911

Akirasho

... I remember being awakened by an NBC news report (I worked night shift at that time)... still, a bit blurry, I remember thinking that a small aircraft must have struck a tower (I remembered the B-25 that hit the Empire State back in the 40's) and then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the video feed of the second plane and knew that human existence on this world and changed in a fundamental way...

I headed down to the bloodbank and remembered as parrot mentioned... an absolute lack of air traffic (unusual for this area)... a tad later in the day, fighter jets were scrambling all over.

Sadness... rememberance... learn.

... not to be a downer thread, but what are your memories? thoughts? hopes? thanks!

CiB

I was at work, chatting about nothing much & the wife phoned to say a plane had flown into the WTC. We put the BBC web site on to have a look but within minutes the BBC site was unavailable (overload presumably). Watched the news through the evening, and unusually even then bought the paper the next day. Still got it somewhere.

It's a sadness to me that the biggest effect of the whole business was Blair using it as an excuse for a massive expansion of state powers under the cover of security, and that we now just accept with just a shrug that airports are allowed to scan us as nude, that a bottle of fluid really is a terrorist weapon that can't be taken on a plane and that our default reaction to our fellow humans should be one of wariness. Blair was an utter c**t in my mind before then. I'd now like to see him taken to task properly for what he pushed through using the blanket of the September 11th attacks as justification.

danlikesbikes

I remember being at work in the city (not NY) with about 200 other people on our floor and someone said that a building was on fire, then we heard that it was a plane that hit. So we switched our TV's over from their usual IT update screens & workflow to the BBC & CNN news and watched as the events unfolded.

All I can think to this day is for the poor people who survived, family of those that did not and the emergency workers who attended.

rick_chasey

Cantors (the broker) do their annual charity day today - getting lots of celebrities to do some big ticket deals - where any profit they make that day goes to the families of Cantors workers who got killed that day.

They were on the floors that were directly hit.

http://instagram.com/p/PbwCFlr03P/ < Photo of celebs doing some broking.

disgruntledgoat

I was hanging about a mate's house waiting for a huge front window to be delivered, watching it on telly. The galzier, when informed of the unfolding horror replied "Bloody 'ooligans".

Then another friend phoned to say his mate Charlie's mum worked for BA and there were definitely 5 planes heading over the atlantic to do the same to London...

Another friend worked for Invesco in London, liasing with the NY office. He just didn't bother going back after his lunch.

bobtbuilder

I was working on a trading floor in London and someone told me what had happened and I thought it was a wind up. Within minutes it was up on all the monitors on the floor. I remember watching it in total disbelief.

daviesee

I was at work when the "rumour" came through into my office.
I fired up CNN and sat transfixed till finishing time. I am still not sure why I stayed.
At first I thought it was a small plane that had hit the building then watched in shock as the second came in.

Cycled home and spent all evening watching the feed. A day that will never be forgotten.

R.I.P.

Frank the tank

Doesn't matter how many times I see the footage of that day it still seems totally unbelieveable and still shocking.

guinea

CiB wrote:

I was at work, chatting about nothing much & the wife phoned to say a plane had flown into the WTC. We put the BBC web site on to have a look but within minutes the BBC site was unavailable (overload presumably).

I was Head of Ops for the BBC's website and that day was mental.

We were surrounded by screens showing the carnage whilst trying to keep the site up which was impossible as traffic reached record levels.

Life changing day for a lot of people.

tmg

I was on a conference call with a company based across the hudson in new jersey, the meeting room they were in looked out towards manhattan, they had there backs to the windows but the meeting was cut short after others in the office started screaming, the guy I was talking to calmly said we will need to rearrange the call as a plane has just flown into the wtc.

airbag

I was in school. Well, actually I had come out and was waiting at the bus stop. Caught gossip from the older kids about someone firing a missile at the pentagon, but didn't really find out more until I got off to find mum waiting for me (this was not a normal thing). As far as I could understand from what she was saying, someone tried to land a plane on the twin towers, which was obviously not going to work.

