September 11 2001

[stasu1213]

Where were you when terrorist attack the World Trade Center on 911. I was sitting in my office downtown when the clerk had informed us that two planes hit the WTC. My other co-worker immediately had said "This is an act of war".

[Mikeg]

I was listening to Drew & Mike and had just exited I-94 at Cadieux when they mentioned that a second plane had just hit the other WTC tower:

Attachment 7229

I immediately said to myself that those pesky criminals had returned to finish the job they had first attempted in Feb. of 1993 and that the police and prosecutors needed to do a better job this time so that all this foolishness would end and Wall Street workers could feel safe again on the streets and in their workplaces.

Attachment 7230

[ggcanfield]

I was at the Armada Flea Market when I noticed some older guy/veteran characters huddling, talking quietly but intently, at several tables. When I asked, I was told that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Minutes later, their reaction was palpable when they heard that the second plane hit. I left for home immediately, shaken by how serious and grim they had instantly become.

During my long drive home, I listened to the radio in horror. It was playing a parent company's New York Station live. They were taking calls from people trapped in the towers, who couldn't get thru to 911 and were calling anywhere they could think of to let someone know where they were. In the middle of a conversation with a man who had "made it down to the lobby", there was suddenly static on the line, and then nothing. The first collapse had occurred.

[Hermod]

I wouldn't call it "obsessing"?

Our own government took an attack on American Soil by a foreign power, and used it as justification to eviscerate our Constitution Rights.

Other than stepped up screening at airports and at the courthouse, I am trying to think of any one of my "rights" that has been eviscerated.

[George Cassidy]

I was working at home when my proofreader called and told me to turn on the radio. I immediately thought it was payback for some CIA messing in the Middle East about which we were kept in the dark. Nothing has happened since to change that first impression.

[EMG]

I was sleeping alone in an apartment in Scottsdale, Arizona, where I'd been for all of a few weeks, looking for work after having been downsized from Chrysler in the 2001 March Massacre, when the phone rang and it was my mother calling from Michigan to tell me the news. [[It was still only shortly after 7 a.m. here). "Planes flew into the World Trade Center!" In my groggy half awake condition my first response was...."In Chicago?" [[I temporarily had it mixed up with the Sears Tower).

Then of course as the reality sunk in my first inclination was to want to drive to the nearest shopping mall and find a TV display to watch it on. [[In this part of Arizona, there's no such thing as free TV over the air - the mountains make it impossible, so there's no TV without cable, and of course being unemployed I wasn't springing for cable service). Ultimately my mom talked me out of that as she was afraid there might be more attacks coming.

So then I called my wife who was already at work back in Michigan - she worked as a nurse in a private doctor's practice at the time - and her office had just begun to get sketchy details of the news through patients who were arriving with reports of what they had heard on the radio.

Ultimately I wound up just sitting in the apartment all day listening to radio reports of what was going on, as well as surfing the Internet. I actually saved some of the news articles I was able to retrieve from the Net on that day, and at times it's interesting to go back and see the different types of speculations that were being fed out while people were still scrambling to determine what the actual facts were.

[ggores]

What a FUN topic. Driving home to make sure the little kids was OK {see, noone really knew what was going to happen at that time, and I was a bit concerned}, was pulled over and ticketed by an Allen Park cop for "rolling" thru a stop sign in a business park. At the time I was kinda thinking that maybe he had something better to do. Apparently not. Jackass.

[ja!mz]

I was working downtown at the time for xerox as a copier repair technician. I was parked across from the Michigan Plaza building on 6th and Abbot when I heard about it on the radio. I went back to our parts drop on Wabash and 14th and someone had turned on a tv and we just watched things unfold. It was something I'll never forget as being downtown there were rumors the ren-cen could be a target. I remember someone saying they were evacuating the Edison Plaza building, and we all went outside and just scanned the sky to see if anything else was coming...it was very scary..I ended up leaving downtown around 2 or so as they sent us home. I saw the mounted police blocking the entranxce to the ren-cen off of Jefferson, and saw armed agents around the Fedral court house, I may have some pictures still saved...it was all surreal....

[EMG]

During my long drive home, I listened to the radio in horror. It was playing a parent company's New York Station live. They were taking calls from people trapped in the towers, who couldn't get thru to 911 and were calling anywhere they could think of to let someone know where they were. In the middle of a conversation with a man who had "made it down to the lobby", there was suddenly static on the line, and then nothing. The first collapse had occurred.

