where were you 5 years ago today?

[sabbat hunter]

where were you 5 years ago today?


I was at home, out of work having recently lost my job. I was watching morning cartoons/TV when they broke in with a special report on what had happened at the first tower. I watched half numb as the second plane hit the tower right in front of everyones eyes. Continued to watch as first the south tower then the north one collapsed from the damage. I remember thinking "oh man my parents are not going to be able to fly in to ny now", as they were in Paris at the time. I didnt even know at first if their plane had taken off or not (it hadnt). after the second tower collapsed, I showered and went to visit my friends at the dry cleaners they worked at to talk about what had just happened.


where were you?

[SteppingRazor]

1. Surfing in New Smyrna Beach, Fla...

no TVs to watch, but everyone with a car on the beach (you can drive on the beach up near Daytona) tuned the radio to the news and turned it up so everyone could hear.

[Penndems]

2. My personal reflections:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2106806&mesg_id=2106806

[Drum]

3. Right here in NYC

Asleep with my girlfiend up on 105th St. Her friend (in Miami) woke us to tell us to check CNN, that something big was happening in NYC. We turned on the TV right before the 2nd plane came, and spent the rest of the day trying to contact friends and relatives, crying and angry. Later in the day there was that yellow smoke everywhere in the city, and for days afterward that terrible smell.

And it was such a beautiful day outside, ironically, the sky was so blue.

[Coyote_Bandit]

4. See earlier thread here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=364x2103820

[lonehalf]

5. I was at home reading "To kill a Mocking Bird" when...

...a friend called to tell me her brother was safe. I didn't know what she was talking about.

He had an errand to do before going to work in the south tower.

We both watched as the second plane hit.

I remember saying "We are at war".

I haver subscribed to those conspiracy charges. I saw the second plane hit. If it was not hit by a plane then all the networks had to be in on it - and thousands of others (maybe millions).

[spinbaby]

6. I discovered DU five years ago

At work we were trying to get some news, but the Internet news sites were totally clogged and we had no decent radio reception. A coworker was getting news from somewhere and that somewhere turned out to be DU. That's when I discovered this wonderful place.

Maybe we should repost a couple of the more significan threads from that day.

[ACK]

7. Working at CNN.com

So I was huffing and pumping on this exercise bike in Atlanta Ga because I was working mid-shift at CNN and wanted to get in a good workout that day.

I was looking up at the tv when the first plane hit. There was all kinds of speculations and such before the second hit. I figured at first that it was some kind of horrible accident. Then the second plane hit.

Off the bike my ass goes rushing home. I get myself ready shower and stuff and rush off to work. As in the middle of Atlanta CNN headquarters.

I was a sysadmin on the Web Farm Network Operations Center. Yeah, I was there.

Listen I could go into the details of the cascade failure we experienced due to the ton of traffic or the reconfiguration of mount points and configs and how we got the webservers back up.

That doesn't matter. What sticks with me is the shock. People tend to make that everyone was clueless. But after the Oklahoma City thing and the first World Trade Center bombing and the Cole I had a bad feeling for awhile that something was going to happen. I think a lot of people did. But never dreamed of the scale we saw that day.

That was the shock for me. I remember sitting in the new Network Operations Center with people screaming and cursing on the bridge trying to get everything running right and testing response and .... But we were all so freaked at the same time like the imagining of it all was too big for us to take in.

We were dumbfounded.

Whether its NYC, or Spain or London it does not matter.

Terror has no limits anymore in a world smaller and smaller by the day.

And today I remember hearing the first tower fell on my way to work and I contemplate sitting there working to get the servers back up as the second tumbled down.

And in a way I am still dumbfounded to this day.

[Weembo]

8. I was sitting on a Southwest Airlines plane

Preparing to take off from Hobby Airport. After taxiing back to the terminal, then disembarking the plane, then being told to evacuate the airport, I went home. Absolutely haunting.

[madinmaryland]

9. In NYC on Wall Street, about 5 blocks away.

I was at 75 Wall Street. I didn't see the first plan hit, as I was on the elevator going to the 19th floor. I saw and heard the second plane hit. At that point we knew it was real. Hung around in the building until around 11:30. We wanted to let some of the dust settle before leaving. It had gone completely dark after the collapses.