Then saw the news report. I can't remember much of it now, or my reaction, but I'm pretty certain that was the first time I was properly horrified by something. Before then news events were only ever funny, exciting, or irrelevant. Not horrifying.

nickellis

I remember watching the events unfold I the sixth form common room. At first I and ther presumed it was an accident. But I'll never forget watching the second plane coming in.

At that moment I knew that the world and life as we knew it would change forever....

Smokin Joe

Myself and Mrs SJ were out in the car listening to Steve Wright on R2. News was gradually filtering through, from an initial report that a light plane had hit one of the towers to the full horror as the story unfolded. All the usual items on the show were suspended to concentrate on the incident, and when we got home we spent the rest of the day watching it on Sky News.

doublem_1

I was at school, think it was year 9. Only heard about it when I got home. I won't forget it, it was on every channel. Such a shame to now realise that it was orchestrated by the government though. To anyone who doesn't believe they could do that to their own people, which is what I often what I hear as the 'reason' I am wrong, just look up Operation Northwoods.

R.I.P.

daviesee

^^^^ FFS! ^^^^

Not even worth quoting.

doublem_1

daviesee wrote:

^^^^ FFS! ^^^^

Not even worth quoting.

Problem?

Just to let you know, I went there in 2008 and paid my respects...

Smokin Joe

doublem_1 wrote:

I was at school, think it was year 9. Only heard about it when I got home. I won't forget it, it was on every channel. Such a shame to now realise that it was orchestrated by the government though. To anyone who doesn't believe they could do that to their own people, which is what I often what I hear as the 'reason' I am wrong, just look up Operation Northwoods.

R.I.P.

Oh my God...

CambsNewbie

doublem_1 wrote:

I was at school, think it was year 9. Only heard about it when I got home. I won't forget it, it was on every channel. Such a shame to now realise that it was orchestrated by the government though. To anyone who doesn't believe they could do that to their own people, which is what I often what I hear as the 'reason' I am wrong, just look up Operation Northwoods.

R.I.P.

I was wondering how long before this rubbish got posted..

daviesee

doublem_1 wrote:

Problem?

Just to let you know, I went there in 2008 and paid my respects...

No problem. You have the right to a view but I didn't think anyone actually believed these conspiracies until now. :roll:

hipshot

Heard odd snatches of other peoples conversation while I was coming home from Uni, "plane crashed into a skyscraper" etc.

Got in & turned the news on. Saw the first tower drop.

An hour later I realised that I was still standing there opened mouthed with my rucksack on.

finchy

I was in town, went home and saw it on breaking news.

I started watching the news at quite a young age (about 11), so having watched so many reports about Rwanda, ex-Yugoslavia, Algeria, etc. during my teens, I wasn't even shocked, just sad to see, once again, more human lives being pointlessly taken.

doublem_1

daviesee wrote:

doublem_1 wrote:

Problem?

Just to let you know, I went there in 2008 and paid my respects...

No problem. You have the right to a view but I didn't think anyone actually believed these conspiracies until now. :roll:

They are far from conspiracies. Can I ask a genuine question? How many skyscrapers do you believe came down in NYC on that day?

Kendal Black Drop

I was leaving work when I very briefly overheard something on the radio about a terrorist attack on the World Trade Centre. I didn't think much of it because I thought it was a reference to the 1993 truck bombing. I got home to find my parents and grandmother watching the television news in total shock and disbelief.

My uncle used to work for Lehman Brothers and had an office in Three World Trade Centre. I had visited him there in 1995 and been to the Top of the World observation deck, so for me it was not just another skyscraper that I'd seen on TV it was a real place that I had memories of.

The phone lines were down and it was some time before my brother managed to find out via email that my uncle and cousin and other family members were OK. My uncle knew people who weren't so lucky.

I couldn't stand to sit watching the news so I jumped in my car and drove to Langdale to go bouldering to take my mind off things but ended up sitting under a tree next to the boulders crying.

To this day I still wonder what happened to the lift attendant that I had a conversation with on my visit.

