What were you doing on 9/11 when you heard the news?

I had just come to Australia to marry my wife a few weeks earlier and was sitting in her living room working on a database program. She was posting to a forum we are both members of, when someone else posted that a plane had hit the world trade center. We quickly turned on the TV thinking it was a small private plane or something. At first the news was slow coming on here but then they switched to live coverage from CNN and we watched in horror as the second tower was hit.

That is the only time I have ever wondered if I did the right thing by coming to Australia. I felt a sudden need to touch home and the US, call it survivor�fs guilt. I returned back to the US in November and still remember how strange it was to see the armed Military in our Airports.

So what where you doing? What were your first thoughts?

I was asleep for the first, oh, half hour or so. Woke up to go to the restroom, and the one in our bedroom was occupied and I had to walk through the living room, where the television was turned on and the volume was up full blast, in order to go. I was half asleep and saw, "Attack On America" at the bottom of the screen on CNN and was like, "What the hell is going on?!" Went to the bathroom and sat down on the couch wondering what I was missing when I was asleep. After a little while I went over to my parent's house -- my oldest brother was there and my mom was freaking out because my other brother was stuck in the middle of the San Francisco Bay Bridge (they were working down there at the time). She was also afraid and going crazy because my dad was out of town (can't remember where, probably the bay area or Auburn). Funny thing is, this Wednesday, September 11th he is flying home from Wyoming :eek:

I really don't know what I was thinking. Just, "Oh My God."

I remember waking up on the morning of September 12th here in Sydney, Australia (still September 11 in the US) to my mum telling me to turn on the TV - something awful has happened.

I told her to go away because I wanted to go back to sleep but she persisted and I turned the television on.

I remember just bursting into tears when I seen the news coverage and thinking "Oh My God" . My mum had friends who worked in the building who never got out and I remember thinking about them and everybody else who was a victim of these horrible attacks. I ended up staying home from school and watched the news coverage all day.

A few days later as I was starting to calm down a bit I got the news that one of my friends was on board Flight 11 that crashed into the North Tower.

I really don't think words could describe what I felt at the time and still feel today. I do know that the images of the events of September 11 will be with me (and I'm sure everybody else) forever.

--Shaun

I was at school when it happened.

I first heard about it during my period 3 class, (Around 11 o'clock-'ish'). At first I thought it was total BS. So, later on, I went my buddy's house during my lunch (4th period) to watch the news.

I was pretty shocked to see what was heppening...:cartman:

Doing tech support. Though it was just a rumour at first - couldnt believe it. But when I couldnt get onto any news sites (CNN, BBC etc) I knew it must be big - but it didnt prepare me for the horror when I got home in the evening and saw the bullitins.

I had taken the day off from work to wait for some repair men to come and fix a waterheater. To pass the time I was playing a bit of counterstrike when the phone rang. I passed the tv on the way to the phone and saw smoke coming out of tower 1, but didn't realize at that point how serious it was. I thought it was just a fire.
I answered the phone and it was my Fiances mother, we talked for a minute or two and then I called my fiance to ask her to call her mom.. I made some offhand remark about the WTC being on fire (according to her, i sounded like this was somethign that happened every day)

About a minute after I hung up the phone with her, thats when the second plane hit and I instantly knew we were under attack. The repair men showed up shortly after that, and we all sat around watching the TV for a while. The one repair man was an ex-marine, and he got extremely upset. He believe Hussein was behind it and ranted about how they should have been allowed to finish what they started in Desert storm.

Eventually we all quieted down, sharing our collective anger and amazement over the events of the last few hours. I spent the next several weeks tracking down everyone I knew that had business in New York and making sure they were ok and their families as well.

I was watching CNN on that fateful day. Suddenly they showed a breaking news. I thought they are showing some movie clip. But I was shocked that it was inbelievable truth.

I was flicking channels while taking a break researching HTTPme.com. I at first thought it was just an accident and then the 2nd plane hit. MY heart sunk. I quickly yelled out to the wife who was asleep and woke up most of the kids in the process. I then stayed glued to the TV absolutely gobsmacked for the next 2 days or so. I knew I was witnessing one of history's most monumentous events.

