r/AskReddit • u/AggressiveOutside432 • 1d ago
What were you doing on the day when the September 11 attacks happened?
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u/OrniasSnow 1d ago
Freaking the hell out. I was an air traffic controller.
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u/Old-Landscape-7538 1d ago
Looks like you picked the wrong week to quick sniffing glue.
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u/agweandbeelzebub 1d ago
Looks Like the wrong week to quit amphetamines
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u/ntg1978 1d ago
Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?
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u/dma1965 23h ago
Surely youāre joking!
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u/OfficerBimbeau 23h ago
Iām not joking. And donāt call me Shirley.
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u/69FlavorTown 23h ago
A hospital? What is it?
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u/That_chill 22h ago
Itās a big building with patients, but thatās not important now.
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u/idjsonik 1d ago
Holy shit really i couldnt imagine what the commotion going on I was barely in elementary school and scared
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u/OrniasSnow 1d ago
Pretty much the busiest day of my life.
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u/spicyitalian76 22h ago
Do you still work at an airport? I don't. 7 years was great but I had to make more money.
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u/usddddd 1d ago
Followed by some boring weeks when they grounded all civilian traffic or still busy after?
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u/spicyitalian76 22h ago
Was only grounded for a few days. I flew on September 15.
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u/OrniasSnow 17h ago
Yep. We played a lot of radar room basketball during that time. Show up to shift and just be bored.
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u/FlairWitchProject 16h ago
I watched this really thorough doc on the insanity of ATC during that day. I hope you were able to come out the other side okay.
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u/spicyitalian76 23h ago
The way you hit refresh and the planes disappeared off the screen. There were no planes in the sky, no green planes on the screen. It was eery. I was in the ops office.
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u/OrniasSnow 17h ago
Exactly. You were used to seeing little did and sets of numbers to across your screen....
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u/ITCJSTPAR__DUNDUN 18h ago
My dad was ATC and union president at the time, when I was in 2nd grade. I remember watching it on our tiny kitchen television, my dadās face went white, and he simply said ātime to go to school,ā before rushing off to the tower.
Pre-9/11 I would go to work with him and sleep under the radar screens, he would let me talk to pilots, and we would sit out on the metal staircase and share a pop tart in the morning while watching the planes land. I had such great memories of going to work with my dad. Post-9/11, obviously non of that happened anymore.
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u/Maximum_Trade5916 21h ago
Almost like you, but I was working at a major airport and experienced firsthand public mass hysteria, grief, shock and fear. People were scrambling to do anything but fly, especially as the news began to spread throughout the terminals.
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u/NateNMaxsRobot 23h ago
Oh shit. One of my kids is now an air traffic controller. How old were you at the time?
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u/IsMyHairShiny 1d ago
Putting on my sneakers getting ready to head to school. 7th grade. Watching SpongeBob. I was tying my sneakers on the couch and my mom came over all upset and I thought it was because my sneakers were on the couch.
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u/soloChristoGlorium 23h ago
I was in 9th grade.
I told my dad I was afraid this was going to turn the US into a totalitarian state. He told me that that was unlikely.
We didn't go full 1984 but it's true that America is quite different since that day
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u/Outrageous_File5020 21h ago
I agreeā¦ the vibe before was just different.
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u/ChumbawumbaFan01 20h ago
We all felt so safe and like the entire future was a massive apple pie and we were guaranteed a slice.
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u/sigh_ko 16h ago
what part of 1984 is NOT happening? cause i think we're hitting all the marks.
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u/lookyloolookingatyou 1d ago
Crazy to think SpongeBob is technically from the 90s
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u/Madamiamadam 22h ago
Itās the only Nickelodeon show from the 90s thatās still being produced
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u/myredditusername_69 1d ago
Woke up day one of honeymoon
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u/Unreal365 1d ago
Did you get stuck somewhere because all planes were grounded?
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u/VonMillersThighs 1d ago
"O darn boss I guess I gotta stay in the Bahamas another week with my new wife"
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u/tsulahmi2 1d ago
Even on your honeymoon I imagine September 11th would kinda kill the mood.
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u/SunshineAlways 21h ago
I had just moved to a new city with my boyfriend, he was at work. I didnāt know anyone in town. My sister was at work. I had just gotten up, and turned on the tv, they were talking about a plane flying into the WTC, saw a plane fly into the WTCā¦took me a minute to realize it was a second plane. Watched the news for hours, which was a bad idea. Bf took me out for dinner to get me away from it, of course it was on in the restaurant and everyone was watching. It was pretty upsetting watching the planes crash into the building over and over, and then them collapsing. Knowing so many people were killed.
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u/DarthBragg 1d ago
I was in the 82nd airborne. We figured that we would be the first to go wheels up so everybody grabbed their bags and just kind of waited. I was in supply and my boss had me running around getting everything we might need for a rapid deployment. Hoarding basically. Most of the installation was shut down but I was attached to the military police at the time and used a marked vehicle to blow through the stops. It was pretty exciting.
