9/11

[Stonewall]

Every other forum I know of has a 9/11 remembrance discussion.  I am shocked that no one started one at midnight...  So I'll do it.
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So, tell us your story.  Where were you?  What were you doing?  What do you remember, if anything?  Has it affected you in anyway? 

Here's mine...

Working in Arlington, VA with a view of DC, when the first plane hit.  Like most people, we thought it was an accident.  Came out of a briefing when the second plane hit.  Was walking to my car when a low flying plane flew over and a co-worker said, "I hope that one doesn't hit anything".  Few seconds later, a rumbling sound, huge fire ball, and lots of smoke filled the sky and spread through the streets of Crystal City.

We were on the top level of a parking garage when we saw the plane.  At first, not being plane folks, thought it was preparing to land at Reagan National, but obviously it wasn't.

I had already spent time on active duty as an infantryman followed by 5 years in the Army Guard doing the same.  I had just gotten out one month prior to 9/11 so I could concentrate on my civilian career and finish college.  At this time, I was a contractor doing some rather cool stuff for the government. 

Post-9/11 I left the secret squirrel gig and travelled the globe as a gun-toter, on a government supported protection detail.  Later, in 2003, I couldn't stand it anymore and joined the Air Guard.  I'm on orders right now.

[Nomex Maximus]

My wife and I were in the final preparations for travel to China to pick up our first adopted daughter,  then named Yong Min who was living in an orphanage somewhere near Changsha. I was at work while my wife was at home getting packed for the trip. We were to travel two days later catching a flight from Boston to Los Angeles and we had our airplanes tickets in hand. The tickets said that we were to fly on United flight 175.

I was at work and was hearing the news from over the radio in the mailroom. At first, the report was that an airplane had crashed into the World Trade Center and I thought, "Well, I always wondered when someone would accidentally hit a building with an airliner." But then, another airplane hit and I thought, "Could some computer bug be causing the air traffice controllers to send airplanes in the wrong direction?" But then it became obvious that the only explanation was an attack of some sort.

I got on the phone to my wife who had her head down doing the packing that morning. We had spent nearly two years so far getting ready for this adoption and she was in her final moments of getting it done. In the past months we had worked through what would happen if Chinese-American foreign relations suddenly went bad - as they almost did during the recent E-3 spyplane incident. I called her up on the phone and asked her, "Are you watching TV? " She said, "No, I am busy packing." and I replied,  "Do you remember what I said about how something bad could still happen internationally and interefere with our plans? You might want to turn on the TV" and she did and said, "Oh, no..."

Well, airplanes were grounded for three weeks after that and our plans were delayed. With armed National Guard troops at the airports we eventually got to China and came back with Madeleine. Now the story about what it was like getting a screaming kicking fighting raging little one year old home and settled is a far scarier story - but not the subject of this thread.

--Nomex

[SDF_Specialist]

On 9/11, I was in high school. I believe I was a sophomore, but don't hold me to that. I had just woke up on day one of a three day suspension for telling a teacher to do some that required one word followed by the word "off". I woke up at about 8:45 to see that there was an airliner that had crashed into the World Trade Center. I was amazed that a pilot with the experience as some of these other airliner pilots had made such a horrible mistake. Like everyone else, it became apparent that this was an attach on the United States when the second airliner crashed into the second Tower. The first thing that ran through my mind was to call my squadron commander to see if there was something that we could do. He told me to stand down, that I will be notified if there is. I managed to get all of my gear together as the third plane took out the Pentagon. My family had no clue as to what was going on. They kept asking me what was happening. I kept explaining to them that America was under attack for some reason. They were even more scared when the fourth plane went down.

I think that it's affected me the way it has a lot of Americans. I don't trust commercial airliners for flights. If I can't drive it, then I don't go. And it is unfortunate, but I have reservations about a lot of Muslims. I'm not saying that I hate them, because I am not racist. I just always have that "What if....." fear going through my head. I pray for those who lost their lives on that horrible day, that their families find peace in knowing that their deaths are being avenged. I just wish that we would have had a better plan of attack when we first invaded Afghanistan.

[davedove]

I was at work for the Army at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in Silver Spring, Maryland.  Like most people, I thought the first plane was a terrible accident, but knew it was an attack after the second one.  Most of the people in the office, myself included, were wondering what to do.

I have to give much credit to the doctors at the institute.  Most of the time we support folks would complain about how they didn't know anything but their research.  However, after the Pentagon was hit, these researchers stepped right up to organize a medical response.

Situations like this also show you who cares about you.  Many people who knew me didn't know exactly where I worked, but knew I worked in the DC area.  They all called me to make sure I was okay.