Greetings:

"What were you doing on 9/11 when you heard the news?"

We were in the process of an emergency server migration for NTT/Verio where we were migrating two Windows NT Servers (one was running SQL 6.5) from PSI.NET in Atlanta, GA to one Windows 2000 Server (running SQL 2000) in Dulles, VA.

The migration had to be completed by the evening of the 11th.

We completed the web site migration the day before, and was working on the SQL migration on the morning of the 11th.

My wife emailed me, and I didn't believe it until a co-worker chimed in.

The company for whom we were doing the migration was located in NY two blocks from Penn Station.

Early the next day, while I was on the phone with the CTO who was working from home, the CEO emailed me that she and the others had to evacuate the building they were in due to a bomb threat. And I had to tell the CTO this news.

It was a sad day. My wife and I are going to a candle lighting and prayer service tomorrow night (9/11/2002) to remember the heroes, the heronies, and the losses of that day.

This probably says something sad about me, but I saw a thread here, right in this forum. I had a look and was about to rip a hole in the person that has posted it telling them what a bad title for a thread I thought it was. The thread was already growing by then, so I double clicked WinTV, and there it was across all channels. Tower One had just gone down.

Fired off some e-mail to people I know in New York to see if they were ok (they were thankfully), then rang my fiancee and daughter in case it turned into something far worse by the end of the day.

Greg Moore

I was at the office in my capacity as an IT employee. A co-worker heard it on the radio and came in to tell me.

The really remarkable thing was that cnn.com, msnbc.com, abcnews.go.com, foxnews.com, and the like were immediately taken to their knees for pretty much the rest of the day. I got one view of excite.com news before it too crashed.

Work closed for the day at 2:00 p.m. EDT and we all went home and glued ourselves to the television.

I just got up and then i switched on the tv and watched the news and after about 5 seconds i got fed up of watching the news about it so put a film on.

I was trying to figure out why adobe wouldn't work :( and watching the tv at the same time when it came on

I was working at the newspaper in Winchester Virginia. I walked upstairs to the newsroom where there is always a TV tuned to the news channels. I walked in just as the news made the screen. The whole newsroom was in shock. Everyone watched in silence for a good 15 minutes.

Then the realization set in and we decided to put out a special edition that day. So the rest of the time was spent buzzing around grabbing AP stories and putting together a second paper.

It was a shock and I'll never forget the helpless feeling watching the events. The magnitude of the destruction took a while to set in.

Very sad.

I was sleeping, my teenage son knocked on my door and told me a plane had just crashed into the WTC. Jumped up, turned on my TV, and was glued to it for a bit. Then I headed down to the firestation that I worked at. Pretty much watched it unfold from there. Amazing that it is already one year.

I was at home surfing the net, someone told me a plane crashed into the wtc, so I watched the TV for a bit..

I had just stepped out of the shower when my daughter told me that my brother in law just called with the news that the US was under attack. I then switched on the news to find out what she was talking about.

I was asleep (West Coast); my wife just opened our bedroom door, I could hear the TV set at full power, and she said something along the lines of "something terrible has happened". It was after the first tower got hit. My wife is usually very cynical. Her choice of words was so not like her that I got up immediately.

We had just bought this 61 inches TV set, so I sat in the couch and saw the whole events unfold before me (I recently learnt that the part I didn't have to endure was the *smell*, since it was just TV).

We watched for hours then I eventually drove to work. We turned on a TV set in a conference room and basically nobody worked that day.

This is an anniversary, all right. It's been a whole year, we were not even in New York, yet my eyes are watering just writing this.

For weeks, I could not get off my head this journalist's voice, who went hyterical on the air when the first tower collapsed.

I was sleeping.

My wife had just dropped my daughter off at school and came running into the bedroom saying a plane had hit the WTC.

At first I thought she was kidding. She being of the ilk who called me a month after Magic Johnson announced he had HIV and told me he died.

