| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 11:28:36 AM | I started that day getting up for work with the civilian company I was working for, thinking it was a beautiful morning from my apartment on Roosevelt Island. The company being down on water street was fastest to get to using the N/R train. I got a phone call from my then girl friend in Winnipeg telling me she was upset and had a nightmare about her deceased grandmother. I had decided being a little late to work wouldn't be horrible and so I kept talking to her on the phone trying to relax her.
My pager went off while I was talking to her and so I looked to the message which had my activation notice on it and a change to standby. I figured it was just some test or drill and kept talking to her but put on the TV curious if there was any news that would warrent the change. So I saw the smoking tower and figured it was just a small plane, I felt horrible for those there and I excused myself with my girlfriend and called to my office telling them I would probably not be in or would be late. I was just reaching to make call back to my girlfriend when I saw the second plane hit. I ran down the stairs and over to FDNY special opperations command. The already had dispatched most of their availble crews and had me go over to help set up staging per protocols.
I was working at staging when the word came out that the tower collapsed and everything else was still being determined.. it was about 5 minutes after that my pager went off with the change from standby to active but I was already there. I went with the first medical unit called from staging into the city at about 3 in the afternoon sent to assist NY Hospital which had a missing crew and a full ER. I spent most of the time keeping the lesser experienced medics out of the hair of the Hospital teams knowing they were troubled by their missing crew. Also got into a fight with a few of the doctors forcing them to find something wrong with a Firefighter to keep him in the hospital under observation whose whole crew was unaccounted for. Saddly it only delayed the enevitable he committed suicide a year later instead of that night.
Around 7pm I was moved down to the main staging at Chelsea piers alternating between trauma and Morgue duties till about 2am.. Got a fitful nap till 4 and then went down with relief teams to the site a march I will never forget and alwys try to. I hardly remember the details between one day and the next although I still remember all of it no real way to describe it. When I was finally relieve of my duties on site... I still don't have the strenth to listen to all the names... 383 funerals.. some without even bodies or parts.. people i trained, people i served with, people I trained with..Some wounds don't heal | |
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 11:41:57 AM | OT: I was on vacation out of the country. Getting home was a nightmare. I don't think it sank in for me until much later. We didn't see coverage, we didn't even hear about it until back on US soil. It apparently wasn't as news worthy elsewhere. Oddly.
Kat :94: | |
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 11:53:34 AM | ~OP~ I was at home. Oddly, I had been up all night IMing with a very close friend who worked in the South Tower. He was a stock trader and worked through the night to better serve his overseas clients. We were due to meet in New York the following Wednesday en-route to Eygpt. There were 8 of us going ~ obviously that did not happen. I did not get to speak my friend again ~ I still have the last IM conversation we had. Sort of weird to read it now, the excitement our the impending trip, the overall discussion that was had over the course of nearly 3 hours. It seems so long ago now. Sigh. 
spaceman: Here's a link I have in archives, throughout my search of "the truth."
The ONLY visions of the Pentagon released, and you are indeed correct, no plane.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12818225/
I'll email you the other "particulars." (I will say, I'm with you on this note ~ I guess I don't quite understand why a blind-eye is better than researching and learning some non-Americanized views on this topic ~ but to each their own.) JMO
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 12:12:08 PM | I was inst mgr my daughter in law Debbie in the lst tower that morning....when she didn't return my messages I closed down the computer and prepared to leave for work..
I gathered my keys and purse and about to turn off the tv --that is when it hit me and I was in complete shock I almost fell over
The phone started ringing family members who saw that too...we all started to cry
she worked for CantorFitzergerald she was on the 102 floor ..she is missed terribly.
her remains were found 11 Oct 01 and we had a proper service then the anniversary of 9/11 is always emotionally upsetting for all but for me especially so
Not a day goes by that I don't think of Debbie | |
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 12:54:51 PM | We didn't even hear about it until back on US soil. It apparently wasn't as news worthy elsewhere. Oddly.
In the UK it was covered live on all the channels. I don't know about anywhere else.
A friend of mine works in Birmingham (UK), she was at a school in a poor, majority Muslim area. She tells me the children were cheering when they found out. These children weren't really old enough to understand so it must have come from their parents. This is why I don't like Muslims.
