Where were you when the towers fell?

[speedsix]

...just dropped off my boys at school and heading to the pawn shop for work...left and bought a P90 at a nearby shop...(bought a 12 ga pump that day at my shop)...told the boss the second tower was hit and went in to work...told the mgr to be especially careful and expect more locals to rob since law enf. was busy...that afternoon at 5:40 the Radio Shack had an armed robbery...and my mgr and a friend were walking by and saw the guy...just didn't see what was happenin'...made a believer outa that young man...I will never see an airliner the same way again...I was full of burning rage that day and for sometime thereafter...

[bci21984]

1st period spanish class my junior year.

[Texas Dan Mosby]

Deutschland, prepping for a field problem.

8 months later...Afghanistan.

9/11 REALLY, really, REALLY irritated the bejeezis out of many of my peers and I, as UBL and AQ were on the radar since at LEAST 91', LONG before the events took place in NY that day.

And yet none of our elected leadership had the courage to pull the trigger. Despite AQ involvement in the OK city bombing, WTC attack #1, Khobar towers attack, U.S.S. Cole attack, AQ involvement in Somalia, multiple embassy bombings...

I truly am glad that the boys finally got UBL, even though it was about 20 years too late.

They'll get Zawahiri too...

[The Mad Moderate]

I was sitting on the couch waiting to walk to school (I was in 9th grade) when it first broke, I saw the second plane hit live. Walked to school went to my first period class and the TV was on the news. When the first class started the Principal made an announcement of what was happening and asked the teachers to turn on the TV and if there were any students who did not want to watch could go to the library. I stayed in class and one of the things that stand out in my mind was the audible gasp from the class when the first tower fell, we were in shock. The whole day was a blur after the second tower fell, for most of the day we watched the news as we could not focus on anything else. When I made it home the TV was on and we all watched WTC 7 fell relived that no one was inside. We turned it off after that, had a family dinner, talked about it and went to bed. That night it was silent, it was strange not to hear the sounds of jets at night, that silence really sticks in my mind for some reason.

[Dadiggla]

I was sitting in the III Corp building at Ft hood filling out a questionare to renew my securety clearance. It was in the back office on the second floor. It was really quiet back there and I remember I had no cell service back there either. When I got done and came out towards the front my phone went off with voicemails. So I stopped to listen to them. It was the wife and friends calling to see if I heard. As I got to the hallway everyone was walk jogging in all directions. You would think it happened next door. I still didnt believe it until I saw it for myself. This was where I grew up. Took school trips there. My second job when at 15 yrs old was less than 2 miles from there. We were flying back to TX from my younger brother's funeral in NY in 2002. So I was already upset of course. As the plane turned to taxi towards the runway I finally saw the skyline...I cried again. Too many emotions hit me at once. Then my wife starting crying because I was. It was pretty sobering. I went back in July and I got a view of the Freedom Tower under construction from the Empire State Building. Its amazing. Im a Texan now...but I'll always pull for NYC.

[Jumping Frog]

I was getting off the exit right by work when the radio said the second tower was hit. Went into work and everyone was watching it on TV.

Then the Pentagon was hit, so we all walked over to the west windows of our office and looked at the smoke (I was working in DC).

We were all expecting more attacks and wondering what else would happen.

After a while, I simply wanted to go home. I remember how freakily deserted the freeways around DC were.

[texanron]

I was working in a satellite drafting office in Hempstead, Texas. One of my co-workers was listening to 740 KTRH when the first report of a plane hitting the first tower came across the air waves. The rest of the day we all were glued to the radio as the madness unfolded.

[jimlongley]

I was SUPPOSED to be at 60 Hudson St in NY City doing overnight upgrade scenarios on a telecom switch. The company whose switch it was had decided not to expand the switch after all and canceled, so I was NOT sleeping all day at the WTC Marriott after having breakfast at Windows on the World, where I used to watch the GA planes, below, flying up and down the Hudson and idly speculate about one of them getting caught in the wind or lost in the fog and running into one of the towers.

I was in my home office, working from home as I had not planned to be in the office that day anyway, when my stepson wandered in and said "Pop, a plane just crashed into the World Trade Center." so I took my phone out of the queue and walked into the next room where the news was on.

While I stood there telling my stepson that that couldn't be a small GA plane as I had first surmised, due to the size of the mark on the building, the second plane hit. I told my stepson he was not going to school that day and went in and called my wife and my boss, knowing that neither of them would have the news on. I also called my contact at the telecomm company that had canceled and thanked them, and at that time I was not aware of the massive amount of damage sustained by the Marriott.