Anyway, we turned on the TV to Fox News just as the second plane struck. It was nuts. It looked like a scene from a Hollywood movie.

That day we sat glued to the TV.

I was visiting a friend. He burst into the guest bedroom telling me the nation was under attack. Unfortunately, I was with a new female friend. Tying her to this memory makes the day particularly grim - what an irritating person.

One of the worst days of my life.

I was in NYC honeymooning with my NYC bride a month before - first time I ever saw all those lovely tall towers, was a gawking tourste you know?

One month latter I'm back home in Saudi, and see the horror on CNN :(

God Bless America - and the whole world grieves with you - even lossing my baby son (Azooz) was not so hard on me.

I was asleep when the first tower hit, but a friend was staying with us who's mom called the apartment and said to turn on the TV. He woke me up and we watched it. I was still in college, and they cancelled classes....I was selling appliances @ Sears, and they shut the mall down cos they had a bomb threat there too (wierd huh?).

Spent the rest of the day watching the news VERY close.

sitting at work on a T3 and we had a warning and the pager went off that there was an internet failure.

There wasnt a failure as such but there were thousands of people around the factory looking at the news online to find out what was going on and the entire internet crawled to a stand still.

after I managed to get onto WebHostingTalk and get some details I managed to get a video feed (via some clever bandwidth management) and got video feed of the towers collapsing.

Quite Chilling.

I was just about to leave to go about 5 blocks from there. I sat down to check the news online first.

Watching CNN, seen the 2nd plane crash live ;)

Well i was playing some counter-strike and had CNN on :D

I was home sick as a dog. After a long shower, I fell on the couch, turned on the TV which happend to be on CNN. I saw the first twin tower had been hit, and soon after I saw the 2nd live. My partner's dad I knew worked in NYC so I called him soon after. He was delayed that day, and was on the LAST ferry over. He saw the planes hit.. he was there.

Out in suffolk at school. Classes were cancelled the second the first plane hit. Got a ride in with a LI fire department and joined the thousands of firefighters already there.

I just woke up and I saw the TV on. I was like "hmm, a plane crashed". Then I go to school and hear another plane crashed into the other tower. :(

I was in 3rd period math class when the teacher next door came over and told my Math Teacher to turn on the TV. We had just turned it on and then the 2nd plane crashed into tower 2. All of us pretty much stared at the TV in amazement of what was happening.

i'd just finished anight shift and was getting my 2 hours sleep before uni and my mum rang and told me to switch on the news, it was a short while after the first plane, but before the 2nd plane. i was absolutely mortified, i was too damn shocked to be emotional. i couldnt believe it was happening. i rang round a few friends whilst watching several news channels. my mum used to work for the fire brigade, and i have a lot of good drinking buddies in the brigade and my heart really missed a beat when those towers collapsed.

I was on a plane that had taken off at 8am that day. It was a substitute flight for a flight that had been cancelled the night before, after I had missed another flight earlier. This is all on the way home from vacation in the Bahamas.

The pilot made an announcement. Our plane was diverted to DC, where the airport was evacuated. We waited in line for hours for a taxi; the taxi driver took us way out into the boonies where we got a hotel room; relatives drove down and picked us up. We didn't see any media coverage until 1:30pm or so, and that was on purpose; the rumours and overheard talk was too much to think about when we were trying to take care of being stranded while the country was shut down.

Kevin

Driving to school then watching it at school live when the 2nd hit.

I guess I slept through the first part.. My father called and said "were you sleeping? oh, well I just thought you should know that two planes just crashed into the WTC towers and one into the pentagon. you can go back to sleep now" I watched the news for a while instead.

I was asleep when suddenly there was a pounding on my window. A contractor we had working outside that day decided to wake us up to tell us what he was hearing on his radio and request the ability to watch our TV to see what was going on.

After that... I was in shock. I remained there for quite some time.

