Brit3964

That week I was off on reserve waiting to do a checkride which was scheduled for the 12th. I had tried to call Dell on their 1-800 number only to find it was engaged. Odd I thought. Have they gone out of business? I tried my bank's 1-800 number and got the same engaged signal. Hmmm... So I called the local number and the girl said you might want to check the news on what's happening in NYC. "Oh, have they tried to blow up the WTC again?" I asked.

At the time I only had the terrestrial TV channels and CBS was about the only news channel I could get well. Like many others probably, I stood in complete disbelief while watching the replay of tower #1 being hit. As I'm watching that, the reports of another airplane hitting the tower #2 start. Then later the Pentagon and rumors abound about another plane targeting the Whitehouse still in flight.

Ironically that was the day I got my I-94 stamped with temporary LPR status in the mail.

Once the FAA lifted the flight ban, we were one of the first airplanes to fly out of my local airport. Just before 911 happened, the FAA were considering turning Raleigh-Durham airport into a Class B airspace (B for Busy) because of so much increased air traffic. On Sept 13th and for about 4 months afterwards, flying through RDU airspace was like how I imagine the pioneering days of flying was like. Almost nothing in the skies except you. Getting cleared for approach into Greensboro (GSO), landing and taxi to the ramp from 28 miles out! I always remember that.

The checkride finally happened a month later.

Pollyana

The Risk Waters conference - yes it was in Windows on the World - one of the attendees was a young lady called Sarah, whose picture appeared in all the English papers, from memory I think it was her wedding photo. She had not been married long, flew over just for the conference. Her father was a close friend of my dad, they were both clergymen in Bath.

I was working for the police in the UK and we were scheduled to do an exercise centring around an aircraft crash at Gatwick Airport. I was heading for work prepared to take "dummy" phone calls from relatives when it happened.
By the time I got to work that had changed to being prepared to take genuine calls from relatives. The phone lines didn't go live for us, I think the Met handled it all, but it was very eerie sitting there for 10 hours waiting to "go live" and not knowing if we would have incidents in the UK to deal with too.

Nutmegger

In CT it has also been reminiscent of the day nine years ago. I was at a yard sale this morning in a very quiet rural area and I stopped and looked at the sky; it was just as amazingly blue and clear as it was then, but I could see and hear an airplane. The thing that sticks with me most about that day is how beautiful it was, and how utterly quiet it became when all the planes had been pulled from the skies. I kept leaving the horrors unfolding on my TV and going out on my deck in the silence and thinking that it was so hard to believe this was happening just 65 miles south.

All the communities around here lost people; a man who lives very close to me lost a group of colleagues who were in a meeting together, and he commissioned a painting on trees on his property in their memory. I drive past it most days, and it is still my favorite memorial.

[IMG][/IMG]

lansbury

I was involved in the investigation following the attacks. We worked 16 hour days without a day off for 13 weeks, helping the FBI gather information on the attackers and those who helped them. In those days the only way to track a persons completed travel record was a physical search of paper records. Out of it we persuaded most of the major airlines to computerize all the completed flight records not just the reservations which they already had on computer, and to change the way the systems could be searched.

Most of the overtime money we earned was donated to a fund organized by the City of London police to bring families of NYPD officers who died that day to the UK for a vacation. UK police officers donated so much that also some officers who survived that day and their families were able to come as well. Several trips were organized and I meet some of the bravest people it has been my privilege to be with and listen to their accounts first hand.

N1cky

I remember driving home from work as I had an appointment with the midwife, it was breaking news on the radio as I was driving. I walked in the house just as the 2nd plane flew into the tower.

I remember having very strange emotions that day, at the midwife appointment we listened to our daughters heart beat for the very first time, hearing that new life and knowing all those people were dying was surreal.

Kaffy Mintcake

I was sitting on a plane, strapped in and ready to fly to Phoenix to visit family. We had not yet pulled away from the gate. The pilot made an announcement, something to the effect of "You may have heard what's going on in New York. We need to deplane and it may be a while before we go anywhere." I was very confused, I had not heard anything on the news. My flight was due to take off shortly after 9am I believe.

There weren't any tvs in the terminals so the whole thing was very confusing. I kept hearing snippets of conversations and ended up calling my parents on my cell ... "Turn on the TV, something is going on."

MsElui

I was at work in England. It was a quiet office anyway - and that afternoon people were just huddled around screens watching the news on the internet - trying to see what was happening. The internet was melting and whoever got an updated news site up was the desk everyone moved to. I can remember trying every obscure new page i could think of to try and find one less mullered than cnn or the bbc. I can remember seeing footage of the planes hitting and later on the towers collapsing and being gobsmacked.

It felt very strange too - because the Americans were so shocked that something so horrible could happen to them - but for us - we had had terror attacks before (albeit on a much much smaller scale) so it wasn't such a 'new' shock. The shock for us was the scale of it all and the fact that it was all unfolding in front of our screens (if i remember back to the terror attacks by the IRA years previously - the internet didn't really exist then so only news was tv at home or a newspaper or radio. .

Malashaan

I was enjoying my long summer after A-Levels and getting ready to start my degree in a couple of weeks. I'd had a couple of school friends stay over, I think we'd been up most of the night, and stumbling downstairs to find my parents had the TV on, just in time to see the first footage of the impact on the BBC. Me and my two friends spent the rest of the day sat in front of the TV.