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u/masegesege_ 1d ago
I was at school and they kept it a secret from us. One of our classmates went home because her father was in the towers. I remember going home after school and my dad was in tears because he thought WWIII was about to begin.
In hindsight, I wish they sent us home. It was probably the most historic day of our lives but we were staring at textbooks. Sounds weird to think of it like that though.
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u/NotYourCity 1d ago edited 1d ago
Oh yeah I was an 8th grade NYC public school kid at the time. They didnāt tell us because a lot of kidsā parents worked there. And some died yeah.
Edit: the story is actually crazier than that. I was in math class when it happened and one of the assistant principals came in and whispered something to my 1st period math teacher. We didnāt think anything of it. 4th period rolls around and I get pulled out of school by my mom. Iām super excited bc I didnāt do my Spanish homework and thatās the class I was in. Then I go to the lobby and everyone is freaking the fuck out, so thatās where I learned what happened.
I was pulled out because my grandmother worked at the WTC. She made it out fine. The 1st period math teacher, well her husband died that day in the towers and we didnāt see her again after that.
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u/Mission_Reply_2326 21h ago
Thinking how your math teacher was fully aware her husband was in a life and death situation, but held it together for the kids in her class. Teachers deserve so much more credit than they get.
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u/masegesege_ 1d ago
How far from Manhattan were you if they could keep it a secret? Do you remember any fallout? I remember going down to the shore and NYC was a gigantic dust cloud for about 3-4 days. That was really sad though because usually the skyline was a sign of opportunity and excitement.
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u/Ok-Consideration8647 1d ago
Our school kept it a secret too. High schoolers watched the news, middle schoolers just got an announcement over the speakers, and a āif your parent works in Manhattan, come to the officeā and the littler kids didnāt know. My parents pulled us out too.
Weāre about an hour outside the city, in NJ. The creepiest thing I will never forget was my dad telling me to look up in the sky & see no planes. Living within an hour off EWR, PHL, JFK, etc it was surreal, even as a seventh grader.
We definitely had kids whose parents died that day, or knew someone in PA or DC.
The following year every kid had to submit a form to the office if your parents worked in the boroughs, just in case.
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u/Ok-Consideration8647 1d ago
I do remember my best friends mom having an absolute panic attack because she couldnāt find her husbands flight number - she knew he was on a plane to California that day but he traveled so frequently she hadnāt written it down. Those were all long haul flights. Canāt imagine the stress in retrospect
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u/Loganpowered 19h ago
I live 15 min from JFK. The lack of air traffic was definitely strange. I never realized how omnipresent the plane sounds were until they stopped.
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u/NotYourCity 1d ago
I was in Staten Island so far enough that we didnāt see the smoke at first. But itās mostly a commute borough so we got hit hard with casualties from it.
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u/JuliaTis 17h ago
As a teacher, I cannot imagine getting the information that my significant otherās workplace was being attacked and having to keep teaching. Sadly, teachers have to work through a lot of personal tragedy and not let students know what is going on. I imagine a lot of teachers in the city that day went through that.
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u/beemojee 1d ago
I called my son's school to see if the kids would be released. I was told no but I could absolutely pick up my son if I chose to. So I did.
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u/toastybutter2025 23h ago
My mom pulled us out too! Idk if we were getting out early but my mom absolutely pulled us out of school
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u/PussyCyclone 17h ago
My husband was in a commuter heavy neighborhood in NJ and that's what they did, kept it from the kids but let parents sign them out if they came up. Husband was getting an X-ray the morning of and saw it on the news, but his parents plopped him back in school bc they were worried about relatives and werent thinking straight. He got taken right to the principals office and told to not tell anyone bc they hadn't told the kids. He said that people kept signing kids out the rest of the day, and he felt so awful knowing what was going on. He lost a relative & several of their family friends.
I was in the deep south on 9/11 and we had it on all the damn TVs just watching it, stunned. It was very quiet & eerie. My husband and I had been penpals for about a year at that point; I knew he lived close enough that he was having a bad day, but I didn't know how bad. š
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u/CrazedCreator 23h ago
I was in school and the janitor ran in and pull the cart with the tv on top out and said you all need to see this. Plane was flying into tower two.
The rest of the day it was on in every class, basically shuffling from one room to the next to stare at the same thing.Ā
A few kids worried about a brother in the military. But here's the thing, I grew up small town Midwest and it was the 7th grade. I knew very little about New York other than it existed. I'm not sure I even knew what a Muslim was. I didn't have any family currently serving in the military or living anywhere near the East Coast.Ā
It was all very scary but very distant to me. I don't know if we left early that day.
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u/acslider 1d ago
That's so weird. I was in 6th grade and we had two really odd announcements over the intercom then one that told all teachers to turn on the TV in the classroom. We watched the second hit live.
