6.30pm, there was just me and the warden. Alltbeithe YH is over 5 miles from the nearest road and has no TV, radio or mobile reception. I had no idea what had happened that day.
After 2 more days hiking in the hills, I headed back to the car at Cluanie Inn in Glen Shiel. A mile from the Inn, I noticed the flagpoles all had their flags at half-mast. My initial thought was that the Queen Mother had died.
Reaching "civilisation" after 3 days of no communications, I walked into the bar for a well earned drink and picked up a paper. Shock and disbelief. Shock at what had happened and disbelief that I had known nothing about it. I was spared the live images that cause many to remember today. I remember because I missed it, and because the tragic consequences rumble on. I pray for ALL those affected by this conflict, and for Faith, Hope and Love to endure.
I was at home working on my daughter’s bedroom and trying to recover from being victim to an unprovoked attempted murder attack.
I was suffering from post traumatic stress disorder which was making me very paranoid and angry.
After the dust settled with 9/11 I recognised many of the same symptoms from the Americans in terms of their paranoia of another attack and desire for revenge, whoever wrong.
So I suppose it helped me see what I had become and therefore allowed me to start trying to get my life back.
I felt for all those poor people leaping from the windows to avoid the fires but can’t agree to the action which followed.
Alan, Aylesbury
I watched the events unfold in when on a visit Kenya.
We watched the disaster unfold in my clients office. I returned to a swanky hotel that was full of Americans en route to the game parks and in transit through Nairobi.
It was a terrible scene as in front of me I watched the news literally filter round the hotel and folk bursting into tears and hyteria. In my lift there was an American woman who asked me what all the fuss was about - I told her exactly what had happend and she was unconsolable.
It was a terrible night that also brought memories of the US Embassy in Nairobi being destroyed by a bomb a few years before. I got news that the airport had been closed. The business centre was going crazy with people trying to see how loved ones were.
It was a numbing experience and I just wanted to be back home with my loved ones.
Regards
I was printing out the final copies for my masters thesis. We had a crowd around the house, I was called into the lounge and we all stood or sat just transfixed by the images that were coming into my home. I remember feelings of utter horror and disbelief. Later in the afternoon, I went into the village to post off my thesis for binding, and there was a surreal atmosphere. Here in a tiny west Wales village. It truely was a global tragedy. How we have all reacted to this event, only time will tell.
i was at sixth form when the first attack happened, we went told anything, just rumours going round the school. Went home after lessons and my brother was watching the news live. we saw the second plane hit live on tv. i live in crawley near gatwick airport so everyone was worried about relatives who work there. tense time, will never forget that day
i was in school i was in yrear 9 so i would be 13 and i was when it happend in english we had to right a frount page of a news paper and i rote mine on a buliding in leeds witch some one had planted a bomeb and and the army bomeb disposal tram were there trying to defuse it and then 100s of peopel died stange
I was in Korinthos, Greece waiting for The Body Shop to open for some essentials. I was working as an agronomist in the Peloponees - table grape harvest for UK supermarkets.
It was very hot & sleepy just before 4pm. I popped into a cafe for a cold nescafé & the TV was on & I saw the first tower collapse. The commentary & news bar was all in Greek so I thought I was watching some civil engineering disaster in NYC. I was ignorant of the human tragedy unfolding & was mildly amused as I was due to meet a Greek civil engineer & thought I would give hime some grief.
The shop opened, I brought some shaving cream & started to drive back to the vineyards. I nearly never made it as my cheap hire car had a key you could take out of the ignition and keep going. Needful of some amusement I took the key out just before a bend in the road to avoid a seafront taberna. Of course the steering locked up & I just got the key back in in time to swerve & avoid demolishing the restaurant & ending up in the sea.
Back at our agent's office he told me about the planes & I realised the seriousness of the tragedy. We had to go to a meeting with a grower / exporter where we met some colleagues from our sister company. All that one of these colleagues could say was "well, there goes our pensions" - loosing for himself whatever respect I had left for him.
Our meeting was subdued & we returned to our hotels & watched CNN all night. Life went on the next day taking UK supermarket buyers around the vineyards.
I phoned to check a friend who visited NYC occasionally was okay but it turned out he was on the roof of a hotel in Nice, Southern France.
A week or so later I was due to return to the UK & although flights had resumed I elected to hitch a ride on a truck - a mistake, it took for ever & I got a flight from Nice after meeting my friend for some R&R.
I was in a cafe in Eilat in Israel whilst on holiday with my then wife and 18 month old daughter. We saw the initial news reports on a TV in the cafe and then dashed back to our hotel to see the full story on CNN. The atmosphere in Israel changed immediately - suddenly there was palpable tension in the air and we, as foreigners, were treated with enormous suspicion. Our journey home, 2 days later, was very difficult and Israeli security treated us as if we were terrorists ourselves. Their response was understandable, perhaps, given the awful atrocities in New York, but still very unnerving.
I was home that day, ill off work. My wife told me to turn on the news because the radio was reporting a fire in New York. I sat there for the next several hours. I watched as the first tower collapsed, and remember walking to the tv screen showing the outline of where is should have been in the smoke but clearly it wasn't. But what I remember more is the outpouring of support I received the next few days. I'm an American and almost every one I knew or worked with asked if I was alright, did I have relatives, etc. I didn't but the kindness was touching.
I had been on a visit to my new job, that I was due to start on the 1st October, in the morning and decided to go home for some lunch before going back to my current job.
Driving to work took about 50 minutes, I had Five Live on and was listening to Simon Mayo. I remember driving along the Formby bypass into Southport when I heard Simon Mayo talking about a plane that had hit one of the World Trade Centre buildings. I don't know why, maybe it was the very calm way that Simon presented the news, but somehow I got the impression that it was plane that was up in the air to give information on rush hour traffic!
When he announced that a second plane had hit the other building I remember thinking that it was a bit ludicrous, why get so close to the building when you know what happened to the other plane.
When I got to work i meant to tell the team I worked with but it was so busy I forgot. It was only at about 4.30pm when I came back from a meeting did I get told what had happened. The team had got a tv and were watching re-runs of the two jetliners hitting the WTC. I was very confused because my thoughts whilst in the car then seemed crazy, yet the reality was even crazier.
My daughter had just got married to an American in the States and the distance between us was magnified enormously. She was nowhere near New York but it was important to speak to her. We were not able to speak on the phone for about 3/4 days but internet connections were ok for about 12 hours before overload on the system made it crash.
When back in the UK later in September a colleague asked me what I thought. I said "well, I thought G Bush jnr would start WW3 but at three months (into his presidency) he has surpassed my expectations"
Not that he started it or that it's started, but when did people / history realise WW2 was underway?
This is my generations "kennedy day".Our parents all remember where they were when JFK was shot and we all remember vivid details of where we were on September 11th. I was managing a hotel in Turkey when the news broke. I watched the events unfold on BBC World in the staff cafeteria with all my colleagues. Revulsion and shock at what we were seeing was shared by all. Even at that early stage it was clear that this was a terrorist attack and employees stood united no matter muslim chrisitan or jew in their absolute horror at the unfolding events. It is a day we will never forget.
Well I was at work at Grantley Adams Intl, Airport (Barbados). Having just sent two flights off to Washington and Miami we heard the talk and thought that an aircraft hit the Twin Towers (a government building) in Port of Spain, Trinidad, where our airline is based. Only to realize shortly after what was really going on. Nothing really sank in until later. We were too busy trying to contact the aircraft and divert them to another destination before reaching U.S. airspace.
I was working in the city in an investment bank and after being told about the first crash watched the second plane hit the building on TV. There was a rumour circulating that another plane had been hijacked out of Amsterdam and was on the way to London. Of course, that was not true but we were afraid. A terrible day.
I was sat i the departure lounge of Aspen, Colorado airport, due to fly in to Newark that day.
The scene in the airport can only be described as one of disbelief and horror as the second aircraft hit and it became apparent that this was not an accident.
The only noise was to be heard was gasps as the towers fell and many innocent people lost their lives.
However, from being grounded in the States for an extra week unable to return home to Worcester, and experiencing first hand the reaction to the catastophy; i belief alot of credit should be given to the way the people of America united in their grief and showed great patriotism to pull through one of the worst acts of terrorism to date!!
September 11 was just a normal day for me, being unemployed. After lunch I turned on the TV to watch CNN. There I saw it - live pictures from NYC. By that time both towers were already burning. I called my brother in to watch - and we sat watching. Then a little while later We saw what looked on the TV like a large amount of dust - and I can remember saying to my brother - "That is it - its gone now". The second tower fell shortly afterwards. Later in the day I saw on TV a photograph of NYC covered in smoke - and I thought it looked just like I have of Pearl Harbour taken in 1941.
i was in manhattan for the first time. i arrived on the 10th and had my first meeting at 8am on the 11th. when i got into the lift after the meeting I met a postman, who said, "this is a crazy city, I was just delivering mail in the world trade centre and a plane hit the building." I decicided to take a look, so I walked down Park avenue towards the twin towers. not many people were walking in that direction, but there were groups talking in the street or listening to radios. when i reached washington square i had a clear view of one tower, but the other seemed to be obscured by smoke. the square was full of students and others watching the burning tower. i asked the man next to me why the other tower was not visible and he told me that it had fallen. a few minutes after this the second tower fell. because of the distance there was no noise and the silence was unexpected. when the tower had fallen the student standing next to me began to jump in the air with rage. "If someone don't pay for this I'll never vote republican again". I walked back to my hotel. when I went back to the area a couple of nights later the bars and restaurants were empty and everything smelled of smoke.
I was at home listening to 5live in my lunch break when I first heard the report. Having been up on the roof of the World Trade Centre the year before I realised that a fire in one of the towers was pretty serious so I popped next door to watch it on TV.
As I was watching the live pictures I could see a dark patch on one of the towers with smoke coming out and could tell this could take some effort to put out. At this point it was difficult to judge the size of the fire.
As I watched I was phoning work to explain what was going on to a colleague who had been up the World Trade Centre with me the year before. Then all of a sudden there was a massive explosion about 15 floors below the original fire and I just went ‘Whoa!!!’
As the camera angle was such that you could only see one tower (one was behind the other) my first thought was that it was the same tower and the explosion was all part of the original fire that was bigger than I thought and had spread further down the building.
It was only a few minutes later that it became apparent that incredibly the other tower was also on fire.
I have just come from school. After about 3 hours I turned on the TV and couldn't distinguish whether that's fiction or reality.
I felt that some period in world's history was gone. The next started. The next war.
A seminal moment for the world. There were two specific stories that related to the attack on the twin towers.
First, I was on vacation in North Carolina with my wife, son and a family of friends when the news broke. My wife and I were in the local Food King, stocking up on provisions when the store fell silent. Not at once, but with a steady progress which somehow made it all the more eerie. We began to realise that something genuinely momentous was occurring and when we asked the store manager, the news was impossible to believe. We drove immediately to the house we were renting as we felt compelled - as did so many millions of others at that instant - to be with our family and friends. We watched transfixed as the buildings burned then fell. It was, however, particularly poignant for us. My wife had worked in the WTC for nearly a year and I had also worked in Manhattan for two years and so felt genuinely fond of the buildings. But the thing that made us feel so vulnerable was that i was due to fly to NYC the following morning for a meeting on the 83rd floor of the WTC - September 12th.
Secondly, my wife's cousin is a senior lawyer at the Federal reserve bank and an ex navy pilot. As the attack began, he went, with another ex forces colleague, to the WTC to see if they could help. He and his friend managed to get a group of around 20 people away from the immediate site and sheleterd in a store doorway, protected by a fire truck. He assessed the situation as too dangerous and urged the people uptown. Most went, some stayed. He went back to the bank, where he stayed for three days and nights as they styruggled to keep the worlds liquidity base operational. The day after the attack - the day I had been due in NYC - he went back to the place they had sheletered. Not only was the store gone, but the firetruck behind which they had hidden had melted...
11th September was a special day for us it was our 25th Wedding Anniversary. We were in London for a matinee show, when we came out we phoned home and heard the news, it was hard to take in, in a few short hours the World had changed. London was a strangely quiet place, there seemed to be no rush hour, people were packed into bars trying to get a glimpse of a television, no aircraft overhead. We didn't know what to feel,or think or do. I was afraid not knowing what may happen next, and just wanted to be at home with my children. A day we will never forget for all the wrong reasons, a day when so many lost their lives.
Someone at work commented that a plane had hit the WTC and we all logged on to the internet to find out what was happening. Most sites were down but I found out enough to email my friend with the words 'You reap what you sow'.
I still wonder when the deaths of Iraqis, Sudanese, Congolese etc etc will be treated with the same sense of significance as those of people in 'Western' countries.
My wife and I were in Florida on holiday and on 11/09 we had booked to go and watch the Tampa Bay Devil Rays baseball team. We left our villa before watching any news programs and drove to my cousin’s villa to pick her and her husband up for the journey from Orlando to Tampa.
When we got to our relatives villa, they flung the door open and told us to watch the TV. As we arrived the second plane hit the WTC. We watched in horror at the unfolding drama.
We still made the journey to the coast although the baseball game (and all other sporting events) was called off out of respect.
It was a horrible day all round, we stopped for a drink at a beach bar and the TV (behind the bar) was showing the collapse over and over again.
All the theme parks were evacuated on that day and the sheer numbers of tourists dropped dramatically for the duration of our stay.
I worked in West Palm Beach, Florida, I was listening to the local radio station (WJNO)I pulled into the garage at about 8:45 am, by the time I had walked to the office the first plane had hit the tower, I went up to our lunch room and was watching the TV when the second plane struck. Many people in that office had friends and family that worked in the towers and thankfully all got out. My wife's uncle Walter was on the upper floors of the second building when the plane hit, he helped get people out by using his cell phone as a beacon. My wife and all her family are from and many still live in Brooklyn NY so it hit home. 9/11 also happens to be our wedding anniversary my wife and I were married 9/11/94. That year were didn't celebrate. About 4 months after the towers came down we went to New York for my wife's Grandmother's 95 Birthday (she'll be 100 next year) and we visited the site of the twin towers, it was the most heart renching scene, thousands of cards and pictures asking "have you seen this person". The little church just across the road still standing with the small grave stones covered in the grey eerie dust, paper and other debris hanging in the tree. Down at ground zero the huge metal girder cross stood above the site flying the American flag. After visiting the site, we walked back to our hotel through the side streets and visited some of the fire station that lost so many people. A sad day.
I caught a cab at 7.15 am (BST) Tuesday morning to take me to West Hampstead Thameslink station for a train to Gatwick Airport. Everything went smoothly and I had checked in at 9.00 for the 11.15 flight US741 to Pittsburgh. I had breakfast at the airport as the time dragged before we could board the plane. Boarding commenced at 10.30 and I was surprised to find that the Airbus 300 had only 36 rows of seats, and even then the flight was less than half-full. Thankfully, there were no very young children on the flight.