I missed this post the first time around. Now THAT was a sobering experience.

[reddog289]

I had recently started working at my present job which put me on the afternoon shift. I woke around 11am and went downstairs expecting to see Bob Barker and The Price is Right on the TV.
Insted I was awakened by the images of the plane crashing into the WTC with my parents and grandmother just sitting there in disbelief. At first I thought it was a bad accident or a new Bruce Willis movie.Boy was I wrong.

[LodgeDodger]

I was in Boston, MA. betterhalf was in Belfast, Ireland.

[Ray1936]

In Las Vegas there was a convention complex on E. Charleston that was also called the World Trade Center [[since demolished). When I arrived at work in the morning and my night crew told me a plane had crashed into the WTC, I immediately assumed they meant the local one, especially since the N to S approach to McCarran Airport goes right over it. Upon being told the truth, I was dumbfounded. Since I had a small TV in my office, I can assure you there wasn't much work done that day.

But I absolutely agree with Meddle when he said above, "There was NO foreign power involved. It was a bunch of loonies, nothing more. And there were our from a country we consider one of our 'allies', Saudi Arabia."

[biketech]

I was listening to Howard Stern when it started. I got to admit he was giving some decent reports of the situation. I worked for ATT/SBC and was in my truck near the Federal Courthouse. Within minutes there were officials at every corner with guns drawn. While sitting in my van I get an FBI agent come up to me asking if I knew anything about another ATT van sitting unattended in front of the Courthouse because by this time every street around the building was emptied. So I tried to help out and walk over to the van to see if I can find out any info like the truck number and call it into dispatch and locate the driver. I'm standing there next to the van with two other agents, I'm talking on the phone and notice they're telling everyone around to get off the street, away from the van. Then it hits me, these guys think there could be a bomb in this truck. It was like the proverbial movie scene. What was I thinking.
Right after that the technician/driver comes casually walking out of the Courthouse gets surrounded by the agents. Shows his id and both of us get the hell out of there

[R8RBOB]

9/11!!!! Where was I?

Mountain View, CA was my home at the time and I got up around 5:30 PDT [[8:30 EDT) and after getting out of the shower it was about 5:50 and the news had the north tower on fire. I was getting dress for work and I remember I had on ABC so they cut in to GMA and sometime after 6 [[9 in the east) the second plane hit and I saw it live on TV and my words was "what the fuck!!"

I worked nearby at Moffett Field so I was debating if I should go in because I knew the government would go into lockdown mode. I stayed glued to the TV until I decided it was time to go. Sure enough the government ordered the lockdown of every government facility in the country and it took me an hour and a half to get into the gates. Security was searching every car coming in. If you didn't have a badge, you weren't getting in. During the time I was idled in my vehicle, two towers had fallen and another plane fell out of the sky. I was at the center for maybe 45 minutes when it was ordered that all government facilities to be closed until further notice. We were out of work until that Thursday but at least we got paid for it.

[fryar]

My junior year in New York had just started. By that point, I had worked my way up to the somewhat nicer digs, a fairly new high rise on elevated ground that had a good view of the southern part of Manhattan. I tended to make my best efforts to schedule my classes late in the day , and so I was awoken via the campus phone by a friend who called me to ask if I was awake, told me I wouldn't believe this, but two planes had crashed into each of the World Trade Center, and they say it's going to go down. I checked the then-still-fairly-primitive internet [[CNN.com kinda looked like Craigslist in comparison to today's version - God, anyone else remember that BBC ticker? ), and it was true. I stumbled my way towards the elevator on my way to the rooftop which was officially off limits, but we all knew how to get there. Looking through the obnoxiously small porthole type window opposite the elevator, I could see that the twin towers were indeed smoking. I was by no means the first to get to the roof, many of my schoolmates were there, some of whom were trying frantically to reach loved ones on their cell phones. I don't know about Michigan, but in New York, the cell phone network was helplessly overloaded and it was impossible to get through. When the first of the towers went down, there were a couple of people on that roof whose knees sort of buckled. It almost defied belief. I didn't see the second one go down, I decided this was messed up, and I should go about seeing if there was anything I could do, although I mostly bumbled about aimlessly, since in situations like that, they don't have ready-made single file lines set up for helping out, for just being a body. I made my way pretty far downtown and ended up bumping into someone I knew by random accident early in the evening. He and his station wagon had joined some sort of impromptu caravan out to Shea stadium to pick up bottled water and blankets and such. How that operation got set up, I have no idea. Late that night, as I'm sitting on campus, drinking a 40 with my future ex-girlfriend and rambling that it shouldn't be lost on anyone that they went for the World Trade Center, not just the military apparatus, that this was a modern-day socialist uprising of the globally dispossessed, a Kampus Kop came by and suggested that I knew quite well that I could not be drinking that 40 on campus like that. I said something about World War III having just begun, and he let me finish it.