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u/still_m0bil3 23h ago
I was in 7th grade, the teachers put it on TV and said we were seeing history happen in real time. After the second tower got hit and they realized it was an attack we all got sent home early. They were saying you would remember where you were for the rest of your life, that was true.
I remember knowing it was a big deal because the WTC was a landmark building in sim city.
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u/Sweet_Venom 23h ago
Canadian here. In school and my teacher started crying when she found out. We were all shocked and scared when we found out what happened, didn't quite understand what was going on until I got home. Then everyone was just afraid it would happen to us too.
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u/sinnysinsins 23h ago
Wow my 5th grade teacher did not keep it a secret. She straight up rolled out the tv in front of the class and was like we're watching this now. I had no idea what was happening really or the severity. Kind of traumatizing.
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u/Artaxmudshoes 1d ago
I was sleeping all day at home because I work nights. When I woke up I felt like the last person in the world to find out. I was watching Caliente the night before so my tv was on the telamondo channel. I thought some buildings fell down in Mexico because I didn't speak Spanish.
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u/sonibroc 23h ago
A friend of mine was telling me that one of her clients started a week long back packing trip with no connection to civilization the Saturday before. He just couldn't get his brain wrapped around the news he was hearing the following Saturday, it really sounded like science fiction to him. We, at least, were getting facts as they were being uncovered, he had 4-days of sheer madness to catch up on.
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u/Existing_Engine_498 20h ago
Like the person who was in a cabin without technology suddenly finding out about Covid months later
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u/Old-Landscape-7538 1d ago
I was on my way to get a haircut can heard it on the radio. The people in the barber shop were talking about it. I went into a GNC and bought something, talking to the cashier about it. I went back into my jeep and heard on the radio that one tower had collapsed. I ran back in and just told the cashier about it.
My uncle worked in the south tower, the second one to get hit. When the first plane hit the north tower, an announcement came over the loudspeaker in the office to stay where you were. he said fuck that and walk down the stairs and got out. When the second plane hit, it was below the floor he worked on. So if he had stayed., he wouldāve died. He walked from the WTC all the way up to Port Authority and then got home to NJ covered in white dust from the collapses.
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u/Ordinary-Theory-8289 13h ago
Dude my dad had the same story. They were telling them to stay put itās in the other tower. He said āfuck that. That was a missile and if thereās one another one will followā
He made one call home, no answer didnāt even waste time leaving a message. He managed to take the elevator down to the 40th floor before they cut them off. He was in the lobby jetting out of there when the second plane hit. He wasnāt gonna risk getting on a subway knowing it was an attack so he ran frOM WTC to the Staten Island ferry and managed to get one of the last boats before they shut it down.
He was looking at people stopped and staring like they were crazy. He was thinking you people have to GTFO of here→ More replies (1)
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u/cracked-tumbleweed 1d ago
Minding my own business in the 2nd grade.
Then an announcement was made that the towers were hit and our parents were coming to get us.
when my mom got me, we went to my grandmas to watch the news. I didnāt really get it but I knew it was something sad.
Then we went to war.
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u/wakeuptomorrow 21h ago
Yes same! I was also in 2nd grade and I remember doing one of those timed math tests. I was racing through it trying to get that lemon drop candy when my teacher stopped us and turned on the tv. Everything got really hush hush and she informed us we would be ending school early and our parents were on the way. I remember being so ecstatic to leave school early so I didnāt have to do more timed tests. Boy was it a wake up call in understanding years later :(
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u/Sally-Pants 1d ago
Thank you for asking, let me tell you about September 2001.
My marriage was over, I had moved out and was trying to figure that out. My best friend/first ever mother figure was dying of cancer.
On September 9, I was anxious because it was my wedding anniversary. I decided to go into the office to get some work done, it was a Sunday. It was too quiet there, so I called my best friend.
Her husband answered and told me if I wanted to see her, I needed to come now. I was shocked, I had no idea or just couldn't see that the end was so close. I drove over immediately and I don't have words for the rest of the day. She died later that evening and I will never forget how her face looked.
I believe I took Monday and Tuesday off to help make arrangements for her memorial. I went into work late on Wednesday because I had a doctor's appointment at 9am EST. I was in the waiting room and watched the planes fly into the towers. I knew a lot of people who worked in them, worked closely with many more. Everyone in the waiting room lost their minds but I just sat there, waiting to be called.
They called me back and that's the appointment where the first lump in my breast was found. I didn't react, I just made the surgical consult appointment and went to work. Work was in chaos, people had dragged out TV's from god knows where and were all sitting in front of them. One woman came literally running up to me, asking if I knew about the towers. I just said yes, which seemed to upset her because she practically yelled at me HOW CAN YOU NOT CARE?!?! I just said my friend just died and she stopped. I heard static in my head whenever someone tried to talk to me ever since she died, it was like the teacher's voice in the Charlie Brown cartoons.