We pulled away from the gate at 11.06 am BST (6.06 am EST) and took off at 11.16. Everything went well for the first 3 hours. Halfway through the journey, the pilot announced that there was air traffic congestion off the Eastern coast of the USA and we would probably have to put down in Canada. This seemed strange but nobody was particularly concerned.
After an hour of circling we put down in a fairly desolate-looking airport in pouring rain. A few minutes later, the pilot announced that we were in Stephenville, Newfoundland, Canada and we would be on the ground for at least 6 hours and maybe longer because of "major terrorist activity in New York and Washington DC." A few minutes later we heard that two planes had flown into the World Trade Center, a third one had crashed into the Pentagon and a fourth had been shot down over Pittsburgh – our destination.
There were 8 planes on the ground in Stephenville, a town with a population of 6,000 people, 3 small hotels and 3 restaurants. The 8 planes’ 1100 passengers and about 150 flight crew added 20 percent to the town’s population. Stephenville boasted one customs/immigration officer.
Passengers were able to use the satellite telephones on the planes, but there were only 2 or 3 possible lines out so it was almost impossible to get connections. Most people’s mobile (cell) phones did not work (even the pilot’s one ran out of battery and having been used by the cabin staff to make vital arrangements for baby/house-sitters). My specially-hired tri-band mobile sat in its case in my suitcase in the hold, while my personal one steadfastly refused to give a signal.
The story of the hijackings and crashes into the Pentagon and World Trade Center came through very slowly as people finally made connections on the satellite phone. We heard the death toll was at least 50,000 and for about 4 hours that was the only figure we heard. By early evening (UK time) it reduced to 20,000.
Our second and final meal was delivered at about 5.30 pm NFT (Newfoundland Time 3.5 hours behind BST, 90 minutes ahead of EST). The pilot then told us we would be on the ground for at least 8 more hours and it seemed unlikely that we would he able to get food to the plane for security reasons. I was still trying to get hold of my mother to reassure her that I was OK (my itinerary made it clear that I could not have been on the plane that crashed at Pittsburgh, but she may have had just the tiniest inkling that I might have been). At midnight (UK) I finally got a line out to her, but neither of us could hear the other, although Mum was fairly certain it was me trying to get hold of her.
Everybody tried to sleep and I managed 35 minutes before somebody kneed me in the head and woke me up (I was not hurt, but I could not get back to sleep). The night passed very slowly, so at 7.00 am UK I tried Mum again and, miracles of miracles I got through. There were tears on both ends of the line. Three hours later, the pilot woke everybody up with the news that we would be getting off the plane in the next hour.
The 150-yard bus ride from the plane to the terminal involved a bus and 3 police cars as escorts. It took 3 hours for the 141 passengers to clear customs and immigration in Stephenville (we had to take all our hand luggage off the plane, while the rest of the luggage – phones, medicines, clothes – stayed in the hold). Having cleared the most detailed search my baggage has ever undergone, courtesy of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, we were greeted by the Canadian Red Cross. They gave us washing items, snacks, drinks (non-alcoholic of course), as well as offering us counselling. We were then debriefed by the local RCMP chief and were told that we were going off to a beautiful holiday camp.
Before we could leave Stephenville, the local chemist came on board and filled out prescriptions for everyone who needed medication. This took almost an hour, but we finally left the airport at about 9.00 am local time. The ride to Camp of the Silver Birches took about 75 minutes through stunningly beautiful scenery. Silver Birches is a Salvation Army Camp for children, and on my radio I heard an appeal from the mayor of a local town, begging people to donate clothing, bedding, food, washing facilities for the people coming to Pasadena (the nearest village) and Corner Brook (the island/province’s 2nd biggest town – population 50,000).
Arriving at Silver Birches, we were immediately fed a hot breakfast and were invited to choose which of the 6 cabins in the camp we wished to sleep in. Each cabin contained 3 – 5 dormitories with between 3 and 6 bunk beds, all 5ft 10in long with rubber mattresses. The cabins all had a couple of toilet cubicles and a wash basin, there was a shower cabin at the other end of the camp. The local satellite company had set up a television with a dish so we could watch CNN on television; the local telephone company set up three telephone lines and refused to accept payment. At 6.00 pm, we had an evening meal, during which we were informed we would be at the Camp for at least 24 hours and maybe a couple of days longer. A telephone roster was set up, each person allowed only one call at a time, but the wait time was around 2 hours.
During the afternoon, while admiring the stunning scenery, I spoke to the local NTV (Newfoundland Television) network and they did an interview with me. As with all my television work (except Countdown) I did not see my interview, which was broadcast that day. The camp is on Deer Lake, a saltwater lake which stretches 50 miles northeast from the ocean. There is apparently quite good fishing, including Atlantic salmon and occasionally a few lost lobster. The water was a magnificent deep blue – as was the sky – with pine-covered mountains rising all around the lake.
A roast beef dinner was served at 6.00, during which time we were told that a local band were coming to the camp to give a free concert. Fresh supplies of clothing and washing items were brought in. The tuck shop opened, giving away snacks, fruit, non-alcoholic drinks, ice-creams, chocolates. Everybody wanted to help and there were counsellors on hand for those who felt they needed their services.
All I wanted to do was sleep so I went to my cabin (cabin 1, room B), took out my pyjamas and went to bed. I slept for 11.5 hours, from 7.30 pm to 7.00 am. The following morning there was a huge amount of grumbling about the snorer in Cabin 5. Apparently this man was so loud that 8 out of the 12 people in his dormitory got out and found other places to sleep. One person crashed out in the doorway of Cabin 1. One evacuee said that the noise was so bad that if he had been a jury member sitting on the case following the snorer’s murder, he would not convict as it was justifiable homicide or a mercy killing.
During breakfast (at 8.00 am) the camp commander told us that lunch would be at 12.00. However, a few minutes later, he brought us the good news that we would be going back to the airport at 12.30, so lunch would now be served from 11.15. We left the Camp at 1.00 pm and stopped at a Salvation Army church in Stephenville. We were taken into the chapel where we were fed. I noted that in the previous 36 hours I had lived like a wild animal, doing nothing more than eating and sleeping. The only other things wild animals do are procreate and kill; No. 4 is against my principles and No. 3 was impractical because there was no privacy.
So near, yet so far. We spent 8 hours at the church as our departure time was put back from 3.00 pm to 4.00 to 6.00, to 8.00 (NFT). During this time further supplies of food were brought in, just in case we were hungry. As the afternoon dragged on, the weather began to change for the worse and it looked as if he were going to get a storm. At 8.00 pm (EST) we finally boarded the busses to go back to the airport. We now we had to get out of town before a hurricane arrived (this was a strange warning because there is no record of a hurricane ever striking this far north).
At 11.30 pm NFT (10.00 EST, 1.am BST Friday), we finally left Stephenville airport and completed the 3-hour flight back to Pittsburgh through awful weather. It was a very bumpy ride. At 1.00 am (EST) Friday morning (6.00 am BST) we landed in Pittsburgh. We had spent 67 hours from leaving London to reach Pittsburgh, a time significantly longer than that taken by the Apollo missions to fly from the moon back to earth.
It took a further 2 hours to clear the very rigorous customs and immigration at Pittsburgh (the immigration part took no more than 20 minutes for the whole flight, the US passport-holders’ section checking a number of the non-US passport-holders’ papers) and we were put up in a hotel at the airport (literally 50 yards from the terminal building). I got into bed at 3.15 am, 73 hours after leaving home.
The following morning the talk around the breakfast bar was of the 2-hour telephone calls to make onward reservations. Before we had left the airport in the morning, we had been advised to ring US Airways on their freephone number to change our itineraries because the queues at the airports would be very long. I decided to walk back to the airport and see how long it would take to amend my itinerary (all baseball was off for a further 3 days). At 11.00, there was a 3-minute period of silence. It was completely ignored at Pittsburgh airport and I only found out how well it had been observed around the world 2 days later
The queue at the ticket desk was about 100 long but it moved very quickly. I did an interview to Action News Channel 4 in Pittsburgh telling my story, before getting to the ticket counter. I completely revised my plans deciding to go directly to Orlando. "You can’t do that," I was told. "There is a hurricane due to hit Florida this afternoon and there are no flights into the area." I said, "Please put me back on the flight to Atlanta tonight and send me to Florida tomorrow," This was done and, at the same time, I extended my trip by a day.
I got back to the hotel, had a bath, shave and change before checking out and walking back to the airport to fly down to Atlanta. Our flight was delayed by 90 minutes because a member of the cabin crew, called up at short notice, took ages to arrive. At the adjoining departure gate there was a real problem as the shortage of crew meant that the Pittsburgh-San Francisco flight was cancelled after boarding had started.
The following morning, I arrived at the US Airways ticket gate, to be greeted with the news that my flight was cancelled. Instead I was transferred to Delta (whose main hub is Atlanta) and I was put on a direct flight to Orlando. The hurricane had missed Orlando by 45 miles the day before.
I arrived in Orlando at 1.30 pm EST and checked into my hotel at around 3.00 pm EST Saturday, 4 days (give or take an hour) after I should have got to my hotel in Pittsburgh. Finally, my holiday could start.
In closing, I must pass on my thanks to the crew at US Airways flight 741. The 13 cabin attendants and 3 deck crew were unfailingly cheerful and polite despite being under enormous stress. They spent the night at ski resort some 10 miles from the passengers and deserved the peace and quiet they enjoyed after working a 29-hour shift, with barely a couple of half-hour breaks in that time.
In addition, mention must be made of the outstanding and humbling generosity of the members of the Red Cross of Stephenville and the Salvation Army at Corner Brook, Pasadena and Camp of the Silver Birches. Nothing was too much for them and they gave of their time and goods with a smile at all times. I found it difficult to accept their charity because it was unfathomable that people from two of the wealthiest nations in the world (Britain and the USA) should be needing immediate Red Cross and Salvation Army assistance. That is not to say I was not grateful, I was. At times of need, they came to our rescue. In future, I know where my charitable donations will go.
DAVID BALLHEIMER is a 48-year-old north London book editor, sports journalist and author.
It was my Senior year in high school and I was sitting in my 1st hour class which was an independent study for art and every morning I would turn on CNN and watch the news while a couple of us would work on our projects. It was 7:35 am Central Standard time and it took about a half hour before we saw the first images flash on the screen of the burning tower. The anchors were telling a story of a plane hitting the tower and we all stopped and devoted our attention to the screen and image of the burning building. We kept our eyes fixated and there it happened out of in the distance the second plane hit. My first thought was it was a playing of the first plane hitting and somehow some one was able to get footage. But to my horror I realized that I just saw the second plane hit and it was live so it was at the very same moment that I was sitting there in amazement.
The rest of the day every teacher and every classroom had CNN on the TV's in their rooms and the mood throughout the halls was gloomy and sad. When the towers fell I was in my 6th hour calculus class and again I couldn't believe I was seeing this live. I will never forget my teacher, who was a man with a wife and a new born, started to cry and I knew then that this was literally going to change the world forever. I remeber very clearly that the airports grounded all flights for that week and my parents house was right in the flight pattern and it was the oddest feeling not hearing or seeing anything in the sky that was so familiar to me.
It is still fresh in my mind 5 years later and for me there are no words to exactly describe how I felt or how others around me felt. It was such an impact on me that I know that for the rest of my life I will never forget where I was and how I felt.
I was on a business trip to Madrid and was in a meeting with an American who has a business selling books to Spanish libraries. We were interupted by one of the staff who passed on an excited message in Spanish. This was that the first plane had hit the twin towers, so we turned on the TV in time to see the second tower hit. We then spent the rest of the day glued to the TV in almost complete silence. I couldn't help but think of the meals I had enjoyed on the 108th floor of the WTC at "Windows on the World" - as someone said it was like eating in a plane that wasn't moving.
I didn't sleep that night and the images of the plane and the flames played over in my mind. There were stories that "all the airports" were closed, and countless other rumours.
I took the 6.30 shuttle flight the next morning from Madrid to Barcelona it was the quietest most nerve wracking flight I have ever had in my life.
I was in the middle of a 3-week trip with my Mother-in-law to Alberta and British Columbia in Canada and Washington and Oregon in the USA. We were on the bank of the Columbia river at Cascade Locks in Oregon when we saw the events in NYC unfold. At breakfast that morning the Americans appeared dazed as though they couldnt grasp what had happened to them.
The next day or two of our trip were strange. How could we go sightseeing with the news from the east buzzing in our heads.
We continued our trip to Vancouver Island and back home a week later
me and my wife were preparing a buffet for the chairman of our club's 65th birthday party.
we stopped outside the cash and carry at a burger bar for a snack.
when the guy behind the counter told us what happened i thought he meant
a small plane.
no he said a big passenger plane
we went back to the club where the guys in the bar were watching sky news we sat watching with everyone else when to our horror the 1st tower clapsed.
the events of this day and who i shared them with will stay with me forever.
my dad had the jfk assassination we have 9 11 and dianna
I REMEMBER IT CLEARLY
i was off work for the week and fitting some new upvc windows upstairs,listening to fivelive. simon mayo was i think interviewing stephen berkhoff when he mentioned that a plane had crashed into the w.t.c. At first it seemed that it was only a light aircraft that had crashed but as the minutes went by the tone in is voice seemed to get more filled with horror.as soon as the pictures came through i put sky news on with the sound down and sat on the bed for hours watching the horror unfold listening to simon and then drive as they brought this attrocity into our lives.it was drafty in our house that night.
Aloha
Most of us in Hawaii were asleep ( Hawaii being six hours behind NY at that time of year ).
On awaking I turned on a favourite local station which was playing somber music ( I thought the DJ had passed away )until the news was repeated.
My Boss called to advise turning on the TV. I was already monitoring the air traffic ( on HF Radio ) being turned back or diverted from Honolulu to Kona on the Big Island.
For us in Hawaii it was a surreal and sad dawn.
I think about this occasion with some sorrow, not just about the actual events - and there have been many more we could talk about - but about the complete and utter waste of an opportunity to maybe consider stopping violence and hatred and war in our world. Rather than consider fully the options, Bush and his friends (note I am not saying America) started bombing back. Since then we've had the travesty that is Iraq and created more problems than we have solved. I am ashamed to be British because of our compliance with all that's happened since - so called 'war on terror' 'us and them' scenarios etc. Where will it all end....?
I was looking forward to the birth of my first baby in 5 days and had had a long summer of hope. I had been at a work meeting and was coming back into my town (i live in dundee, scotland) when the news of the first incident broke on 5 Live. Horrified but thinking it was an accident, i pulled the car over, listened intentally and phoned my work colleaggues telling them to retune the radio to 5 Live. Pulling away gingerly after a good while at the road side edge, the second incident began to break. Obviously after the initial horror realising that this didn't appear to be an accident - i remember clearly thinking two things straight away:
1. My god - what kind of world is my baby about to enter?
2. Will this start WW3 and will my baby actually have a planet to live in?
By the time I got into work, there was a stunned silence with people gathered around radios and televisions. It was eery and left most visibly shocked and some with tears in their eyes. Even at this point, we could not appreciate the true horror that was unfolding until the sight of the first tower coming down.......