I'm sorry for the off topic, it such a disgusting thing. I can't get it out of my system and I suppose its part of my experience of 9/11. Before that Muslims hadn't crossed my mind. | |
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 1:54:14 PM | | Heard about it while getting ready for work. They were saything that a plane flew into one of the towers and I knew that it was no accident. Airline pilots just don't make mistakes like that. When the second one hit I knew it was muslims before they even said it was. Muslims are the only people who are praised by their god to commit suicide. Allah loves his people to blow up because it is the only dignity they can have against the more powerful Jesus who tought his people to preserve themselves and defend rather than attack. . | |
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 2:36:24 PM |
When the second one hit I knew it was muslims before they even said it was. Muslims are the only people who are praised by their god to commit suicide. Allah loves his people to blow up because it is the only dignity they can have against the more powerful Jesus who tought his people to preserve themselves and defend rather than attack. .
There is a HUGE difference in culture and religion. NO WHERE does the Holy Qur' ran advocate, instigate or otherwise promote suicide in any form. Culture, however, is an entirely different thing. And many non-Islamic cultures do, in fact, advocate suicidal acts as proof of loyalty, bravery and other theories not recognized in American/Westernized "cultures."
The Quran says do not kill yourselves nor kill each other. According to Prophet Muhammad and his sayings suicide is forbidden and who ever commits suicide will abide in hell forever.
OT: The UK, of course, would be informing citizens of the 9/11 happenings. Most often BBC reports exactly as the Americanized version of news. There are countries on this planet that don't see America in the same light as Americans, Canada or the UK. There are places where these acts went relatively unnoticed, even hailed as others have pointed out. JMO
Kat  | |
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 3:11:17 PM | A friend of mine came to my class to grab me and inform me what happened... My family was living in DC then, and works for the government... Reports were saying that the location my dad was at had been hit.
One of my professors turned on the TV in his office. I was in complete shock. My cell phone couldn't get anyone of my friends or family in DC, which made me get a bit more nervous. After watching the second tower fall, I went home.
There was never any doubt in my mind who was responsible.
Thankfully my dad was fine. A friend of mine, her mom was in the hospital from burns due to the fire at the Pentagon. Her mom lost all of her office staff and numerous friends. Another friend lost his parents at the WTC.
Later that week a race car driver I had worked with was in a really bad racing accident and lost both of his legs. I had been working as an aerodynamicist in motorsports. I quit, changed careers, and went to work on unmanned aircraft for the military.
I took the fight to the terrorist, and in their home territory.
-Todd | |
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 3:41:38 PM | I live in Calgary, Mountain Standard Time zone, and was getting up to my daily routine of checking email before work and looking at my favourite web forum. They were talking about it there, and so I turned the TV on to watch the first tower fall. Was pretty amazing to be sharing the experience with people around the world in real time.
I went to work after the second tower fell - at the Foothills Hospital at that time, with a view of downtown, wondering if I could expect to see airplanes sailing into the twin towers of Banker's Hall at any moment. Was a nervous time. Other than that, nothing really stands out. We had TV sets on the unit anyway for family members to watch so it wasn't unusual to have them on. Nobody seemed to talk much about it; those that knew I was in the reserve army wondered if I was going to have to go someplace. Mostly people were just stunned.
The message forum I originally heard about it on shut down for a week because the conversations got so heated there - with ignorant comments about "kill them all" (whoever "them" was supposed to mean - nobody knew), and eventually the general discussion forum was wiped clean in a forum purge, so while the forum is still there, the 9/11 stuff is gone forever. Just as well, I suppose. | |
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 4:02:05 PM | Was on holiday in Newquay (Cornwall) with my parents; on Spetember 10th my mom and I had been on a trip which included a stop at a little church next to an old air force base at St Eval, there's a WWII graveyard in the grounds which has some USAF flyers buried there; I took a few photos, on a couple of them I managed to catch two USAF personnel in full uniform paying their respects...can't actually remember where I was next morning but as I was walking back through the town to the hotel about 1.50pm I overheard a woman talking to her young son who said something about declaring war on America...got back to my room, opened a can of bitter and put the TV on...just in time to see the second plane hit...I finished that can in record time, grabbed the rest and went round to my parents' room, my mom was out somewhere but my dad and me just sat there watching the whole thing over and over...that night the hotel bar was crowded but virtually silent as we watched the reactions on TV and the BBC parading sneering young Muslims pontificating about the price of democracy etc etc... and in response to the guy who mentioned the Muslims in Birmingham - which is where I live - when I got back at the end of the week I was told about the celebrations in Sparkbrook and Alum Rock that night.