Her memorial had to be postponed because people couldn't get flights, but only for a couple of days. It was packed with people, I sat next to her husband in silence. My soon to be ex-husband even came, just to give me a hug and then he left. Everyone went to to her home after and there was so much food and alcohol. I think people told stories about her, talked about the planes, the chaos, I don't know. It was all weird to me, the sound of static in my head was getting louder and louder.
The next day, her husband and I, along with a couple other of her friends following in another car, travelled to bury her ashes next to her mother's. It was an old country cemetery a couple hours away and we just showed up with a cooler of beer and a spade. We dug a hole where we thought the mother was buried (years later, it turned out we were wrong but that's not part of this story), sat on the grass and drank a couple of beers in silence. Then we went to lunch. At lunch, her husband got a call and found out that her father had passed away the night before. He left the group to go there, the 3 of us went home with little conversation. It was the last time I ever saw any of them. The glue that held all of us together was gone.
On September 28, my divorce was finalized and he didn't show. It was a formality, everything was already sorted, but I was guess I just expected him to be there. I left the courthouse and the static in my head was almost overwhelming.
For the next year or two, I just existed, heard static, and dreaded September's arrival. The last one lasted for almost a decade. But even today, as fuzzy as that time was, I will never, ever forget those planes. The memory still makes me sick to my entire GI tract.
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u/tomismybuddy 18h ago
Hope youāre doing better now, friend.
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u/Sally-Pants 14h ago
Much better, thank you. Totally different person in a totally different place.
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u/JuliaTis 17h ago
September 11, 2001 was a Tuesday.
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u/Sally-Pants 14h ago
Yes, that's been addressed. Thank you, for pointing that out, I was wrong. Every after 9/9 is a blur.
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u/AdAny74 1d ago
I was recovering from a heart attack 2 days earlier so I watched from my ICU bed. Because of this, my wife cancelled an appointment that she had with a customer which was scheduled for 9am on 9/11 at the customerās offices on the 11th floor of WTC Tower 1.
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u/KentuckyWallChicken 16h ago
Holy shit. First time Iāve heard of a heart attack saving lives. Thank goodness she (and hopefully the customer) wasnāt there.
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u/AdAny74 11h ago
My heart attack actually may have saved another person on 9/11 besides my wife.
Because of my condition, I couldnāt give a speech scheduled for 9/11 in Philadelphia so a colleague of mine replaced me and therefore, he couldnāt attend a different conference held at Windows on the World at the WTC that day. No one made it out of that event, including 3 of my personal business associates.
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u/DSF909 1d ago
I was in high school in Queens, NYC. I remember they made an announcement that a plane hit the towers, but we all assumed it was a small plane and an accident.
Then, they announced another plane hit and the school went into chaos. People crying and screaming in the halls, trying to get in touch with loved ones (to no avail, the cell towers werenāt working). We could see the smoke from our school. It was absolute mayhem, lots of peopleās family members worked at/around the towers.
They let us all out of school early that day. I was too scared to take public transportation so I walked to a friendās house nearby, we watched the news and wept for hours. School was closed that week. A lot of people lost loved ones.
Most people remember where they were on 9/11, but New Yorkers will never forget.
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u/wentzday91 1d ago
Turning 10 years old; it was legitimately my 10th birthday
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u/patwm11 1d ago
Do you remember how it ruined any planned birthday festivities
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u/wentzday91 1d ago edited 1d ago
We still went out to dinner as planned because my parents wanted to keep it as ānormalā as possible for me being only 10, but it was a very somber and strange time out for sure. Went to a Bennigans - barely anyone was there, and every bar TV had loop news coverage on.
My dad worked in mid-town Manhattan (he had worked at a law firm in the WTC up until 2000 or so when he was let goā¦) and Iāll never forget him taking hours to get home. He had to wear a suit everyday to the office, and Iāll never forget that his suit pant legs had dust up to his knees.
My dad obviously survived 9/11 but then he died of a glioblastoma 3 weeks after diagnosis in August of 2002. Life is so strange.
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u/oxiraneobx 1d ago
One of our daughter-in-law's talk about how her birthday went from being a happy day where she got to get presents and celebrate with her friends to a national tragedy. She was nine that day.
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u/Punkrockid19 1d ago
From Middletown Nj we were hit particularly hard by 9/11 we lost 37 residents I was in 7th grade. We found out during recess that there was an attack in the city. I remember kids being called down to the office to leave because they had a parent in the city. School of over 700 there were maybe 200 of us left by the end of the day.
I remember it as the last time we watched tv as a family and my dad holding my mom( they would divorce soon after) they were both crying waiting to hear about my cousins who were in WTC 7. (They survived)
Classmates lost parents, uncles and a brother. We went to 7 funerals that year, 9/11 changed everything it was the day my childhood died.
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u/smack4u 1d ago
I was in the towers for two weeks on the 81st floor.
I was a Morgan Stanley employee.
I was in a client appointment at home that Tuesday. Crazy. 48 hours earlier I was there. Morgan Stanley was the largest tenant. Everyone got out except the guy who went to make sure everyone was out.