I was with a colleague discussing a trip to New York; we are in the food business and were planning a trends tour the following month. The office was buzzing with the news from America and unable to access the internet I switched on a portable tv and we watched in horror as the second plane struck. We went to New York three weeks later on a 767 with only 20 passengers. In the city the air was still full of dust and there was a metallic sour smell in the air. We walked downtown and saw the remains of the buildings it was shocking. We saw the relentless convoy of trucks removing debris from the site, their wheels hosed off as they left, in an attempt to keep the roads clean. The New Yorkers were amazing, they treated us like royalty, free drinks, free cab rides and said thank you for coming, thank you for supporting us; I'm so glad we went.
I remember that day very clearly. I had just got in from college and switched the radio on, when I heard that "the twin towers had collapsed". Initlly, I thought that this was a reference to the towers at Wembeley which was then in the process of being demolished. I then switched on my TV to find that it was not football stadium collapsing, and to watch live the world changing forever.
I was at home and a "News Flash" came on (during Neighbours if I remember rightly)telling of the first hit. I switched to CNN (I do not think there was a News 24 at that time)and watched in absolute horror.
I went to collect my son from school and the Towers were the sole topic of conversation. Everyone was asking "Who could do such a thing?"
I remember saying "In the next few days or so you will probably hear the name Osama Bin Laden mentioned." I distinctly remember someone saying "Who is he?". I only knew his name because I follow current events closely. How times have changed - now everyone knows who he is!
I also remember my then 11 year old daughter watching the news on the BBC all the rest of the afternoon with tears streaming down her face as she watched a tragedy unfold before her eyes.Her world changed that day - suddenly nowhere was safe.
Our first child was born on the 7th September 2001. We had bought him home from the hospital the previous day and our first night with him was a nightmare, if I had got three hours sleep I would be surprised.
The midwife arrived and our TV was on. When she sat down she passed comment on the events on the TV, something like "Isn't this dreadful?" - my wife and I hadn't even noticed that the news report had cut into normal pogramming, and only now focussed on what was going on.
It seems incredible now but it did not hit home at all - all we wanted to do was focus on how to make our first born happier and check that we were not doing anything wrong. I remember being irritated that the midwife seemed so distracted when we were in dire need of advice. The enormity of what had occurred did not really hit home until the first anniversary when I felt slightly ashamed and surprised about my reaction on the day itself. Maybe it is testimony to nature's way of giving your children your full attention in their early days.
We went on to have two further children and our eldest started school yesterday.
I was supposed to be in psychology last lesson but I never made it. We saw that the first tower had been hit by one plane and they were waiting to get confirmation of an explosionon on the second tower. At first none of us even thought of terroism, of course now it would be it be at the forefront of our minds.
When we learnt of the full extent of what had happend, we sat in scilence flicking between various news channels.
It is hard to describe the utter bewilderment that it left those without any true political/worldly knowledge have. Seeing the iraqi/afgan people celebrating in the street my first thought was what have we done?
9/11 for me took me as a naive person and showed me how ignorant I am about how the world is.
For the summer of 2001 i had been working with my Uncle in London waiting to start university in September. My Uncle works as a photographer and at the time a video editor. The first that i heard of the events was when one of the guys in the office next door came in and asked whether we knew what was going on in New York. "Something has blown up at the WTC, i've just been speaking to my wife". My Uncle had a television in his office for his work, so we turned it on and watched the events unfold from just after the first plane hit. The office gradually filled with others from the floor interested to know what was going on. I remember feeling shocked and numb. I stood there for about 2 hours. I can remember someone commenting that it looked like a big budget film. The shock turned to a sickening feeling as the two towers in turn collapsed.
I left work early. I had worked in the city for about 3 months and had never spoken to anyone on the train in usual commuter style. That day though i acted as a commentary service updating fellow passengers as i listened to Radio 5.
I was on vacation in Bradenton Florida and had just got out of bed at about 8.30 am and put on the TV to check out the weather forecast, I went to the kitchen to put on the kettle and returned to the TV and asked my wife Carol why she had changed the channel and was watching a movie, she said shut up and look one of the Twin towers is on fire looks like a plane has crashed into it. At that very moment the second plane came into view and deliberately hit the second tower it was like a weird dream we could not believe what was happening in front of our very eyes, we were devastated and speechless for minutes.
We sat horrified but glued to the TV throughout the disaster, morbid I know but we could not look away from what was unfolding in front of us, when the first tower collapsed I screamed with shock unable to believe what I had just seen. I could not believe it when the same thing happened again to the other Tower, it was the worst experience of my life. There was also a long period when there was no information and I just sat there wondering how many other planes were going to crash that were already up in the air before the curfew on flights was in place.
Then the Pentagon building was hit with the awful video footage from there, as well as the fact another plane was “missing” and then later forced to crash by the heroic efforts of the passengers.
Having spent many years working for a US company and with many US friends many living in NJ I felt for the people of America as if I was one of them it was hard not to feel a deep sense of sadness and helplessness, all I could do was sit and watch this dreadful series of events unfold in a deep state of shock.
Later that day the whole of the residential area we were living in was silent candles were outside many homes and flags were at half mast and appearing everywhere. The people were in shock our neighbours many originally from the NY and NJ area were frantically trying to make contact with relatives but all phone circuits were on overload even our parents couldn’t get in touch with us from the UK or us with them.
Having been to the US many times I had never seen a reaction to an event like this, for days the look of shock was on every ones face but as a nation they drew closer together hour by hour in the face of such adversity. Whatever people may think about the people of the USA they are fiercely Patriotic and stick together just like Londoners during the Blitz you had to have been there to see it.
I still get bad dreams about what happened that day and all the people who perished, they do not go away, my previous trip to the US had been to NJ and on the last day I had to drive to Boston, while driving over the George Washington Bridge I remember looking over at Manhattan and the Twin Towers thinking how lovely they were and that I must pay them a visit now that can never happen.
I well remember the chaos of going home and the security at the airport if only that had been in place a few days before; I had to travel to and within the US many times over the coming months and being on empty planes was an aerie experience never to be forgotten.
I will never forget that day for as long as I live seeing it in real time while in the US has left a scar no amount of time can heal.
I was working from home, and initailly heard about the disaster at about 2.00 pm on the radio. I rushed downstairs and put on the TV. My wife was away on business, and I had two workmen in the house fitting a new boiler. We all stood stunned at the pictures of the second plane hitting the towers. I stayed watching events unfold until well into the night, simply unable to take in what I was seeing.
I remember putting on a financial channel and seeing stock market's across the world in collapse. There was a real feeling that normality had completely flipped, and I will never forget the feeling of fear and anger.
I live in a quiet area on the Wirral, and can see the Welsh mountains from my house. It felt so strange to see the lights in Wales twinkling and the peace and tranquility out of my window, and at the same time see the devastation in New York on the TV, and wondering whether this was perhaps a tipping point which would change the world forever.
I visit the States frequently on business, and have been to Ground Zero to pay my respects. 6 months before 9/11 myself and my wife were sitting on top of the WTC in the open air just listening to the noises of lower Manhatten.
Even having seen Ground Zero, it is still difficult to appreciate what happened that day, and the scale of the disaster.
My wife and I were due to fly to New York on September 13th 2001 to celebrate my 40th birthday. It was a surprise trip that my wife had booked and only told me about a few days before. I was so looking forward to it as I had never been to the USA (and still haven't). On the 11th I was getting the cases out of the loft and my wife was ironing the holiday clothes with the TV on. I heard her say "Oh God ..." and ran downstairs, to find her watching the footage of the first impact. At that stage we both thought it was an accident, so we watched with growing disbelief and horror the second impact and the collapse of the towers. Later that afternoon the travel company phoned to confirm that all flights to the US were grounded and that the trip was cancelled. One day I will go and will visit Ground Zero to pay my respects.
I remember that day very clearly because I was on my way home from school and was looking at what happened through the television in a shop and I was actually didn't believe at first but then I rushed home to watch it on one of the news channels and I was just shocked
I suspect my experience of 9/11 is almost the opposite of most. I was at 16,000ft on the border of Tibet; I had no idea anything significant had happened. 9/11 didn't happen for me until 9/13......
I was near LiTang in the far west of Sichuan, close to Tibet, driving round in a Mitsubishi 4 x 4 with a Chinese friend who spoke both fluent English and Tibetan. We were having a ball – it’s one of the most amazing places in the world - with huge mountains; wild animals and steel-grey rivers, gorged with melting snows, charging down valleys like a stampede of buffalo. It could hardly be further away from Manhattan.
In ignorance, the day after 9/11, sitting in a road-side tea house, I watched my friend engaged in conversation with a local. He seemed concerned. He came over to me afterwards and said, ‘There’s been a bomb in New York.’ I shrugged, ‘Bomb in London; bomb in Belfast; bomb in New York. What’s the fuss?’ My friend said the local guy was quite excited about it.
We never normally saw a newspaper or TV. I’d long given up turning on the telly in any of the filthy rooms where – of necessity, not lack of funds – we stayed. There was usually only one ‘hotel’ in the small town/villages we chose to stop in. They cost about 15p a night, and the object of the exercise was not to allow your person to touch any material object in the place. You put your bag down and left the room immediately, only returning late at night to spread a bamboo mat on the bed and get your sleeping bag out. You never watched TV.
On 9/13, my friend bought a Chinese newspaper in a Tibetan shop and showed me the picture on the front. There was a huge passenger plane exploding into a skyscraper, while its twin alongside it already burnt. It looked like a poster from a coming disaster movie. I stared in disbelief as my friend relayed an account of what had happened.
I knew then that it was massive – an event of Himalayan proportions in the political and cultural geography of the globe. I’ve been a traveller half my life. I knew well how utterly out of touch most of America was with the realities of the rest of the world. I could sense the terrifyingly cold perfection of the atrocity. The utterly disrespected ‘weak’ striking so effectively at the heart of the ‘strong’. In the history of the human race, have so few ever inflicted so much fear on so many?
Not everyone I met that day felt as I did. A number of the Chinese I spoke to were quite dismissive of the event (like the Americans, many Chinese are very isolated from everywhere outside their own borders). Oh, they had sympathy for the dead in a human way, but what did the Americans expect? Along with killing all those Chinese in the Embassy bombing in Belgrade, the yanks had been dealing out death on an industrial scale since Vietnam. Shit happens.
One – a businessman from the east coast of China, travelling commercially in Tibet – even managed a chuckle. With the twin towers gone, he remarked, Shanghai’s Jin Mao Tower had moved up from 5th to 3rd in the world’s top ten skyscrapers.
I was in the US at the time, working about 30 miles north of Manhatten in Stamford CT. At around 9.00am I arrived at work and was signing in for my contractor's pass. A lady behind me said that, driving into work that morning, she had heard on the radio that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. I immediately thought it must be a light aircraft. I said to her how amased I was since it was such a perfect day. There was not a cloud in the sky, it was pleasantly warm with no discernable wind. I made it swiftly up to my office which had a TV set designed to provide presentation materials. I fiddled with the tuning and, ironically, the only terrestial signal I could pick up was the BBC World Service. It was unreal watching the horrer occuring so close by, unfoldly on British television. As I looked out from the office window I could the eerie plume of smoke rising on the horizon. It will live with me forever.
Sitting at home, watching the tv, my flat mate and I watched as the live pictures came in. We saw the second plane flash across the screen. We wondered how our Saudi Arabian students would react the next day. We were working in Ha'il a small, conservative town in northern Saudi Arabia. A few were sad at the news, many were smiling, but the most common comment was 'now they know what it's like to be bombed'
I was in New Jersey visiting friends, getting ready to visit the twin towers observation deck that morning. We were ready to walk out the door when my friend's mother called from the UK to see if we were in NYC already...thankfully, we had over indulged on "the water of life" the night before and had not achieved the early rise that was intended...we sat in complete shock as we watched the second plane hit the towers...sometimes I still can't believe how lucky we were...there's a lot to be said for whisky!
It was just another Tuesday afternoon in early September as i tramped arcoss the fields close to our suffolk home with our dog mij. Just like any other day I had listened to the lunch time news on radio 4. Nothing much was happening but Nick Clake was trying his best. The next progamme the story of a song came on, the song was
'Some where over the rainbow, niether the tune or the singer who had made it famous were to my taste but I listened in nonethess as the story unfolded I became less sconfull of Judy Galaland and the gentle tune. Towards the end of the program the story moved on to modern times, and the heart rending story of the dicovery of a shy artist with an amazing voice. Eva Cassidy, again this isn't my singing style,perefering the rough house sound of the Oysterband or the Pouges,however the story of Eva's far to short life caught me up and the sound of her voice captivated me as I came out a coppice of trees. I stopped to take the scene of a peaceful suffolk landscape, with Eva voice fadding out the I chose to tune into Simon Mayo on 5.His next statement was. 'We've just had a report of a plane hit one of world Trade Towards in New York.' The rest is history writ large but as I hurried home on that blackess of days I could still hear this American anthem ehcoing in my head. Now with at this time of year I hear the song ehcoing again.
I was working in the City of London at the time and noticed the BBC website saying that a small plane had hit one of the towers. The web soon became congested and I learnt of the collapse of the first tower from a relative who was watching TV.
At this point I tried phoning colleagues working in that part of NYC, unsurprisingly without success.
I decided to head home and continue trying from there and, whilst standing on the platform at Stratford station, watched planes flying in the skies overhead and wondered who, what, and why? It felt surreal to stand there wondering whether planes would start falling to earth around me.
Later, at home, after the second tower had fallen and whilst the web was still paralysed, I was able to make e-mail contact with friends who were stranded within their buildings in Wall Street. The web may have been unable to cope, but the internet was alive and well and proving its ability to survive catastrophic damage, as was its remit at its birth.
In stark contrast to the destruction of buildings and lives and hopes and dreams that day, the survival of the internet provided a small beacon of hope.
I was in Tehran on 09/11. A colleague and I had been at a trade show all day and we were visiting our host in the evening for a meal.
He invited us into his apartment and offered us a drink. He then apologised profusely, saying, “The television is on. There is some terrible news. Airplanes have crashed into the world trade centre and it had fallen down.” We could not comprehend the enormity of his words. We stood in front of the TV watching the terrible images. Because of the time difference we watched the tragedy live. The commentary was in Persian so we could not understand a word. At that time we could not believe our eyes. It was like an action film and we kept expecting Bruce Willis to appear. Our host changed the channel to BBC world service so that we could understand what was being said. We just stood there for over an hour. Horrified.
Later, during the meal, the topic dominated all conversation. For me an amazing thing was the answer given by our Iranian hosts to the question “Who do you think could have done this?” My colleague and I had absolutely no idea. Considering, that at that time, there had been no media reporting or speculation, I found it totally surprising that, without hesitation, they all said it was Bin Laden. They spoke about his great wealth, his private army in Afghanistan and his hatred of the USA. They said that they did not agree with his politics, what he had done, the trouble he was causing and the millions of refugees that had fled from him in Afghanistan to Iran and Pakistan. However, their dislike did not extend to supporting the USA against him even though they did not approve of the attack and showed absolutely no dislike of America.
