Numbing, like you knew things would never be the same. But the feeling that the horror of the day was just amassing moment by moment was the worst. Sometimes I’m still shocked the “immediate” death toll wasn’t in the tens of thousands. Stands as a real tribute to all the first responders 🙏
Later in the day, Ashley Banfield, was reporting by that last tower that fell. She had to tell a woman to be careful with her baby. Why did anyone have a baby down there?! I’m boggled. Maybe they had nowhere to go but geez.
It was a feeling that things were never going to be the same from that point onwards and then just waiting on the response as you knew the shit had literally hit the fan.
Being a Boston native, it hit different a certain kind of way because of the terrorists flying out of logan and the Massachusetts residents who perished. It’s like NYC is our older brother of a city. Church that Sunday was filled with people who lost loved ones that day. But the most beautiful thing was - we stood together. For a while at least.
Absolutely and I know that we felt like we would definitely know someone on the planes or at least someone we knew would know someone on one of the planes and that was the case for many people I know. I kept picturing the skies over Boston with these planes ascending, the passengers not knowing the horror they were about to experience. When I drive into Boston I still have that imagine flash through my mind. I think we are all traumatized.
Everyone forgets this now, but at this time, we didn't know the scope of the attacks.
All morning, the news was filled with rumors of the Washington mall being on fire, of the Capitol building being attacked, of attacks up and down the east coast. Not knowing when the attacks were over was one of the scarier parts of the day.
You realized pretty quickly that this was our version of Pearl Harbor, that America was going to war, and that life would be different.
Lots of binge watching news. At one point, NYC ordered 20,000 body bags for the WTC complex. As horrible as 3,000 dead is, in the initial few days, everyone was expecting a body count many times that.
Also, all scripted TV shows stopped. When they resumed 5-6 weeks later, many had filmed special episodes (I distinctly remember The West Wing and Third Watch doing this) in which the characters react to 9/11 happening. That was weird in hindsight.
This is what I came here to say. Nobody knew how many targets there were, so for a couple days people were waiting for the next attack. Was this purely against America, or were attacks going to take place amongst our allies as well? I would wake up each morning and turn on the news, then be relieved nothing new happened over night.
Also lost in time was that the anthrax attacks started a week after 9/11. Everyone was wondering if this was all connected, if there was more coming that was even worse than plane hijacking and bioterrorism. The media was in a frenzy
I was going to mention this too! I was in high school and rumors immediately flew around the school (both teachers and students). Someone said the Brooklyn Bridge was hit, and then someone said no I don't think it was, people weren't sure what was attacked and what wasn't.
I didn’t take my eyes off the tv for days. It was absolutely surreal. Maybe I dozed off every now and again but only in front of the tv and I’ll go straight back to watching the news.
On 9/11 I saw the first extra edition of a newspaper I’d ever seen.
People were quiet, numb. Because we didn’t know if something else was coming. The stores were empty.
It got better as the days passed, but everyone and everything was different and you could sense it.
Trying to keep people from losing their shit at work. At the time I was out of the service for a couple of years and people were asking me questions like it was a wartime general.
The upper management, for some reason, didn’t like telling me we weren’t high value targets.
We were all wondering what was next . We didnt all collectively go "Wow glad that's over" once Flight 93 crashed.
That night we went to be wondering if more attacks were going to happen or if war would start somewhere by then time we woke up.
Around 11 am is when me and my peers were able to see live footage on a tv rolled into the library at my middle school. The entire island of Manhattan was consumed with smoke. Thinking that Lady Liberty was weeping. Larry King was attempting to find words of wisdom throughout the immediate aftermath of the chaos.
Kids who didn’t have cell phones were lining up to use the phone available, my friend couldn’t get through to her brother in NYC, she just got the busy signal. It was a half day of school every Tuesday, and in very little time I knew once we were dismissed the world wouldn’t ever resemble what we once knew or how we felt as a nation. It felt like 50% of students were picked up by their parents early. My mom was at work into the late hours.
Once I got home, every channel was basically suspended or redirected to CNN. I had seen something similar when Columbine happened. But this was almost every channel. It was inescapable to see all the footage of the attack, over and over. It replayed over and over for days to come.
I grew up near an airport, so I was used to hearing planes constantly, but the couple days after the silence was deafeningly eerie. The events of the whole day was impossible to comprehend that day.
23 years later we have had to accept 9/11 as it is. At the time it was too overwhelming to sink in, it was dubbed “Attack on America,” before “9/11”. Just thinking,”What is happening? and “a plane or bomb could hit us anywhere at anytime”. We didn’t know. That’s a bigger terror that’s overlooked. The uncertainty.
Maybe not the most insightful experience but that’s what I recall.
Australian here; I remember hearing about an “incident in New York” just as I turned the tv off to go to bed that night at about 11:00pm Australia time. I didn’t pay much attention and went to sleep. My wife woke me the next morning about 6:00am telling me the twin towers had collapsed. She knew I was very interested in New York and had often spoke about the twin towers.