I spent part of the morning worrying about, and trying to call once in a while, my friend who worked in the telephone central office right there in the building, only to find out that he had been transferred to Staten Island a couple of months before and was safe.

Another friend was the Chief Engineer for the TV tower and died.

Knowing that the telephone systems all across the US would get more and more blocked as everyone tried to call everyone else, I stayed off the phone except for one last call to my former boss at 140 West St, which was being evacuated as I spoke to him. 140 West St. is the building immediately north of the WTC and was featured in many of the news shots before the collapse, with Ashley Banfield stnding disheveled in the street and a building in the background with a black flag hanging from the front. That flag was a Verizon flag and that building is multiple floors of telephone central offices and switches as well as offices and control centers, and my former reporting location for a while at New York Telephone, although I worked upstate.

I put my phone back in the queue and never got a call all day, I guess no one had trouble with their switches.

[10Shooter]

I was at home asleep, when my wife called and told me about the plane hitting the building.
Got up, turned on the TV, got suspicious also (6 years USAF, 4 years TXANG), started yelling in my empty house, where are our fighters, get the jets up. Then saw the second one hit, then the others, I was full of burning rage that day and for sometime thereafter...(as speedsix put it so well). It was very strange feeling that night knowing there were no planes flying over the US other than military for a while.
It seems a lot of people have forgotten.
I VCR'd some of that day, and just recently came across that tape and are going to burn it on DVD's. Which I had taped more.
Hugged my wife and babies when they got home, prayed hard, cried too.
My country changed forever.

[The Annoyed Man]

....it was strange not to hear the sounds of jets at night, that silence really sticks in my mind for some reason.

My office at the time was located on approach, about 1/4 mile off the west end of runway 8/26 at Burbank Airport. Normally, we had Southwest 737s and American Air MD80s landing practically right over our heads all the time....like every 5 or 10 minutes or so. So when the flights stopped, it got abnormally quiet, even in broad daylight.

Then, within an hour or so after the last commercial aircraft landed, we had a flight of F-18s come in and land. From then on for about the next week or so, we had F-18s coming and going at regular intervals, using BUR as an airfield, as they flew CAP over the area. There seemed to always be at least one of them circling high overhead in a racetrack pattern. Occasionally, 2 or 3 of them would race off together in some direction or other, presumably to investigate something, before returning to the "hornet's nest" at BUR. Then one day, they were gone.

It was almost comforting when all the noise of commercial flights resumed because it was a sign that, despite the terrible blow our nation had been dealt, life was returning to normal..........a new kind of normal in which the word "terrorism" was now a part of the daily language......but normal nonetheless.

[cctcaden]

Sitting in my car waiting for class to start heard it on the Bob and Tom show and remember thinking some idiot in their Cessna but I decided to go home and watch the tv so I didn't see the plane hitting the second tower. I had only worked for Southwest for 6 months and I was off that Tuesday I did go into work Wednesday. It was a weird feeling working at an airport with no people in it and a couple of planes just sitting there. One of the planes was a United 757 so we were able to see the size of the planes involved and that was eye opening.

[Griffen]

I was in my home office working. I heard a comment on the radio about appearing that something hit the WTC. Then they said, this looks bigger than a personal aircraft. I got out of my chair, turned on CNN, and sat in amazement for the next two days. I still watch the documentaries each year, and it brings it all back to life as the day it happened.

[Wfahey]

Sitting in my office in San Antonio when one of the IT techs said a plane had hit the WTC. I logged on to CNN on the computer and it was frozen because so many people were trying to log on. That tech (Ed) kept running back to my office to tell me about all the ongoing crashes that were occuring. I finally had him setup a TV in my office so we could keep up with the events. We had offices in the financial district of San Francisco and were worried about additional attacks there so we evacuated that facility and sent non essential people home. I had retired less than a year prior and was certain I was going to get recalled. I even got a letter from the Air Force letting me know that I was still obligated if called based on my career field. I never was called but I was sure ready to go.

[threoh8]

I was inspecting the carbon black plant near Big Spring. We started hearing things over the radio that morning.
After leaving the plant, I had to stop on the two-lane road to readjust some things for the trip home. Sure enough, here comes a Crown Vic. Deputy Sheriff, IIRC I was in an unmarked panel van with a thermal imager and assorted cameras - surveillance gear! - within sight of a refinery, on a day when we didn't have any idea how widespread this attack would be.
I knew full well why he wanted to see who I was and what I was up to. I was very cooperative, even more so than usual, and made certain I didn't do anything to make him nervous. He was professional, and it didn't take long.

I spent the next several months wondering if the Army would recall me from IRR status before I officially retired. Didn't happen, but I sure wouldn't have fought it.

[XnTx]

HQ AAFES Dallas, TX.