I will never forget that evening. Of course the horrific images but also the depth of knowledge of the Iranians of world politics. Their dislike of Bin Laden and their lack of enmity towards the USA.
It had a profound effect on my perception Arab/Muslim versus Western/Christian attitudes and the style of the political reporting. In particular the difference between the thoughts and emotions of these ordinary people compared to the statements I was familiar with from the leaders and the media in the UK.
As a footnote. Very soon afterwards I had business with an American company. I was horrified by the contrasting hatred from an intelligent, university-educated, businessman from the mid west. He wanted to “nuke” all those ***** who burn the USA flag and dance in front of news cameras.
It seems to me that the political leaders and those who fed him with such a hateful way of thinking have a lot to answer for.
The attitudes of most of us are led by what we read and hear through the media. This means reporters carry a great responsibility to avoid making prejudicial comments and judgements regarding religious and political events. It beholds them to present the information, as far as is possible, factually and without emotional exaggeration.
I was on exercise in Oman when a colleague came racing up to my vehicle and told us all to switch on our radios and listen to BFBS. He said a plane had crashed into the 'Twin Towers' - to which he received a chorus of derisory remarks.
But BFBS confirmed his story and knowing that the Bosses daily conference was on, I phoned the news in. We all stood in silence listening to the news. Later the queues were massive at the phones/computer terminals we used to talk to home as people tried to watch the news online.
I most remember the stunned silence and disbelief of 30 or so troops who were crammed around a small computer screen watching grainy images of the towers come crashing down. We really did seem to be far away from home that day.
I was on jury duty that day. I came down from court to the large room in which all jurors across the many courts assembled. On the far side of the room was a TV set, high on the wall. All eyes were on it, and a strange hush strangled the senses as I walked to the locker-area.
Looking at the TV, I was surprised that everyone was so attentive to an episode of Thunderbirds. Then I realised that I was looking at the same image, seemingly played on a loop. The plane hit square, against the clear blue sky. Again. Again. Again. Each time a drawing of breath, no words, just the sound of air being breathed deeply from across the whole room.
Disbelief, sheer disbelief.
I can't recall a single word being spoken, other than the TV commentary, until we returned to the Court ante-room. At the end of the day I returned to the room, and this time there the replayed image was of the first of the towers collapsing. Outside, the panorama was as blue as that in New York. I shuffled out to catch a bus hime, and listened to my radio as I did, with several passengers asking for an update. I could not reply, and simply shrugged.
I spent the rest of the evening glued to the news, trying to make some kind of sense of it. I still am.
I was 17 when the attacks happened and was visiting London, trying to decide where to study for my Law degree. Eventually, I had my fill of the lectures and nibbles so decided to go and do some traditional sightseeing, heading over to the Tower of London. I remember that everything seemed normal; in particular, no one seemed to be talking as though anything unusual had occurred. At the Tower I joined a group of predominantly American tourists waiting to be taken on a guided tour by a Beefeater. As our guide came out to start, he simply stated that there had been some attacks in America and if anyone wanted to go and contact family he would show them where to go. When pressed, he said an aeroplane had crashed. Only a few left the group. I immediately put what he said out of my mind as just another one of those awful things and continued on the tour as if nothing had happened.
It was only when I got to King's Cross Station, hours later for the long train journey home, and saw groups of commuters standing around absorbed in newspapers with front page photographs of the Twin Towers, that I started to realise something was seriously wrong. I remember sitting opposite a gentleman on the train, unable to tear my eyes away from the picture on his newspaper. Again, the normality everywhere sticks with me. People seemed quiet, as was I, until I eventually arrived home, at 10pm and watched some footage of the event and its aftermath on the news.
I think seeing it hours after it happened made it more difficult to accept. I still find it difficult to make my brain realise that the sights on screen were not the product of Hollywood but the start of a seismic shift on a global scale that changed so many things that I know I certainly took for granted.
We were living in New Jersey and were holidaying on Long Beach Island, south of New York. After the horrors of the morning we went to the beach and sat on a deserted beach in a state of total bewilderment while our two small children played in the sand gloriously oblivious to the all-encompassing doom of that day.
I was living in Moscow at the time so the news came in during the evening. I had been at an Aikido class. When I came out one of my friends told me there had been an attack on the east coast of the USA and tens of thousands were dead. I was used to the very dry Russian sense of humour and was waiting for the punch line to a joke. Then I saw the queues for the exchange kiosks and I knew something was up. When I went into the class, they had been offering 30 roubles to the dollar, two hours later they were offering 12 roubles to the dollar. My wife and I hurried back to our flat and tuned in to one of the Russian TV stations (ORT, I think) and acught the TV pictures. After a few minutes, they cut to speech by President Putin who spoke about "an unprecedented act of terrorism". That is the phrase that has stuck with me ever since.
I was in year 11 at school, in a biology lesson (We were supposed to be learning about teeth) when our teacher told us what happened.
We were a bit shocked and some people were a bit scared, one person shouted out (loud enough to be heard by everybody) "I bet it was the ****ing arabs", at the time I was suprised he didn't get into any trouble, but I think the shock of the whole event took some of the sting out of his words, and it was an almost acceptable thing to say.
on waking up of nights at 2pm i turned the tv on to what i thought was a action film, when i finaly realised i was so dumb struck i got on the phone to my brother to make sure he was ok, took me ages to get hold of him all horrid thoughts going through my head but luckly he was sick that day and not gone into work or he would have not been here today....
It was my 19th wedding anniversary. I had been working in Pennsylvania, USA for 3 months, the first time I had been away from my wife on our anniversary. I was horribly tired after 3 months of trying to start a new business in a far away land. The job was going badly, equipment was breaking down around me. I didn’t even notice people starting to talk about the events in NY. By mid morning, I started to notice.
When they mentioned it, I shrugged it off, telling them to get on with their jobs. When they mentioned a plane hitting the towers, I pictured a small aircraft bouncing off after an accidental collision. When they talked of terrorists, I said get over it, we have lived with the IRA for years without going into a state of panic (I come from Warrington).
They talked of a plane crashing 20 miles away. I thought it might be a good idea to call home. My relieved wife, who had been trying to call for the last 5 hours, tried to convince me of the magnitude of the events. I told her we had repaired our grit blasting machine. “Happy anniversary” she screamed, as she slammed down the phone.
It was only as I sat in my motel later that night, watching the horrific pictures, that I realised my perspectives were massively out of wack.
The following morning, I learned that my American cousin, Jennifer Louise Fialko, had been working on 87th floor of Tower 2. An un-caring Englishman 4000 miles from home. The only person un-touched by the events. The only person touched by the tragedy. On my first visit to USA in 1992, Jennifer had shown me around NY, including a trip to the Twin Towers. I pray my perspectives have changed since that horrible day. My anniversary serves as a continuous reminder to cherish my wife and family.
David Parr
I'm an American and I've been living in England for the past 9 years. I heard about the crashes from a friend at work who was listening to the radio. At first he told me that a plane had crashed into one of the Twin Towers, and made some sarky comment about 'yanks not being able to fly straight'. My first thought was that it was a light aircraft, as I believe something like that had happened before. A few mintues later he told me in a different tone that it sounded pretty serious.
I went out to the parking lot to listen to my radio, and listened as the second plane hit the towers. For the next few days I watched the news almost non-stop when I got home from work. The strange thing was that I felt quite detached from the whole experience. I know that people from lots of countries all over the world died in that event but it was the first time something of that magnitude had happened to the country of my birth. Even now my friends (one of whom watched the entire episode from his apartment window across the river) have completely different, maybe stronger emotions attached to that day.
But I still get chills when I hear the second plane flying into the tower.
I was at home watching tv, when on came the news flash on the BBC. I sat at home on my own in a state of shock. It's hard to find the words to describe the feelings I had that day, I even got a phone call from my father in-law in Holland and we both watched the unforgetable scenes that unfolded in front of us.
I was in London and halfway through a run of a show in the West End. I woke up at midday and went out to buy coffee and magazines, including a copy of the Economist which had a big feature on No Logo and the antiglobalisation manifesto which up to then was the biggest story of the time. I flicked on the TV when I got back and straight away saw the pictures of the plane in the first tower, but didn't realise that it was live, presuming that it was archive coverage of something else; it was only when I saw the second plane and heard the reaction of the anchor that I realised it was live.
I only became really frightened when news of the plane crashing into the Pentagon and reports of other hijacked plans came in and assumed the next ones would be heading here as noone knew who was attacking whom. I then also remembered that my cousins worked in midtown Manhattan and when I spoke to my mother, who said noone had reached them yet, I was very scared.
I've never known a stranger night in a theatre; we all sat transfixed to the TV in the green room, only moving to go on stage, with all the actors dashing back to the screen between scenes. In the audience, only 10 people had turned up out of a sold out house - maybe feeling that it was wrong to carry on with their lives whilst they stopped to try and articulate what had happened.
our cast similarly did not know what to do so we went to the pub, after the strangest performance we'd ever given, and then lay out on the roof of a house in Covent Garden and talked about what had happened. some one said "11th September 2001 will be remembered for ever now" it had been such an inocous date, that didn't mean anything up until then, but now it is more synonymous with world events than any other date in recent history; it is JFK assasination for my generation.
The next morning I woke up in a daze and found a newspaper; on the first four pages there were just enormous photos of the towers falling, and no words - even now its impossible to grasp the enormity of what happened that day and put it in to words that can't ever justify it and how it affected world politics and individual lives so deeply at the same time.
I was in a courthouse in Hartford, Connecticut, about 100 miles NE of NYC. Most people in the courthouse were aware that something was going on, but with no access to radio or television we were reduced to rumors and information gleaned from cell phone conversations in the crowded hallway.
The judge was 45 minutes late to the bench that day, and had hardly begun proceeding through the docket before a marshal burst in and announced that there was a bomb threat and the building had to be immediately evacuated. I held the courtroom door for one elderly woman trying to evacuate, and reassured her that I didn't think that the next terrorist attack was likely to hit a small courthouse in Hartford, but the panic of everyone leaving the building that day was real and palpable.
When I finally got outside, I saw that state troopers had circled the capitol building down the street in case of possible attack -- a surreal scene. It was also eerie during the next day or so to hear military jets flying cover air patrols over our heads in the mainland US.
I was working abroad, in Malta, at the time and VOIP'ing to a group of NY based investment houses for an hour before the event (thankfully - none based in either of the towers).
On the first collision I heard a few expletives from one of the group's communications - but these were played down a little by the others as being a light aircraft hitting the tower (can only figure that they were some distance away). I'd though little of it at that moment - if it had been anything of a bigger aircraft surely the whole of NY would have heard its impact?
Within minutes (I guess - people going to their windows/computers and seeing what had happened, communications began to fail - I guess from an overload - and any information coming to me was sparce. About the time of the second impact communication with the outer world via the internet was almost instantaneously lost. I held a few mobile calls but these to gave up after around 30 mins.
It was impossible to get any information over the internet - so I'd left work early to go to a bar and watch the American Network news via satellite.
Within about 30 mins of watching I figured that this could be the beginning of the end - and I guess that still holds true.
Within about 40 mins of watching, the particular bar I was in switched channel as there was a particularly 'big' Italian Serie A game playing.
Couldn't believe how naive these guys were - but trundled home to watch the desperate events unfolding with my partner in absolute disbelief.
A disbelief that certainly still holds true to this day.
I was on a free period from college playing snooker when my mate said " a plane has hit the twin towers"
immediatly me and my other friend looked out the window towards Wembley which was near my school.
Obviously we were wrong but as we watched the tv over the next five or six hours it broke our hearts, and we still reflect upon those immediate Wembley thoughts and how lucky we were it was in another part of the world.
RIP
I came down from my classroom at around 3.30 having been teaching all afternoon and at that time, there were only 2 computers on dial up connection in the staff room. No one had radios or anything on them. There my colleagues were hooked in I suppose to the BBC. I came in and asked what was going on. My good friend said, planes have hit the twin towers and its third world war i reckon. Presient. (sp) I got on my mobile to my other half and he hadn't seen or heard anything. I told him to turn on the TV - News 24. He told me he was taping Bob the Builder. I was shouting at him to not give a damn about that. (Our son was tiny thenc and at nursery - my husband's not that odd.) He turned on 5 live radio and gave us a relay of info about what was goin on. It was so strange. I didn't have the cues to know if it was a big deal or not. I went home soon after and husband wouldn't let me watch the TV. Kept saying about voyeurism and so forth. To this day, I have not really seen what happened or lived through it. he was right in a way - what good would my watching it have made and we had a small child with us. But the whole count down to that disaster eludes me. I've watched edited footage, but the timescale is not there for me - the initial shock, the realisation, the ongoing catastrophe. I think that most people assume that they had, even then, access to the whole thing as it was played out. Many didn't. It doesn't make your sense of the day any less shocking. But the emotions involved in the unfolding and building and realisations about events that people had are lost on me. I only got what was edited and narrated and replayed and artified (I'm thinking of that film made by the bloke attached to the fire dept when it happened.)
We were in Boston, MA, USA on our honeymoon. We were just getting ready for breakfast when we turned on the news to hear that there had been an explosion in one of the Twin Towers. Was it a gas explosion? No, a small plane had hit the tower. No a large plane. Surely not? Then as we watched the scene a second plane hit the second tower. We immediately knew what was happening. But we quite calm at that stage. We walked across the road and sat in Starbucks for breakfast and watched Boston slowly realising what was happening. Americans just were not used to their country being the target for terrorism.
We went back to the hotel and the place had become chaotic. People, mainly tourists, were trying to book extensions because they knew that all flights were cancelled.
We then realised that we were affected because we needed a taxi to Boston airport to pick up a hire car. The same Boston airport from where at least some of the suicide planes had taken off from. No taxis were available as everyone tried to get out of Boston - there were rumours that another plane could be heading for Boston. Thankfully our hotel managed to organise a stratch limo for us and the limo driver agreed to half his normal fee. But we were still not sure if we'd be allowed into the airport. We arrived at the airport to be confronted by armed policemen, but fortunately we were allowed in.
We got to the car hire office and again panic... people were desperately trying to book any vehicle. Some people were offering trips across the USA. Some people were planning to travel from Boston to Mexico. We were worried that there would be no vehicle for our honeymoon trip. Thankfully the hire company were still guaranteeing cars to people that had booked ahead as we had done. We got our car, a white 4x4 Toyota, not the one we had booked, but we didn't care we just wanted to get away from Boston as quickly as we could.
We headed north from Boston. On the radio we could hear that schools were closed for the day. People were being told to move away from large cities.
