NationStates Jolt Archive

I was at school. In second period, the teacher announced that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. My first thought was "Geez, how bad is that pilot?"

In 3rd period Spanish, we watched TV, even though we werent supposed to, of the news channel broadcasting from NYC. I saw the second plane hit, live, on TV. Then we knew it wasnt an accident.

At lunch that day a kid had to call his father because his father was in New York City. He called, but no answer, so he prayed. His father was alright, we found out later.

When I went home, my dad took me into the back yard, and we talked. He said it was a terrorist attack on the United States, and was most likely carried out by a terrorist group under a man named Osama Bin Laden. I had never heard of him before.

That night, I prayed for our nation, and I cried.

Last night, I prayed for our nation, and I cried.

I was in school. I was in the 8th grade. I was in history class, and I was just about to switch to math class. Then one of the AP (assistant principals) came to the door and told the teacher something. He told me to get on the computer and get to any news site. I went to foxnews.com and there was a banner thing that said "Due to the tragic events of this morning, this site will be overloaded with people and will run very slowly" and on a school computer it could have taken weeks lol. But by that time I was concerned. All I knew was that something terrible had happened. Then a TV was rolled into the room and we began to watch it all. It was a very emotional day. They they started talking about the Pentagon and I became VERY concerned because my dad's cousin works in the Pentagon, on the Army side, which was the side that got hit. Then my mom came to the school and picked me up. She told me that all she knew was that his office was blown to hell and that we couldnt find him. It was a very emotional day. It turned out that his office was being remodeled, so he was on a cruise with his wife in Alaska. He would have died that day if it werent for his office being remodeled.

I'd just woken up and was getting ready for school when my parents yelled that something had happened in NYC. I thought maybe someone had a snipe rifle and waspicking people off or something but it was much, much worse than that as I would find out. All day at school, (I was in 7th grade then), everyone was talking about it and ignoring the teacher. Once I got home, my mom turned on CNN and it was on for pretty much the rest of the night. I got worried about more attacks would happen and that Toronto or Vancouver may get attacked. Thank God there weren't, too many innocents had died that day.

too many innocents had died that day.

Im not 100% sure, but as far as I remember the official number of dead/missing people was 1,283. It was always on the fox news ticker on fox news channel. It was 1,282 for the longest time and then I noticed that it changed.

Didn't I already answer this?

Yeah, each year at least once

I was together with my mother in a bank in Frankfurt. We were waiting in the waiting area. It was shortly before 3 p.m. Central European Time. There is a TV showing NTV (the german partner of CNN) which is a news channel with a lot of economic news. Suddenly they reported "breaking news" and showing pictures of the burning of one tower of the WTC in New York. It was unclear what happened.
But suddenly there was the other tower burning as well. Then we had the appointment and dealing with some business issues. Though it was clear that something incredible had happened it was unclear what was the cause of it. Later we returned to the TV in the waiting area and saw the incredible pictures and the report that two planes hit the buildings - obviously a terrorist attack. Then we drove home - following the events again on TV. Seeing people jumping out of the towers - the first one had already collapsed. I was seeing the collapse of the second tower live on TV. Incredible and horryfying pictures. Dust clouds all over Manhattan.
My mother and I were in NYC in 1996 and we also were on top of one towers of the WTC. Now, the WTC was no more.
And thousands of people were dead.
It was difficult to realize that. It actually remembered me of a movie: Independence day and an allien attack against the world.
But we indeed don´t need to worry about alliens.
The worst of all is still coming from other humans. The viciousness and evilness of humans can be incredible - that was shown through human history and it was shown again on Septmeber 11.
There was already speculation about the perpetrators of this. It was soon assumed that an islamist groups stood behind it - Al Quaeda and Osama bin Laden. That was confirmed by all sources later - and even by them themself. The government declared "unlimmited solidarity" with the US.
The invasion of Afghanistan was pretty undisputed. We discussed that at school. Giving the rejection of the Taleban to extradite bin Laden and Al-Queda it was seen as inevitable.
This consensus unfortunately collapsed however when the Iraq issue occured.

Was at work.
I remember I was doing some dishes reeady for a client. The chef walked in and said that plane had flown into a building in america. We thought it was one of those 2 seater planes. We thought it was a shame and got back to work.
About 4 hours later, we found out more details, but hearing about it was not the same as seeing the images on TV, which I did not till that evening.
First thing i did was contact the few friends in NY to make sure they were ok. Which considering the state of the phone lines at that time were in a terrible state. So after repeated calls as well as a dozen emails, I found out the next day that my friends were ok.

I had just finished school...I got in then I turned on the news (something kinda drew me to do it...I seldom watch the news) and then there it was one tower smoking....and then the second plane hit.

I had just woke up and went over to the computer where I had a huge amount of msg's from MSN waiting for me, far more then usual. All of them saying things like "Turn on your TV" others saying "America is under attack" I then within a second turned to CNN, I caught the second plane hitting the WTC, I called my mother and she didn't believe me she thought I was pulling her leg. She turned on her TV and we both seemed to have a real long period of silence on the phone as we watched. I told her I would let her go so I could hear what was going on. It's a day I will never forget. That is for sure.