Since I was already working for the Army, my life didn't change a whole lot, just the focus at work changed.  I did do one thing in my private life that many others did not.  After 9-11, many people cancelled travel plans.  I had a trip to Cancun planned in November that year, and I went on it.  One of the goals of terrorists is to make people afraid and change their way of life.  I was not going to let them do that to me.  Besides, at that time the airlines desparately needed business.  My taking the trip was one way to fight back.

I actually don't think I ever really felt much fear about that day.  My response was more one of anger and outrage.

[Nomex Maximus]

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[A.Member]

Only three responses? I guess America IS starting to forget. 

I wouldn't take a lack of responses to a thread or the unwillingness to share a memory as "forgetting".  I seriously doubt anyone on this board has forgotten. 

I have plenty of memories but they're just for me right now.

[jimmydeanno]

Only three responses? I guess America IS starting to forget. 

I'm sorry, I didn't realize that I was mandated to reply to this.  I have not forgotten in the least, but I don't think that me posting a long thread on what I was doing this day 6 years ago is going to help me remember anymore than I already do.  I wasn't doing anything special and had nothing to do with anything that occured during or after - so what I did is irrelevant.

[Skyray]

Joe average citizen has little idea on how to contact the clandestine forces of the US government.  I was on the phone to someone whom I suspect of being an operative describing something that I perceived to be a threat.  In 2001 I was working as Chief Pilot and Digital Technician at an aerial photography company.  We got an order for aerial photographs of 27 power plants along the east coast.  The customer wanted pictures of the plants, the approaches to the plants, and the GPS coordinates.  When I looked at the order, it struck me as not quite right, and I called someone in the aviation community who was heavily involved in aviation in South America and whom I suspected had "Company" ties.  While we were talking he exclaimed "Holy [excrement] get to a television!"  I got to one just in time to see the second plane hit.  Three days later I had an interview with the FBI.  The agents interviewing me commented that they had five levels of threat classifications, and at this point they were only doing level one.  We didn't take the pictures.  The company that ordered them turned out to be a blind front.  Go figure.

[flyerthom]

I had just walked in the door from along night at work in the ER. I checked my E-mail and got an "I'm OK don't worry" e-mail froma close friend in NY. I was confused as heck till I turned on the tube.

That night at work was oneof the most erie I'd ever spent.  It was slow, the Stratosphere and the whole Vegas strip was dark. And I was extremly angry (colorful languade deleted) because I'd justmoved from PA that summer and had I been home, I wouldhave been sent in to help. Two of the EMS squads I worked with in PA were sent.

After flying restarted, I was able to finish my PPL, I also got serious about finding a volunteer slot out here. That's when I migrated towards CAP.

[Walkman]

This morning at 6am, I went out with my son's BSA troop and placed big US flags in our neighborhood (about 50 people participated).

[NYWG Historian]

I got a call that morning from my wife that an explosion, likely a plane crash, had just been reported on TV at the World Trade Center.  I turned on the TV in our main conference room and was quickly joined by a number of colleagues (I work for the company that re-vamped the security access/evacuation procedures at the towers after the 1993 WTC bombing).  Knowing my CAP background, I was asked how this could happen, particularly on a CAVU VFR day.  I started explaining about the VFR corridor over the Hudson River, but realized that no little Cessna or Piper had made that gaping hole.  That's when the second one came in and we all knew....

I was also the New York City Group Commander that morning.  I can't describe to you the frustration of contacting my ES teams and other personnel and making them hold their ground until we got taskings.  I had an aircrew ready to launch in minutes for photo recon; ground teams wanting to help downtown; mission base staff itching for the okay to start work.   All of us seething, wanting and needing to do something for our city. Talk about feeling hopelessly impotent.

The smoke and dust rose from the site for days, blown over our Fort Greene apartment in Brooklyn, leaving a charred, tangy smell of burnt electrical wiring and concrete.  At night, the glow of the spotlights as crews frantically worked lit up the night as a constant reminder of their grim task.

It took a couple of days, but the aircrew finally got to fly their mission.  Mission base folks drove to Albany to staff the SEMO center.  Ground teams pitched in at a food warehouse in the Bronx making packages for the recovery workers.  Squadrons did clothing/supply drives collecting toiletries and other items for recovery workers.

For months, the armory that was my Group HQ was turned into a family center where families came to report their loved ones missing and to give DNA samples.  The outside walls were covered with the little flyers/photos/mementos asking for the whereabouts of loved ones.  It was heartrending.

Just under two months later, my wife and I married in a beautiful church in Rye, NY that had been holding 1-2 funerals a day for victims of 9/11.  For many of our friends, it was their first time to New York City since the attack.  Hopefully the wedding offered folks a little spot of happiness on the road to healing.
 