Kendal Black Drop

It would be nice if we could keep this thread from turning into an argument about whether it was terrorists or the government who perpetrated the attacks. If anybody wants to discuss it please start another thread about it.

doublem_1

Fair enough KBD. Like everyone else, this is a day I won't forget. As I turned on the TV and seen replays of the planes striking the towers it was like nothing I had ever seen. And as I remember it was on every channel. I remember standing in my front room 6 foot from the screen in disbelief.

baldwin471

Don't really remember much about it, i was only 7 when it happened. All i remember is coming in from playing footy and seeing all my neighbours in my house watching the telly and not really knowing what the hell was going on. Obviously since then i've found out the full horrors of what happened on that day. RIP to all who died (With the exception to the parasitic scumbag perpetrators) on that terrible day.

essexian

I was shocked and saddened like most people. It hit home hard as less than a year earlier my wife and I had spent an hour or two at the top of one of the towers while in New York on holiday. I still find it hard to look at the photos we took.

However, I quickly, and I am likely to get flamed for this, came to the realisation that these attacks were a god send to people like Bush and Blair who had been looking for a reason to attack Iraq for quite a time. I am not saying the US and UK Governments were behind the attacks: the Iraqis certainly weren’t, but I find it hard to believe that two governments with all the resources they have didn’t know the attacks were likely. Also, its hard to understand why no action was taken to nullify the threat on their way to New York. This is standard operating practice as seen twice previously in the 80’s and 90’s.

So by the end of the day, while I was sad for the 3 000 or so people who died that day, I was also sad for the hundreds of thousands of people I could see being killed in the forthcoming illegal and immoral Bush and Blair wars.

(And to answer a question up page, it was three towers. I have no idea how the third (Tower 5? I forget) came to fall when it wasn’t hit by anything.)

jrduquemin

I was working at my friend's house, building a PC, when my mum called to say there had been an accident in New York. We turned the TV on a couple of minutes before the 2nd plane hit the WTC and we thought 'That's no accident'...

Afterwards, when the camera crews were on the ground, I kept hearing loud bangs that I later found out were the people hitting the ground after jumping out of the windows. That noise will stay with me for the rest of my life... :-(

kieranb

well, it was the day we arrived at a campsite in France for our holidays, during which we didn't watch the TV at all, and no english papers available either, also it was before mobile broadband or wi-fi so no internet either. It wasn't until 2 weeks later when we returned home that we found out.

nickellis

essexian wrote:

Also, its hard to understand why no action was taken to nullify the threat on their way to New York. This is standard operating practice as seen twice previously in the 80’s and 90’s.

The two flights that hit the WTCs left from Logan Airport in Boston, MA. Which is roughly 190 miles from Manhatten. By the time the ATCs realised the flights had been hijacked the first plane was already buried in one tower and the second was already over NYC. Not much time to scramble fighter jets and perform a shoot down.

doublem_1

essexian wrote:

I was shocked and saddened like most people. It hit home hard as less than a year earlier my wife and I had spent an hour or two at the top of one of the towers while in New York on holiday. I still find it hard to look at the photos we took.

However, I quickly, and I am likely to get flamed for this, came to the realisation that these attacks were a god send to people like Bush and Blair who had been looking for a reason to attack Iraq for quite a time. I am not saying the US and UK Governments were behind the attacks: the Iraqis certainly weren’t, but I find it hard to believe that two governments with all the resources they have didn’t know the attacks were likely. Also, its hard to understand why no action was taken to nullify the threat on their way to New York. This is standard operating practice as seen twice previously in the 80’s and 90’s.

So by the end of the day, while I was sad for the 3 000 or so people who died that day, I was also sad for the hundreds of thousands of people I could see being killed in the forthcoming illegal and immoral Bush and Blair wars.

(And to answer a question up page, it was three towers. I have no idea how the third (Tower 5? I forget) came to fall when it wasn’t hit by anything.)

WTC7 in fact. A controlled explosion beyond any doubt.