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September 11, 2006

TK0001 said:
Good lord, you're a Mark too? So am I.

What the hell draws Marks to this place? My guess is the computer chip the government implanted in our heads at birth.
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Did you forget? You, Gravy, MarkyX and myself are all the same person.
 
I had occasion to go to the World Trade Centers site this past Thursday September 7th 2006.

I had all my suitcases, and bags of presents for friends and relatives taped anywhere they would fit. I had to walk about 10 blocks to get there, but it was a beautiful sunny morning, like Sept 11, 2001.

I had no idea what I would see or how I would feel. I tend to be emotional, and often find it hard to control myself. As I approached the site, I hear a man yelling. He is yelling ‘You need to know the truth!’, and other things I couldn’t quite hear. So now I am feeling anger, hoping I can stay in control. Other people were just passing by; I don’t think anyone was listening to him. Me, I made a straight line to confront the man.

He had a bottle around neck, and was apparently soliciting donations. Very strange.

One of the greatest things I have learned here at JREF is debate tactics. Surprisingly, the man had a great deal of knowledge about what lead to 9/11, what happened that day, and what happened after. We engaged it a discussion, him still yelling, me asking questions and making points. A crowd soon gathered, listening now, and giving the guy money. I had to move on, and started to give him some money, but he refused. Instead, he gave me a New York City lanyard.

…Moving on, I saw a Police Officer, and asked him the best place to get a good view. He told me, and I shook his hand, holding it too long, I’m sure. I think he understood.

I got to the site, and took some pictures. I then put my face up against a wall, and started to cry uncontrollably. A few moments passed, and a perfect stranger came over to me, put his arms around me, and said over and over again “You’ll be OK, you’ll be OK.” There are people like that in the world.

He was right. The wound will scar over, but it will always be there.
 
I'm feeling physically sick right now as I'm watching the anniversary ceremonies on the news. Five years ago I wasn't able to understand the magnitude of this horrible event. I'm not quite sure if I am able to understand it now.

My thoughts go out to all Americans and people all over the world who lost dear friends and relatives.

I also want to thank all of you who spend your time and effort debunking the idiotic CTs. I admire not only your detailed research but most of all the incredible restraint you're showing when you deal with those disrespectful (rule 8)ers.
 
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Well it is the middle of the afternoon on September 11th, 2006. Though I am nearly 2000 miles from GZ, the weather here today is just like it was that morning in NYC.

I was at work, so I didnt get much of a chance to watch MSNBC. They were doing a minute by minute replay of the today show broadcast from 9/11/2001. When I got home for lunch I watched...It was around the time just after the two towers collapsed. They cut to a guy 10 blocks from GZ, and they showed the firemen. They showed them crying, hugging each other, most of them just lost in their own world. I got a lump in my throat that I couldn't swallow.

My deepest and most sincere sympathy to all those who lost someone on that day, and to those who lost their innocence.

TAM
 
I took the morning off so I could watch that on MSNBC, since I only saw bits of it the first time. Harrowing.

Kudos to that network for showing that.
 
On September 11, 2002, my husband and I were in Paris for our honeymoon. That evening, we took a dinner cruise on the Seine. Visible from the river were two intense beams of light shining side-by-side into the sky to symbolize the two towers of the WTC. They were so eerily beautiful.

As we past by the beams in the boat, the captain called for a moment of silence to honor those who lost their lives and to express the country's (France's) sadness and sympathy for its American friends. It was an extraordinarily touching experience.
 
Peephole said:
Interesting, the first tower collapsed a few minutes ago and the reporter is constantly referring to the collapse (which he isn't yet aware of) as "the second explosion". Isn't that wat CT's often refer to?

Edit: Oh and the explosion reported near the capitol was actually the part of Pentagon collapsing.
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I watched the first twenty minutes of their coverage of the attacks online. It was a very difficult experience watching the coverage before the second plane hit. You know what's going to happen, and there's nothing you can do about it. It was sickening, almost.

What I did find interesting is how confused everybody was during that chaotic time. The CNN anchors were speculating that the fuselage of the plane must be stuck, intact, inside the North Tower. It sounds silly now, but how many people knew at that time what would happen when a passenger jet crashed into a skyscraper at high speed?

When the second plane hit, the on air reporter thought that the fuselage of the first plane had somehow exploded inside of the North Tower.

I was also amazed that even after the second plane hit, I did not once hear the mention of the word "terrorism". Eventually, they realized that, but in the immediate aftermath they were speculating about navigation system malfunctions.

It goes to show that cherry picked quotes from the day of the event prove nothing about what really happened.

Just to add my own personal recollections of that day: I didn't turn on the TV that morning until probably 20 minutes after the second plane hit. I saw the replay (over and over) of that second plane impact. It was such a bizarre piece of video that my mind didn't know what to make of it. Then I hear Katie Couric report that plane hijackings had been reported. The video I had just watched went from bizarre to sickening. I could envision in my mind the passengers inside the plane as it rammed into the south tower. There were much worse things to come that day, but nothing compared to that first realization.

And brumsen, please take it to another thread. You raise important points, but raise them in another thread.
 
