Where were you on 9/11?

I was in Athens airport waiting to board our plane back to the UK. There was a huge TV screen in the corner with crowds around and as we walked in I saw a plane flying into a tower. My immediate thought was 'It's not very clever showing disaster movies in the airport'. It was only as we got closer we could see the news banner at the bottom and see everyone reaching for their phones.

There absolute panic, people running around, phoning. We watched the news to see what was happening and it took a while to sink in. 10 minutes later we were called to board our flight. It took ages to board and we sat on the tarmac for another hour, I assume while safety checks were going on. Had to watch it all again when w got home to find out exactly what was happening.

We were on holiday in Mevagissey, Cornwall, strolling back to our accommodation after a lovely day spent on the beach and strolling around town with our dog. Someone had parked and was listening to the news on the radio. We hurried back to watch the horrendous news on the TV.

I was at a part time university course to complete a Post Graduate Certificate ( while teaching ). I returned to my car, and when I turned on the ignition, the radio came on. I initially couldn’t understand what I was hearing, as it was barely conceivable. I had a 50 mile drive home, and listened the whole way. Of course it was on tv when I got home, and we watched as it unfolded further. Shocked, of course, and so sad.

We have visited what is now called Ground Zero, the fountain memorial is very apt.

The museum which is built in what was the basement of one of the towers still has the girders, walls and some of the stairs in situ.

It was so incredibly poignant and utterly heartbreaking.

grafting for a wage

My children were still school
Age and I was part time at work, I was at home cleaning the kitchen with the radio on for company I could not take in what I was hearing! A chap I knew was supposed to have been flying out for a meeting in one of the towers but had come down with a nasty virus and missed the flight! He would have been in one of the towers at the time that the planes struck!

I was in the garden tidying up a cordyline tree when my husband phoned from the US where he was working for a week or so. He said the phone lines were about to go down and they did. Fortunately, he was in Dallas, not in New York.

I was working at a Theological College in Oxford. OH was in Kiev on business, daughter visiting boyfriend in Australia, elder son waiting to join the Royal Marines and younger son in 6th Form.

The maintenance guy popped his head round my office door and told me America was being attacked. We ran down to the Student Common Room and watched those dreadful events unfold before our eyes. There were a couple of American visiting lecturers staying and they couldn’t return home for a while.

I was sitting in my car outside the local French railway station waiting to pick up DD3 from school. I had switched on the BBC expecting to listen to the play that was broadcast at that time. I first thought that the program was something in the style of Orson Wells, The War of the Worlds, then the horror dawned on me.

The children at school were, of course, very confused in the following weeks, at one point one frightened ten year old took a knife from the canteen for protection.

I was in my office on Long Island, NY, only 30 miles from NYC, when my co-worker came in and said a plane just crashed into one of the twin towers. I was thinking it was a small twin-prop plane. Then, he came in and said another plane hit the towers. We realized we were under attack. I remember looking out the window and seeing very few cars on the LIE. It felt as though the world had stopped. I also remember watching it on TV in one of our conference rooms and seeing one of the towers fall. A woman wailed very loudly - her son was in the tower. All flights in the U.S. were cancelled. I remember how eerily quiet it was outside. I never realized how much background noise planes caused until those days.

I was working for the DWP at the time when the news came on the radio. It wasn't until I saw the footage on the TV that I truly understood the horror of it. All the Pakistani's who worked in the department were all laughing and shaking hands with each other while this was going on. I never spoke to them again.

I’d left work to collect DD9 from school and go straight to the music shop in town to choose a flute for her lessons. On the way back to the car a crowd has gathered outside a TV rental shop and were watching the live news on the display televisions in the window. My teenagers were at home and I remember hoping they weren’t watching it too.

Today my eldest grandson is exactly the same age, just started Y5, and the world seems a much worse place.

monami

grafting for a wage

So were many on this thread as they make clear. How and where did you hear or watch , or not, this event?

I was in hospital with my son age 11, we were in a single room. I turned the TV on and saw the plane go into the tower! I had to go into the city to buy him some pyjamas and M&S was deserted.
I also remember when JFK died, I was on night duty and turned radio on and heard the news. Both incidents will stay with me!