Six years on I am still having nightmares about plane crashes and I've never been nearer an aircraft than the old planespotters' tower at Birmingham airport... | |
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 4:20:16 PM | As a west coast Canadian I was puttering around the house while the kids got ready for school. An avid news hound I had the TV on just before the second plane hit which I got to see live. I yelled out to the wife and kids 'come and see this, the US is under attack'. We sat glued to the set until we had to go.
My first thought was, with all due respect to those who perished, ' those **stards finaly brought a war to NA'. I was not refferencing Bin Laddin, but the guy who sat like a deer in the headlights with school kids as his country is under attack. | |
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 4:24:53 PM | | I was living in San Diego at the time. I remember seeing it on the TV, and going through all the emotions that everyone else here experienced. But the thing that still gives me chills is that I learned days later that the terrorist who flew the plane into the Pentagon had lived only TWO BLOCKS from me!!! Had I perhaps unknowingly stood in line behind him in the neighborhood grocery store at one time? I had no idea there was a terrorist in my midst. I remember the mosque across the street from me receiving bomb threats so they put police on duty there 24/7 for a while. All of my Muslim neighbors stayed inside for quite a long time, fearful of going out in public. It was a sad and terrifying time for many, to be sure. | |
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 4:56:06 PM | I remember the morning well, I was delivering a new truck to Atlanta, was outside of Chattanooga Tn, when I heard about it on the radio. When I got to Atlanta watched the coverage on tv for a while. Me and another driver then headed to the Port in Jacksonville FL for delivery the next day, with a flight following to Minneapolis. Luckly the other driver had the smarts to line up one of the last rental cars at Jacksonville airport, so when we got there all we had to do was jump in and drive back to MN. I remember that security at the port and airport was EXTRA TIGHT that day.
I have my thoughts about conspiracy theories but like OP said this is not the place. | |
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 4:59:20 PM | Beautiful song here by Alan Jackson. I was never so moved as when I first heard him perform it.
"Where Were You (When The World Stopped Turning)"
Where were you when the world stopped turning that September day
Out in the yard with your wife and children
Working on some stage in LA
Did you stand there in shock at the site of
That black smoke rising against that blue sky
Did you shout out in anger
In fear for your neighbor
Or did you just sit down and cry
Did you weep for the children
Who lost their dear loved ones
And pray for the ones who don't know
Did you rejoice for the people who walked from the rubble
And sob for the ones left below
Did you burst out in pride
For the red white and blue
The heroes who died just doing what they do
Did you look up to heaven for some kind of answer
And look at yourself to what really matters
I'm just a singer of simple songs
I'm not a real political man
I watch CNN but I'm not sure I can tell you
The difference in Iraq and Iran
But I know Jesus and I talk to God
And I remember this from when I was young
Faith hope and love are some good things he gave us
And the greatest is love
Where were you when the world stopped turning that September day
Teaching a class full of innocent children
Driving down some cold interstate
Did you feel guilty cause you're a survivor
In a crowded room did you feel alone
Did you call up your mother and tell her you love her
Did you dust off that bible at home
Did you open your eyes and hope it never happened
Close your eyes and not go to sleep
Did you notice the sunset the first time in ages
Speak with some stranger on the street
Did you lay down at night and think of tomorrow
Go out and buy you a gun
Did you turn off that violent old movie you're watching
And turn on "I Love Lucy" reruns
Did you go to a church and hold hands with some stranger
Stand in line and give your own blood
Did you just stay home and cling tight to your family
Thank God you had somebody to love
I'm just a singer of simple songs
I'm not a real political man
I watch CNN but I'm not sure I can tell you
The difference in Iraq and Iran
But I know Jesus and I talk to God
And I remember this from when I was young
Faith hope and love are some good things he gave us
And the greatest is love
I'm just a singer of simple songs
I'm not a real political man
I watch CNN but I'm not sure I can tell you
The difference in Iraq and Iran
But I know Jesus and I talk to God
And I remember this from when I was young
Faith hope and love are some good things he gave us
And the greatest is love
The greatest is love
The greatest is love
Where were you when the world stopped turning that September day
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 5:21:27 PM | | I was at work when it happened. All of a sudden, the network went down. Someone brought in a TV. I sat at my computer in disbelief listening to it. I couldn’t get up to look right away. It was a strange feeling. I was very frightened. For a few moments I really believed that a third world war had just begun and the US had become “ground zero,” not just New York… | |
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 5:28:10 PM | I was at home watching it in disbelief. I come from a family of three son all of which and my father are veterans. I was in Desert Shield/Storm, my older brother was working at the Pentagon that day. He worked in the ring in which the plane stopped and lost several of his co-workers including his boss who was in a meeting at the time the plane hit. Everyone that was in that meeting was killed and my brother was supposed to have been there as well - did not get the e-mail. He received a Soldier's medal for pulling several people out of the wreckage that day. He retired there two weeks ago and still lives in VA nearby.