We got to our hotel and tried to call home to calm everyone's fears. But all transatlantic lines were jammed. However we had brought a laptop and managed to connect to the internet. We sent e-mails to friends asking them to tell relatives we were ok.
In the afternoon we were on a beach in Cape Ann. It was lovely day but the beach was almost deserted.
We continued with the honeymoon. We had a good time but we were happy to be back in England at the end of it.
It's 9/11 every day in the Congo and you don't remember us.
The thing that I remember most about 9/11 is that I had taken a day off work to go fishing with a friend. I had my mobile phone with me but there had been no signal all day - we were too far out in the sticks! However in the middle of the afternoon it suddenly rang with my wife telling me that something was going on and that it had something to do with planes crashing into buildings. She was at work at the time and so it was difficult to get details. I had taken a radio with me and then switched it on to listen to Simon Mayo cover it as events unfolded.
The funny thing was that as soon as my wife hung up, I lost the signal for my phone and it was dead until I got home that night.
I was driving past the Pentagon in DC to a meeting in Maryland on the morning of 9/11 when I received a telephone call from my wife in London to tell me about the first plane hitting the towers. I tuned to the radio and heard about the second plane and just went on to my meeting.
My business partner was in New York and was close to the WTC and I knew that he planned to visit on recommedation from his son who had visited a few months earlier. I got a call from his son because he could not get through to his dad. I lied, I said that John was in a different part of town and no where near.
I went into my meeting and the lady's mobile phone rang several times - the Pentagon then Philadelphia. She was in tears and I stopped the meeting and left.
I drove back to DC and it was like being in a science fiction film. I was the only car heading towards the city. On the other side of the freeway the roads were blocked with stationary traffic trying to get out of the city. Helecopters were flying low overhead as I passed the Pentagon for the second time that day.
From my brothers house we had to go out, we had to be with other people - we met one friend who worked overlooking the Pentagon. He had seen the plane flying low past his office window and bang.
The following day I took the train to New York and everyone went quiet as Manhattan came into view and there was only smoke where their had been two buildings.
I met up with John and we went for a meal - we had to eat -and we were in Grenwich village so close to ground zero and it was heart wrenching to see people wandering around with pictures of the lost and creating a large shrine in Washington Square with hundreds more pictures and messages. The whole area was covered in dust and it was like nightime because of the dust still in the air36 hours later. We felt like intruders and had to get out and go back to our hotel. We could not help and what could you say to anybody.
On the follwing day we went back to work.
We had no idea if we would leave on the Friday as the airports were closed. There was the memorial service and I thought the airports would be opened as soon as this was over so we recklessly checked out of our hotel - rooms in New York were at a premium - and waited in reception watching television. At the end of the service the announcement was made that JFK was open and we were in a cab minutes later.
The road to JFK was empty. We got there and tried to check in with United but our plane was still in London so they hestitated and called for a flight to Japan to check in. After a shortwhile the Japanese flight was stood down and we were called for London. We were told that they had changed the Tokyo plane for London - the reason Pearl Harbour and because London stood shoulder to shoulder with DC. The Japanese were in tears. We did not care we just wanted out.
I WAS ON A DAYS LEAVE FOLLOWING MY SISTERS 21ST FEELING A BIT WORSE FOR WEAR. SO I WENT DOWN MY LOCAL FOR A CURER WITH THE BOOK I WAS READING BY TOM CLANCY. THE SUBJECT OF THE BOOK WAS ABOUT A JAPANESE TERRORIST FLYING A PLANE INTO THE SENATE. MY SHOCK WAS PROFOUND AS I LOOKED UP TO THE TV AND SAW VERY SIMILAR EVENTS UNFOLD ON SKY NEWS. SPOOKED WASN'T IN IT. ALSO UEFA WERE A DISGRACE THAT DAY PLAYING CHAMPIONS LEAGUE FOOTBALL
Earlier in the year of 9/11, I seperated from my wife of 20 years and found myself at 1pm on 11th September, meeting a lady for the first time through the Saturday edition of the Guardian's 'Women looking for men' etc. This was the first time I'd ever been on a blind date and I was nervous to say the least, even if Marise did sound lovely when we initially made contact via our mobiles.
We met at St John's Bar in Kentish Town for a light lunch and drink, but during our time together, we didn't gell at all. We made our hurried exits and I drove off listening to Simon Mayo on 5 live, as he first reported the attacks. I visited New York 2 years ago with my new partner Maureen and we paid our respects at to Ground Zero. We were very moved by the site. Whenever I think about the tragic events on 9/11, I almost always wonder too if Marise found the person that she was looking for. I hope so.
I live in Las Vegas, and was attending the University of Nevada. That semester I was getting up at about 3:00am to study until I left for class at about 9:15. I was subscribed to CNN's breaking news email alerts, so I would get email if there were any big events. I checked my email when I awoke, and the big story at that time was that Michael Jordan was returning to the NBA (National Basketball Association, for you Brits who may not know). I was finishing up a writing assignment, and checked my email just before I left. There were about twenty breaking news stories. I checked the latest one which was about part of the Pentagon collapsing. The one before that was about a car bombing at the State Department, and the one before that was about the second WTC tower collapsing. My first impression was that the CNN site was hacked, not just because of the horrific nature of the emails, but also there had been a rash of major websites having been hacked recently, including the White House site. I had a short drive to campus, and noticed that the usually full parking lot was very empty. That is when I thought that the emails were for real. I walked to the library and saw the aftermath on TV. I was astounded and horrified. I am from the NYC area originally and had been in the towers many times. Even five years later, not a day goes by when I don't think of the tragic events of 9/11.
I was working for a lighting company just outside Newcastle (UK), stuck in a small office, no TV. Our company accountant - normally a laconic, ruddy-featured bloke - came in pale-faced and said to come and watch the TV in the conference room as a plane had hit the twin towers in NYC.
Spent the rest of the afternoon watching things unfold, with a kind of numbed, horrified fascination. I've been to NYC a number of times, and have stood at the base of the towers, craning my neck so far to look up the sides that I felt like falling over backwards. It was hard to grasp the reality that something so huge and solid-seeming was gone.
My sympathies were totally with the American people at the time - and still are with everyone who died or lost someone, and I'm full of admiration for the emergency services who showed so much bravery that day. But my heart sinks whenever I think how woefully GWB and his cronies in the White House have mishandled everything since, and turned all that world sympathy into so much suspicion, contempt and derision with their simplistic, gung-ho worldview. My thoughts & prayers are with those affected by this tragedy, but my mind boggles at the fact that US citizens re-elected that man and gave him licence to screw things up even further than he already had. The world changed for the worse that day, but the way the US govt has handled things since then, with invasions of other countries and taking away the freedoms of its own people, has made things much, much worse...
I had been in a new teaching job less than a week, when all staff were asked to assemble in the hall for the year's staff photo. As we were all being organised by height, and nudged into position, a quiet whisper started to go along the rows of teachers about 'something' happening in New York. One of the PE teachers was secretly listening to a radio through an earpiece whilst the photo was being taken, and so the news - at that point very sketchy still - was passed along like chinese whispers. In between snippets, we all paused to smile at the camera. As soon as the photos had been done, everybody rushed to their classrooms and offices to find out what had happened, just as the full horror was beginning to be realised. Weeks later, the photos arrived, and each member of staff was given a copy (presented in that unmistable school-brown cardboard frame). I still feel very odd looking at that photo, knowing what was happening precisely as it was being taken - it marks a moment of unimaginable change for all of us.
On 11/09/01 I was working at home and had just come down from my office to the living room when my daughter phoned from Seattle where she was attending a meeting, but was jet lagged and wide awake. She asked was I aware of what was happening in New York, so I turned on the TV and as we talked the second aircraft crashed into the south tower. The sense of shock for both of us was profound, my daughter subsequently spent over £300 talking to us and her partner. The events delivered five strands, the first was the concern for the safety of my daughter as she made her way home to the UK. The second was the real sense of loss for those who died. The third was the horror for those victims forced to jump to their deaths from the towers. The forth was establishment of my real anger at those who either carried out these acts and at those who turned a blind eye to them. Finally contempt for all the fellow travellers of whatever hue, who seek to blame the victims for this atrocity
A day we will never forget as we were in Barnet general hospital with my wife giving birth to Gabriella our gorgeous little girl....We seem to be a disaster family as got Married the day Diana Died 31/08/97
I think I was one of the first eye witnesses to appear on Five Live that morning.
I was on a business trip to NY at the time.
At around 8.30 a.m. a change of plan had sent me back down to my hotel in Tribeca only a few blocks from the WTC.
But before the cab could reach the hotel it had to pull over to let a huge convoy of emergency vehicles past.
I got out and looked up to see flames pouring out of one of the towers. There were people around me but at that time everyone thought that a small plane had crashed into the building. There was no panic.
I rang my family and then called the BBC. I was put straight on air on Five Live. By this time the second plane had hit - but as the second tower was obscured by the first it looked as if there had been a secondary explosion. It took another couple of minutes for us to realise both towers had been hit.
My most vivid memory of that moment was how extraordinarily vivid the colour of the flames and smoke were against the beautiful blue sky.
I decided to head back to my office and was about halfway up West Broadway when I heard a sound that I will never forget until the day I die - it could only be described as a collective, deep, gutteral moan from the hundreds of people watching the burning towers. I turned to see that they were reacting to the collapse of the first tower. I think that is the moment that hit people hardest. People were sobbing and clutching each other for support.
Within minutes I was back in my office which is less than a mile away on the same side of the island.
As I watched events unfold on TV the second tower began to collapse and I turned to watch it fall from my office window.
After that we were locked in our building for a few hours as no one knew how many more attacks were to come.
Eventually we were let out and I went to a bar around the corner. At around 4 p.m. I stood outside trying vainly to get a line on my cell phone - out of the corner of my eye I saw the facade of a building in the distance begin to 'shimmer' and a few seconds later it too collapsed (It was WTC Building 7). My immediate thought was 'How many more buildings am I going to see go down today?'
The surreal nature of the day was compounded later on. There were no more hotel rooms to be had - so on the off chance I rang the Tribeca Grand where I had checked out 12 hours earlier (this hotel is only 10 or 12 blocks from the WTC). To my amazement they were still open and still had my room.
I dragged my case back downtown. The streets were now deserted except for police, National Guard and emergency services. I had to go through two check points and then be escorted to my hotel.
The next morning I woke to find a layer of smoke in the room. I opened the curtains and looked out on what, just the morning before, had been the magnificent view of the WTC - but now there was just a pall of smoke.
I now live in New York permanently and feel a special bond with the city having lived through this terrible moment in history there.
I was working in Londons Covent Garden with a young lad who had never been out of Shrewsbury.It was about lunch time when we heard pepol saying that a small plain had hit the traid buildings. We were unable to see a tv and were relying in overhearing office staff.We had to work in a bacement that night without any radio, could not wait to ring home to tell my wife we were ok. Stayed up late into the night watching the old tv in our room.
Next day walked around town never seen so many armed police in my life.
I remember exactly - I'd bravely climbed to the top of the cathedral in the centre of Florence and was steeling myself to peer over the edge to admire the view, when my boyfriend put his arms around me and asked me to marry him.......
We celebrated our engagement with a boozy lunch at a fabulous restaurant and spent the afternoon wandering in loved-up bliss around the shops. Stopping off at a large newsagent near the station, we were trying to work out what was being shown on the television screens inside. We didn't understand the Italian commentary so had to rely on the pictures - we couldn't quite believe what they seemed to be telling us.
We went back to our hotel in a bit of a daze and rushed to find some English news. The sheer awfulness and scale of what happened gradually became apparent.
On a day when so many people lost loved ones, it was a significant time to have made our commitment to each other. We had a deeper understanding of the importance of the bond we were forming and the impact it would have on our lives. We have now been happily married for four years.
I had just opened my shop in Walton-on-Thames when I had a call from my mother saying there had been a disaster in New York.
I turned on a pocket television I had to watch the events unfolding. Although one can be easily desensitised to disasters around the world in the face of the almost incessant streaming of news and violence that abound on our screens both factual and fictional the horror of this particular tragedy was all too evident.
For me - a Muslim born in England - there was also a deeper despair and fear at the eruption of an all out conflict that would inevitably harm the many for the actions of the very few.
The actions of those terrorists and those who have followed in their footsteps since have no basis in the faith in who's name they are carried out but if ever there had been a time to turn the other cheek I'm sure that it was then. Unfortunately the extremists claiming to be of my faith have got the war they wanted whilst those claiming to be the champions of democracy and freedom have done nothing but aid and abet them since.
I was at home, watching Neighbours on BBC1 with my puppy on my knee. The television picture quickly changed to show live pictures from New York. I wasn't aware of the size of the twin towers so thought the first plane was a small, 2 seater aircraft. It was only the TV commentary that finally made me aware of the sheer magnitude of the events unfolding.
I phoned my mum who was also at home and told her to switch the television on. We stayed on the phone, discussing the events and the things we were seeing. It was then that the second plane hit. I think me and mum were silent for about 2 minutes, neither of us could speak. Then we both began to realise what was actually happening, before our very eyes, and how much the world was going to change for all of us.
Perhaps what sticks in my mind more is driving to collect my then 12 year old son from school. He had had rugby training so was later than usual. The streets were so quiet, empty of both traffic and people, everyone indoors glued to their TV screens. When I arrived at school the rugby team were nowhere to be seen. I found them all in the gym with their teacher, crowded round a portable TV watching the latest news. 15 young pale faces wondering why, understanding the seriousness of the events but not the implications. My son was full of questions all the way home, but for once I could give him no answers.
I am a C of E vicar. on 9/11 i was travelling to Alder Hay Children's hospital in Liverpool, visiting a young boy who had come through a painful operation. I was in my car listening to Steve Wright on Radio 2. He said that there were reports that a plane had crashed into one of the towers. The report was brief and sketchy & i was left with the impression that maybe it was a small plane - like a 2 seater - and the show carried on. When I got to the ward I found the strangest scene. Nobody was talking. Children, parents, staff were all staring at the T.V. monitors positioned at each bed. I got to the boys bed and along with his family, looked at the screen. The N. Tower was in flames and while i was there I saw the 2nd plane crash into the S.Tower. I have never been so stunned before or since. I barely said a word to the boy or his parents - we were all so shoked at what we were witnessing.
That evening i was preaching at my church for a Mothers' Union service. not quite half way through I had to stop. I couldn't go on with the sermon. I simply asked if we could pray for those involved in all of the events of that day & we did.
I was in a meeting at a client's site in Surrey. I explained I kept my mobile as my dad was very ill in the USA. The mobile rang and it was my sister, so I stepped out of the room to talk to her. She said with panic "Did you hear the terrible news from the States?" I assumed it meant my dad had died, but not she said "America is under attack, planes are going into buildings, a plane is headed to the White House. Get to a TV." Well, I couldn't "just get to a TV" as I was in a meeting. So I went back in the conference room and told everyone what my sister said, and it was laughed off as a prank! (War of the Worlds Radio hoax). We continued the meeting. Several times I said, "my sister sounded so panicked." Still we continued on. It was only at 5PM, leaving the meeting, turning the car radio on and calling my sister back, when it all become real.
