Do you remember where you were on 9/11?

[vanmyers86]

It was a sad day of the sort I hope we'll never have to see again.

I think we all hope that.

 

[SimonDoom]

It was a sad day of the sort I hope we'll never have to see again.

I think, unfortunately, that we have to assume something like it will happen again. The shocking thing about the September 11 attacks was the asymmetry and simplicity of it. 19 men armed with nothing more than box cutter knives successfully took over four jet planes at about the same time and turned them into weapons against the most powerful country in the world, causing an astonishing amount of damage. I'm surprised there has not been more terrorism since then. I expect there will be more in the future. We have to be prepared for it, tactically and psychologically.

 

[KeithD]

I think, unfortunately, that we have to assume something like it will happen again. The shocking thing about the September 11 attacks was the asymmetry and simplicity of it. 19 men armed with nothing more than box cutter knives successfully took over four jet planes at about the same time and turned them into weapons against the most powerful country in the world, causing an astonishing amount of damage. I'm surprised there has not been more terrorism since then. I expect there will be more in the future. We have to be prepared for it, tactically and psychologically.

They were armed with a lot of collected knowledge about how to get it done too. That's where a whole lot of prevention effort has to be invested--and it was, but not enough when assessed in hindsight. One thing that George Bush said that was certainly true was that, in countermeasures, we have to be right every single time and the terrorists only have to be right once. To be right even some of the time, though, the intelligence effort must be healthy, functioning, and supported. It currently isn't. External forces think that's just dandy. So, apparently, do a the supporters of the current U.S. "administration."

 

[HollyLoriAnnalee]

7th grade, which already sucked

 

[Bramblethorn]

I think, unfortunately, that we have to assume something like it will happen again. The shocking thing about the September 11 attacks was the asymmetry and simplicity of it. 19 men armed with nothing more than box cutter knives successfully took over four jet planes at about the same time and turned them into weapons against the most powerful country in the world, causing an astonishing amount of damage. I'm surprised there has not been more terrorism since then. I expect there will be more in the future. We have to be prepared for it, tactically and psychologically.

Linking to image rather than blow up the page, since I can't get this to rescale:

https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/TNT_Graphics_Web-02.jpg

source: https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-united-states

 

[SimonDoom]

Linking to image rather than blow up the page, since I can't get this to rescale:

https://csis-website-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/TNT_Graphics_Web-02.jpg

source: https://www.csis.org/analysis/escalating-terrorism-problem-united-states

I was thinking more along the lines of something truly catastrophic, but you are correct that terrorism has never gone away and it comes from many sources, including domestic ones.

 

[HappySpouse]

Our state has a High School Graduation Qualifying Exam that is taken in the 10th grade. 11th and 12th graders, who had already passed, got to have "opportunity days". There was a whole list of things, and I chose to go teach kindergarten in one of the elementary schools because I'm cool. It was the first day I was ever in front of a class in a teaching role. I also got to do exciting things for a kid like use the teacher's lounge and workroom. The first tower had been hit, and every staff only room had it on the TV smoking, reporting on evacuation attempts. Everyone thought it was a terrible accident. I started to make a bag of popcorn and then the second tower was hit. This elementary school building used to be a k-12 school and it was 5 small stories. Watching the TV, I let the popcorn burn badly in the microwave.

As news that the country was under some kind of attack to an unknown extent started spreading through the school, so did the powerful smoke smell of the burnt popcorn, rising up through the 5 stories.

I basically panicked everyone in an elementary school.

 

[Brutal_One]

I was at work. Working in a floor that used to be a trading floor. I was working for a bank at the time. They had a tv screen when the news announcement came. So watched live as the first plane hit and then incredulously saw the second hit! Immediate reaction was WTF of course and we had traders working on that day who were on the phone to workers in one or both of the two Towers. No doubt having the last conversations with some of those poor folks who did not make it. As it continued to unfold and when the towers collapsed it just left me numb, shell shocked. An event I witnessed unfolding and will never forget.

Brutal One

 

[Brutal_One]

Anyone else remember the death of the Princess Dianna of Wales?

Yes being in UK and working in London remember the initial news report where at the time it was not confirmed that she died. Of course when that became clear it was a shock and in the days following I visited Buckingham Palace to see the thousands of tributes and messages laid at the gates.

Tragic of course and bringing it home the extreme consequences of being ‘hounded’ by the press. Sickening really but there was no ‘specific’ target to vent anger at. Crazy situation of course but it showed the collective genuine grief outpouring from a country at the loss of such a special person.

It also changed the UK monarchy in time for the better. God save the Queen!

Brutal One

 

[MetaBob]

have you ever referenced September 11 in any of your works, either in hindsight or foreshadowing? I've done it quite a few times.

