I was at Emma E. Booker Elementary School in Sarasota, reading The Pet Goat to some school children. I heard about the attacks but really wanted to find out what happened to the goat so I did nothing for about 20 minutes until I reached the end of the story.
Oh wait, that was George Bush.
I was actually at work in Tavistock Square (which may sound familiar due to another terrorist attack) and heard about the first crash just before the 2nd plane hit. I saw footage of the 2nd plane which I didn't really react to very muc. I think the scale of the images threw me a bit. It was hard to get my head around that fact that this was a jumbo jet crashing into a massive building. It was when the towers collapsed later on that it really hit.
Was driving to meet my business partner at The Bull in Chislehurst. We had an appointment at our accountants in Swanley as I was buying his half of our joint business. Watched the whole thing on a tv in his office. We agreed a deal for the business and reached a figure that I was going to pay over a 5 year period. The catch was that as a result of 9/11 my business lost £1m in turnover as we specialised in printing for conferences and events. This market ( especially in the Middle East ) collapsed after 9/11. Not sure my adviser should have stopped me signing that day as it was new ground for us all. However, I put pen to paper after the collapse of the second tower. What I was paying was over the top as the value of my company had gone down during the 2 hours I spent in the meeting.
Working on the reception desk at Sky News. TVs above my head had been playing it out, while I was oblivious below.
A crowd soon built up around my desk, and eventually I realised something serious had happened - we turned the volume up in time to see the second plane hit, but we all thought the second impact was a replay of the first for a good few minutes. It wasn't until the buildings fell that the scale of the event really washed over me. Like many people, I really hadn't considered how big the Towers were having never really come across them beyond a pub quiz question and Trading Places. I vividly remember picking up a copy of the Evening Standard on the way home. The image of the explosion was astonishing.
I also remember wondering how badly Rupert Murdoch might be hated, given our proximity to Heathrow, and how wise it was to stand next to a sign that read "The country's busiest station" when at Clapham. The kind of terrorism fear that the US would learn to harness for their own means.
Was living in Chicago, getting ready for work and sitting watching the breakfast news when it came on, couldn't believe my eyes when the second one hit and the show hosts were silent. Lived in a hi-rise and was scary time as there was a rumour that the plane that went down in PA was heading for the Sears Tower close to where I lived.
Took days for people to start returning to work and America was understandably completely broken. In the end my wife and I had to turn the tv off it was heartbreaking and we got to the point where we spent hours crying watching all the stories. The one I'll never forget was the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald. He was interviewed live, he'd taken his son to his first day at school so wasn't in the WTC, he was in absolute bits, I couldn't hold it together. I had a 6 month old and wondered what on earth kind of world she was going to grow up in.
A year later we were living in London and my wife's father who had lung cancer was given just a few days to live, my wife was already there so I jumped on a plane the next day to get over there. I got to the airport and it was empty, the American Airlines plane empty, maybe 20 on the whole flight. It was a beautiful clear day and then I realised it was September 11 one year on. The flight crew and captain had a minutes silence, very emotional.
I walked into a Pub in Nutfield for a coffee, looked at the big screen TV and thought that I was watching a film. It was interesting this week on TV to hear about the bad relationship between the Police and the Firemen, which resulted in the deaths of Firemen who were in the second Tower and unaware that the first one had collapsed. The Cowboys are still around !
I was still at secondary school. I remember finishing my last lesson of the day and as I was leaving one of the buildings with my mate a maths teacher said to us "Boys, get home and stick the tele on. America has been hit, America has been hit bad" Me and my mate didn't really know what to make of it but needless to say we rushed home and stuck on the tele just as the second tower was hit.
It was surreal, I was young and didn't really grasp the impact it would have but just thought it was crazy that someone could fly a plane into a building. There was probably 7 of us in my friends front room watching and for at least 30 minutes no one said a coherent sentence, only the odd expletive in disbelief.