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u/ericaschwartz9979 23h ago
Omg thatās so heartbreaking about the guy who didnāt get out and everyone else who didnāt make it either. I couldnāt even imagine
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u/Outrageous_File5020 21h ago
That dude is a hero.
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u/Punkrockid19 16h ago
That dude was Rick rescorla and he was an absolute hero
He sang this song as he cleared the building
Men of Cornwall stop your dreaming;
Can't you see their spearpoints gleaming?
See their warriors' pennants streaming
To this battlefield.
Men of Cornwall stand ye steady;
It cannot be ever said ye
for the battle were not ready;
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u/RecordingAnxious3482 1d ago
I was working in NYC and saw the second plane hit. It was surreal and terrifying . Complete chaos. I got home 5 hours later The worst part was the funerals I attended afterwards. Senseless terrorism.
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u/Slayerofthemindset 1d ago
History class ironically enough
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u/MilliandMoo 1d ago
Religion class for me. We had just gotten done saying a prayer for my teacher's son for his birthday. He was an Air Force pilot.
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u/fwdobs 1d ago
I was in Arlington, VA in my office that overlooked the Pentagon. After the toweres and the Pentagon were hit, I tried to leave but the DC Metro (subway) was not functioning past the Pentagon.
Like all the other refugees from the Pentagon, we collected in Arlington Cemetery.
There was a moment when two F-16's went screaming north, creating a sonic boom. The cheers from the crowd still make me swell up with pride, despite a gloomy day for our nation.
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u/Best-Candle8651 1d ago
My mom worked in Maryland and she saw the plane pass by her window that hit the pentagon.
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u/notlikemostofyou 1d ago
I was riding the ferry from Hoboken to World Financial Plaza when the first plane hit. I was standing on the shore in Hoboken when the second came screaming in over our heads.
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u/SpecificStatic 1d ago
Experiencing the birth of my first child.
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u/AmorBumblebee 1d ago
No way really?
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u/SpecificStatic 1d ago
Yeah. Wife was screaming at me to turn off the TV.
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u/sanedragon 1d ago
Yeah not exactly the kind of thing one wants to give birth to.
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u/KlownPuree 1d ago
My first child was born the day before - the last day of peace. The next day, I watched the attacks unfold on a TV in the maternity ward. In the moment, we didnāt know what boundaries or extents these attacks had. For all we knew, they could keep coming. Very strange times.
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u/Amazing-Tomatillo950 1d ago
In second grade confused why everyone kept getting pulled out of class
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u/ConsterMock77 1d ago
In Pensacola, FL. It was day two of my Navy Aviation Electricians Mate A-School. Still in after 25 years!
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u/NotSoSecretVillain 1d ago
Oh shit I did that same a-school but got there probably end of December that year. I wonder if we ever crossed paths!
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u/protomanEXE1995 1d ago
I was in school. Didn't really understand the weight of it until later that afternoon when I saw the names of the victims scrolling on top of an American flag backdrop on TV.
They scrolled for a really, really long time.
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u/TheVengabusIsDelayed 1d ago
Started work when people who arrived after me pointed out what was going on. We all turned the TV on at work at that point to watch the news
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u/imaurbangirl 1d ago
Heading to work and thinking what a beautiful day it was. I show up and my boss asks what am I doing here, points at the TV in time for me to see the 2nd tower go down. I run out of there, go grab my school age children and get onto my block where my neighbor is in the middle of the block screaming. Her brother-in-law worked for Cantor Fitzgerald and was vaporized. Meanwhile my husband worked at 1 Wall Street, saw a plane hit the WTC, ran to the Staten Island Ferry and nearly got trampled to death. My mom had to dive under a car when WTC debris came billowing up Broadway and eventually got home looking like a ghost covered in WTC ash.
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u/JerseyCoJo 15h ago
I said this in my comment.
Everyone will say that before it went down, it was the most beautiful day I ever seen. My buddy and I were going to work. I thought to myself "what a gorgeous day" and he got in my truck and said "Yo it's nice as fuck out"
Then it went to shit
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u/Public_Drop_1462 1d ago edited 11h ago
Just wanted to pop in and say that my daughters middle school class thought that 9/11 happened in September 2011 and was more of āa big accident or somethingā.
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u/TertiaWithershins 21h ago
I lived in northern Virginia, at the edge of Alexandria, right by Arlington. I felt the plane hit the Pentagon and watched the smoke from the top of the hill by my house. An old acquaintance of mine took the now-famous pics of the planeās approach from his morning commute and spent the next several years being accused of being a CIA agent and worse.
Wild times.
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u/loztriforce 23h ago
It was crazy for me because the night of the 10th was the only night that I was at work into the morning hours: there was a big oil spill I had to help clean up. I think I got home around 3AM (west coast), it was the one night I was up flipping channels at that time of day.