I was on my way to work had tha radio on and there was a comershal playing. the bob and brian (two local raido moring guys) came back on the air and they were very somber sounding. but knowing them i was wating for the punch line of a joke they started before they went to comershal. then they said the words the WTC has been hit by a plan. i knew we were in for a world of #$%@. i got to work and they had a tv on (btw the drive to work take me about 3 mins or so) i saw the second tower being hit live. ran down to tell the others and from there its just kind of a bler of what went on that day. there was no one there hardly after everyone found out what was going on. some people even left there food behind to go and call others or to watch the news channels. (btw i work at a food store) I think i was in a dase for about two weeks after it had hapond. to this day i cant remember thoes two weeks but i remember exactly what was goin on tv and with people at work. yes we were nervous and woundering what was next.

then we got news that the pentagon was hit. thats when we knew that everything was going to change.

I my self wanted to take a time off work to go and help out but i knew i would just get in the way once i thought it out a bit.
I was just hoping for something good to come out of it. but there ws not a lot of it. i can still see the second plan crashing in to tower #2 like it was yesterday and here it is now a year later. the site is cleand up. and there ready to rebuild.

I was working at home putting content up, when opened a new browser window to check the news at cnn.com roughly 8:55 a.m.

k

I was already having a bad day working and I got in the truck and the radio was on and all of a sudden they started talking about the first plane and I thought terrorism right away. Oddly I had read about osama bin ladden (dont care if thats spelt right) a few days before and thought about who could have done it. After the second plane it was even more obvious it was terrorism. Latter, after things calmed down I remembered my cousin worked for Delta and I made sure she was ok. I realized how I could have been effected directly if it had been her.

I was in my 2nd hour speech class. The first plane hit during the class switch and as we walked in I noticed something was wrong because the TV was never on in our class room.. The teacher then told us what had happened and we watched on live TV in horror as the 2nd plane hit a few minutes later and by the time the next hour had ended, the towers had collapsed. :(

I was on the way to work listening to howard stern as I usually do during my morning commute when I heard about it.. At first I figured it was just some freak accident and did not really get the full effect of what had really happened came inside and stayed on BBC and CNN all day and listened with a awful feeling in my stomach a feeling of being unsafe and not knowing what all of this was going to bring. A old freind of mine from high school was on the plane that crashed in virginia. I have got to say I hope I never have to feel that feeling again.

I was on the 34th Floor of the Liberty One building in Philadelphia, PA. I was glued to the TV in the staff lounge, along with many more employees. As you would imagine there was alot of panic, as we the building in a skyscraper located in a large city. An announcement came over the loud speaker, stating that our building is secure, and we should continue our work. However I asked my boss, if I could leave, and he understood. I then went home to jersey, called friends that worked in the NYC area, to see if they were okay. After I felt secure at my house, and knew all my friends were okay. I watched the news channel night and day. I could not believe what was happening, I couldnt even imagine how people from the NYC area felt. Things wouldnt be the same around here if the philadelphia skyline changed, as its just accross the river from where I live.

I was working when my mom called and told me to turn on the news. I still can remember that sickening feeling I had. What a sad, sad day I will never forget.

Wow! It's amazing how many people know someone who was lost that day. After all the chances are 5000/250000000 ...

I was taking a jog and my family was watching the tv coverage when I came back. It was really scary because I didn't know fully what was going on. I kept thinking we could be nuked any moment.

Originally posted by IT Hosting
After all the chances are 5000/250000000 ...

Dont you mean 1/50000?

Wow! It's amazing how many people know someone who was lost that day. After all the chances are 5000....

The official figure is 2803. There may be more casualties.

Originally posted by Acronym BOY


Dont you mean 1/50000?

I think that

3000 / 250,000,000 is more informative because it gives you three bits of info (casualties, population, ratio) as opposed to one bit of info (ratio). Ok, so I was too lazy to reduce, whatever :mad:

Well the reason i think so many people seem to know each other is due to the "Six Degrees Of Separation"

More info here:

http://www.fortunecity.com/emachines/e11/86/sixdeg.html

Its not easy to understand so i suggest not reading it unless you are in for a little confusion ;)