That day struck very close to home and I thought after having been in the Desert myself (and BTW being proud of the support I had gotten while I was there from the homefront) and after 9/11 that there was no way we would ever forget whats important and WHY it is so important to stand up and fight for what we believe. Quite frankly, it is clear that the opposite is true (particularly in the media)
- Remember what has happened here on our soil, remember those that paid the price then and those that continue to pay for our freedom, and be thankful for that because it is does not ever come cheap.
Without becoming political, just remember that there are heroes in your midst so that there won't be terrorists there as well. Sometimes its hard to recognise either of them so expend a little extra effort on the 11th and try to remember to thank a veteran or a soldier or,for that matter, everyday folks who serve next-door... like policemen and firemen and other emergency personnel. | |
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 5:33:38 PM | I was working on a song, the few days leading up to 9/11. I'd spent the entire afternoon and evening of the 10th at the keyboard and the computer and had the song nearly finished -- just needed some vocal harmony work, and a saturated string section to fill out the last verse, maybe a bit more work on the bridge melody -- by the time I finally went to bed about 2 a.m. Then next morning, I woke up to ... well, you know ...
That song still sits in my book, unfinished ... where it will remain unfinished ... like so many other things that day.
cdn guy
Edit: And now that I think of it, I didn't write another thing for over a year following 9/11. Amazing the effect that some things can have on us. | |
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 7:38:25 PM | I had just dropped my daughter off at preschool and heard on the radio that a plane had hit the WTC. As soon as I walked in the door I turned on the news to see what had happened and how such an "accident" could happen. As I stared at the TV the second plane hit. I clearly remember hearing broadcasters scream and say "Oh My God" over and over. I realized that something intentional was happening. Then the scenes of ppl jumping. I got sick. Then news that the Pentagon had been hit. Then I was terrified. I live 15 minutes from Barksdale Airforce Base (where GWB flew from Florida). Friends were calling from the base saying Air Force One just landed. I called my ex-husband. "Should I go back and pick up our daughter?" He said absolutely not. The distraction of school was much better for her than the terror we were all experiencing. Both towers collapsed and I couldn't breathe.
I went to NYC in December 2001. Ground zero was still smoldering. There were miles of petitions covered in pictures of the dead/missing. A lady stood beside me sobbing and held up a picture of her son, daughter-in-law and only grandchild. They were all aboard the first plane to strike the towers. In one quick moment she lost her entire family. She hugged me, hugged my little girl and told me to never take one day with her for granted. As I walked through NYC, I realized that so many ppl were doing on Sept 11th exactly what I was doing that day when all hell broke loose.
I stopped. Prayed for all those lost that day and everyone they left behind. Then I prayed that nothing like this ever happen again. I still pray that prayer every day. | |
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 8:10:01 PM | 911 I woke up that morning andmy wife had just gone to work ( she worked in detroit )and commuted from windsor , I was off that day and was watching the news when it happened ? I watched the first plane hit then the second and I was on the phone trying to call mt wife to tell her to get home because it was an obvious war ! Noone believed me since they didn't have TV's in the office building she worked at . I had to exclaim that you need to get home now !!!!!!!!!! the border went to code orange just after my wife finally got her confirmation and got back to windsor ? Then I watched as the skies lit up and the towers burned thinking to my self how are they gonna clean that up way up there ( being in construction and having years in architectural engineering ) I thought to myself that's not an easy thing to fix .