[alcibiades_mystery]

11. Post your story here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=364&topic_id=2105357&mesg_id=2105357

[Marrah_G]

10. I was on the Mass- RI state line

I sent the kids off to school and a friend called and said to turn on the news. I can still remember it all so vividly every smell, every sound. I was stunned when I saw the tower on fire, speechless and terrified when plane 2 hit and when the towers fell I just started to scream. It was a hours before I could find my voice again and start making calls to my friends in the city, it was even longer before I reached any of them. 5 years later, I am more angry then afraid, but the horror is still there every time they show the towers falling, but the screaming is inside now.

It's just a matter of time before the unthinkable happens again. This pathetic little man we call "W" has no concept of how to develop peace and his implementation of the "war on terror" is grossly incompetent. The end result is generations of hatred toward America and an increase in recruitment for terrorist organizations.

Everyday I pray that the elections will not be tampered with, that we take back the house and senate, and begin to heal the damage done the last 5 years. I want a future for my children. The icing on the cake would be for President Gore will finally take his rightful place in the White House in January 2009.

Honestly though, a part of me thinks perhaps things have gone to far this time and will not be changed by peaceful, bloodless means.

Even Rome fell.

[AlCzervik]

12. in my car driving my daughter to school when my phone rang

and i'm thinking "Who the f is calling me this early?" and it was my husband--"turn on the radio, any station right now" and then i did and then we spent the rest of the day waiting to hear from our niece who worked a block away from the WTC. I will never forget that morning.

[shireen]

13. asleep

i slept through it all. Finally woke up around 10:30am, got ready for work. I was half-asleep, feeding my fish before going out the door, when the phone rang. It was my mom, calling from Malaysia. She said, "The World Trade Center towers in NYC have collapsed. It was a terrorist attack." I told her she was crazy, what the hell was she talking about? She said, "turn on CNN".

[Igel]

14. At home.

I helped my wife get ready for teaching English to Russians at the local Jewish Community Center maybe 10 minutes from where we lived in Rochester, NY. She left, and I made myself breakfast and sat down in front of the computer to check out the NYT.

Had trouble getting it loaded; tried a few other national papers until I finally got some paper online that said a plane hit the WTC. I assumed it was a private plane, and read a few news articles. The web was slow.

Wife came home, said the JCC was evacuated and closed because of some terrorist threat. We turned on the tv, and the two towers, IIRC, were already smoking. Neither had fallen.

My assumption was Islamic terrorists. Couldn't square it with Hamas or even quite with Hezbollah, though. Although Hezbollah was at the top of my list it just wasn't their style. Hadn't heard of AQ. Didn't rule out a joint operation.

[The Sushi Bandit]

15. Hotel room in Waikiki

my wife called me @ 5:30am from California and told me to turn on the TV. I watched the second plane hit.

[Kire]

16. In the shower, listening to Howard Stern

Dad told me to go into work, so I did. I worked for Barnesandnoble.com call center in Secaucus, NJ (right next to the Lincoln Tunnel). I had to turn back when they closed Route 3 about 5 miles out. I then went to a blood donation center, and the line was a mile long. So I went to my old job and said hi to my old co-workers (and also to use the bathroom). They closed down early so I went home.

The next day, I made it to work and I got one call from a customer and an air show was going on outside his house. It freaked me out.

The other call I got was from a customer in Manhattan who wanted to know why the same day shipping program we had wasn't working. I literally told her that it was because two planes knocked down the World Trade Center, and she said, "Don't give me that shit." and then she said we could send the trucks over the Tappanzee Bridge and back down into Manhattan. I told her we'd do our best, and she said, "Don't do you best, get me my books. I have a presentation I need to do." I don't remember exactly how it ended, but the supervisor of the whole floor was watching and couldn't believe it, either.

[carrowsboy]

17. In the breakroom at work

We were all huddled around the TV watching it all go down.

[AtomicKitten]

18. home in Santa Cruz, CA sipping coffee

getting my son ready for school - watching events unfold on CNN

[babylonsister]

19. Bali, Indonesia. Who knew they'd be next?

:(

[Eurobabe]

20. Just outside of London on a day tour

I had stopped at Broadway in the Cotswolds, when someone jumped on the bus and said a plane hit the World Trade Center. The bus radio was broken, but then people's cell phones started to ring and more details emerged. By the time we got to the next little village, everybody piled into a pub that had CNN on, and we saw the pictures for the first time.

I ran into the bathroom and dry heaved. This couldn't be happening.