Many broadcast stations were off the air for days and weeks - and for what it's worth, it sounded like that community of business was pretty cooperative in sharing facilities and such in the aftermath - so you may have had more Michiganders listening to that New York parent station than New Yorkers.

[Blueidone]

I worked at home and hubby worked afternoons, so we were late sleepers. I awoke after the first plane hit, but before the 2nd one hit. At first I thought, like a lot of people, that it was just pilot error some mechanical misfunction that put the first plane in the tower. When the second one hit, I ran upstairs and woke my husband up screaming about what had happened.

I still remember that feeling...that terrible feeling...that our country was under attack. Of course, I know now that wasn't the case. But at first, that was all I could think.

God bless those who lost their lives that day, and their families, and all the military and non-military personnel who have served this country, sometimes giving the ultimate sacrifice. For most of us, our lives went on with little change. For others, it has changed dramatically since that day.

And just as an aside...hubby and I had to fly to a conference in New Orleans three weeks later. It was a little nerve-wracking, but we weren't about to give up that trip!

[eno]

I had recently started working at my present job which put me on the afternoon shift. I woke around 11am and went downstairs expecting to see Bob Barker and The Price is Right on the TV.
Insted I was awakened by the images of the plane crashing into the WTC with my parents and grandmother just sitting there in disbelief. At first I thought it was a bad accident or a new Bruce Willis movie.Boy was I wrong.

I had a similar experience. I had been up late the previous evening and slept in until around 11A. When I turned on my TV to watch The People's Court, both towers of the WTC had collapsed and there was the smoking dust cloud dispersing from Manhattan. I thought it was a story on '93 WTC bombing until the cobwebs cleared by reading the banners scrolling along the bottom of the screen telling about the plane crashing into the Pentagon. The breadth of the attack hit me and I realized how much the world had changed in a short time.

[Corn.Bot]

I was working in my office when a smoke-break-buddy called me and asked if my daughter was OK. I had no idea WTH she was talking about until she informed me that NYC was being bombed, and then I was really confused.

My kid was actually in Ithaca, a couple-hundred miles away from NYC; but I appreciated my friend's concern once I learned what was going on - we turned on the TV we used in training sessions [[it was 15" with a built-in VCR, we thought we were so high-tech). The TV did not pull in a signal for anything unless a human hand was holding and pointing the aerial at a north-facing window. We watched the 2nd plane hit.

My friend and I stepped outside for a smoke and the perfect deep-blue, cloudless sky took me by surprise: how could it be this beautiful out on such a horrible day? How could life be going on like nothing was changed, when I felt such dark dread in the pit of my stomach? I still get that feeling of incredulousness when I think back.

As it was, I tried for the rest of the day to reach my daughter at college in upstate NY. I could never get through by phne and she did not respond to my e-mails. It was 9 or 10 pm that day when she finally succeeding in calling home. "Mommy, I want to come home," my 18-yo said. "I'm on my way to get you, right now," vowed crying me. "You can't - they've shut down New York's borders," she wept.

My poor child... she'd been in college about 3 weeks, a 10-hour drive from home, and did not even hear the news about the WTC until nearly lunchtime. I say "my poor child," but a number of the students in class with her that morning lost relatives, several of them lost both parents.

I'm sitting here crying as I type, that's how hard this still strikes me.

[Bobl]

We were at a motel in Grand Bend, Ontario.
This event illustrates the dangers of mixing politics and religion. When mixed, no good ever results.