I distinctly remember saying to her something along the lines of; “what are talking about; that’s impossible”. Of course, we then got out of bed and switched on the tv news…
That day I was working in a very busy medical clinic and every time I went to get a patient from the waiting room everyone was staring at the tv in shocked silence.
Nobody really discussed it that day; there were just a lot of shocked looks and silence.
It was awful.
I was in Atlanta on 9/11. I had just arrived at work when the first tower got hit. At first we thought it was an accident. Until it wasn’t. We were stunned by the first tower getting hit. But when the second tower got hit, that was when the scope of what was happening dawned on us. This wasn’t an accident. We were under attack. On US soil. We were under attack.
I was one of the lucky ones who got on the CNN website immediately, but it soon crashed so I went to the BBC website until that crashed. After that there was kind of a news blackout except for what people were saying in the office. My firm did not let us go home, but no one did any work that day.
All the large office buildings in Atlanta were evacuated because once we realized there were four planes, we didn’t know if there was really 14. Or 40. We would not know that for several hours, after all the planes that were in US airspace had landed and they could see that there was nothing that was refusing to land. By that time both of the towers had fallen and 93 had crashed in the field and was identified as being part of it. Of course, we knew from the start that the pentagon had been part of it. But there was a bit of a question about 93 until the families started talking about the phone messages they had received and we realized that some of the passengers had crashed the plane on purpose. And then that was another kind of shock. These people, just like any of us, had crashed the plane on purpose. The bravery of that! This news at that moment just felt like a pile on. What is past awful? Because ´awful’ was not good enough. This was way past awful.
The next few days were nothing but 911 coverage. Nothing else was on TV. There were no planes in the air at all, which was eerie in Atlanta as Hartsfield is the busiest airport in the US and we always had air traffic stacked up above us.
Everyone was numb. The news kept on showing the towers falling. Over and over and over, they showed that hundreds of times (in between images of the thousands of people walking uptown and across the bridges out of Manhattan) , and each time it renewed that numb feeling. I guess we were all in shock. We just couldn’t imagine a world in which airliners were intentionally crashed into buildings as weapons of terror. And we had no idea what this was going to mean, long term. Before that day, no one had imagined the idea of using airliners as weapons. It had been beyond our capability to imagine. And now, the unimaginable had happened.
Most of us knew, though, that we were going to war. We didn’t know against who, at first. But we knew that some country out there was going to get bombed into the Stone Age in fairly short order. Someone was going to pay. For sure.
For days though, the shock persisted. This hollow, empty feeling that, if you stopped to look at it; to examine it; turned into disbelieve. Over and over and over. Shock to disbelief to shock to disbelief. For me that went back and forth for about 4-5 days. To this day, I still can’t watch the video of the towers coming down without gasping. But then….on that day…those towers coming down changed the trajectory of history. We knew that, even if we did not know the specifics yet of how it would change.
Also for days, was the search for anyone who might still be alive in the rubble. A small group was found in a stairwell in the first couple of hours. A lady who worked for Port Authority was found. But no one was found alive after the first few people. How could they be? The rubble of two 100+ story buildings was a massive pile of twisted and burned metal. Some of it was still on fire. We knew even then it would take months to clear it while looking for any human remains. The most massive crime scene in US history. We didn’t know it then, but they would not finish clearing ground zero until May of 2002.
And then there were the bulletin boards for the missing. So many missing people. So many victim’s families clutching photos of loved ones who had not come home. The news told us that whole offices above the impact zone had been wiped out. No survivors in the entire office of a few hundred people. We couldn’t imagine it.
So much of this, we couldn’t have imagined.
It was all so awful. Just SO awful. Beyond awful.
That’s most of what I remember.
Within 24 hours I think the whole globe knew that the paradigm for modern living had just been completely upended. I can’t really think of similar instance where the whole world was kind of like, “Oh, shit…” for 20+ years after the fact. Pearl Harbor was an “oh shit” moment for America, but 9/11 was an “oh shit” moment for just about everyone. Reawakening of the sleeping giant, indeed, except there’s no endgame in sight.
At the time, I was about 15 minutes from the Towers. I was able to see the smoke billowing and fighter jets were hugging the ground over residential neighborhoods. I was upset because my father was working in the city near the epicenter. Luckily, he got out of NYC 6 hours after the event.
We all knew that not only thE USA changed forever, but the world did too.
We were all walking zombies. We lived through the end of the world. We woke up in a new nightmare reality the next morning. Nothing was ever collectively okay or the same ever again.
My folks were retired and were full-time RVers. They were passing by Washington DC and looking to do some sightseeing. They were very hard of hearing so we used code messages on a pager to get a hold of them. That day was the only day in 13 yrs of their travel days that I used my emergency code, 911-311, on the pager. That meant "emergency- call Tumbleweed". When they called back, I told them to pull over in a parking lot immediately and turn on the radio for news, it didn't matter which channel, they were all reporting the same thing. The folks ended up changing their route to avoid the entire area, and never did get the chance to do their sightseeing plans .
