In the hospital getting my appendix removed

I was at work as a government contractor with Lockheed Martin. We stopped our work and simply watched TV in the conference room until we were sent home. Saw the towers collapse in real time as if a product of a demolition team downing a building. Twice? Despite plane hits were in different floors, their collapse behaved exactly the same... ???? It was never in the terrorist mind to collapse the buildings... much less two? They tried in the 90's with a van full of explosives in the basement parking of one of the buildings and failed!!! We will never know. And then again, I recalled a laboral terrorism act were at least 43 people were killed, 100 injured with a $2.30 sterno can set on fire on a spare chairs storage room in the Dupont Plaza, former Puerto Rico Sheraton hotel/casino New Year Eve 1986. Granted, played a lot in the tragedy that the Main Casino Emergency Exit door was Chained down!!! So sometimes the terrorists strike gold even when just looking for pebbles since no help was expected!!!! I will Never Forget!

At the community college taking a class. That was an odd day indeed.

In a cave making videos

I remember waking up that Tuesday morning to my radio alarm. I remember in a semi-dream state asking myself, "why is Peter Jennings on Mark and Brian?" I was then awakened by a telephone call. It was my mother telling me "Don't go to work!" I asked her why and she said, "turn on the television." I did and saw the images of the towers burning. I later learned that two of my work colleagues were on the plane that hit the Pentagon.

I tried to call into work but when I picked up the phone I could not get a dial tone. I drove into work, which was right next to the Los Angeles airport. The facility had been closed for security reasons. The world was never the same after that.

I was a 19 year old sophomore in college. I had to give a speech in my public speaking class at 9:30 CST that morning. I was practicing and didn't have on the news. As I walked to class, I noticed there was no one out, and then my roommate walked by me. She told me that the Pentagon had been attacked, but didn't mention the WTC. I didn't hear about NY until I got to class. The person behind me said something, and I turned around like "what?!?" I didn't give my speech that day.

It wasn't until the tenth anniversary that I started to heal. I always felt weird about it, somehow incomplete. I watched every special, saw every documentary, but something felt off. I was reading an article about the anniversary, and it included tons of pictures from around the country on the day. There was a photograph of a group of college kids in Utah standing together and looking up at a TV in their student center. Something released in my chest when I saw it. I finally saw something that reflected my memories of the day. I was able to process that I wasn't alone that day. Many of us had that same experience at campuses all across the country.

It changed the course of our lives. It was the end of our childhoods, the end of our innocence. Our experience was unique and overlooked, but we had it together.

First part of the day I was at work. Two hours later I was renting a seventeen passenger van and driving up to New York City. Went to work at ground Zero at 7 the next morning. Left New york on June 27th of 2002. I was working for FEMA as a Mass Fatality Specialist.

At work Bluewater nursery we had radio on in our rm children were asleep so we could follow the dreadful advents

I was driving my son to school and I turned on the car radio and they were talking about a plane that had crashed into the World Trade Center. So I called my wife on my cell and told her to turn on the TV and see what’s going on. She suddenly screamed ‘oh my god’ as the second plane hit.

I was working in my father's pharmacy. Couldn't believe my eyes. It still saddens me whenever I come across a footage of that incident. And some people here have the nerve to say "only two buildings were knocked down, and a tiny fraction of a percent of our population were killed". Un-fucking-believable!

West Coast, Washington State. My oldest child had just been born. It was a while after I had returned to work from paternity leave. My wife was still on maternity leave. The deal was I would stay up and care for him at night and she would get get up early. It turned out to be a bad deal for me but that's another story.

She got up around 5am because she couldn't sleep and to feed him but she turned on the TV instead. Just a few minutes in the news interrupted with news of the first plane. She might have been watching the news to begin with. She immediately wakes me up. I remember them being confused and telling a story about a propeller plane that hit a tower before. She asks, "What does this mean?" As I sit there pretty groggy, I say that I don't know but the world will never be the same again. Right around that time the second one hit. It was terrifying. I don't know what channel it was but we (the newsman and I) sat and tried to come to grips with the reality of what was going on. Lots of denial and confusion. Talked about the FAA closing all flights down and the Pentagon and rumors of other planes. The first tower collapse and how it was difficult to see but I knew right away what was going on. The news guy couldn't bring himself to believe it. I yelled at the screen and then just stared. I stared a long time and then the other tower collapsed. I was late to work but I went in. I felt like I had to know what other people were doing. It was a terrible, scary and uncertain time.

I was teaching on 9/11. When I heard that a plane had hit one of the towers at first I didn't think that much of it. I had heard of small planes hitting buildings before. Then I saw the videos and realized the scale of the thing. That ended the lesson. We started over the next day.