The thing that will always stay with me is having a strange mix of horror that it had actually happened but also that something expected had just happened. I wouldn't say I predicted it, but watching it happen it wasn't a shock and I still feel sometimes that maybe it should have been. It didn't really strike home just how REAL it was until they started showing footage of people in the windows and knowing that the chances were most of them were going to die.

robin1234

Yes, I remember the IRA Troubles in the 1970s, I worked for the Ministry of Defence in Holborn and my wife (or girlfriend then) had an office job elsewhere in London (working illegally, those were simpler times.) I remember several times hearing big explosions in the distance and phoning her, not because I was afraid for her safety but to try to triangulate to where in London the explosion was. It is strange to think back to how different our relationship to breaking news & what is going on in the world was in pre internet days. Of course there was TV in those days but nothing approximating to CNN etc.. I would just make a mental note, and wait for the six o'clock news on Radio 4 to find out what the incident had been.

Master_Bulldog

I was a sales exec working for a mobile phone company and had been drafted in to manage the store they had in Romford. I knew what a quiet store it was so I asked one of the other sales peeps to bring in a TV, which they did.

I had just completed a sale (the only one of the day!) and the TV was turned on...we couldn't beleive what we were watching. In fact at first we thought it was a film or something but then there was a buzz of energy amongst the shoppers outside...it was odd. I stood outside smoking on a cigar when a stranger comes up to me and asks if I've heard about what's happened in New York. It all slowly dawned on us all that yes, this was really happening. I remember tutting under my breath as I watch events unfold on the TV and thinking to myself that this would be the start of many years of trouble...

CelticRover

Lothianlad

It all began around 13:00 hrs here in the UK....lunchtime. I was at work but my mother was at home doing some ironing and watching a repeat of Emmerdale on TV - two people having a bit of an argument in the pub - the Woolpack - everything being transmitted as normal when, without any prior warning, the TV action just switched from the Woolpack to a live picture of a skyscraper in New York city with dense black smoke pouring out of the upper storeys of the bulding - for a moment or two there was no sound - no actual announcement...just this picture of a skyscraper building with clouds of smoke coming out of it. No more Emmerdale, and for the rest of the day most of the TV schedules on many channels were completely changed and listed programs cancelled, and scheduled news bulletins.

The following Sunday on BBC1 TV the scheduled live morning service from a church somewhere in the UK was switched to a live service from the American Church in Tottenham Court Road, London.

Apparently every single person or organisation in the UK who / which sent messages of sympathy to the United States Embassy in Grosvenor Square, London, following this event, and who had quoted an address in their messages, received an acknowledgment of thanks.

Tragic as this event was, and just to keep things in perspective a wee bit, exactly seventy years ago London was being bombled from the air by the Nazi German Luftwaffe for an average of eight hours per night, for seventy two consecutive nights from 07 Sep 1940 - with an average number of fatalities of anything between 500 and 1000+ people - each and every night. And that was just London alone.

scrubbedexpat097

We were back in the UK on an emergency visit as M's grandmother was seriously ill and not expected to survive. We had been visiting her in hospital and had taken a break to get some lunch and have a wander around town. We were in an Argos store and I was lining up waiting to pay as M stood by a row of TV's that were on but muted. He called me over and asked one of the staff if they would put the volume on...soon the whole store was silent, watching in horror.

We rushed to my brothers house, one of my nephews lived and worked in NY. It took many many hours before we knew he was safe. He actually worked in another building less than a block away and he saw both planes hit from his office window. Everyone was sent down into the underground parking lot and from there he walked for miles all the while trying to contact his wife. Eventually she found where he was, and they made it home. It took J a long time to get over what he witnessed, it was traumatic enough for us watching on a TV screen but to actually be in the midst of it is horrifying.


We had to wait to fly back to Texas, we were on one of the first flights out after they lifted the no-fly ban. Our plane was half filled with US soldiers being sent back to the US from their base in Germany. As we were pulling out onto the runway we stopped and the plane turned back. Apparently their orders were changed and they had to get off. It also meant their luggage had to be removed so we sat on the tarmac for another hour while that was sorted. Mind you we had two rows of seats to ourselves, which helped!

So here we are 9 years later and still this disaster effects our lives. Two weeks ago another of my nephews who is in the Royal Engineers was sent out to Afghanistan for 6 months. He has already spent time in Iraq. His mum, my sister, is stressed and worried as is his wife and 2 beautiful young kids. I just want the next 6 months to pass by quickly and have my nephew safely home.


The horror of 9/11 is not over yet until all the troops are home.

ian-mstm

I was at work that morning, and listening to the Bob & Sheri show on the small radio that I kept on my desk. Sheri interrupted Bob's banter saying that CNN has just reported that a plane hit WTC1. I emailed Sheila to tell her. A few of us walked next door to the VA hospital where they had a large TV in the lobby and we stood, transfixed, for the next 1.5 hours - not even caring that we weren't at our desks working. We watched the 2nd plane hit WTC2... and watched it disintegrate less than an hour later.

President Bush gave a news conference at about 11:00 that morning saying that the US will hunt down and kill those who had perpetrated these tragedies. An hour or two later, at another news conference, he said the US will prosecute to the full extent of the law, those who had perpetrated these tragedies. I remember noting the difference in language and, for my part, wished he had stuck with the former rhetoric.

For a week thereafter, I kept copies of our local newspaper as events unfolded and information came forward. I still have those newspapers.

Ian

E3only

I just want to say – based on many documentaries and other accounts I have watched, this disaster could have been avoided. There were just too many warnings missed. I hope the government and the intelligence agencies have learnt from it, they are sharing more data and keeping all of us nothing in US but other countries safe.