My sister was sure a war was underway and missles would be fired off. She thought "at least we are safe here in Britain" and was glad not to be in America anymore. I told here if missles were set off from a foreign land, they could probably hit US Airforce targets in the UK easier than the USA and that we were no safer here if it was a war.
My brother in Boston had planned to fly that flight from Boston that day and changed his mind. But a neighbour of ours from growing up in Chelmsford, Massachusetts, was on the plane.
I was in my office in Flint North Wales UK when we heard the initial garbled news alerts. I was working for an international courier company at the time, so the world was already a small place for me.
We rigged up a TV in the warehouse & the 5 or 6 of us who where in the office started to watch in shocked silence the horrific scenes on the tv. I was due to travel to Glasgow for a few days work that afternoon with a colleague, I did, but all the time just wanted to be at home with my husband Chris - I felt very scared.
We had only been to the US & visited the WTC earlier that same year. Still, today I find it hard to comprehend what actually happened that day - I visted NY & the site of the Twin Towers again earlier this year with Chris, it felt a place for my own silent contemplation & to remember the brave, those lost & those remaining.
11th September 2001 will stay in my mind forever, when my parents said to me i know where iw as when President JF kenedey was assignated my reaction was like how can u remember what happened in 1963. But after 9/11 i now understand why.
At the time of the new breaking about 13.50 i was on the phone laughing and joking with my girlfriend at the time and at the time was flicking through the tv channels. at the time news was breaking of the plane hitting the first tower but i didnt know and i thought that BBC was showing a preview of a film and i thought how could they show a preview of a film like that at this time of day.
Then it came apparant that a plane had colided with the north tower and i told my girlfriend what had happened and carried on talking to her and watching the telly. Short time later watching the telly there was a shot of another plane getting closer and closer to the south tower and then suddenly Bang second plane had hit i dont think i could type my reaction but i was stunned at this point my girlfriend at the time thought i was joking.
i carried on watching the news and it came apparnt of whast happened that a terrorist attack happened and seeing what happened I thought it couldnt get any worse and then 2 towers became 1 tower what was left of the south tower was a rubble and then shortly afterwards 2 became none and all there was left was rubble.
Rest of the day i just sat there stunned after what i just seen happen before my eyes if someone said to me that hijakers would take over a pplane and deliberate fly it into buildings before then i would of said they was joking but after 9/11 i just dont know what to believe. thats why i guess till i day die i will always be able to remember where i was and what i was doing at 13.50 on 11th September 2001 cause it was a day that changed history.
I was in Beijing for a conference. We had finished dinner late, around 10.30pm which was 3.30pm in London and 10.30am in New York. I got back to my room and switched on the TV just to catch up on the day's events. Like many people who did the same thing without knowing what had happened, I was faced with pictures of the Twin Towers burning and thought it must have been a film. I soon realised it was not but could not understand the captions which said the towers had collpsed since I saw them burning. It was a while before I realised I was watching early footage of the event. When the full truth came out that two planes had crashed in to the towers, that they had collapsed with heavy loss of life and that other events had or were taking place it was so hard to believe what was going on. Facing all this in Beijing was also strange. I phoned home and got confirmation of what I saw. The next day several American delegates to the conference, who were all airline or cargo aircraft employees, were shocked and soon discovered they could not get home since all flights were grounded to the USA.The last piece I remember was that I moved on to Shanghai two days later and looked at the local English newspaper. Within these two to three days the news of this terrible event had moved from the front page headline to page three. It made me realise that at least in China it was not as important as it was elsewhere in the Western world. Remember how long it was before it was off our front page news and not a headline on TV and radio.
The day had started quite normally for me here in Kent UK. I'd done a pile or washing and decided I'd better get the ironing done, so I popped the coffe pot on and returned to get out the ironing board. I decided to switch the TV on and watch whilst I ironed. I wasn't really aware of the time but thought it funny there seemed to be a movie on. I remember standing there fixed to the spot as the sheer devastation unrolled before my very eyes, I don't know how long it was before I realised with total horror that what I was watching was actually happening! Later as more news came in I was brought to tears by the voices of those caught up in this dreadfull atrocity, voices of men and women, all someone's son, or someone's daughter, someone's wife, husband, desperate voices saying goodby to their families on cell phones. I prayed so hard that day, for all involved, all touch by this dreadful cowardly deed, I prayed for mankind as the media rolled on...................We can never forget, nor should we forget 9/11, the victims, the survivors, the heros, and the unsung heros both human and K9 who undoubtedly gave their all so unselfishly.
i was nightshift on the 08 11 01 the first thing i always do when getting up in the afternoon is switch on the news and have a coffee ,i could not believe the pictures sky news were showing was the real? i phoned my darling wife to make sure she was safe . why i dont know she was only working a few miles from home , her freind was on a trip to new york that fatefull week and saw it all as it was happening , i still think about it now what must the people of new york think ? thers is only two world events that bring me to tears , the dunblane shootings , and 9,11 r.i.p all of you
I was at school and my first class was almost over then a teacher came into the classroom saying that a plane hit the world trade center. She didt know how big the plane was. So we turned on the tv and saw the chaos happing to our fellow americans in new york city. In my second class we were watching it and thats when the buildings collaspe and we were all shocked and couldt belive all this was happening. Later in the day when I got home from school i turned on the tv and no matter what station you had it on the samething was on that channel wiether it be a sports channel,music video channel or a channel for woman. all the same images and news report was on.
Life imitating art? If what happended was a movie, it would of been a blockbuster.
I spent 11th Sept hidden away from the world at a asessment center, so had no idea what had gone on.
When arriving home I found my house mate on the sofa in silence watching the tv. I seen some footage of a plane hitting a office tower and said "Cool." "What's the film your watching?"
To my shock he said "It's not a film mate. It's real." I couldn't believe it and sat there for the next few hours still in my suit and tie, completely amazed something like this could happen. I did remark at some point 'The world will never be the same again, that the americans would turn the world upside down for revenge'. I think we can agree that throw away comment proved a rather profound statement.
It doesn't matter where anybody was on 9/11 2001.
The horror of those poor people dying in the TWINS matters.
But despite horror and terrible tragedy, facts still remain:
Steel girders melt at 1400C, jet fuel burns at 600C. This is not nonsense - it's metalurgical fact. Even terrorist on 9/11 couldn't change the laws of physics and facts.
The girders in the Twin Towers could NOT have been melted by a plane crashing in to it. And could not have made BOTH buildings collapse as they did. It's impossible. This is a fact, not a conspiracy theory, not even a theory but fact.
Where you want to go from there is up to the individual. Where your questions, from this factual starting point take you, is up to you. But planes crashing into buildings - as dreadful as it is - CANNOT make the buildings collapse. Fact.
Read this quickly before the BBC take it off.
Factual science is NOT a conspiracy theory. And while the horrors of 9/11 - and planes crashing into buildings is absolutely awful, please DO NOT FORGOT THE FACT: PLANRHi,
You just had a lady on who is an expert in Al Quaeda etc. You asked her about the possibilities of 9/11 being a conspiracy theory. She called the notion nonsense.
Steel girders melt at 1400C, jet fuel burns at 600C. This is not nonsense - it's metalurgical fact. Even terrorist on 9/11 couldn't change the laws of physics and facts.
The girders in the Twin Towers could NOT have been melted by a plane crashing in to it. And could not have made BOTH buildings collapse as they did. It's impossible. This is a fact, not a conspiracy theory, not even a theory but fact.
Where you want to go from there is up to the individual. But planes crashing into buildings - as dreadful as it is - CANNOT make the buildings collapse. THIS IS A FACT! NOT A THEORY!!
I am British, and was in Suffolk, watching the BBC footage with absolute disbelief. I was on my way to work in the US (in Massachusetts), and was waiting to get a flight from London to New York. Two of my colleagues-to-be were working close to the Twin Towers that day, and had to run for their lives. I eventually arrived in New York on September 20th. I had been working in Angola from 1999 training teachers close to the capital and was in the area attacked by UNITA rebels in May 2001 (when one of my Angolan colleagues was killed). I was in two minds as to whether I should fly into the US .. but having survived frequent IRA bomb scares in London in the '80s and UNITA in 2001 ... life has to go on. I currently work for a non-profit close to Detroit, that trains development workers in Africa. A friend who I play chess with lost his niece in the Twin Towers ... and I know a couple of people from Ipswich were also killed there. So thoughts and memories of that day are never far away. President Bush always claims that 3000 American citizens were killed that day. It rankles me that he never recognises that citizens of many countries and many faiths (and perhaps some of none) were killed that day.
I was driving in southern germany.I put Voice of America on the radio.
I genuinely thought I was hearing a remake of the 'War of the Worlds' for a short time.
Then I realised the truth.
Hello,
I've read a few of these blogs but the most striking thing is that I have only read one which questions the collapse of the buildings. This was a bit of a ramble but the point was made.
I work at an air base in the Middle East (Can't say which country) but I am a civilian worker repairing aircraft.
I was at work when the planes hit and we went into the mess room to watch CNN. It was quite strange being in the Middle East and hearing CNN say they thought it was the work of Arabic terrorists.
However, when the buildings collapsed nearly all of the technicians I was with remarked how impossible it was. That a plane indeed could not have caused the collapse. Speculation went no further then because the scale of the terror and horror outweighed any rational thought.
Now, however, when we do talk about it (and since it's the 5th anniversary we have done) we all agree that exterior elements had to be used in order to demolish the buildings. The rambling blogger was correct when he said that steel girders cannot melt with jet fuel. But from our point of view, we look at the plane. The engine casings are made of stuff called jet steel and titanium. Titanium melts at about 1700C obviously used on an aeroplane engine because it can withstand so much heat.
We work on aircraft every day and the reports that planes can totally vaporise like they did when they hit the buildings and the way they did at the Pentagon (no wreckage) and United 93 hitting the ground without a trace of the plane is, to say the least, very very curious and odd.
We speak to many pilots here, some of which are Israeli trained believe it or not.
They openly suggest that Mossad were involved in the rigging of the buildings with explosive in order to create a controlled demolision. The reason why: to convince America to start a war with Afghanistan and Iraq.
I imagine the Conspiracy Theories will exist over this topic for years - but there is one inescapable fact (like the other blogger said)and that is an aeroplane alone cannot cause a building to collapse by crashing in to it. That is, quite simply, impossible.
It was 2 weeks before my wedding and I was in my fiances garden, stripping some disgusting paint off the pine doors that we had inherited, at the home we planned to share after our wedding. As usual I had Simon Mayo on the radio and heard the first reports from the WTC. I ran indoors to put on the TV and sat there absolutely horrified to see the second plane hit. For the rest of the afternoon I didn't get much work done. I remember thinking in amazement at the stupidity of one TV presenter whose name, luckily for him, I don't remember, when the second plane hit he described it as a light aircraft and suggested it was possibly confused by the smoke, even me in my front room could see it was a large airliner.
My inlaws came round with my 5 year old and sat dumbfounded in front of the TV as the towers collapsed.
As reports came in from Washington of an attack at the Pentagon I got straight onto my PC, I had friends who had just arrived in Washington for a 6 week work assignment, I emailed then every day that next week, they told me of people being spirited away, government employees disappearing, constant flypasts by military aircraft and a general state of shock all around. I will never forget where I was that day, or who broke the news to me. Simon Mayo will forever be a reminder of this terrible day.
Hi.
I was watching BBC1 when a breaking News appeared and said a plane had Crashed into a building in New York.
I turned over to CNN. News i dont remember how long after the 1st one but i sat watching this plane come in in slow motion , it was like watching a diaster movie it could not have been real i said to myself,
and the second plane crashed into the side of the other tower,
then we got video of people jumping from the towers and i was really upset . and i turned it off. i just coudnt watch people jumping to there deaths i will never forget. the same as i will never forget Thomas Hamilton killing 16 kids in dunblane
quite horrifying...
AH
I was part of a small team trailing nine RAF Tornado GR4 aircraft back from Nellis AFB (Las Vegas) We were in the Azores and had just started crewing-in for the last leg back to the UK, when one of our American hosts heard over the radio about what had happened. We managed to launch all nine aircraft but are own transport back a C130J would not start! Getting snippets of information from the crew it was obvious early on that it was no accident. The ground engineer was unable to fix the engine-starting fault before we were told all aircraft movement’s worldwide had been cancelled so we went back to the departure lounge and watched the horror unfold. All I could think of was that someone was going to get whacked big style by the USA.
I have just read a number of the comments and the events of the day came flooding back to me.
I was working at one of the gas terminals on the east coast of the UK.
I was enroute for a cigarette; the smoking room was off the lounge in the rest area. There was a crowd of people around the TV, but I did not take any notice until I came out of the smoking room. I was then facing the TV, just at the time of the second plane.
We all stood horrified, watching the events unfold. The most moving part to me was when the first tower began to collapse - the TV antenna simply dropping vertically; no-one around that TV could imagine that such a traumatic event could actually happen. Myself and the other gas plant workers simply stood in complete shattered silence.
Shortly after the 2nd plane hit, the whole of the gas plant was shut down by a worried operator and, as far as I remember, remained so for the following 2 days.
That day was also my son, Jonathan's, 15th birthday; he and the rest of our family will never forget that birthday.
I remember well the 11 september as it is my birthday. we had a big night out planned as i was on a training course with some of the guys i never get to see very often. i didn't think any one of us realised that day that those events would change the course of our careers or indeed our lives. it has changed everyones lives and the subsequent course of events is still unfolding before us. i think the people who carry out these acts are going to be virtually unstoppable whilst we are tied by laws which they will never be bound by. god help us all if they get a hold of the most powerful of weapons.we need to find them and destroy them before it is too late.
I was on holiday at an international sports resort in the Canries. Waht struck me at the time was that amongst the other equally horrified watchers, (originating from nine European nations, two American continents, and four African and Asian countries), not one disagreed with a discussion opinion that "US administrations have consistently and persistently blundered into foreign affairs for economic or political gain when they should not have done; this vile terrorist act is inextricably linked to such actions".
I'm a Merchant Seaman.
In 1988 as a Deck Cadet aged 17 I was assisting the 2nd Officer on the Bridge as we sailed towards New York. This was the first of many port calls I have now made to NYC/New Jersey.
The very first thing I saw of New york on that lovely summer afternoon (one day before my 18th Birthday)was the Twin Towers of the WTC. It was a sight I would never forget.
We must have been 40 miles from the nearest land yet I could see the tops of the towers peeping over the horizon.
As we got closer the Empire State Building popped up, then one by one all the other buildings.
It realy was an amazing afternoon watching some of the worlds most famous landmarks slowly come into view.
On September the 11th 2001 I was studying for a examination, during the afternoon my phone rang,
"by the way a plane's hit the WTC" I was told.