I heard in the middle of an A-level Psychology double period. Our teacher's son had gone to New York for a holiday and she'd received a phone call in the middle of class about a "bomb explosion" from a relative. She spent the next half hour frantically calling New York trying to make sure her son was okay. Of course, none of us students knew what was going on. She only told us at the end of the class that there had been a bomb scare or an explosion or something, but her son was okay. Psychology was my last lesson that day and I turned on the radio in the car and heard about the planes crashing. For a second I was stunned. For the next 2 days all anyone did was watch the news.

I was at home and taking a nap - that is until my mother woke me up all the sudden and told me that there is something terrible happening. I basically saw all of it live on TV :(

The next thing I did was to call my American friends to make sure they´re all right, safe and okay and asked if there is anything I could do (yes, I know, more or less empty words).

what does it really matter?
it doesn't change what happened, or does it?
it doesn't make anyone feel better about what happened ('I know... it's bad... but at least I wasn't taking a bath during that time, I was doing something *important*...')
why do you ask the same question every year? Just because everyone does?
you might as well ask 'what did you guys do on your bday this year?' you might get some interesting responses...

I was at work when we first heard the news -- after it beacame apparent what was happening, I spent the morning on the phone with my family, trying to figure out where my brother was working that week (a few blocks away from the WTC) trying to call my grandmother who lives in NYC, trying to keep it together for a coworker whose stepson worked on the 80th floor of one of the two WTC buildings.

Later that morning, I went to the obstetrician and had my first sonogram for my son. We had originally planned to tell everyone that night that we were expecting. Needless to say, we decided to wait a couple of weeks, because it just didn't seem like a day for good news.

Spent the afternoon updating our company's intranet site with information about our destroyed routers that were colocated across the street from the WTC in the Verizon building, and updates on the safety of the people from our NYC office.

I was at work in the uk. only 2 computers in the office had the internet, so i remember we were all crowded round those 2 pcs all afternoon trying to work out what was going on from the BBC news website and CNN. saw it all on tv that night when i got home, but still didn't believe it.

Well I woke up listening to Howard Stern talking about it(I'm in Califonria) and was wondering if it was some kind of sick joke they were playing.

After a bit I figured this can't be a joke and ran to the TV and turn it on just in time to see the first tower fall.

The next couple days I spent trying to track down my sister, her husband, my friends and a few people for friends that are overseas.

We were lucky as nobody died.

My sister lives near there and walks by it all the time. Some of my friends worked there for temp jobs.

My friend's fiance was sent there on a business trip to the second tower :eek:

He went beserk especially when the borders closed.

All were caught up in the running and luckily for her(she is Malaysian), somebody was kind of enough to drag her into a building when the debre cloud went rolling by.

Humpf. Scary to think that someday we will be telling these stories to kids..... ;)

I spent most the day at school, in the office (I was in high school) for yelling at a teacher after she wouldn't let me use my cell phone to call my friends in New York. I spent pretty much the entire day worrying myself shitless over them.

Thankfully, everyone I know was alright.

In class, my school didn't tell us till 4:00 that day. It pissed me off because we were the last ones on the planet to know.

I was walking into my science class. My science teacher had turned the TV towards his computer. He was watching it. It was a shot of the pentagon. I asked what was going on. All he said was there was a plane crash. The rest of the day, all we talked about that the country was under attack and we were going to war. I was in 8th grade at the time. For the rest of the day, I watched CNN.

I was sleeping.

At the time I couldn't have cared less.... I still have mixed feelings towards it.

I was at work, listening to a local radio station, when it was announced a private plane had hit one of the towers. A few minutes later they announced that the other tower had been hit and it was believed to be an attack. Reports started coming in of the Pentagon attack, as well as reports of everything from a car bomb to another plane hitting the Capitol. As one of my sons works at the Capitol quite a bit, I immediately started trying to call him and his wife. All of the phone lines were tied up as were internet news sites. Another person in our office is from Mexico, and was able to access a Hispanic news site. He translated and kept us informed of what was going on. Later that night, one of my son's co-workers in another office, was able to reach me and let me know my son and his family was OK. Imagine my first shock as the co-worker is a Saudi and spoke with a heavy accent!!

I was in fifth grade... we just watched the TV for 2 hours. It was a huge shocker when the second plane hit.

Even though it was sort of funny when I saw replays of the time when our news station saw the plane hit. There was this reporter, just talking, and then a plane hit the buildings behind her, just like background scenery. XD

But really, the situation itself wasn't funny.

I was in school, freshman, 30 miles away from New York in a little place called Glen Rock, NJ. Our town lost 11 people and we could see the smoke rising in the sky.

I was in second period, grade 8 (note: I live in Canada, southern Ontario) and out VP came in and told my teacher something. We had no idea.

When I went home from lunch, my mom was sitting there watching the TV. I saw the two towers hit, then a video of the colapsing. I didn't feel bad, I was just afraid that the CN tower would be hit. Later I realized how many were killed, then I felt a little bad, but I still didn't care too much.... I try to distance myself from this kind of thing or I'll become depressed.

I feel the US diserved an attack, but too many innocents were killed. They should've gone for the Capitol Building or White House, nothing else. They don't need to kill 1000 innocent Americans to make a point.... they just need to kill one administration.

I was a half hour north of NYC, in Rockland County. We got tipped off about the first hit by a fight jet going over the school. I lived close enough to NYC to have an hourly jet patrol pass over my house, and to see a cloud of smoke.
I don't really feel like going on. My choir sang near the sight that december.

Funny, really, in a sick sort of way. The only death ot my school was a man raising money for the local mosque.