I was at Bluewater with my mum buying a laptop just before I was due to go to start uni. Massive crowd outside the Sony shop in dead silence - was absolute horrifying and and can picture the exact surroundings and people in at that moment.
My sister in law's boyfriend had a brother who had been in the WTC when they had a bomb years ago, so when the first plane hit he rounded up his close workmates who were quite casual about staying thinking we'll be alright. he insisted they left. They got to the stairwell and it was packed, 2 of them said forget it, so he and another carried on. Halfway down the other guy who had a heart condition said he had to rest told the guy to carry on. He got no more than a few hundred yards up the road and the tower came crashing down. He was a successful trader but the guilt and trauma ruined him, after years of depression and drinking he left his wife and 3 kids and ended his life. So sad.
I was in a car with a young lady somewhere in the hills above Penrith.I had no idea that anything was amiss until my mate phoned me up on the train on way home telling me to sort out my story before the now ex Mrs found out where I was as the trains were being cancelled and I was miles way from where I should have been!
On Hampstead Heath on an afternoon date with a girl I was getting back together with after not seeing each other for 6 years. She got a phone call about it. I was more interested in getting into her knickers at the time.
I was in a car with a young lady somewhere in the hills above Penrith.I had no idea that anything was amiss until my mate phoned me up on the train on way home telling me to sort out my story before the now ex Mrs found out where I was as the trains were being cancelled and I was miles way from where I should have been!
9/11 has been responsible for at least one divorce. Some guy who was supposed to be at work in the WTC but was actually off somewhere with the mistress gets a phonecall from his wife who had seen the footage of the planes and wanted to know if he was okay to which he replied "I'm at work, of course I'm okay!".
I wasn't directly affected and this is really quite petty in the bigger picture, but working from home I first heard it unfolding on 5 Live. Simon Mayo did a fantastic job, as he does turning his hand to just about any topic. If it happened now we'd be led through it all by the juvenile Richard Bacon who has the gravitas of a Womble. Not the most important aspect of 9/11 but a sign of dumbing down.
I wasn't directly affected and this is really quite petty in the bigger picture, but working from home I first heard it unfolding on 5 Live. Simon Mayo did a fantastic job, as he does turning his hand to just about any topic. If it happened now we'd be led through it all by the juvenile Richard Bacon who has the gravitas of a Womble. Not the most important aspect of 9/11 but a sign of dumbing down.
How very dare you? Great Uncle Bulgaria has gravitas coming out of his arse!
Lol Rizzo,I managed to bull my way out of that one,I came up with some plausible rubbish about going to Glasgow to pick up some books that I ordered then the central station was shut by a security alert and I was off the hook!
Was at work for Natwest in Drapers Gardens, 25 storey building round corner from Stock Exchange and Tower 42. Me and mate just walking back into office from the canteen and our manager said - BBC say a plane has crashed into the World Trade Centre. Reckon it must be one of them sightseeing planes.
Logged on about 15 minutes later and saw the reality. We put the TV on and watched all afternoon. All the other large buildings around us were evacuated but not us. Our manager made us compile a list of all outstanding FX trades we had with companies based in the the Towers - Goldmans,Cantor,Marsh etc so we could stop our dollar payments going out to them, as they were probably not going to be paying us for their trades. Went to pub down London Wall after work got quite drunk, and sickeningly had a bet with someone on how many people we thought would have died. Not my finest moment.
I was 15, came home waiting for a b0llocking from my mum as i had got in trouble for something (can't remember now) and she was just watching the tv telling me about what had happened. I never really knew what the twin towers were there for but remembered seeing them in films and knew they were massive. When i went to ground zero in 2007 and went to the museum place it was so strange. Peoples last calls ringing out, calls to NYFD/NYPD, the beams of the structure burnt and twisted, amazing stories of survival. So unreal.