Thinking it was a Cessna or some other small plane (like many others have thought) I kind of felt a bit sad for the people involved, but I put the phone down and carried on with my revision.
An hour or so later I took a break and put the telly on.
News 24 on BBC1 (something bigs happened!)
Then I saw the banner on the bottom of the screen.
"Both Towers of World trade Centre have collapsed"
I couldn't take it in, how could these magnificant buildings that guided me into New York collapse?
Then the re-run of the passenger jet h
eading towards..Well everyone knows what happened and I can hardly bring my self to type it.
I have been back to New York since and have seen what the attacks have done for everyone who lives and works there.
I doubt there will be many people in the world could walk past the fire station close to ground zero, see their simple memorial for thier collegues and not feel a lump in their throat.
Long live the people of New York
It was at the end of an enjoyable lunch with friends when I was walking back to the office along Canon Street, London and noticed a crowd of people spilling from the pavement onto the road. Going past them I noticed the look of shock on many of their faces as they watched televised replays on a TV in a coffee shop of the first plane hitting one of the towers . I joined the crowd and there was talk of a dreadful accident but we watched and listened for any more news. Then as one building burned we heard that a second plane had hit the other tower and there was talk of "no accident". Many of us were fixed to the TV in shock. After a short while I and others went back to work to pass on the dreadful news to colleagues - the office internet access had been switched off due to the number of hits on news sites. In the office everyone then tried phoning someone at home to get further news. Later we heard the towers collapsed and we talked about the dangers of working in Canary Wharf and was London also going to be targetted?
Working in a tower block in the city, as the news of a terroist attack broke the office was closed and we were advised to go home.
It was a day many of us will never forget and my thoughts go to the poor people who were caught up in this atrocity, simply by going to work.
We were on holiday in Majorca. We'd just got back to the room when my friend rang me in hysterics saying a plane had hit the twin towers. Thought she was over reacting until, not long after, a tannoy announcement around the pool told everyone the awful news. From that moment on, every morning was spent crying into my breakfast in a local bar that had sky news on constantly and reading all the newspapers. will always remember that fireman's face as he was pictured going to help victims...
My son had just started a new school and I was preparing to leave to pick him up. His world had already changed. It changed again without him even noticing.
I was in a public library in Greater Manchester on a public computer, no one else seem remotely interested when I announced to no one in particular 'God have you seen what's going on in America'. I finished my session ten minutes later, walked outside and the streets were full of emergency service vehicles, with sirens blazing in a usually relatively quiet area, it felt like the apocalpse had started. When they announced that 50,000 had died and then reduced this figure I began to smell a rat. First impressions last and the authorities were clearly eyeing the propaganda value right away. Since then I've concluded that 9/11 was an inside job.
I was flying from Singapore to Chicago via Amsterdam, and we were approximately 2 hours out of Chicago when I was awoken by the Stewardess advising me to prepare for a landing in Toronto. The captain then calmly announced that the whole of US airspace was closed, but that we would be on the ground in Canada within 20 minutes.
Once on the ground, he gave us the first details of what had happened, and we then disembarked and met our Singapore Airlines rep, went with our baggage to a local hotel where the ballrooms had turned into what looked like an evacuee site. TVs on and everyone calm but clearly struggling to come to terms with the reality of the situation.
We eventually made it out of Canada on Thursday night. The intervening days were rather surreal, with many trying to carry on as usual and others from the flight wanting to get into the US in any way they could, bus, car, taxi, train etc. A number of us however wanted only to return to Europe, and therefore stayed "attached" to the flight. We were extremely fortunate to have been the 2nd flight into Toronto, as the 50-odd planes left in order of arrival, but spaced approximately 2 hours apart.
Funnily enough three friends and I were in a TV shop (Martin Dawes),in Preston deciding which teleision to hire for our second year at university!
I still was living in Germany and had just come home from school when my granny called. My first reaction - before I'd seen what exactly was going on - was something like 'yeah, they're probably just making a big fuss about nothing again...'
Then I finally switched on the TV and just at that moment the second plane was hitting the second tower and I just thought 'oh my God'. I clearly can remember the newsreader to comment on everything thoughout the whole afternoon and evening and every time I hear Enya's "Only time" I still get goose bumps all over my body.
I was doing some work and needed an adaptor for a computer. I walked up putney high street and into a high street electrical shop. the shop was completely deserted - no-one behind the counters. I walked to the back of the shop and there was 25 people crammed into a tiny space watching banks of display tv's all with the news on. It was completely silent apart from the commentary over the tv.
We’d enjoyed yet another fantastic visit to Crete – an island we’d visited on a number of previous occasions and a place that we had plans to eventually make our home. Why did these lovely holidays always have to end? We’d become good friends with our tour guide Mavis, though she preferred to be called Georgina, and she’d insisted we sit next to her right at the front of the coach that took us back to the airport at Hania. She told us that she was dreading having to make the announcement to the passengers that our flight home would be delayed. We asked her about the reason for the delay and she said “probably a technical problem back in Manchester”. As she predicted Georgina/Mavis’s announcement was met with groans of frustration. It was Tuesday 11th September 2001 and it was mid-afternoon.
After checking in, we were given vouchers and directed to an open-air café restaurant on the airport perimeter. We were part of a group of more than 100 passengers with hand luggage, many with children, trying to compete for the 30 or 40 plastic chairs in the heat of that day. During the three hours at that café I noticed a number of Greek military planes screeching overhead and wondered whether there had been a problem between Greece and Turkey.
The flight back to UK, despite being late, was uneventful – a plane full of depressed returning holidaymakers.
In Manchester our priority was to find the right bus to take us back to the car park where we’d left our car. Believe me, this was no easy task and we ended up on a bus that took us to some obscure “satellite” car park somewhere in Cheshire. It was late and dark and the driver said he would be returning to the airport in around one hour.
Please could we wait on the bus? It’s freezing! OK. I’ll leave the radio on for you. Thanks.
The radio was on but we weren’t listening. It was just on, in the background. Krystyna asked “Have you heard that”? I said “What”? She answered “The radio”
“No, why”?
“Listen to what they’re saying”
“Christ, has something big happened? Or is it one of those ‘War of The World’ kind of radio dramas”?
We listened and started to feel sick and really really needed to get back to our house in Yorkshire, just to be somewhere familiar and that felt safe. Our worst fears of what may have happened that day were confirmed when another couple joined us on the bus, weighed down with luggage at what was the obvious start to their holiday. They were ashen faced and looked like they really didn’t want to be there or to be going on holiday at such a time. No one spoke, we were all immersed in our own thoughts. The driver appeared and drove us back to the airport. No one spoke.
Five years ago tomorrow my boss & I were flying to Detroit for a meeting. Just off New Foundland the pilot announced that US airspace had been closed due to a "diplomatic incident" and we were therefore going to Canada. 10 minutes later he came back on to say that he'd spoken to the company (BA) and it had been decided that they had just enough fuel to fly back to the UK. By this time we were jittery. We knew that something serious had happened but we didn't know what. Our best (and scariest) guess was that the plane had been hijacked. We had the seats next to the emergency exit, and on a 747 that's right opposite one of the stewardesses when they're seated for landing. As we approached Manchester (because Heathrow where we'd taken off from was full) she took her seat and we noticed she was white with fear. Only when we landed did she tell us that the World Trade Centre had been attacked and that her brother worked there. All the hotels in Manchester were occupied, so they bussed us over to stay at the infamous Adelphi Hotel in Liverpool. We watched our TV's in amazement, and then ate fish and chips out of the paper in central Liverpool. I hope that stewardesses brother was OK.
Ken
i was traveling back on the train from manchester after visting my daughter,my wife spoke to me on my mobile telling me what had happened the carriage was very full people standing as we approached coventry all mobile started ring togather it was quite scary visting ground zero later they selling t.shirts with the remains on it
On 11/09/01 I was working offshore inspecting subsea pipelines for BP. I remember an undercurrent of - I don't know how to describe it; almost like an electric current running through the boat. I recall a colleague, a geophysicist, grabbing my arm and nearly lifting me off my seat in his urgency to convey that I should get myself to the lounge. Curious, I left the tedium of processing ROV sensor data and went down to the lounge, where some of the Norwegian marine crew were watching satellite TV (it was a Norwegian vessel, so it was Norwegian TV - TVNorge, I think). There was a news report on, showing the WTC with one tower burning. Some of the survey team came in and gravitated to me, us being British. We muttered amongst ourselves about what it might be (the voiceover was in Norwegian). We agreed we were probably watching a trailer for the next Bruce Willis flick or something and the stern looks the Norwegians gave us didn't register and although they all spoke excellent English none were translating for us - and that didn't register, either. About five minutes later an airplane-shaped streak shot across the picture, behind the burning tower and smacked into the other one, throwing a vivid ball of flame and sparkling glass from the other side of the tower. The voice-over got suddenly excited. It dawned on us that this might not be a movie trailer. The bit of that footage that sticks in my mind is how sunny it was in New York - the falling glass twinkling as it spiralled down - and how dull, dank and crapily overcast it was 50km off the Humber. Suddenly the feed cut live to onsite CNN footage, complete with English-language voiceover, live from the scene (their HQ in Atlanta, I think they kept assuring us - nothing like a bit of plugging during a crisis!). It became apparent to us that something unprecedented had happened. Even before Bush was saying it a day later we were talking about an act of war. It spread through the boat like a bad smell in the a/c - in minutes everyone; Norwegian, English, and Dane knew that life as we know it had just been steered onto a completely different path.
Normally, life at sea on a survey ship is one of laughing and joking and stomach-bending ribaldry. On 9/11 even the excessively obscene ROV operators dropped their usual sexual banter. FHM, Loaded and Maxim were put deferentially aside; all attention was focussed on the genocide four thousand miles away. A surreal change in atmosphere occurred instantly - a sombre air of respectful head-bowing to America purveyed. Even the usual gallows humour attendant to bad news crawled respectfully back into the paint locker. Working offshore is a cultural experience (most marine crews are Indonesian or Filipino, with European officers) where humour, outlook and everything else transcends religious and cultural norms - it is a community in its own right; no-one takes offence, everyone joins in, countering personal humorous slights with the same in a spirit of light-hearted jocularity. Hard-working, helpful Indonesian muslims drink and tell dirty jokes in pubs on portcalls with the Europeans ina spirit of "when in Rome" amd joining in and being a close-knit team. A few weeks after 9/11 I joined a ship owned by aritish company that employs Indonesian marine crew. As soon as we clear port we have to perform an all-hands muster drill to comply with IMO regs. At the drill the Indonesian muslim bo'sun stepped forward after the roll call and said, in his broken English, that on behalf of his ABs (Able-Bodied Seamen) and indeed all Indonesians, he wished to express his deep regret, etc. And he was sincere in that. And we admired him for his candidity.
But I digress - this isn't supposed to be a political treatise! Back on 9/11 the company in question (a Norwegian firm with offices in Aberdeen) sent an e-mail to all vessels in its fleet indicating that crew-changes would be arranged immediately for anyone too distressed to remain onboard - even in Africa. They would foot the bill for anyone with relatives in New York who wished to travel there, regardless of the means employed to do so. On our vessel, as we were in a part of the world served by offshore helicopters, it was let known that anyone too distressed to remain onboard would be changed out by helicopter (at £4000 per passenger per hour for a 24-seat Super Puma) before nightfall that day - even though our ship was due alongside Immingham for a scheduled crew-change within 36-hours.
Such was the way 9/11 reached out and touched the entire world...
John Smith (Hydrographer)
Aberdeen
I was working in the States and had cause to visit the UK on business. After a couple of days with the family in Bromsgrove, I spent a very pleasant night at the Ritz in London.
On the noon plane back to Houston, I dozed off, as I tend to do and on awaking noticed we were only 45 minutes from touchdown. Good sleep thought I.
After 24 hours on the plane on the runway at Gander,Canada. We "deplaned" to the amazing sight of another 40 odd planes on the runway. From then on we were the guests of the very very kind people of Gambo, Newfoundland.
Abandoned by the airline (force majeure), me, many of the passengers including and my new friend Geoff, spent the next week sleeping on the floor of the firehouse.
Can't thank the Canadians enough for the hospitality. Hope I would do the same.
Reading these comments tugs somewhat - and for me life went on as usual on that day; we carried on inspecting pipelines under the North Sea, although the usual banter was gone. When I got home I laughed at the jokes in the pub. These days I'm older and wiser - and would happily punch such jokers very hard if they made their remarks again, I am unashamed to say.
I was serving with UK special forces at the time. I was deployed on a training exercise in a very hot and dusty place in the middle east.
Returning from the desert to our forward operating base - an old fort in the middle of nowhere - I found all the personnel clustered around our one TV. This TV was connected to the outside world via an old satellite dish we had jury rigged.
I got close enough to see the screen and saw what I assumed was an old action film of some kind. The grainy rolling picture showed some kind of tall building burning, producing dense clouds of smoke.
I was soon educated that this was the real deal. I figured we would be pulled out of our current location pretty smartish. Sure enough 2 days later we were back in UK - this was the good news. 3 weeks later I was in Southern Afghanistan - this was the bad news.
Steve T
It was about 1.50pm on September 11th 2001 and I was working in my office at home, listening to Radio 5 Live. As Simon Mayo made the first announcement that there was “a fire in the Twin Towers”, natural curiosity took over and I headed for BBC News 24 to see what was happening. At this point it simply appeared that there was a serious fire. As the second tower exploded, the news assumed a press helicopter had hit the second tower. When the news played the film in slow motion, I was consumed by an overpowering feeling of dread and the hairs stood on my neck as I realised this wasn't an accident. I was now shaking as I relayed the news to my wife, brother and parents.
I sat there with a fearful realisation that I was watching people desperately fighting for their lives LIVE on TV. This was the most poignant aspect; I was watching people dying whilst sat in my home, in front of the TV. I don’t mind admitting I cried as I watched. I sat there until past midnight; I almost felt like I couldn't leave, like I was part of it. The world changed that day but so did my opinion of it.
Respect and thanks to all those brave people that worked that day for the emergency services.
I live in Phoenix, Arizona in the States.
I was working for a major university in the Phoenix area at the time. My clock radio woke me at 5:55am PT (8:55am ET), about ten minutes after the first plane hit the north tower. My radio was tuned to a news/talk station. I was getting a live feed of a station based in New York City in Phoenix, I was wondering why. While I was still waking up, I remember hearing "World Trade Center" and "fire". I thought they were playing an old tape of the 1993 bomb explosion. Then I heard the Phoenix announcer break in saying that that we were getting a live feed of the New York radio station and he announced that a plane flew into one of the towers of the World Trade Center.
I immediately got out of bed and put on one of the morning news programs on TV on and saw what was the most horrific sight in my life. I saw a big ugly hole in the north tower with black smoke coming out. The newscaster was interviewing a witness on the phone who saw the plane fly into the building. I remember the witness saying that other than the plane was flying low, he didn't see anything to indicate the plane was in trouble. He said it just flew straight into the tower. I thought this has to be a freak accident by some amateur pilot. Initially I thought it was one of those small Cessna planes, but the hole looked too big to be a small plane.