I have not and doubt that I ever will. The loss is still too deep and personal for my family. It was the most horrible day of my life. That said, there was also so much to be joyful about. Our peoples came together, even if only for a few days or weeks. So many heroic acts, large and small. So much kindness and generosity.

 

[Lori_the_Hoosier]

I was working the day shift at University College Hospital, London in the ER; I happened to glance up at the TV in there and saw the first plane hit; I was appalled, I thought it must have been an accident, then the next one came in and I knew it was the start of something bad. The ER was full of the usual, drunks, junkies, OD's, RTA's, it's usually a zoo in there, but the place was silent as everyone watched the screen in horror. A day I'll never forget.

 

[BelleCanzuto]

It was very late at night in Australia for us, getting close to midnight in Melbourne.

On this topic, have you ever referenced September 11 in any of your works, either in hindsight or foreshadowing? I've done it quite a few times.

I haven't referenced 9/11 specifically. But my story "Catharsis" was inspired (i guess that's the right word) by the disaster mental health work I did with the Red Cross in the aftermath of it. The disaster in the story isn't clearly described, and what is described isn't entirely accurate to 9/11. But some of the specifics of what the main female character expresses is true.

One of my first interactions was with the brother of the pilot of flight 175 (the second plane). He was carrying in a painting (or a large poster) to put up on the wall of missing posters. He talked about the horror of people thinking his brother had been involved somehow.

Anyway. It's indelible.

 

[Salacious_Scribe]

YES! I had two relatives that worked in the towers. One was lat for work cuz she was asked to stop and pick up doughnuts for a meeting, the other had a client meeting in NJ.

I did lose several HS classmates who were FD and PD.

I was working in Cocoa Beach, helping build an electrical substation. Was fired that afternoon cuz I was told to dig a hole in a certain spot. The location had several lengths of conduit so I moved the conduit to dig the hole.

I was fired for moving the conduit because I wasn't allowed to do an electricians job, even though no electricians were on site that day, and I was told the hole had to be ready in 30 minutes.

 

[_Lynn_]

I remember, yes. However, what stays with me most is the trip I took with a group to prepare and serve Thanksgiving dinner at a fire station that year. We had to get Giuliani's permission (in writing). Several companies and stores donated everything we needed including two vans to transport it all. My now-ex, daughter, and her friend stayed at a hotel on Wall St. while the others went to a fleabag cheap place out of town somewhere. My first view of the towers will never leave me. A trip of a lifetime.

 

[Candy_Kane54]

I was working when it happened, actually in a meeting with customers on a software application I was helping create. I was stunned but okay when the towers were hit. However, when the Pentagon was hit, I lost it since I had been there several times for briefings and meetings during my career in the AF. That's when I just walked out and went home. I called a lot of people I knew and found out the plane didn't hit the Air Force side of the building, so my friends there that day made it home. A lot of them suffered from survivor's guilt and I lost a couple of friends who ended up committing suicide. So the toll wasn't just the people who died that day ...

 

[vanmyers86]

Re-posting for the writers who have joined us since last year so they can share. Since I've already posted my memory, I won't rehash it yet again.

I recently found an essay I wrote a few months after it happened "so I won't forget." My younger self clearly had no idea how deeply that experience would mark us all. And watching the coverage makes me feel like it happened not long ago at all - certainly not 20 years ago. I guess memory really is the soul's time machine.

Wishing everyone peace on this anniversary.

 

[Wifetheif]

I had just gotten to work at the University of Delaware library when we learned about the first impact from the internet. All of us were confused until the second plane hit. My friend Harry turned to me and said, "This is war!"

 

[CyranoJ]

I was on my way to work. I saw footage of the first plane hitting the tower on a TV in the window of a department store. I didn't understand what I was seeing at first, like most of the media in the first minutes of the catastrophe I thought I was witnessing some terrible accident. It was only when I got to the office that I learned it was a terrorist attack.

Fun fact: my brother was interviewing for a flight attendant job at an airline on that very morning of that very day. I can't imagine how surreal the memory of that day must be for him.

 

[Payne_Hall]

I was in grade school. And I remember thinking something was wrong due to the way other people were acting. Dad picked me up that day, which made it clear something was definitely wrong (he didn’t usually get off work that early). He was the one who let me see the news footage for the first time and I remember having to clarify, “This was on purpose?” Because I wasn’t really piecing together the commentary with the footage and my first thought was that it was obviously an accident of some kind.

He had the patience of a saint and he explained as best he could. The night before, we were deciding which four wheeler he should look into buying and even that memory stayed just for how different the two nights felt.

 

[KeithD]

I was in my home office, editing the 2002 Brassy's book, Through Our Enemies' Eyes: Osama Bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America, then credited to "Anonymous," later revealed to have been written by Michael Scheuer, a former chief of the CIA's Counterterrorism Center.