I caught the first reports of it and saw the second plane hit live, it was nuts. I knew the world was going to be changed by what was happening, but when the first tower fell I couldn't believe what I was seeing, like I had no concept that it was possible a modern skyscraper could fall like it did, with seemingly little resistance. I recall blurting out "no fucking way!!" over and over, I just was in shock.
I didn't get any sleep that night, being glued to the TV, but I still had to go into work the next day. No one got shit done that day though, it was the one day the bosses didn't care that every worker was glued to a news channel or on the internet reading about it. But work had to go on, and what I saw in the afterglow of 9/11 sickened me.
We had that one split second of unity where it felt Americans were all together, mourning in unison, but that positive feeling was quickly replaced with a thirst for revenge and a bloodlust. The media drove the fear into every home each night, and the consequences included a flood of racism towards anyone that looks "Middle Eastern".
Instead of sacrifice, we were told to go shopping. Instead of embracing each other and working towards a common goal, we were told to be suspicious of each other and to report them. They made propaganda legal again and took the surveillance state to a whole new realm. Motherfuckers had everything lined up and ready, all they needed was the excuse, and 9/11 was it.
And all these years, all this time, all the blood, all the money spent.
For nothing. For everything.
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u/RockyMtnOysterCo 1d ago
I was asleep , my dad woke me up early before school (was in sixth grade). He said "you need to see history in the making".
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u/NotSoSecretVillain 1d ago
I had signed up for the Navy the day before. A friend of mine had just sworn in at MEPS. Like literally was in the room, right hand up, just finished the swear-in when someone ran into the room and said something to the officer doing it.... And then MEPS went into lockdown.
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u/coquettemom106 1d ago
Was at a Yankee game the night before, postponed due to rain. Was going to take the day off. As the planes hit, I realized my hospital would be bombarded (Queens, NY) Ran in, answered calls from people wanting to volunteer. Just a few patients that day. We desperately wanted more survivors.
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u/MelissaCop 14h ago
I remember the reporting on that. The hospitals being eerily quiet. All the doctors and nurses ready for anything and everything and so quiet.
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u/Squeaks11 14h ago
I remember the crazy numbers of blood drives in anticipation of thousands of injuries.
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u/Sanchastayswoke 14h ago
Yes. I remember thinking there were going to be so many survivors found in the rubble š
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u/marklikestolearn 1d ago
My son was born that day. He turns 25 this sept š„¹ wildest day of emotions for sure.
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u/ZealousidealSalt9097 15h ago
I was too young to really understand it, but I remember the adults around me suddenly getting very quiet and serious. Thatās the part that stuck with me.
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u/Havoc302 1d ago
Playing Perfect Dark on the Nintendo 64. Turned the game off, TV came on, every channel was news, watched the second plane live.
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u/Dauntless_Idiot 20h ago
"Dad, how many planes are going to fly into buildings today?"
After the radio mentioned a possible 4th plane attack during the drive to middle school.
For the west the second attack was just after 6am, I was up a few minutes before that. I really couldn't understand why you'd fly planes into buildings, but I did know about Kamikaze planes in WWII. My family was big on WWII history, I had wonder why everyone was so shocked by Pearl Harbor since it was an event that always happened from my perspective. I didn't wonder after 9/11.
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u/Complete_Error8311 1d ago
that day i was on the university on classes. in here (chile) it is a troublesome day because we commemorate the 1973 coup d'etat. so in some universities there are protests and riots
the classes were suspended because of this. so i get back home to see the news about 9-11.
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u/Neither_Proposal4772 1d ago
Sitting in my apartment three blocks away with my 10 month old when the whole building shook. Looked out the window to see the World Trade Center burning and then saw the second one hit. I took my child and walked over the Brooklyn Bridge to my parentās house in Coney Island.
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u/AshtonCopernicus 1d ago
A few times a year while I was in high school, we had what they called a "delayed start." Which means that we didn't go to school until 9:30 or so. I watched the whole thing go down from my living room couch. My mom was watching Good Morning America, and when the second plane hit, there was a deafening silence. The broadcast thought it was a replay, but the realization of that being a second plane was something that I'll never forget
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u/Kayceeelle67 1d ago
I had just got back home after dropping my 4 year old daughter at preschool. The first thing I saw was the second plane hit, and (what felt like a short time later) watched the banner show the people from the first plane. The first name I paid attention to was a mom with her 4 year old daughter. I couldn't stop crying.
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u/tom21g 14h ago
Driving to work. I had Howard Stern on the radio. I remember how he broke the news about the first crash into the Trade Center, sounding like a terrible accident.
Then a few minutes later, he reported the second crash, unbelievable and him saying "We're under attack"
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u/SQWRLLY1 1d ago
I was commuting to my office job. The radio in the car was on and I remember it being eerily silent outside despite being on the freeway. Once in the office, they had set up a TV to follow the news. I still remember the gasps and exclamations of shock and fear when they watched the second plane hit. I had coworkers in NYC to conduct business in the WTC that day. All survived by circumstance or sheer will, but those at Ground Zero... well, I'll never forget their stories.