[Eclipse]

I was working as an IT / Facilities Director for an Internet company in Downtown Chicago. 

Our offices were in Citicorp Center, which is also the Ogilvie Transportation Center (Northwestern train station), one of the two major rail hubs in Chicago.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogilvie_Transportation_Center


My schedule was somewhat flexible, and I had a late start because my house was being painted.  Like most people I woke up to sporadic reports of an "accident" in Manhattan, and had the television on when the second plane hit, causing me to yell to my contractor to get into the kitchen and starting a bad day.

After watching for a while I left for the train, listening on my radio all the way - to this day I can remembers the dichotomy between the informed and uninformed.  There were a number of people on the train listening as well, and we would occasionally look at each other in (fear? horror? anger?) I don't know, but the look was the same - contrasted against the uninformed / disinterested reading yesterday's news or sleeping.

About 1/2-way into the the city (40 minute trip), they started talking about other attacks, and I was struck with 2-seconds of literal panic - Chicago has the tallest building in the US, and I work in a large BRIGHT BLUE
building on the edge of the city, which is also a transportation hub - and I was going TO the building because I felt a responsibility for the people and the assets.

((*))  Well, I wasn't going to stop the train.

When I got downtown, things were "exciting" - there was never anything like a panic, but certainly most people by then had something similar on their mind.

I went downstairs and bought a small B&W television from the Osco - the only place we cold get a signal
was in the CMO's office, where I huddled around that little 5" screen with the CEO, CFO, CTO and a few other execs.  Being the typical dot-comer / finance types, several of them had friends of family in or near the towers.  There was also business concern that a financing round we desperately needed would be impacted by the crisis this would cause in the markets. (life, does, after all, go on).

Executives watching a 5" B&W television with the image of a collapsing building will be in my memory forever.

As time clicked, the sky got quiet (no planes), and the news services talked more and more about follow-up attacks such as in Ireland (IRA) where they wait for ES people to respond and then set off round two, I got more and more insistent that we release everyone who was working to go home.   Considering how organized the attackers looked, I believed an excellent second strike would be to wait until the whole country was going home and hit the trains and expressways - and again, that big blue building out in the open with a train station in the basement. From our windows and on the news we could see the the commute was starting early, with thousands of people in the streets moving towards the exits.

After what I thought was way too much hesitation, I convinced them to let everyone go home, which was great, except this was what every other company in Chicago had decided as well. Thus began the great exodus from the city.  And to Chicago's credit, there were few issues outside of crowded buses and trains. The expressways, of course, were a nightmare.

My CAP activity consisted of checking into the unit and relaying availability - many local units participated in airport watches for days after, as well as assisting stranded aircrews and passengers, especially at larger regional airports like Rockford and Palwaukee that see a lot of traffic but don't expect people to hang around very long.  Several of our pilots had stories about being ordered to land "immediately" and then having to find a way home by some other means, only to retrieve their planes later in the week.

My unit hosted a joint seminar a few days later with the FAA and AOPA to guide pilots on procedures should they be intercepted by the military because they were in restricted airspace.  This was especially an issue for PWK and UGN pilots because of their respective proximity to O'Hare, the city, and a nuclear plant on the North Shore.  Sneeze or get a bad tailwind on a go-around, and you were in trouble.

The unit meeting the next Tuesday had more participants than I had ever seen, with the CC filling staff positions which hadn't been occupied in years and discussing increased funding and tasking.

We all knew things had changed.

(BTW - thank you to the NY'ers for getting it done for all of us - to this day their photos are some of the most clear and comprehensive.  Whenever I see them I try and grasp the enormous pressure they were under.
There have been pivotal moments in our history, and if that is not the pinnacle, I don't know what is.)

[Eeyore]

On 9/11 I went to school as normal.  I was out by 8:30 am for work and walking into the Capitol building through the South entrance, I was told by a Capitol police officer that the Word Trade Center had been hit. I thought it was a joke or something.

I got into work on the House floor minutes later and saw on the cloakroom tv's what was going on. Then the second plane hit.

The House went into session that day but as soon as the pentagon was hit we evacuated. This wasn't a coordinated evacuation, a cop decided to pull the fire alarm because he thought he saw a plane above. On my way out of the Capitol I could see the plumes of smoke coming up from the Pentagon. Most of the people that saw that instantly broke into tears.

Staff as well as Members of Congress were running out of the building. Many staff and Members had to get to specific evacuation points so that they could keep governing. Of that moment my biggest memory was of a Congresswoman yelling at one of my friends for running and asking why he was in a hurry. He told her that the Pentagon was just hit. That Congresswomen took off her high heels and booked it out of there.