It wasn't long until I received a call from my daughter saying she had been running late for an appointment at the Pentagon and had just seen an airplane flying low across her living room window in her Potomac Towers apartment, on the river, and had heard a huge explosion from the direction of the Pentagon. Having just seen on TV where the plane hit, I told her to scotch any idea of an appointment in the Pentagon and to get out of her apartment and go down to the parking lot, using the stairs, not the elevator--and to call me back when she was there.

The day didn't improve after that other than that she was safe and, for the first time in my life, I was grateful that she tended to run late.

 

[MillieDynamite]

I do remember, I stayed home from school because of something that happened between my birth father the day before (by birthday), the worthless son of bitch, and me. I saw it happen on TV and when the buildings crashed to the ground it was as if they fell on me. I ran away from home a week later.

 

[LAHomedog]

It was early morning CA and we were getting our son ready for school. I drove morning dropoff. My wife came running into our bedroom in tears. I was born in NYC, she was born in NJ and we have a lot of family and friends there.

As a family we watched on TV with the rest of the world. It took days to find out how everybody was. As it turns out, my favorite aunt, who lives in Greenwich Village, was suppose to go to breakfast at Windows on the World that day, but luckily felt under the weather and didn't attend. Fortunately, everyone we knew were okay.

I also remember where I was when Kennedy was shot.

 

[MetaBob]

FWIW, MetaBob, I think a lot of us just shared a tear with you too after reading your post. Intense, moving, and a stark reminder of how the impact of the 3,000 that died that day so quickly multiplied exponentially into their families and friends, and eventually the entire population as a whole.

I still can't talk about it without choking up, which surprises me every time. I'm just glad I don't talk about it often.

 

[XerXesXu]

I was recently retired and sat in the sala watching rolling news coverage. The focus was on the first tower. A second plane appeared, and I remember the commentator saying something like, ‘now they’re showing a recording’, and I thought, ‘They’re not there’s a burning skyscraper on the right’. But even then I didn’t think something deliberate was happening. I was familiar with skimming skyscrapers going into Kai-Tak and assumed New York airport was the same. When it hit the second tower that changed.

I woke my wife and told her to come and watch because there may be more. She wasn’t interested.

 

[LAHomedog]

My account is no doubt the account of numerous others. I was just a couple miles from WTC. I heard the first impact and immediately felt like something was wrong because of the quality and proximity of the resulting boom. However, we’ve had transformer explosions and the like so I just turned on the news expecting to see a matter like that on the breaking news. As soon as I heard something was going on down there, I raced up to the roof and saw the tower smoking, prominent as they used to be in the lower Manhattan skyline. Over the next several minutes, all the rooftops around me started filling up with people from their apartments below. That's not unusual on, say, the 4th of July when people come up to watch the fireworks, but I'd never seen it quite so busy up there. The second plane came in and struck. Everyone was shocked and terrified and frantically asking what was happening. It was just a cacophony of confused voices.

I remember seeing the towers collapse right in front of me. However, what really sticks out in my mind, more than anything else that day, is the ungodly sound of a multitude of voices wailing all at once. It wasn't like hearing a bunch of people screaming. It was deeply ominous, full of haunting inflections, each expressing a genuine degree of anguish. It was like we were all a bunch of macabre foley artists, generating a ghastly roar to provide a sound effect for the otherwise silently crumbling tower in the distance. -- I can still recall it perfectly in my head and it still unnerves me in precisely the same way.

Later, I looked down at the avenue nearby and saw a grim scene; a handful of people in suits powdered in white dust that must have just walked blocks and blocks like that to get as far away as possible, toward wherever their homes were. They must have been numerous more, drifting in all directions across the city. They looked like stunned ghosts. I was close enough that my neighborhood was shut down to traffic and I had to take proof that I lived there to get back if I wandered out, which I did. Eventually, I visited a series of blocks by one of the National Guard headquarters which had become a sort of Missing Persons Row. It was positively wallpapered in images of missing loved ones, hung with such hasty desperation that there were signs on top of signs, which inevitably peeled off and were left to become trampled. No space was left bare. Even mailboxes were covered in flapping pieces of paper with family photos and pleas for help. It was a frustrating, depressing scene, not just because of the sheer magnitude of it, but also because you couldn't help but leave there with such a blur of countless faces that one couldn't possibly provide any one of them with the dignity or attention that their families wished for. Wanting to do something, I remember strolling into a makeshift site for providing aid and immediately volunteered but was sent away as they were already at capacity. Thus, I went home and sat helplessly in front of the television along with everyone else.

Thank you for taking the time to share such a powerful, emotional memory.