Then to my horror I saw it !! It was all just a ruse , the buildings were internally demolitioned. I watched people jumping from the buildings to escape the heat which would have been unbareable for humans on those few floors that were on fire for thirteen minutes. Then they decided to play the final card and push the buttons to set off the explosions to bringthe buildings down and I thought how could any one be so cold as to maliciously kill that many people.
What did they do it for ? To start a greed war for oil ? to point fingers at a "moron" nation ? To kill thousands more american and canadian kids who are oblivious to the realities of the politics of greed ?
Okay so I wasn't sure that men could be so evil. I was wrong.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7E3oIbO0AWE
For those of you who supported bush , you have more blood on your hands than you know ,hope you can sleep at night !!!!!!!!!!!!
Anyone with a brain can see the difference between a controlled demolition and an accidental collapse. | |
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Rhett1
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Joined: 10/16/2005
Msg: 96 | |
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 9:08:07 PM | Meer Kat,
You sound like a very devoute muslim who speaks for their religion....Although it seems that a lot of your fellow parishoners are blowing themselves up in the name of islam. I think they may be misinterpreting the karan. Meer Kat, I think you had better get busy and preach the true meaning of the koran and what muhumid wants them to do becasue a lot of them are commiting suicide and praising each other for it. | |
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/10/2007 9:13:16 PM | I live in long island. 35 miles away. It was horrible. We thought some friends had been killed there, as we didn't hear from them for days afterwards. Everyone of my neighbors said that they had lost a relative. One lost a coworker. I found out a client of mine had died and left a very young widow. My mom had just been in the towers on business a few days before. My dad actually had worked on the construction of the towers years ago. He had died two weeks before this tragedy.
People come from all over and visit Ground Zero, and I can't fathom how anyone sees that as a place to visit. One night, I was driving in the city and pulled up to a red light. I looked to my right and realized I was there. Ground Zero. Bright lights eerily illuminating the area; the area just being nothing but a hole in the ground and a fence surrounding it; a tomb of innocents killed by extremists. I shuddered at the gore of it and turned my attention back to the street light. 3,000 souls crying, burning, now silenced. Lives torn. Where going to work that day meant instantaneously jumping thousands of feet to your death, throwing yourself out of a skyscraper window to a concrete sidewalk, that being preferable to being seared alive by the burning tortuous flames, the immense heat blazed from jet fuel where they were trapped. Plus those that were terrorized in what should have been routine flights and gave their lives because of crazed, zealous, murderous mad-men. | |
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| 9/11 and how you experienced it ( personal stories)
Posted: 9/11/2007 2:31:19 AM | This morning is bright and sunny .... just like the one on that day.
It brings back the memories of that day. My daughter and her partner had just told me I was to become a grand mother.
I left them at home watching video's as I left to take my afternoon class (2 till 4pm GMT) at the Manhattan club, (North Yorkshire, England).
After class, I got into my car and drove the half hour journey to be with my mum who had suffered a massive stroke and was in hospital.
I arrived at the lobby which was unusually filled with people watching the tv screen... there was something in the air which made me stop and look at what they were so intensely watching. At first it seemed like some movie.... then it dawned on me that these were live pictures from America.... and very real!
I can't begin to describe the feeling that engulfed me. I was so aware of the loudest silence there amongst so many other shocked and horrified people in that lobby.
All the stories I'd hear of WW2 as I grew up came welling up and I really believed I was witnessing the beginning of WW3.
I made my way up to the hospital chapel where I needed some time before going to my mothers bedside.
I could see the fear in her eyes as she had to witness yet again the horror of war.
It seemed unthinkable that the States could be the target of such an attack.
My day had started out so beautifully happy and filled with the joy of a new life to come but now I was wondering would even the next moment arrive, let alone the birth of my grandchild.
It took the next three years to recover somewhat from the feeling of dread. Though today is different.... today I am going again to the Manhattan club to teach my class and stand on that stage which has a graphic life size poster of a window overlooking New York from one of the towers. I can't help feeling a bit sick and sad. My thoughts will be with everyone who experienced loss and also those who survived but still hold memories of that dreadful day. In God we trust | |
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