The whole rest of the journey home to London was a blur, and the bus was so silent you could hear a pin drop. I had to take the tube from the bus station back to where we were staying, and I was scared shitless. Once I got into our hotel room, my husband, (who had been sent home from the FInancial District because they feared attack there) said you are not going to believe this, its really bad. We stayed up almost all night watching the footage. Both of us were completely in shock, and numb.

Now I am just mad about the whole thing, I feel abused by this administration that either LIHOP/MIHOP and continues to use the horror of that day as a means to their own ends. It's fucking disgusting.

[TayTay]

21. At work. Helping the news along

I saw the reports on the plane hitting the WTC and I thought it was some sort of accident. The second plane meant it was no accident.

My brother used to take one of those flights out of Logan Airport for regular business meetings in San Francisco every other week. I didn't know for a few hours that this was not his week.

A lot of the people on the planes lived around here. Ther were many nervous moments as people waited to see if a name was on the plane's passenger list. Too many were. Too many were.

[wicket]

22. In Boston, evacuated from a high rise

And then home to turn on Dan Rather.

[Nay]

23. At work in a hi rise, about an hour south of DC. When the first plane

hit, everyone was in the breakroom, watching the coverage. When the second plane hit, we all knew it was no accident and our building was immediately evacuated. A good dozen people quit their jobs that week, saying they would never again work in the top floors of a hi rise, for any kind of money.

Hubby and I went home and watched the coverage, just as numb and horrified as we could be. I remember (false) reports of a truck bomb in DC and then the Pentagon being hit. We were in shock from the horror of it all.

The way * has politicized this whole thing has enraged me way past reason. I am white-hot with anger, even 5 years later.

[last_texas_dem]

24. First semester of college

I had just started my first semester of school at the University of North Texas in Denton. I was living in one of the dorms and had come downstairs to eat breakfast with my (now ex-)girlfriend. On the way to the cafeteria, I remember passing by one of the TVs and seeing three or four people gathered around on of the TVs in the lobby watching some sort of news program. We went on in to the cafeteria and ate, and when we came out there were a couple dozen or so people gathered around and both towers had been hit. It being something extremely major for some reason didn't sink in for me for quite a while. I just remember that things felt pretty surreal. I remember classes being cancelled and sitting in my girlfriend's room with the news on and catching up on homework (reading The Odyssey for my literature class mostly). As the week went on things began to sink in more for me.

One kind of funny thing I remember is that my roommate (I never asked him what he was politically, but I figure him as moderate to slightly conservative) saying that very afternoon that he hoped we wouldn't end up going into Iraq over 9/11, and mentioning that he had two brothers in the military. At the time I didn't think much of it, but about a year later when Shrub had the war drums beating in full force, Tim's words seemed very prescient.

[NJ Democrats]

25. At school

an hour outside of NYC. I was in 4th grade at the time, and while I didn't know what happened until I got home, I did know something had happened.

[Imagevision]

26. In Miami wondering how the hell this could have happened?...

[POAS]

27. Asleep after working night shift

I heard the phone ringing and then my daughters voice over the speaker on the answering machine. She said something about a plane hitting a building in NYC. I tried to get back to sleep but had to get up to see what was going on.

Upon seeing the images I immediately called her back and we talked through the rest of that horrible morning, each of us in total disbelief at what we were seeing.

My sharpest memory was a discussion I had with a co-worker when I got to work that afternoon. Having been stuck at work all day he had little idea of the magnitude of what had occured so he said something like, "What's the big deal, planes crash all the time." I said, "You don't understand, the buildings completely collapsed. The entire island of Manhattan is completely covered in smoke and dust." I was angry with him for not feeling what I was feeling.

Immediately I flashed back to 11/22/63. I was at work and returning from the back of the warehouse when I gave a cheery greeting to a co-worker. He already knew about Kennedy being shot from the radio reports which everyone was listening to in the foreman's office. He almost bit my head off, "What the hell are you so happy about, asshole." Man, I thought, what got into him? I found out as soon as I got to the front and saw everyone crowded around the radio.

[Jed Dilligan]

28. Weird

I don't remember anything after about noon Pacific time. After that it was just another day. The group of people I'd been watching with broke up and we went our separate ways. I might have gone for Chinese food--it was completely unmemorable. The shock wore off and the depression set in pretty quickly.

I do remember two days later going to a party with a bunch of art students. They were all very retro-chic, dancing to "I Will Survive," and I remember thinking, will you? Will we?