Where were you when

[frankiegth]

The attack on the twin towers took place?

I was out on my bike and when I got home a very anxious/excited/bemused son was telling me

"Dad they've crashed some aircraft into the twin towers and there's going to be another world war."

I then sat down to watch in disbelief as the events of that fateful day unfolded. It doesen't matter how many times I see that footage of the impacts it's still unbelieveable, horrific.

[ambersalamander]

I was in Sainsbury's, London Road, Brighton. Popped out with boyfriend who was visiting, to get some stuff in for dinner. Got home to our house, which was a big Victorian heap converted into a student hovel, and as we walked in, Melanie (my housemate at the time and friend since the age of 11) called out from the front bedroom, "Guys, come in and watch TV with us!" Thinking she was just being sociable, I called back that we'd just put our shopping away and then come in.

"No," she said, uncharacteristically firmly. "Come in here NOW and watch the news."

"What the hell's happened?" I muttered to Boyfriend, and we went in to find Melanie and a plethora of buddies staring open-mouthed at footage of a smoking Twin Tower. "Someone's flown a plane into the World Trade Center," someone said. "They're trying to work out if it was an accident." A horribly short while later, the second one went.

"So that answers that question," I mumbled darkly. I just couldn't get my head around the whole thing - it was awesome, like a really bad Bruce Willis movie. I had to keep asking "is this real?" Nobody could fully grasp the sheer enormity of it.

As everyone was glued to the TV, I made them all a massive pork and bean casserole with mash. Unfortunately, I too was glued to the TV and I burnt it almost as badly as what we were seeing on TV

[Col ISIHAC.]

At work - and watching was a most surreal experience.

At the time, I was working in Worthing (NOT surreal as such) in the jobcentre; which occupied half of the ground floor of the then DSS building. No telly, just a rather scrstchy radio in our tea room BUT the Social Fund area next door DID have a TV - suspended from the ceiling lest some drongo try to nick it; so I found myself pausing on my fairly frequent trips to and fro saying yes and no to begging requests from customers, looking up at the screen, standing there with said customers trying to make sense of it all.

One of my staff took me to one side and mentioned that her father was scheduled to be at a meeting in one of the towers that day. As it turned out, he was still elsewhere; the meeting was for later in the day, but it brought it all home somehow.

[votp]

I was at work too and was alerted to it by one of my troops who was watching the Beeb on the web. Within minutes the coverage was on the TV in the canteen. Very surreal; I remember walking over Waterloo Bridge later in what seemed some sort of daze, no one was speaking and there was a silence about the place and a sort of anxious look to the skies. I notice from various sources that 411 emergency services workers lost their lives, for some reason I find that a shocking statistic.

[medibot]

Had an English lesson in the drama hut at SGS when we heard about the first plane and then went home for lunch and saw the second hit on Beeb news.

Remember feeling a bit odd afterwards because i couldn't empathise at all with the way people were reacting and getting upset because it didn't really affect me in that way, probably in the same way you can't comprehend a trillion dollars or whatever, rather than some sort of cold callous disregard but still, I mainly remember finding it funny that i really didn't give a sh*t. Very odd. I presume it's probably quite a common way to deal with such things otherwise you would be a gibbering wreck!

[thevicar]

I was walking thorugh Woking (I think I was probably late for work) and saw something on the telly as I walked past Dixons, assumed it was a film at the time. Got into the office and no-one was doing any work at all (not a big change I admit) and finally realised I'd been watching footgae of the first plane.

Surreal day mostly spent checking on various friends, relatives and colleagues and making sure that my various periods whereby I could get called up again had expired. I know the final part of that is fairly callous but it was a reaction shared by a few of my mates. Even at the time it was obvious the yanks were going to attack someone and we'd be dragged into it.

