911

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

^^^^ FFS! ^^^^

Not even worth quoting.

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...

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:

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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.

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.