Within a couple of minutes, I saw the second plane fly into the second tower and the ball of flames exploding. Now both towers had big holes with black smoke coming out. In an instant, that's when I realized that this was no accident. Minutes later, the Associated Press was reporting that a plane that took off from Boston's Logan Airport heading to Los Angeles International was hijacked.
At about 6:35am PT (9:35am ET), I saw the first pictures out of Washington where I saw a plume of black smoke. There was a report of an explosion at the Pentagon (that was when the third plane hit). I called my supervisor at work and asked if security was closing the campus in light of the attacks. She told me she hadn't heard anything from security.
I remember I was so upset at this I couldn't watch anymore, so I turned off the TV and took a shower. I then got into my car, drove off and put the news/talk station on my car radio at 7:05am PT (10:05am ET). The announcer reported that the south tower had just collapsed. I was listening to the news all throughout the commute to work. Just before I arrived at about 7:30am PT (10:30am ET), the announcer reported that the north tower also collapsed. As I walked into my office, my coworkers told me that a fourth plane crashed near Pittsburgh (in Shanksville).
By then, I knew this wasn't just another terrorist attack. This was an act of war.
i woke to hear simon mayo mention that a light plane had struck the wtc. I went and turned on the tv and turned to cnn where i watched the events unfold.I have muslim friends who claim this was all cgi/conspiracy etc etc. how can you understand what happened if you cant believe the visual images of that terrible event.
Amidst all the horror and shock, a very small tale of innocence kept.
Throughout that Tuesday afternoon, in a leafy Essex suburb, my 5 year old son and I had what was then called CBBC Choice on with absolutely no idea what was going on in the big bad world that day.
Whilst the world was reverberating to the happenings at the WTC, we were wrapped in Tweenies, Bodger & Badger, ChuckleVision et al.
Even when we switched over, just after 5, I saw the image of smoke from the twin towers and just assumed it was one of those made-for-tv daytime movies still running.
Not until my son was given his tea, bathed and was in bed did I discover what happened. And in a way I'm pleased that's how it went.
The one thing I want my son to have is a real childhood, full of wide-eyed innocence and awe. Joseph remembering such a tragic event would undoubtedly have stripped away some of that innocence.
Ignorance isn't bliss but sometimes obliviousness is okay .....
We were caught in traffic on a greyhound bus on the outskirts of Washington DC as a huge plume of smoke rose above te city. I thought nothing of it just thinking it was a fire. Twenty minutes later we were in Grand Union station overhearing people talking about bombs at the Washington monument and the White House. A few minutes later an anouncement was made asking us to vacate the building. When we got outside there was a mass of people streaming past. We only found out what was happening when we walked past an electrical shop that was showing what was happening in New York. The crowd around the shop suddenly vanished as a rumour started that there was another plane heading for Washington. We ended up somewhere in Virginia after catching the first underground train available. Looking back we were very lucky we were caught in traffic, the pentagon was first on our list of places to see!
I was 12 5 years ago and at school in Washington DC when the planes struck. Rather than feeling traumatised or angry I simply remember feeling confused and distanced by the whole thing. However I don't remember questioning why someone would do it. What I do remember is that the day before, the 10th, I was, by dint of the new Morrocan school bus driver taking a completely wrong turn, travelling past the Pentagon at around 9:00 AM ET. What also sticks in my mind is lying in bed that night hearing the various fighter jets pass overhead in the DC airspace.
I well remember this day, as my wife and I were on holiday on the Isle of Man. We were in Douglas, browsing round town and shopping, when we saw the first reports on the TV's of a hi-fi shop window. We went in to watch, and the staff turned up the sound as they were watching in horror too. My wife was very upset about it and nearly in tears at what she thought the world was comin to. I seem to remember we were watching the TV's when the 2nd plane hit, and saw it as it hit (or was that a memory of a memory, did it really happen live on TV!). By the time the towers collapsed, there was a crowd of other shoppers and people in the shop, all watching in horror as the events unfolded. Though it must have been nearly two hours before the towers collapsed, it seemed like mere minutes. Afterwards we went back to our digs, and watched the news for the rest of the day in disbelief. It still, in a weird way now, seems like a surreal event. Whenever I watch an old film that still has the towers in it, the memories come back, Die Hard 3 comes to mind. Our thoughts go out to everybody who lost somebody that day. We show our support by going for holidays in the USA, and speaking and chatting with real people. By showing that we're not afraid to continue living, we're not going to let the terrorists win!
I was working at Rolls-Royce Aero Engines in Derby when news first filtered through from internet news sites (although I didn't see the full news pictures until I got home & watched the evening news). Within 4 months I had lost my job in Aerospace, and spent the next 22 months unemployed or working for NMW. I have not worked in the Aerospace industry since. The economic effect from Sept.11th may have been relatively small but it was significant to many people.
James
I was working at a large IT consultancy in Tottenham Court road when my wife called the first time and said that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. I relayed this message to my nearest colleagues and we all went online to find out what was going on and you could see from the pictures that it couldn't have been a small plane. Then someone came into the office and said that the other tower had also been hit and that was confirmed a few seconds later when my wife called again. From that point on it was almost impossible to access the internet to get any more information. I think that in itself was terrifying.
What compounded my shock was the reaction of one of my colleagues who was born in the UK but had Pakistani parentage. He was smiling and happy. "It was about time", he said. "America was the great enemy" and "This is a great day". I was totally speechless, numb I guess. I didn't know how to respond. It still upsets me to think that I couldn't find the words, wasn't able to say something back. I know it wouldn't have changed his opinion or view of the world but it would have made me feel better, less helpless.
My then partner Sam, now wife, and I had just moved to Long Island on a three year business secondment to the US. We lived about 20 miles out of NY, and had been in the towers 2 days before with then partners children. I had flown to Chicago on a short business trip to the Mid West, and Sam stayed in our apartment with a friend who had come to enjoy the beach and NY. That morning, I woke up a little lat in my hotel in Madison,Wisconsin, and put the TV on; like most people I thought I was watching a bad Bruce Willis film! The rest of the morning I sat with all the hotel guests watching a TV rigged in the hotel bar, in a growing state of shock. I tried to call home to Sam, and also to the UK to family there, but it was very difficult as the transmitter on top of one of the towers had of course gone. I agreed with my customers to cancel my visits for the rest of the week and got agreement from my car rental company to drive my car all the way back to Long Island, 1200 miles away. All the way on intestate 80 I saw cars with licence plates from California, South Dakota, etc, people who were doing the same as me, trying to get home. I finally got back to our apartment on September 14th, I had to cross Manhattan and the smoke was still thick in the air. I got home and found an aircraft carrier at the end of our road. Our town, Long Beach lost many firefighters, the same guys we say parading on Memorial Day a few weeks earlier. I am back in the UK now, but part of me will always be a New Yorker.
An absolute tragedy of a day 5 years ago but is the blanket wallowing really necessary?
I am an American from New York State and a former resident of New York City. I had been living in the UK for a year at the time of the attacks. I was informed of the event by a colleague who had a text from a friend watching the tv. I was shocked and immediately feared for the 100+ people I knew who worked in the area.
It was only later that evening that I learned of the full horror of the event. My friend, Chris Ingrassia, worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. As soon as I found out where the plane had hit I knew he was gone.
On this day we should remember all who lost their lives as well as other victims of the terrorist attacks and wars that have followed in the wake of 11 September. The saddest thing for me is that the world will never know what wonderful things all those people, including my friend Chris, could and would have accomplished to make all our lives better.
Waiting for my son to come out of school I remember listening to the reports on Radio 5. My sons teacher stood by my van as each report came through. We listened in complete shock. Later I called my friend in New York. He had postponed a meeting that morning in the WTC because he had a toothache and went to the dentist instead. Never has a toothache and visit to a dentist been so welcome.
Whatever the rights or wrongs of American foreign policy this was a horrific act. My heart and sympathy goes to those affected by the 9/11 tragedy.
On 11 Sept I was working in a very large open plan office for Nortel Networks, in Paignton, Devon, UK. The buzz went round the office very quickly and soon the internet started to seize up - this was worrying considering the bandwidth we had available from our systems. Early in 2002 I was made redundant due to the IT/Telecomms industry suffering a massive slump. I am also a member of HM Reserve Forces and by mid-April 2002 I found myself in Afghansitan chasing the Taliban and al-Qaeda. I am still in uniform and will probably remain so for the foreseeable future.
I am a white Anglo-Saxon have an American father but as those terrible events unfolded a year ago all I could think was that you reap what you sow!
The US have been sponsoring terror across the world for decades for political reasons so 9/11 and all that has and will follow is and was inevitable.
We live in a world where shock and horror has become the norm so we might as well get used to it, I can't see how the situation can ever be resolved we in the UK had to eventually sit around a table with the IRA.
Who the hell can we negotiate with this time?
I'm an American, from Philadelphia, which is about 2 hours away from New York by train. I've been living in London since 1996.
On September 9th, 2001, my husband John and I went away for six night break in Boscastle, Cornwall. On September 11th, we'd gotten bus passes, so we planned on spending that day, travelling from town to town, which we did. The last peaceful moments we spent were in Port Issac, where we stopped for something to eat in a tavern by the sea. In retrospect, we realised the planes must have hit the towers as we were leaving that tavern. We got our first inkling that something had happened in New York City, when we overheard a man talking on his mobile, after we'd gotten back on the bus to go to Crackington Haven, a remote area well known for its geological features. The young man on the bus was talking about 'it' whatever it was, having happened in New York because of oil...He also mentioned London's Docklands, and people being sent home early from an office building there We couldn't see that connection, but we were very curious to know what had happened. However, before we could ask him, he got off the bus, with his mobile still clasped to his ear. The other people on the bus were all school children, chatting as normal.
When we stepped off the bus at Crackington Haven, there was noone else there, not very unusual for late on a weekday afternoon, we thought. When we saw a small shop opened, we made our way there to look for a newspaper, or inquire as to what had happened, only to be barked at by the woman running the place that she was 'closing!' That didn't surprise us in itself, as it was the off season, and the area was deserted. But as we were leaving, we heard a radio in the backroom state that there were 'fighter planes in the skies over Washington, which, as we had no other information, almost made us feel as though we were in some sort of 1950's science fiction film, it seemed so unreal! By that time, we were both extremely anxious, so without even looking at Crackington Haven, we immediately decided to head back to Boscastle. While we waited for the bus on that lonely road, we speculated and speculated until we'd gone round in circles! Were the US at war? Had alien beings from another planet finally revealed themselves? My imagination was working overtime. I suppose that's one of the hazards of being part of the 'duck and cover' generation, raised on 1950's B movies.
My husband is from London, but, like me, he loves New York, having spent some months living there in the eighties, and taking lots of trips there with me, when we lived in Philadelphia when we were first married. New York is a town we both think of as another 'home.'
When we got back to Boscastle, we realised we wouldn't be able to buy a newspaper, as all of the newsagents (all two of them) were closed! That left us no choice but to climb up the hill to our self-catering accomodations, and turn on the television.
Like many other people, when I first saw those images of the burning towers on a television screen, I thought I was watching a diaster movie. I think I may have even said that to my husband, who was in the other room when I switched on the TV. But when the same images were on every channel, we realised, to our great shock that this was real...That these terrible images represented am actual real event, no matter how horrifically sureal they seemed!
We spent an undefined amount of time that evening, staring at the screen in disbelief, as the first moments of impact were played and replayed, along with the reactions of the people on the ground in NYC, who were watching in horror! It felt like the end of the world at first, as it hadn't sunken in yet that the worst had happened already, at that point, and NY and the other places which had been attacked without warning were now left to face a painful era of recover, however long that might take...And then we both began to wonder and worry, how the American government would react....
After crying myself to sleep that night. I pulled myself together right quick the next day, when I found out that someone who was a native of Boscastle was waiting to hear about their young daughter, who worked in the World Trade Center in NYC.
Mary Couzens - Southwark, London
Surely it's appropriate for some peace and private reflection. It does not need some kind of BBC 'sponsored' national or global day of grief.
Yes of course we must remember those who lost their lives and those who have since lost their lives as a direct or indirect consequence.
Why should you be surprised to discover the overriding message is still one of shock, horror and sadness? The memories are still vivid and painful.
This 'where were you' free-for-all is just pandering to the 'I, me, mine' generation and does little or no justice to the memory of those who lost their lives and the suffering of those close to them. You're not going to do this every year are you?
We must do all that we can to address the ills of world and the fears of those who live in it. We can only achieve this through greater understanding based on respect and love of fellow human beings.
Sincerely and from the depths of my heart
Roger - Cardiff
It was interesting to hear the comment this morning that our economy recovered very quickly from the 9/11 tragedy. For small business' it has been a different story. I watched the second plane fly into the tower on a television in the window of a small business a few doors from our own fledgling family business. Overnight we had £360.000 worth of new business cancelled. Our main clients - from America, The IT Industry and City Dealers were all affected. We re mortgaged our house three times to try to save our livelyhood (my husband, daughter & myself all worked in the family business) but 18 months later we closed our doors. The consequences at 54 years of age have been catastrophic. We will never be able to re pay our mortgage. Our suppliers fell like dominoes & 25 years of building contacts & good working relationships with artisans disappeared with each closing door. Only one retail business survived in the village high street that we were in. I am extremely grateful that our lives were not sacrificed and think constantly of those who's were. I love my life.
My husband and I were coming to the end of a weeks holiday touring Florida & had stopped over in Key Largo the night before the attacks. We got up on Sep 11th & put the tv to see the weather forecast as we had a long drive back to Orlando that day.
I went into the bathroom & some minutes later my husband shouted me in a panicky voice.
I came into the room to him telling me in disbelief that a plane had hit one of the world trade centre towers some minutes ago - I stood there in shock looking at the scenes of total devestation to then witness the second plane hit the tower as the news coverage was live.
I felt like my legs had be taken from under me it was like a bad dream only happening right in front of my face.
We watched the coverage for several more minutes before setting off in the car to drive back to Orlando & we listened to the coverage on the radio - we heard the the reports of the plane hitting the pentagon, the towers collapsing, the plane downed in Pennyslvania & the police & fireman that had lost their lives trying to save people in the first tower that collapsed & the worst thing that other planes were still unaccounted for and there was a real possiblilty of more attacks.
By this point we were really scared -what was going to happen next & how were we going to get home the following day.
We made it back to orlando in a state of panic & blur & we went to see our holiday rep to be told that we wouldnt be flying out the next day and they werent sure when.
We watched hours & hours of tv coverage and I felt like I knew these peiople that had been affected & it it was hurting me too.
I think in some ways it affected me in a way that nothing ever will again.
We eventually went home on the saturday after it happened. I have to say it was a horrible experience being in the US after it happened I have never seen people so devestated by something that has happened to their nation and it will stay with me for a long time probably always & I still get emotional each time I saw those scenes again.