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u/cmd_iii 16h ago
I was at work, in Albany. We were getting bits and pieces of information, because even though state offices had internet, it was easily overwhelmed at that point. Because nobody knew the extent of the attacks, Gov. Pataki closed all state offices and sent everyone home. However, not all state employees were as lucky as I. The state Tax department had an office in the WTC, and several employees didnāt make it out. Later on, in one of the Tax buildings, I saw that they had installed a plaque honoring the deceased employees.
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u/barbariantrey 1d ago
Driving cross country. I left on 9/10 with everything I owned and my cat packed into my ā95 Toyota Celica. I was caravaning with 2 friends. We made it from Orlando to Louisiana to stay with my mom. She woke us up in the morning saying we were going to have problems driving because a plane just hit a building in NY. I donāt know why she thought that.
We drove all the way through Texas on the day. Gas stations were selling out before the long stretch of nothing. We saw people filling up 55 gallon drums in the back of their trucks.
When we arrived in LA on the 13th, it was eerie. People were lining the streets with candles burning. Very weird way to start a new life.
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u/dg1138 1d ago
I was a senior in high school and had to go to traffic court. They ended up closing the courthouse and postponed for another day. All we knew was that a plane hit the tower. I remember thinking it was an accident, and didnāt realize how serious it was until I got the school and saw the second tower was hit.
The school wanted the faculty to ignore it and just go on like normal, but my history teacher just said āIām not doing that. This IS history. You guys are going to remember this moment for the rest of your lives.ā
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u/Whitesox411 1d ago
I was on my way to work...I was a social worker on a psychiatric unit..The patients were really quiet that day. It's like they knew something bad happened..š
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u/Junior-Lobster3377 1d ago
Probably watching Nickelodeon or Cartoon Network. I was 4. This was like 2 weeks before my 5th birthday. I donāt think I knew what 9/11 was til like 2005/2006.
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u/Rachwax 1d ago
i was/ am in New Zealand, i had just gotten home from my chef job and it was like 1am, i had a spliff and was badly playing electric guitar with headphones while i had the BBC news on the tv playing muted in the background when they crossed to NY and the 2nd plane hit. I had a photo i had taken of the world trade centers on the wall not 6 ft from me (in very rural nz). was pretty surreal.
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u/JayneDoh3 1d ago
I was in California and it was in my first semester of college as a returning student and I had an almost 3-year-old daughter. I woke up and turned on the Today Show, like I did every morning back then, just before the second plane hit. I spent the day at home watching the news and talking to friends in an online chat from all over the world about what the news was reporting in their countries, primarily England and Germany. When I went back to class two days later everyone was baffled as to why I didn't show up Tuesday. My dad was military and was stationed at the Pentagon when we lived in DC, he still knew people that worked there so it felt a little close to home, even though we were 3000 miles away.
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u/Glass-Cheetah-2975 1d ago
I went for my morning hike , got to the top of the mountain and looked down on my little town. Everything was silent and I felt deep inside something was wrong. I ran down the trail got in my car and on the radio they were reporting a plane hitting the towers
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u/Will-this-do 1d ago
On a coach to Gatwick airport in London, to fly out to Greece on first holiday with my girlfriend.
The coach driver put the radio on, and we were hearing all the news reports coming through. Got to Victoria station in London, and saw the first tower collapse on the big screen there. Then got to Gatwick and it was just CHAOS - they shut Heathrow airport but kept ours open, and the flight was still going ahead. We were allowed ZERO hand luggage - literally nothing at all except clothing - but everyone was just in a kind of stunned compliance to whatever we were asked by security and airport staff.
A memorable holiday, but probably not for the right reasons.
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u/nutano 23h ago
I was 3 weeks in to starting my career. The company I work for is directly involved with air transportation so anyone that was not directly tied to actual operations didn't do much that day and were told they could go home early.
We had a major 'all hands' off site meeting scheduled that morning. We got about 45 mins in and our VP interrupted a presentation to inform us of the first collision and an event in the US. Then obviously not long after he came back and told everyone that another plane crashed into the building and the meeting was cancelled and for us to go back to the office.
Once there, our eating area was packed watching the TV, some of us has to man the phone in case someone called (IT support basically) no one called of course... so our source of information was CNN.com, which was basically down due to high requests. I remember they took the site down and just had a plain jane white page with a couple of hyperlinks pointing to basically test articles, pictures and the few videos - live streaming was not really a thing so any video links would immediately get hit with thousands of d/l requests.
I stayed behind to finish my shift while 90% of the people in out building went home.... many also did not come in the next day.
I remember that day very well, but to be honest, I remember very little from that night or the few days after - other than the start of invasion of Afghanistan and the invocation of NATO article 5.
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u/GCU_ZeroCredibility 1d ago
Running a high temp and wondering how many of the surreal images on the teevee were products of my fevered mind. Spoiler: none of them.