I was starting on my first day on a new ward in our general hospital . I walked onto the ward with the ward manager and the doctors, nurses and patients were all watching the television in disbelief.
The first tower was already hit and fell while we watched and the second was also hit .
Obviously we couldn’t watch it for long because patients needed care.
One of my concerns at the time was it was the day that my DD and her new husband were due to fly back from honeymoon in the Carribean. Luckily their overnight flight went ahead and they arrived home safely the next morning .

I was teaching in secondary school and for some reason I walked into the humanities faculty in my free period and they had the tv on ! We watched in horror plus disbelief! The image which remains is of a man jumping from one of the towers . It haunted me for days.

I was teaching in an FE College - a class that had only joined about a week before and were still on Induction. Walked into our staff room having seen the class off home for homework on computing with an on-line chat net for assistance planned for 8pm. Utter shock on seeing the event’s unfurling in the staff room.

8pm whole class, many different students in down town central Southampton from all sorts of nationalities, creeds and colours. All deeply traumatised. We spent the whole night on line discussing anything and everything - agreed to all meet in College next day for a group hug and then home again to recover and sleep. I am still in contact with many of those students, the closest and most integrated group, I ever taught, 25 years later

I have also visited the ground zero area and it is a sobering experience

I was 39 and working as a dental receptionist. Our lab guy rang down to tell us the news, he’d heard on the radio. The full impact didn’t fully sink in until I saw it on the tv after I’d got home.

(Got a text from the nice chap I’d met a few weeks earlier to say he’d got back from his holiday to the US the day before. I was so thankful as I’d not known exactly when he was flying home. We married the following year).

I was at work. I’d just finished for the day, teaching at a secondary Pupil Referral Unit (PRU). A colleague was watching the tv in his classroom & said, “Come and have a look at this.” So I did & we watched the footage of the second plane flying into the building. We looked at each other completely mystified. Neither of us could make sense of it in the moment.

I had just got home, put the tv on for some background noise, went to the kitchen but was drawn back in by repeated snips of commentary, looked at the TV and could not believe what I was seeing, it was like a film and yet not.I felt shock and my legs felt wobbly, not only did I feel so sorry for anyone caught up in the horror and their families , I also felt certain it would start WW111 , I thought 'America will not take this lying down'
My husband was at work and couldn't be reached, I phoned my Uncle at work and told him to get someone to turn a tv on, all I could say was 'They've attacked America'I think ,ost people went to bed that night with those scenes burnt onto their retinas.

Id just got home from work my D.I.L telephoned me about a family matter and said have you seen whats happening in new york, i put the tv on just as second plane hit the other tower.
Omg i said to D.I.L theres a huge problem with the radars on the plane, not realiseing it was terrorists
In 2008 visited the site it was still being cleared.
There was a very strange atmosphere,sent chills down me.
Heartbreaking seeing photos of lost loved ones pinned to a fence.
Spoke to a young guy working in a store,he told us he was still at school, the day it hapoened and had popped into the store for some pens etc.to rake to school.
He had entered the store by a different door, which he never used, and he said a different door saved him from seeing the first plane hit but was still in the store so everyone got out and ran,when they realised something dreadful was happening.
Something no one should forget.
The world is now a dangerous place, its something that could easily happen again.
So enjoy life

I was actually chatting on my computer in a 'chat room' and talking to people from all over the World. Some were in America and some may have even been in the towers. A comment came through that a plane had hit the Pentagon and at first I thought it was the start of a joke, as did several others. Next the first plane hit, and the comments were shocking and people were logging off or going blank and the comments were to put the tv on. I did this and stayed watching it for most of the day. I did not go back into that chat room as I am sure some of who were in my chat room were in the towers. Absolutely shocking. Even to this day it is unbelievable that someone could plan and execute such a terrible thing.

The 11th September was my mum's birthday. My two daughters and one SIL and I had taken her into London for a trip on the London Eye and lunch.
We were on the train going home when people on the train started to get messages on their phones.
We went back to DD2's house and sat for hours watching the tragedy unfold.
A shocking, never to be forgotten act of terrorism. The world changed forever on that day.

DH and I were in Turkey on holiday sat on a beach. Suddenly all the bars along the front brought tv’s out directed at us on the beach. At first I thought it was a film but realised from others expressions it was indeed live footage of the planes hitting the towers. People were jumping to their deaths. It was utterly heartbreaking 💔