Where were you?

[PoBoy321]

Well obviously 95% of the nation isn't close to NY. That's a ridiculous and obvious statement. My point was that if you're in Kansas City or something and drive 90 miles, KC is still going to be the closest major city. Philadelphia is a 96 mile drive from NY. 90 miles is almost halfway to Boston. My point was just that saying you're 90 miles doesn't mean that you're going to have any type of connection to the city.

[Ace_W_Ace]

In the subway at Chambers St. when the first tower fell.
Later, in mid-town by the Empire State building thinking "I'd better get the hell out of here".

9/11/01 was an absolutely beautiful morning in NYC. Clear skies and warm.

I stepped out of the PATH train several blocks north of the WTC to a surreal scene. The opposite side of the street is lined with hundreds of people staring south. There is NOBODY on my side of the street. Very, very weird. I figure everyone is looking at a nasty car accident. Being a native NYer, I pride myself on not staring at nonsense like that, I'm that cool. So I walk a block to buy a paper. The guy at the newsstand has the radio on, and they report that a plane hit one of the towers.

So I figure that I ought to take a look at this. You may recall that back in the 40s a small plane hit the Empire State Building. So that's what I'm thinking as I cross the street to see black smoke pouring from Tower 1. I mill around with a group of people. Nobody knows what kind of plane it was at that time -- except one guy, who says it was an American Airlines plane and that this was an act of terrorism. Everyone around him tells him to shut up, that he doesn't know what he's talking about, and that he's scaring people.

I grab my cell phone to call my wife, who works in midtown. Can't get through. So I call my office in NJ and talk to one of my partners. They are listening on the radio. As I am talking to them, the 2nd plane hits. Huge fireball. Everyone screams. Terrifying screams that will stay with me forever.

I recall telling my friend on the phone that you're not going to believe this, another plane just hit. The first thing I think is what a coincidence, two planes hit. What a dummy. But you can't just think of the obvious as you're standing there. My friend on the phone does the greatest thing anyone could have done for me there -- he says "you better get out of there". It would never have occurred to me to do so.

So I hightail it back to the PATH. They haven't stopped the trains from running yet, and they haven't closed the City yet. So I get on a train, and there's a young couple that gets on with me. Across from me is an older woman, looked like a nurse, who seemed to be on her way to work. Rest of the train is empty.

After sitting in shock, the couple and I start talking about what we saw. It was obvious that the woman across from me had no idea what happened. She never said a word. Just listened, with this expression on her face of incredulity, again that I'll never forget.

We make it back to NJ. I get in my car, and it seems like we're in another world. Traffic is moving normally, like any other day. Again, surreal. Meanwhile on the radio they are talking about a plane down in Pennsylvania.

My wife did not get out of NYC until that evening when she was able to catch a train to Westchester (the exact opposite direction of NJ). I remember driving on Route 80 that evening to go pick her up. There is a spot where you can see all the way down Manhattan, and there was this very smoky haze over lower Manhattan. It was there for a few days.

I was far enough away from the whole thing that I was never in any danger. And I didn't hang around to watch people jumping to their deaths. But still, 3 1/2 years later, hardly a night goes by where I don't think about the images -- the people on the other side of the street, the smoke, the fireball, the look on the woman's face on the train -- and the scream when the 2nd plane hit. I cannot imagine what it must be like for people that (a) were a lot closer than I was or (b) lost a loved one.

Thank you for listening.

[Sponger15SB]

Woke up and turned on the TV, watched the 2nd one hit.

I just remember going to school a little bit later and walking into AP Econ and the TV was on, and nobody talked for like 30 minutes, it was totally silent and we were all just fixated on the TV and nobody knew what to say.

edit-
Oh yeah one of my friends was the "Prep athelete of the week" in the San Diego Union Tribune that day. At least I'll always remember that nobody even noticed.

[BeerMoney]

Giving a calculus test.

[Benal]

I was daytrading heavily back then, so my morning routine was.. Get out of bed, power on my PC, turn on the TV and switch it CNBC. First thing I saw was a plane hitting a skycraper, and I thought to myself, why are they showing a movie on this channel? I double checked the channel, and yup, it was CNBC. By the time I finally realized what was going on, the second plane hit, live. I sat on my couch in a state of shock/disbelief for the rest of the day.

[Dynasty]

I didn't venture into Other Topics back then. But, I found some threads form the day of the attacks. It seems there aren't many long threads so I'm guessing some threads and responses were lost in the archiving.

All the posts are by "Anonymous". But, if you look at the responses, you can often see who the posters above actually were.

Mason Malmuth's post from 9/11/01

This was not a crime! (This was an act of war)

Worst day in US history?

[Aces McGee]

I was a senior in college at American University in DC. I played on the Ultimate Frisbee team, and we had practice that morning. My friend and I were driving home and as we pulled into the parking garage of our apartment building, the radio station we were listening to cut away from the music, and the deejay said a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center.

My friend and I just sort of looked at each other, then rushed out of the car, into the building, and onto the elevator. I remember being in the car, and I remember opening the door to our apartment, but nothing in between.

When we opened up the door, one of our roommates turned to us and sort of half-yelled "they are attacking our country!" I think the second plane had just hit.

Soon after, the Pentagon was hit. We lived on the 13th floor, and we could see the smoke. We've got some decent pictures of it.

There was a rumor going around that the fourth plane was actually circling the DC area. We spent several minutes out on our balcony, looking for it.

Our fourth roommate worked downtown by the Capitol, and we couldn't get in touch with him, though we figured he was fine. He finally made it home in the early afternoon, after a military escort out of his building. I've never seen him so shaken up, but I guess being evacuated at M-16 point with chaos all around and no real idea of what's going to happen next will do that to you.

Several of our friends came over, and we watched TV most of the day. Late in the afternoon, I went to play basketball, just to do something else. Did anyone else feel the need to do something "normal"?

I can't imagine anyone forgetting where they were or what they were doing that day, unless it's for traumatic reasons. I remember a lot of it vividly, as if I was outside my body, watching.

-McGee

[Sponger15SB]

[ QUOTE ]
This was not a crime! (This was an act of war)

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow, now there is an interesting thread.

[wbrumfiel]

Im one of the disconnected ones as I live in CO. Anyways, I was sleeping and was supposed to take my mom to the Dentist for some fairly major work to be done on her teeth. She was in a lot of pain and had been on a lot of pain medication making her kind of looney. So when she woke me up that morning mumbling about planes flying into buildings I thought she had just taken 1 too many pain pills until I turned on the TV to watch the 2nd plane hit. I knew right away what it was and I pretty much knew the magnitude of what had just happened (even though Im too far away for some peoples tastes and have never been to NY). When the rumours started pouring in that it was Bin Laden involved I knew we were in for a long drawn out search and destroy (hopefully) mission.