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9/11/2001; Tell me your story
Topic Started: Sep 6 2011, 07:31 AM (897 Views)
DairyQueen2049
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DRAGON BREATH. DRAGGIN' BUTT
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The title says it all.

I was at the Lansing Armory pulling monitoring wells. The guys in green suits WITH GUNS came out and closed the gates. We were kept on site all day, could not leave. Watched it all on the Armory's tv. Then watched more at home with my brother. We could not turn it off.



Watched the Steven Spielburg Rising special this weekend - wow. Just Wow.
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Plaza Suite
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Shunnnnn the unbeliever. Shunnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn.
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I was a senior in high school in New Jersey. We were pretty much directly across the bay from NYC. The entire school was chaos all day. Parents were pulling their kids out of school and the office staff was constantly calling kids out to let them know their family that worked in the towers were alive. You could see the smoke from my english class. It was crazy and unbelievable.
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RHowell
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Plaza, didn't realize you were so young. I was practicing law, and looked out of our conference room to see the smoke cloud go up from the Pentagon (we had an early morning meeting), which was just across the bridge in VA. We were 4 blocks from the white house so we evacuated, but so did everyone else and it took me 2 hours just to get up the ramp and out of our garage, another two hours to get out of DC and then 30 minutes to get to the barn once I was out of DC, where I then rode my horse Whisper and watched all sorts of odd fighter jet looking things fly over the barn (which was near dulles)...I felt very glad to have a place to escape to so far away from the city.
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justmagic
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Is the meadow on fire?
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I was a high school teacher. I had first period free and would turn on my TV to watch the end of Good Morning America after homeroom each day. I watched from the moment it was "breaking news" and nobody was really sure what was going on. I kept it on for the students who came in to 2nd period as at that point the news was starting to make it's rounds through the school. At one point I left the room to get something in the planning center and when I came back they told me the first tower had collapsed and I didn't believe them (they were teenagers after all) until the replay. We watched all day.

My room was on the second floor of the school and I had a cathedral ceiling with windows along the one side up high. We were in the flight path to the local airport and you could normally see planes going by all day. One of the things I'll never forget happened on the day they allowed planes to fly again. We were working in writing pods and one of the kids looked up there was a plane flying past the window. All 30 students stopped and watched it in slience until it was out of sight.
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AstonMartin
Off visiting Candy Cave, be right back.
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I was a senior in highschool as well (grade 13 in Ontario still existed and i was in OAC). I was selling tickets to our graduation. My best friend knew i was doing that and said that he just heard the craziest newscast about some plane flying into one of the twin towers in NYC.....he said we had to find a tv to go check. So i grabbed our money kit and tickets and ran up to the library in time to see the second plane hit. Classes were cancelled and people went home. My aunt lives on 1st avenue in NYC but thankfully was ok. We couldn't get ahold of her for quite some time and it was scary. We were lucky.

I see it now and I still get shivers. There are some heartbreaking stories,.....personal and otherwise.
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Buryinghill1
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Saddest day ever.

I was at work, and someone on TOC posted an alert. Turned on the only (tiny) TV we could watch as a group. I was in shock. As a native New Yorker, it was especially hearbreaking to watch the towers burn. Then we heard about the other planes. A group of us were glued to the TV. Boss comes in and says "don't you have anything better to do?" I cried.

Mom called (she survived Nazi occupation) and said "This is war. This is why I left France." She was terrified.
Dad called. He lives up the Hudson from Manhattan. The jets flew right down the river in front of his house. His concern was Indian Point power plant which is an easy target on the Hudson. He was packing to drive to Quebec - cash, passport, gas cans.

My stomach turns and my eyes fill with tears with every reminder. I recall being relieved most of the people got out of the towers. Something like 40,000 people worked there? Some astronomical number. One death is awful, but that many would have caused a world war...
And I remember being horrified to hear the hospitals were all prepared for mass casualties, and most got a handful of minor scrapes, some chest pains, almost no trauma. Thousands of nurses, doctors, EMS, first responders... all with little to do. The casualties had vaporized.
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Won for Me
Is the meadow on fire?
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I worked for a cable company. I heard it on the radio as I was driving in. We sat in a conference room and watched all day. I had a horse club meeting at my house that night. I remember thinking no one would show up and why was I preparing all that food. No one would come. But, everyone did.

I remember being scared of the "what would happen next?" I had a friend who's father was well connected. He told her a few weeks later to not go anywhere that weekend. Stay close to home and be prepared. She told me and I didn't want to go about 90 miles to a friend's house. The friend made fun of me for not wanting to go. Nothing happened that weekend. I never did find out what the warning was all about.