[amberaleman]

I'd taken the week off work to redecorate my kitchen, but on the afternoon of 11 September I went into central London to go to an art exhibition (Vermeer, as I recall) before going on to Sutton's match at Grays Athletic. The first I heard of the attacks was when I passed the flower stall at Embankment station, where a small group of people had gathered round the stall's radio. Details were then a bit sketchy but I picked up the gist of what had happened. Later, I met a friend in Grays who'd been out all day and had heard nothing of the news. We called into the Grays clubhouse for a pre-match pint and watched open-mouthed as the chilling footage was replayed on the big screen.

I spent all the next day at home with a paint brush and roller and the rolling TV news.

[peekay]

I was at work. A delivery driver came in and said that a plane had flown into the Empire State Building.
Tried to get onto various news websites without any success. I can only assume due to the volume of traffic they were getting.
Listened to developments on the radio for the rest of the afternoon.
Didn't see images until I got home from work about 3 hours later.

[Meadow]

I was in the kitchen at home. I was just about to turn Steve 'rhymes with' off when he said something 'breaking news' or some such. Put the TV and saw the re-runs of the first plane. Phoned himself at work and we were discussing the possibility of terrorism when the second plane hit.

I know it was ghoulish, but I couldn't turn the TV off.

[coops]

Out shopping.
As we queued at the till there were people chatting about a plane that had hit the WTC, but the rumour mill had it down as a light aeroplane. When we got back to the car Radio 5 was reporting it as possibly a bomb, then there was a shocked reporter saying that another plane had hit.
After that we just did what nearly everyone else seems to have done, stared dumbfounded at the TV all day.

[robotsmfc]

I was only 10 ("and three quarters!") so I was at school when it happened. The teacher's husband was in New York at the time in that sort of area, but he wasn't involved at all other than probably having seen or heard it from wherever he was. Needless to say, she wasn't entirely focussed on looking after the class for the rest of the day.

I think I was a bit to young to appreciate the gravity of what had happened, but I've seen the Ground Zero site and I've been in the World Trade Center subway station (I was on a nerdy trip for "Future Leaders" ;D). It sort of helped, but it was more of a surreal than an enlightening experience.

[DazaB_WCFC]

I was in school. I remember my younger brother saying that the "twin towers had collapsed" and thinking he was on about Wembley.

Sat and watched it on tele until 6 o'clock when I remember getting annoyed that the "breaking news" finished to go to the 6 o'clock news which I complained would be exactly the same thing.

[robotsmfc]

Sept 11, 2009 0:27:58 GMT DazaB_WCFC said:

I remember getting annoyed that the "breaking news" finished to go to the 6 o'clock news which I complained would be exactly the same thing.

Such a moaner, even as a child

[Sultan of Cannock- SRFC]

I was still with my previous employer. We were in the middle of consolidating the business from two sites to one and there were just three of us left in the soon-to-be-abandoned building, me as paint tech preparing paint and parts for two decorative sprayers (one of whom was from the Yemen). I'd been listening to the test transmissions for SAGA radio and just happened to retune to 5Live for some news. They said that they were getting reports that a light plane had hit the World Trade Centre.

For the rest of the afternoon i was bringing updates in to the increasingly incredulous sprayers along with fresh paint and parts. When i heard that the towers were actually collapsing i kept expecting to wake up any second and find that i was dreaming the entire thing. Despite being shocked by such an evil and despicable deed, we also had to grudgingly acknowledge their "achievement" in pulling the whole thing off against what must have been increbidle odds.

I fiirst got to see the carnage when stopping off at the gym on the way home.All the screens were showing it, the only time i ever saw all of them tuned to the same programme.

I remember flicking through the satellite news channels before going to work next morning. All of them were still rerunning footage from the Twin Towers except for Al Jazeera, which was showing Israeli bulldozers flattening Palestinian houses.

[Sultan of Cannock- SRFC]

Sept 10, 2009 8:59:12 GMT Meadow said:

I was in the kitchen at home. I was just about to turn Steve 'rhymes with' off when he said something 'breaking news' or some such.

Was that Steve Allen on LBC 97.3? He was on about being on air when the story first broke yesterday morning.