[luckycar]

On Sept.11th,2001, I was at work at the Ann Arbor Wastewater Treatment Plant.After taking the morning samples up to the lab,I was stopped by a mechanic freind ,who has since passed,and he asked me if I had heard about a plane that hit the WTC.I said no,so he turned on his radio,Drew and Mike.We made a beeline for the break room to see if it was on the news.Everyone was watching when the second plane hit.Wow.We had now known that this was a terrorist shot to the US.About that time,I commented about this being a derversion,and the DC area was the real target.Sure enough,the Pentagon was next.I shut up after this.Then another co-worker was saying how all the jet fuel burning would melt the steel beams,and that the buildings could collapse.Again,we were spot on.The rest of the day was just going thru the motions,with some extra security.
The next couple of days we watched as F-16s were refueling over Washtenaw County,then it was back to normal at work,but not in the rest of the world.

[lizaanne]

... and the perfect deep-blue, cloudless sky took me by surprise: how could it be this beautiful out on such a horrible day? How could life be going on like nothing was changed, when I felt such dark dread in the pit of my stomach? I still get that feeling of incredulousness when I think back.

I felt this way too that day. I was at work when my co-worker next to me took a call from his wife. We worked in Troy at the time, and she was down at the RenCen I believe. He said that a plane flew into the Twin Towers. I emailed my then boyfriend who worked for the same company. We found a radio and put it on the window ledge and tried to get what updates we could, the company network was jammed with everyone emailing and trying to get to the internet.

We finally went down stairs to a conference room and that is where I saw the plane hit the Pentagon. I remember that as we were sitting there watching this all happen, there were two men outside [[we were on the ground floor) washing the windows. They had no idea what was going on. I was so paralyzed with what was happening that all I could do was think - they don't know, they don't know. But I could not move to go out and tell them. And in some way I didn't want to spoil their innocence. But I still feel so guilty about not going out and bringing them in with us.


Then I spent the next hour driving I-75 home and talking to my dear grandmother who talked to me about bombing scares and black outs during WWII, and how she was alone for three years because my grandpa was away serving overseas. She totally was my rock that day.

I then met my boyfriend at my house and we pulled out the sofa sleeper and just stayed there all day and night watching any news we could find, and prayed and prayed.

Hey - I still get choked up too. Don't let the crabbyasses get you down. Some folks are still hurt by this.

[Whitehouse]

I was at the office, around 3 pm the radio was interupted with an extra news bulletin. [[Where I live we're 6 hours ahead of New York). Like anyone else on the globe internet was the first place I checked. CNN was on it's but for the first time ever, after getting a gazillion of hits per second. That site was stripped to it's bare skeleton just to keep it afloat.

My brother was at home and he saw the tv footage of one of the towers collapsing.

[[Off-topic, shouldn't this be moved to "non-Detroit"?)

[mam2009]

It was a primary election day in Michigan. I was driving around to various poll locations to check on the poll workers who were working on a campaign that I was involved in at the time so I heard it on the radio. Kept looking in the sky that morning wondering if hijackers might attack some location in the city since we didn't know yet who was responsible or if it was part of a larger threat. A very unsettling thought to consider that the continental U.S. would actually be attacked en masse by its enemies.

[Corn.Bot]

Hey - I still get choked up too. Don't let the crabbyasses get you down. Some folks are still hurt by this.

TY, Lizaane [[and all). I may have a soft heart, but I have a hard head. I also have naturally low blood pressure so probably I should appreciate external blips that raise it for me now and then.

[detroitbob]

So 9 years later a "church" in Gainesville FL is promoting a burn the Koran day on September 11, 2010 and I swear the advance TV coverage showed a sign advising to 'bring the family'. Shades of Berlin 1933. The national news coverage on this one ought to go well when it's rebroadcast on Al Jazeera's world wide broadcast. Now, they have the Constitutional protection of freedom of religion that also ensures the Park51 Cultural Center can be built. Can't wait for the actual fevered pitch buildup to the 10th Anniversary.

Just watched the broadcast of South Pacific...Lt. Cable's soliloquy is as poignant today as in 1949:

You've got to be taught to hate and fear
You've got to be taught from year to year
It's got to be drummed in your dear little ear
You've got to be carefully taught

You've got to be taught to be afraid
Of people whose eyes are oddly made
And people whose skin is a different shade
You've got to be carefully taught

You've got to be taught before it's too late
Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You've got to be carefully taught
You've got to be carefully taught