I was evacuated to a specific evacuation point and we went into lockdown.  The rest of that day was erie, all of the streets were empty except for a police car or ambulance every 30 minutes or so. We just sat there and watched the news the rest of the day trying to figure out how this all had happened.

My memories of that day have been etched so deeply that there is no way that I could every forget them. I want to thank all those that lost their lives on that day. If it wasn't for the brave men and women on United flight 93 there is a good chance that I would not be here today (as their target was found to be the Capitol Building, where I was at work that day). There is no way to truly express how I feel towards those heroes, but thoughts of 9/1 often bring me to tears.

[bosshawk]

My step daughter called and asked my wife and me if we had seen TV: said no and she simply said, turn it on.  Did so and spent most of the day watching.  When I saw the first plane hit the building, thought of the B-25 that flew into the Empire State Building in 1945(?): I was old enough to remember that!!!

Got a call that night from one of my CAP contacts to see if I was available to fly a special mission the next day.  Said yes and started to get ready.  The mission was to fly my own Bonanza from Watsonville, CA to Medford, OR with a load of blood.  Had to have a second instrument rated pilot with me(no problem).  We transferred the blood from another CAP flight from SoCal and activated our instrument flight plan. Had a unique squawk given to us by the FAA.  Had filed a somewhat convoluted routing to Medford, but once airborne, Approach Control called and asked me if I was ready to copy a change to my routing.  Clearance something like this: N619RP cleared from present position(out over the Pacific) to Red Bluff, direct Medford.  Now, for those of you who know the area involved, my route(direct) took me right through the San Francisco Class B airspace and right over the city of San Francisco.  I headed direct to Red Bluff at about 6000 or 7000 ft.  Eerie: not another airplane on the radio for the entire trip of about three hours.  Periodically called Center to see if they were still awake.  Most unusual flight I have ever made. 

Spent the night in Medford and returned to WVI the next day: not many more planes in the air that day.

Something to remember for a long time.  Glad to contribute.

[ladyreferee]

I was driving to work along a country road, noticing how blue the sky was and how pretty the leaves were on the trees, when I heard on the radio about the first hit.  I had a fleeting thought it was terrorism (I'd read articles and books about possibilities before).  Arriving at the office, I found one of my engineers glued to the radio (we bill by the hour).  I thought he should either go home to listen, or stay and work without the radio on because the economy needed to keep chugging.  But I thought it would blow over and said nothing.  Then I went to the dentist, and as I was in the chair getting my teeth cleaned, with the TV on, the second plane hit.  I about choked.  My engineer didn't work much that day and we lost billing.  But I am thankful that this also woke me up.

I became a Christian, joined a Bible study group, joined a great church.

Later I joined CAP, and am now qualified as GTL.  I am also planning on joining NASAR and taking their courses as well.  My pack is always ready and same with my two boys' packs.  This last weekend I spent doing observer training. 

Skyray got me starting thinking.  I have two surveyors on a job in the Chicago area, surveying and getting GPS coordinates for alot of Nextel cell towers.  I'm going to ask what the reasons are for this - shouldn't they already know this information if they built the towers?  We weren't hired by Nextel, but by a small firm I've never heard of before.  Although they did give us the combinations for getting into the cell tower sites....how easy it is to get this information and then use it to our detriment?

[Ranger75]

The Situation Room, West Wing, the White House.

[SDF_Specialist]

The Situation Room, West Wing, the White House.

Is it safe to assume that you have more knowledge of this horrible event than the rest of us could fathom?

[Ranger75]

My experience and memories of the events prior to, on the day of, and following 9/11 are similar to that of most Americans, perhaps enhanced by having had a unique perspective as they played out.  Much of my time in the SITROOM on 9/11 and the immediate days that followed is recalled like a series of flashcards being thrown in front of my face.

[flyguy06]

I was deployed to Bosnia during 9/11.. Because I was not there during the actual attack, my outlook on 9/11 is a little different. Most people wouldnt even mention this because they are afraid of being politically incorrect. But I am not. I agree that 9/11 was a tragedy, but i dont think it was the worst tragedy to happen in our history. Pearl harbor, slavery, the Civil War. This country has been through worse things than 9/11 which is why I dont get al the hoop la over it. I guess because it happened in our lifetime and not just something we read about in thehistory books.

[Eclipse]

It was a premeditated attack against CIVILIAN targets, the consequences of which not only instantly ended the lives of innocent people, emergency workers and members of the military, but which had economic consequences that cost billions of dollars, disrupted countless lives, destroyed business, and who's ramifications are still felt in business, travel, and personal safety.

It caused a reorganization of one of the largest governments on earth, and triggered a war which is even more horrific no matter what side of the fence you sit on.