I was driving on my way to work on the Richmond-San Rafael bridge seismic retrofit (I was working as a state construction inspector for the dive crews) when I caught the news about the first plane hit. When the second hit I knew it had to be a terrorist attack. I called my parents and woke them up, as they had a planned flight to Canada to visit relatives and I knew there was no way they were flying anywhere that day.

I spent the first few hours out in the San Francisco Bay with a dive crew, and we had just gotten a diver down when word came back to shut down work and get everyone off the bridge. We didn't have news radios on the boat and were only getting snippits of what was happening from cel phones. I didn't believe the entire towers had collapsed (I thought the tops may have partially collapsed) until I got back into the office and saw CNN. For the next few days police zodiacs cruised underneath the bridges, checking out all the work boats and barges underneath the bridge. I never thought my bridge would be attacked, but I was certain that the Bay Bridge or the Golden Gate would be on a target list, and we all wondered if they would be hit that morning.

One of our dive companies had offices across the street from the WTC. When they fled their building, a person ahead of the company's CEO was crushed by falling debris.

My father is a retired pilot for United. He knew one of the co-pilots that day (can't remembe the flight). I often wonder if he dwelled on how he must have died. He was a captain of a 747 on Pacific routes during the 90's. I'm curious to know if his plane would have been on that original plot to blow up airlines over the Pacific, and what I would have done if it had happened.
 
boooeee said:
I was also amazed that even after the second plane hit, I did not once hear the mention of the word "terrorism". Eventually, they realized that, but in the immediate aftermath they were speculating about navigation system malfunctions.
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I think it took about a half an hour before the first mention of terrorism.
 
I suppose, having started this thread, it is only right I provide my own account.

As you know I was half a world away. It was just after midnight here on Sept 12th, when Boston ATC received an odd transmission from one of the thousands of aircraft in Eastern US airspace. "We have some planes".

I didn't find out about 9/11 until I woke, 6 hours or so later. I remember the first words as clear as day.

"The twin towers are gone"

Such a strange remark to be woken with. I simply didn't understand. How can two buildings disappear?

"A plane crashed into them"

I instantly thought of a small aircraft, smeared across the face of the building. Fire.

"Oh. They're not gone. They're on fire?"

"No, they're completely gone."

I headed for the TV immediately. They were still playing footage. My mind was struggling to reconcile a small plane hitting the WTC with both towers vanishing.

The first image I saw, when I reached the TV, was one of the towers collapsing. I can't remember which.

The image still haunts me. I remember, oddly, that was first horror was at the destruction of such a monument to human endeavour. It was not loss of life, but loss of buildings that turned my stomach in knots.

But then, of course, the reality dawned on me. I imaged those enormous towers, full of people. I imaged the streets below. In my mind New York was always packed with people and cars. I imaged streets full of people and yellow cabs, with the towers crashing down on them.

At this point they were talking about ten thousand or so dead. I remarked "It'll be more, it'll be 20, 30 thousand" My mind recoiled.

Of course, thankfully, it was not more. The towers had burned for some time, something I was oblivious to at the time (I was still trying to work out how one plane destroyed two towers at that point!). The police had time to seal off the area and evacuate. Many many many thousands survived. The fatally wounded towers themselves managed to hold up just long enough for virtually everyone who was able to get out.

It is a new realisation, reading all your accounts, and I thank you dearly for sharing them. By the time I knew of 9/11, it was all over. We knew it was 4 aircraft, and we knew it was terrorists.

For those who watched events as they unfolded, no such comfort. The confusion must have been terrifying. Are there five hijacked aircraft? Ten? Fifty? Has the Capitol been hit? Air Force One? Are there bombs as well? When will it end? When?

-Andrew
 
I got home from work early that day, and checked my email (must been around 9:25 EST, 3.25 PM in the Netherlands. A friend mailed about watching TV and seeing a plain crash in the WTC. He attached a screencap. My first thought was that it was another internet joke, and that the photo was badly faked.

I tried to go to CNN.com, but I couldn't. I then realised something was terrible wrong. When I flipped on the TV, every channel had the burning towers. I couldn't believe it!

My first thought was that two planes collided and then the wreckage crashed into the towers. It was absolutely unbelievable at that point that it was an terrorist act.

My father and I visited New York three months before 9/11 (and yes, we stood atop WTC 2) and at no time I felt insecure. We had security checks at the WTC, at the Empire State Building, at the Statue of Liberty, the airport... But it just seemed like some sort of routine. Never could I (and everybody in the US) have imagined something as terrible as 9/11... complacensy (sp) is, I guess, the best word to describe it.

My most vivid memories about the WTC are that you could practicaly see them from wherever in Manhattan you where. They were also the first, and last buildings you'd see when flying into or out of NY. I also remember talking to a firefighter about the '93 bombing, and how it would have been if the tower(s) did fall down then. The firefighter kind of gave me a desperate look.

The most strange memory I have, is of the musquitos I saw flying next to the windows of the lower observation deck (the indoor one, I don't know how to call that). I even thought about them when watching the events unvolve. How weird is that?