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Indy
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I was a senior in college. It was my sleeping-in day (no class until my British history class at 2pm) so I was one of the last girls in my house up that day. We all slept in one of three big rooms and normally when I'd get up and go downstairs, it would be quiet because most people were in class by then. I remember hitting the landing to the second floor, and seeing a bunch of people crowded in one of the rooms watching a tv. I asked what was going on and someone told me a plane had flown into the Twin Towers. I remember being very confused and having to be told several times what the hell had happened. I went down to my room and sat down to watch the Today Show on my little TV and waited for my roommate to come home from her morning class. We watched the news non stop until I had to go to class at 2. And then pretty much all night long until late when we got so fried from news overload we had to turn to the Cartoon Network for relief. I also remember spending a lot of time on TOB that day, reading other peoples experiences and the like.

I also remember my 2pm class being somewhat of an interesting experience. We all showed up, not really so much to have class but just to meet and talk. We were all obviously quite shell shocked and didn't know what to make of what had happened. We were all scared and mad and just confused. Except for one student who was from somewhere in former Yugoslavia (Coatia I think). His past was what we were terrified our future was going to be. He was eerily calm about everything which was somewhat scary, how "normal" an occurrence like this could become.
Edited by Indy, Sep 6 2011, 09:39 AM.
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Little Diva
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I was in Toronto getting ready to head into the financial district for a meeting. I was staying at a friends house in the 'burbs, and we had just started a quick conference call with another colleague when he said a plane had hit the twin towers. We thought it was another small plane hitting the towers, so we went on with our meeting. once we were finished, we turned on the tv in time to see the second plane hit.

Shortly after, the financial district was pretty much shut down and they sent everyone home. We drove back to Ottawa, listening to the radio, not speaking, and wondering what had happened to our friends who worked in the Towers.

On Sunday, I am travelling to a conference in Nebraska. I will be thinking of a lot of people I knew and lost and in some odd way, I feel like I will be honouring their memory by being on a plane, flying.
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gunnar
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I was home getting ready for work. Saw the 1st plane. Omg. Called Mother and we watched the 2nd plane. Jhc. But I got in my car and drove across the Bay Bridge to work in a high rise in SF. We all went back home.

Next day went to a horseshow. In honor of 9 11 we used red white blue yarn on a few braids. But riding was the best cure!
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Reynard Ridge
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Drivin' The Short Bus
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I was working in Princeton. I was in a meeting until 10:00 behind closed doors. As we were walking back from the building the meeting was in to the building I worked in, we saw people gathered in the cafeteria watching the big screen. When I saw what was going on, I ran back to my office to contact a dear friend of mine whose husband worked in the Towers. He had survived the earlier attack, and she was on pins and needles for a couple of hours, until he contacted her that he was out, and was on his way home.

He's not the same person; he saw too much that day. :,( But he is alive.

After she confirmed that he was okay, I headed for home. The office had officially closed, so anyone who wanted to go could.
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SidesaddleRider
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Is the meadow on fire?
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I was a senior in college (Sec. Educ - Social Studies) at Penn State, and was in my "teaching social studies" class when we got word of the first plane hitting the tower about 5-10 min after it occurred. Naturally, our professor turned on the TV to see what was going on, and we watched the second plane hit the tower. We all just continued to watch the TV for the rest of the scheduled class time, and then we all went home to continue watching the coverage. All classes campus-wide were cancelled for the rest of the day. When I got back to my sorority floor, there was mass chaos. At least 3 of my sisters had a parent that worked in the Twin Towers, and were understandably freaking out over their inability to get a call through to NY and find out if they were still alive, and another dozen sisters were from NYC and knew people who worked in the towers.

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MayaTy02
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I had just arrived at my corner office on the 6th floor of a high rise in Stamford, CT, about 40 miles from NYC. Lots of windows in my office which really freaked me out btw. Heard about it and quickly tried to get online to watch the coverage. My brother worked at the time at the World Financial Center, and even parked his car at the WTC parking garage, that's how close he was. I went home shortly after the second plane hit, not productive, wanted to get in touch with my brother, which I finally did. He was fine, ran with a group of colleauges towards Grand Central and even got the last train out before they shut it down.

The thing that is etched in my mind that day is how silent it was at home. No planes flying over, no noise. Just very solemn, it stuck me as so odd.
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Boston
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It'll be an adventure! We're going on an adventure!
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I was a freshman in high school and I was in AP History class. I remember another teacher came in and whispered in the ear of my teacher and I will never forget the look on my teacher's face, like he saw a ghost. They turned on the classroom TV and told us what happened. I'll admit I didn't realize at first how big of a deal it was, I was confused. I just remember the whole day being SO eerie and quiet, and once I got home and talked to my mom I was sick over it and we just cried together. I didn't go to school the next day, I was just shook up.

I've watched several of the specials about it and I have a hard time watching them now. It makes me very uneasy and I have nightmares. Especially the ones where they show the people jumping/falling out. Horrifying.

RR- that is so sad about your friends husband. I hope he is in some counseling...
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MayaTy02
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oh yeah, forget that husband and I were supposed to go on vacation on 9/13 to Virginia and DC... we kept our plans. Very strange drive down, crossing the Tappan Zee bridge in NY and seeing the plumes of smoke still coming from ground zero, and then passing the Pentagon, all in the same day.
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