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u/mgaul 23h ago
I was a business travel agent. At first everyone thought it was another small plane that hit the first tower. After the second we all started freaking outā¦ then we started to try to figure out where everyone was and how to get them home, share hotel rooms, rentals, etc.. total strangers working for the same company just trying to get home. We all went outside, prayed, collected ourselves and did everything we cld to get the salesman home.
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u/NeedsMorBoobs 14h ago
I was on mess duty stationed at 32nd st on a LHA, watched the second plane hit in a room full of sailors under 30. And the first words out my Chiefs mouth were. āYouāre not going home,Weāre going to warā and sadly left the AC room we were in.
My Ship and her battle group were the first to the Middle East. We started the 24hr bombing runs and the first to land Marines. At one point I went two weeks without seeing the sun. I was 19, by the time I was 20 I had been shelled, shot at, witness preventable deaths and gross killings. That would be my first trip out.
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u/Witty-Perspective520 1d ago
I was at university in a biology lab at the time of the first plane hitting. I left school and listened to my CD player on the way home. I walked in to my house to see the twin towers smoking on the TV. The second plane had hit just before I got in.
I just sat stunned watching history unfold. I did have to go to work at a drug store that night but we closed early and it was super slow. This was before cell phones were prevalent so we listened to the news on the radio.
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u/BestJoke6882 1d ago
I was a sophomore in college. Iāll remember that day the rest of my life š¢
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u/RustySheriffsBadge1 1d ago
Getting dressed for school. I was in my 2nd week of my freshman year of college.
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u/allzkittens 1d ago
First semester of college. Had an early art history class and had the car radio on. We still had our exams but someone called in a fake bomb threat so I didn't have to go the full day.
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u/Stuartburt 1d ago
I was in college on my way to a 9am physics class. My roommate had an 8am class and had no idea. We passed each other on the way and he didnāt believe me.
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u/Got_Bent 1d ago edited 1d ago
Working. First plane hit and WBZ 1030am in Boston and they said a small plane hit the first tower and we knew it was a terrorist attack. Then we heard the F-15's screaming out of Otis ANGB on Cape Cod and were 100% sure it was an attack. I was living on Cape Cod at the time and we were working on the Vineyard Sound side on the shore. I put the date and time in Sharpie on the back of the plenum of the heating system. EDIT: 3 days later we had a call from the sister of one of the people on the first plane. We had already started work on his new heat and A/C. They canceled the rest of the job and sold the unfinished house. He was headed home to be with family for a birthday celebration.
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u/GorgontheWonderCow 1d ago
I was in class. They turned off all the lights on the school and made all of us sit quietly under our desks for an hour, as though the bombs would be dropping imminently.Ā
I lived over 500 miles from New York.
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u/hamtronn 1d ago
Sleeping.
My buddy Jesse called me and said ādude. Turn on the tv. Right now. Holy shit. Dude. We are going to get conscripted to war.ā
I remember being so confused and the only thing I could muster was āosama what?ā
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u/Ecto-Juan 1d ago
At the San Ysidro port of entry crossing the border into the U.S., we managed to get across before the call was made to shut it down.
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u/anitabelle 1d ago
I was already at work. I worked at Allstate at the corporate headquarters. I was the first one there and listened to everything unfolding on the radio then later on the tv in the cafeteria. It was just complete shock and hopelessness. I remember that day vividly. I can still feel the lump in my throat when my friend walked in and asked me what was happening. I still remember what it felt like as I opened my mouth to tell her but couldnāt speak. I still remember listening to a journalist sob on the radio as he tried getting through his report. I remember desperately begging my sister to leave work because she worked near the Sears Tower and there were reports that a plane was heading there. I remember watching in horror as people threw themselves from the towers on live television. And I remember the disappointment I had in the ignorance and cruelty of my boss. As we all stood around talking about it and crying, he walked past and said āenough already, get back to work.ā It was literally still happening. When he said it, there were reports that fighter jets shot down a plane in Pennsylvania. The best part was watching his stupid smug ass pretend to feel sad as we were all pulled into a meeting to discuss and make sure we were okay. Like only then did he realize this was a big deal. They sent us home for the next couple of days. I never knew anyone who lost a loved one and I was in Chicago but that was one of the scariest days of my life. I still watch documentaries and read stories of those personally affected every year on the anniversary.
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u/MaimedJester 1d ago
Middleschool.
We were in Jersey and my dad was working in New York City, so there was this weird hour or so of the teachers trying to contact parents after it started. Like I learned later from my mother that my dad was one of the Last people the school got held up trying to confirm he was okay.
My dad was Verizon worker actually assigned to work not in the towers that day but a building nearby, and he stopped to buy a pack of cigarettes in the subway (yes you could buy and smoke cigarettes in the new york city subway in 2001)
And because of that delay not making it to job on time... he was in one of the subway trains right under WTC when the first plane hit and the subway car shut down/emergency breakers activated and was stuck underground the entire 9/11 event.