Had collected a customer's car from Watford and was driving it back to Redhill, listening to a CD the owner had left in the stereo when JiMMy85 (see above) 'phoned to ask if I was watching what was happening. I hadn't a clue and couldn't quite believe what he was telling me but the motor was a new S-class with a T.V fitted. I was on the M25 so came off at the next junction (J11), parked up and turned it on. I remember it was a very odd feeling when I got back on the motorway as I felt that the world would be changed forever becaude of these events, but here was the good old 25 carrying on as usual with its lorries, madcap drivers, centre lane huggers etc. all carrying on as normal. Felt vey odd somehow.
I was working for O.S at the time and in some stuffy office somewhere under Petty France in the maze of underground passages in that area.
The phone went saying we where going into lock down. The only news about what was happening I was getting for the first hour was from the old mailing list. And some members where not at all happy about people posting non-Charlton bits!
Finally I got the ISDN line to work the internet and managed to watch online what was happening.
I was working at Newton's near Mansion House. The first I heard was a colleague got a call from her husband saying one plane had hit the towers. I didn't know what to make of it and almost didn't take it seriously. She said try and get on bbc news, Sky news, CNN etc and everyone was locked out. Then another call, a second plane has hit. Then a third call saying one of the towers has collapsed. One of the meeting room's projectors had BBC News on it and all inside were horrified, staring in silence and utter disbelief. The second tower collapsed cue tears, shrieks and utter bewilderment. I left work about 3pm as all major cities were on red alert. I remember getting home and just watching and discussing it (trying to make some sense out of it) with my flat mates and girlfriend. Never seen anything like it and still the programmes today give me a cold shudder down my spine.
on a company golf day near croydon somewhere - my brother and sister in law were flying back from New York and had been in the twin towers the day before.
What a strange day. I was working in the city. I remember everyone had left by 3 and I was the only one left in the office. Kept getting contacted by people telling me they'd heard a rumour that more planes had been taken at Heathrow and were heading over to commit me to my death. For some sadly it was an excuse to invent and spout nonsense. Nowadays they have FR and threads about our ex-keepers wage demands to exercise their need to generate fiction.
Thinking about the people who had to choose between jumping and staying inside and burning still makes me sad.
I was in Portugal at a waterpark with my family. I just remember them announcing something over and over in Portuguese about the WTC.
Didn't realise what it was until we got back to our villa and saw it over and over again on the news. I initially thought it was some music video for some reason but even when I realised I still couldn't grasp what had happened. I do remember dad saying at the time he thought it would have something to do with the Black September or Al Qaeda.
i was bunking off school because my mum and dad were on holiday. just remember playing championship manager and watching 9/11 on the news. shocking stuff.
Comments
Oh wait, that was George Bush.
I was actually at work in Tavistock Square (which may sound familiar due to another terrorist attack) and heard about the first crash just before the 2nd plane hit. I saw footage of the 2nd plane which I didn't really react to very muc. I think the scale of the images threw me a bit. It was hard to get my head around that fact that this was a jumbo jet crashing into a massive building. It was when the towers collapsed later on that it really hit.
A crowd soon built up around my desk, and eventually I realised something serious had happened - we turned the volume up in time to see the second plane hit, but we all thought the second impact was a replay of the first for a good few minutes. It wasn't until the buildings fell that the scale of the event really washed over me. Like many people, I really hadn't considered how big the Towers were having never really come across them beyond a pub quiz question and Trading Places. I vividly remember picking up a copy of the Evening Standard on the way home. The image of the explosion was astonishing.
I also remember wondering how badly Rupert Murdoch might be hated, given our proximity to Heathrow, and how wise it was to stand next to a sign that read "The country's busiest station" when at Clapham. The kind of terrorism fear that the US would learn to harness for their own means.
Took days for people to start returning to work and America was understandably completely broken. In the end my wife and I had to turn the tv off it was heartbreaking and we got to the point where we spent hours crying watching all the stories. The one I'll never forget was the CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald. He was interviewed live, he'd taken his son to his first day at school so wasn't in the WTC, he was in absolute bits, I couldn't hold it together. I had a 6 month old and wondered what on earth kind of world she was going to grow up in.