I had just turned 21....and still lived at home. My Mom woke me up with the craziest face I'd ever seen on her and said we were gonna be at war. I worked with my Dad and he said "fuck this we're going to work ". Wierd day of work and talking to absolutely everyone including strangers about the latest.....hard to explain to my kids how strange that day was

At work at my IT job. I first heard a plane hit one of the twin towers, and I thought of the small biplane that crashed into the Empire State Building back when. But then I hear a second plane hit the other tower, and my soul shuddered...

I was at work in Fort Smith Arkansas watching it on a little portable TV we used for weather.

UNCW in Wilmington, NC. I was checking my mail at the post office and noticed a small crowd looking up at the tv. From where I was at, it looked like they were watching a smoke stack, but as I walked up I saw it was one of the World Trade Center buildings. Nobody said a word, it was like everyone was in shock. I quickly left and made my way to the Student Center where I saw more people, students, professors, all looking at the tv--all in shock and disbelief. People were on their cell phones, crying. There was a Marine recruiting booth set up, and I watched them as they received calls on their cell phones. In an instant, they quickly packed up their booth and left. It was a terrible day. I went and gave blood; I didn't know what else to do. Then I went home and cried.

In kilby state penitentiary waiting to go to my assigned camp. I was on my way out the door and saw it on the tv.

Miami Beach. I was trying to open a tour company. Not a banner day for the tourism industry. Unfortunately my business took a huge nose dive. Never to recover.

Home with pneumonia, watching t.v. stuned that such a tragic accident could happen...then the second plane hit the other tower. ...could only hope that the responsible could be found...so many heros that day, and many that followed...too bad our current president is such a poor excuse of an honor to them.

Stationed in La Maddalena Italy with NSA La Maddalena.

In the dentist's chair, getting my teeth cleaned. I could tell something had happened by the way everyone was acting, but I couldn't ask questions. For about 5 minutes, I was the only one in America who had no clue what was happening.

I worked for the company who manufactured FDNY's turnout gear at the time. We had a half dozen'ish firefighters from FDNY visiting, getting ready for a PPE standards conference (we were working on some new thing and these guys were field testing it). They were all watching the news in a conference room, before going out to a controlled burn for the day (this is how you entertain visiting firefighters, burn shit), when the first plane hit the news I was in there shooting the shit with them (I grew up in the shop and FDNY quartermasters, some of these guys were more like uncles). I'll never forget how silent everyone went all at once. As soon as they started live coverage on the ground we started trying to make out back patches so we could tell who was going in. When the second plane hit they all started trying to figure out how to get home. There was no way to get back into the city that night, was what they were being told. When the first tower fell, we started comparing notes of who we had seen go in and hadn't seen back out on the street. My Uncle Jack sat on the floor of the conference room, with tears streaming down his face for what seemed like hours. A retired FDNY veteran, who had seen it all, was numb with horror. Around 3pm or 4pm, we finally got word that all of the guys could get back into the city in a semi truck if we were sending goods to help the relief or search and rescue efforts. So, the company owners rented two straight trucks and we filled them both with boots, bottled water, replacement heat channel knee pads and everything else we had on hand that we thought would help. I think it was about 4am on the 12th when they finally pulled off for the city. We were aware of the other flights at the time, but because of the businesses relationship with FDNY, my personal relationship with so many of the firefighters and the fact that we had so many retired and active FDNY captains in house that day was 100% about New York for me.

It was my fifth day as a teacher (6th grade), and the principal came around to the classrooms at about 10 o’clock and told us to turn on the TV, because something important was happening in New York... I don’t think she actually knew what was going on, she just wanted the newly installed “cable in the classroom” to be used I suppose! My TV didn’t work, so I didn’t know all of the details until lunchtime in the teachers room, and everyone was just silently watching and crying. For the rest of the day tons of kids kept getting paged to the office for dismissal, which was so frightening because I work north of Boston and we didn’t know if it was over or more horrors had happened closer to home.

Wellman Iowa. I worked the night shift and came awake to a high school friend who lived in Manhattan calling to say he was ok. I had no idea what was going on.

I was listening to the radio in my car as I went to meet somebody to give them some t-shits for publicity/fund drive for a project I was involved with in Savannah. News of the first plane hitting was just being announced on the radio and the AM jocks were speculating on it.
But contrary to some urban legends there was no footage of the first plane hitting live or even that day. The first plane hitting the tower was not known about until at days later because a film crew happened to capture it.
It was when so many eyes and cameras were on the towers a few minutes later that everyone's heart nearly stopped.
Until that moment there was still the chance that it was a terrible, inexplicable accident.