The destruction of the WTC still hurts me. Even though I'm not from NY, or the US, the fact that I saw the towers with my own eyes, and stood on top of one of the towers, gives me a personal bond to them. I think of this tragedy almost every day.

My heart is with everybody who suffered, one way or the other, on that day,
 
My story isn't very interesting. I was eighteen years old and living with my parents, getting ready to start college. I heard about the first attack on the radio, which itself is unusual because I was listening to a classical radio station that rarely mentions breaking news. Like most other people, I figured the first plane was a fluke -- pilot error, one guy with a suicidal/homicidal bent, something that ended right there. After the second attack, we turned on the local NBC station and watched.

It was very scary; we lived near Chicago, and at the time we didn't know when or where these attacks were going to stop. For all we knew, the attacks were moving west, and the Sears Tower was next. I saw the reports of the office buildings being evacuated, and of college campuses on lockdowns and thought of my friends who'd already started school. It seems kind of stupid in retrospect, but I wondered if I was going to be starting school at all. At the time, we just didn't know what was going on. The whole country could have been coming to a screeching halt right then; I thought I might be watching my entire life turn on a dime as Americans faced a destructive war on our own soil.

I did go to work that day; it was my last day working at the violin store. The owner had managed to yell at me and make me cry the day before, so I was happy to be leaving. It was largely uneventful, as no one was thinking about their kid's violin rental that day. I gave blood at the local hospital the next day.

So, my story is dull. The man who eventually became Mr. 42 was on a vacation with his family in Europe at the time. The trip was a pretty big deal; Mr. 42 (a self-sufficient adult at the time) was there with his parents and his aunt, uncle, and cousins, and they'd been planning the trip for a long time. They were in the Chunnel when the attacks happened. As they were leaving the Chunnel, someone came over to them as asked, "Are you Americans?" They answered in the affirmative, and the stranger said, "I'm so sorry about what happened." So, that's how they found out that they needed to check the news. For them, they didn't know when they'd be able to get back to the US, since their flight was cancelled.

Sorry, my account just isn't as heart-wrenching as some others.
 
Gumboot, my story of 9/11 was very similar to yours. I had just left music 101 for biology when someone told me that a plane had blown up the towers. I at first thought they meant a military plane, so I asked what kind. I don't remember what they said, except that they were gone.

As I went to the student lounge I saw a girl run out crying and I knew it was going to be bad. First thing I saw on TV was the first tower crumbling, but from that particular angle it looked like a large section of the first one had sloughed off.

We were studying Islam in history that night, by a strange quirk. But before I got there, I remember stopping at a complete stranger's car to listen to the news on her radio through the window. I can't imagine being able to do that now.
 
I didn't think I'd want to read or participate in a thread like this, but here I am.

I remember staying up super-late on my computer. It was almost 6am (california) and I thought I'd check CNN as I prepared for bed. I saw their coverage from the moment it began.

I remember the confusion, what the hell am I watching? I watched the 2nd plane hit and I literally fell out of my chair onto my knees, yelling at my TV. I remember the commentators not seeing the 2nd plane even as it happened on their own monitors. I'm yelling "You idiots! Look at the damn screen!!!"

I had roommates downstairs at the time. I didn't know if I should awaken them. I thought that maybe my yelling had. Then the first building collapsed. I was in tears, screaming at the TV now. I'd never felt such horror in my life, before or since. I ran downstairs and one of my roomies was just coming out of his room.

He says "Are you watching this *****???!!!". We woke up the rest.

*******

No planes in the sky. Few cars. My neighbors from India didn't come out of their house for a few days. People were looking over their shoulders in the stores, at the fast food joints. People would see a cop or fireman and start to cry, or say "thank you" or "I love you" to them.

I remember trying to be extra friendly to the Iranian man who owned the liquor store I went to. He couldn't hang enough U.S. flags in his store and on his windows. He must have been scared too, though from a very different perspective.

I remember walking to the San Jose Arena to see a Sharks hockey game perhaps a week later. Maybe less. The skies hadn't been open very long. As I walked, a low flying airliner roared overhead on final approach and everyone suddenly looked up.

It scared me. Being in that building during the game worried me a little. When the Star Spangled Banner ended, all 17,000 people started chanting "USA!!! USA!!! USA!!!" It got very loud and it was an extremely emotional experience. Everything was at that time.

I remember staring at a vacant field across from my house and imagining how tall those two towers would look if they were right there. Impossibly huge. Then I tried to picture them coming down...the enormity of it, the life lost, the implications of the event itself. My mind just couldn't quite grasp it.

I guess that's why I typed this up.
 
I know it's after the fact, but here's a link to one of those tribute pages that was put together by some fans of drum corps. I don't imagine most people are familiar with the activity, but it has some roots within the military establishment.

Make sure your sound is on.

ETA: One more.
 
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I had a job interview that day. The first inkling I got was when my interview called me and left a message like, "Despite what's going on today, we'd still like to do the interview". I had no idea what she was talking about until I turned on the TV. I got there for the interview and all everyone was doing was sitting there watching TV.

I also had an appointment to come in and fill out an application to work at a movie theatre the day the Challenger exploded.

I think someone is trying to tell me something.
 
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