A year later we were living in London and my wife's father who had lung cancer was given just a few days to live, my wife was already there so I jumped on a plane the next day to get over there. I got to the airport and it was empty, the American Airlines plane empty, maybe 20 on the whole flight. It was a beautiful clear day and then I realised it was September 11 one year on. The flight crew and captain had a minutes silence, very emotional.
I was still at secondary school. I remember finishing my last lesson of the day and as I was leaving one of the buildings with my mate a maths teacher said to us "Boys, get home and stick the tele on. America has been hit, America has been hit bad" Me and my mate didn't really know what to make of it but needless to say we rushed home and stuck on the tele just as the second tower was hit.
It was surreal, I was young and didn't really grasp the impact it would have but just thought it was crazy that someone could fly a plane into a building. There was probably 7 of us in my friends front room watching and for at least 30 minutes no one said a coherent sentence, only the odd expletive in disbelief.
It's a day I'll never forget. Tragic.
Me and mate just walking back into office from the canteen and our manager said - BBC say a plane has crashed into the World Trade Centre. Reckon it must be one of them sightseeing planes.
Logged on about 15 minutes later and saw the reality. We put the TV on and watched all afternoon. All the other large buildings around us were evacuated but not us. Our manager made us compile a list of all outstanding FX trades we had with companies based in the the Towers - Goldmans,Cantor,Marsh etc so we could stop our dollar payments going out to them, as they were probably not going to be paying us for their trades. Went to pub down London Wall after work got quite drunk, and sickeningly had a bet with someone on how many people we thought would have died.
Not my finest moment.
Had collected a customer's car from Watford and was driving it back to Redhill, listening to a CD the owner had left in the stereo when JiMMy85 (see above) 'phoned to ask if I was watching what was happening. I hadn't a clue and couldn't quite believe what he was telling me but the motor was a new S-class with a T.V fitted. I was on the M25 so came off at the next junction (J11), parked up and turned it on. I remember it was a very odd feeling when I got back on the motorway as I felt that the world would be changed forever becaude of these events, but here was the good old 25 carrying on as usual with its lorries, madcap drivers, centre lane huggers etc. all carrying on as normal. Felt vey odd somehow.
I was working at Newton's near Mansion House. The first I heard was a colleague got a call from her husband saying one plane had hit the towers. I didn't know what to make of it and almost didn't take it seriously. She said try and get on bbc news, Sky news, CNN etc and everyone was locked out. Then another call, a second plane has hit. Then a third call saying one of the towers has collapsed. One of the meeting room's projectors had BBC News on it and all inside were horrified, staring in silence and utter disbelief. The second tower collapsed cue tears, shrieks and utter bewilderment. I left work about 3pm as all major cities were on red alert. I remember getting home and just watching and discussing it (trying to make some sense out of it) with my flat mates and girlfriend. Never seen anything like it and still the programmes today give me a cold shudder down my spine.
What a strange day. I was working in the city. I remember everyone had left by 3 and I was the only one left in the office. Kept getting contacted by people telling me they'd heard a rumour that more planes had been taken at Heathrow and were heading over to commit me to my death. For some sadly it was an excuse to invent and spout nonsense. Nowadays they have FR and threads about our ex-keepers wage demands to exercise their need to generate fiction.
Thinking about the people who had to choose between jumping and staying inside and burning still makes me sad.
I was in Portugal at a waterpark with my family. I just remember them announcing something over and over in Portuguese about the WTC.
Didn't realise what it was until we got back to our villa and saw it over and over again on the news. I initially thought it was some music video for some reason but even when I realised I still couldn't grasp what had happened. I do remember dad saying at the time he thought it would have something to do with the Black September or Al Qaeda.