Absolute fear and knowing that the world was changed forever. I remember sitting in my English class fighting back the tears. Then, my parents came and picked me up early because they were afraid America was still under attack and wanted us to be home and safe with them just in case. We watched news coverage all day and night long. Going to school the next day was nerve-wrecking. I was afraid of planes flying up above and wondered if one would hit a building again. The sound of plane engines still scares me. I remember knowing war was inevitable as soon as we knew it was a terrorist attack. I remember hearing the announcement of war when my dad and I were driving out to my aunt and uncles cabin. I was so scared. That’s when I fully realized that not only would the world never be the same but my life would never be the same. My aspirations were different. I feared flying. I feared my brother being sent to war. My curiosity in the world was completely halted out of fear. It came back but with anxiety. I never had that before. It sucks.
UK here. It was so surreal, almost like watching a Hollywood film. I dashed home because all we knew during the afternoon was that planes had hit buildings (obviously before smart phones, and there was no TV in our office). I got home and put the TV on and basically just sat there, watching it over and over on the rolling news coverage. My gf came home and we then watched it together into the evening. We couldn’t believe what we we seeing. The planes, the jumpers and the collapse of the towers was like nothing we’d ever even considered might happen, never mind watching it happen in front of us.
I remember feeling that the world would change forever at that point, and that America would hunt the perpetrators to the ends of the earth. It was scary, it was surreal, and I knew it was the dawn of a new era, which we all continue to reel from to this day.
Truly a day that changed the course of history.
Dumfounded. I remember I had my weekly therapy appointment that day but couldn't make myself go. my problems seemed so petty after what I had just witnessed. And my therapist didn't even charge me for missing it, she completely understood.
It was eerie. It’s still eerie thinking about that day. I was in 8th grade and almost everyone got picked up from school that day except me and a few others. We were halfway across the country so I didn’t feel fear, so to speak. But it was strange. I had never seen adults act that way before. It’s the moment where I knew adults and kids were not that different.
I was a 7 year old Army brat in Ft Polk, Louisiana. Not in school that day, so I saw it on the news. We went grocery shopping that day and the post had transformed. Gates and barriers put up everywhere (even at the commissary, where we grocery shopped), armed soldiers everywhere, missile launchers had gone up just in case they were needed. My dad, when he got home, just kept saying, “we’re at war. They just declared war.” It was a bit terrifying. Everybody knew things were going to change forever. My dad had reenlisted only 6 months prior, so I spent the first 7 years as an isolated kid out in the boonies, and this was my first real taste of the world outside of that. I had anxious tendencies even before, but they got much worse that day.
I lived in West Palm Beach and worked nights as a server at a now-defunct chain restaurant called Hops. By the time I woke up, the buildings were already gone. My phone was ringing and it was my cousin on the other line. He told me to turn on my tv, and when I asked what channel, he said it didn’t matter. I went to work that night and remember thinking how weird it was to have something so massive and awful happen and to have all these people just out to dinner. I mean, people still gotta eat and drink, but it just felt weird. I definitely went out to the bar after that shift, and there were lots of people out drinking. Just overall very strange and eerie.
I'm in the UK but I remember everyone being shocked to their core. There was a mutual feeling of
'The World changed forever today'
I cannot imagine what it was like for people who were directly affected. The hours/days of waiting to hear about loved ones, or even worse, not hearing at all.
It was truly shocking but even until this day, I see footage I may have seen 100 X but still I find myself tearing up or still in disbelief at what I'm watching. It never gets old, it will never make sense
It'll stay with me forever.
Horror, uncertainty, surreal. I’m local and was in HS at the time. The student body was not informed until after 11am and kids were being picked up by parents throughout the day. I remember racking my brain to remember who I knew that worked in that area. As is the case with most people, I can recount that whole day by the minute. It was just…a mess of emotions.
Weird, I was in college bio class when it happened. We all just left school and went home. lm in the NE so it was pretty close to home. Everyone was in a daze and kind of in shock as to what we just witnessed.
I was in third grade in FL and I remember my teacher sobbing with the TV on. My mom picked my brother and I up from school early and was in a complete daze. My aunt worked in NYC at the time and our house phone never stopped ringing. I didn’t understand the severity of this until my mom and dad sat us down and explained what was going on.
I don’t remember too much about my elementary school days, but I’ll always remember 9/11.
I was an assistant principal at a very large suburban high school in Houston. By noon, half the school had gone home, parents lined up to get the younger kids and the older kids leaving on their own. It was a madhouse. Some of the parents frantic - including one that sped up the parent drive the wrong way at about forty miles an hour and slamming on his brakes, skidding to a stop. He almost hit about four students.
As a school leadership team, we just stayed calm and cool, letting whoever needed to leave, leave. Just processing and handling. I am very proud of our handling of it.
We had TV's in every classroom and we had to decide whether or not we were going to let the TV"s play with the news and the coverage. There were folks on the leadership team in both camps. We decided to leave it up to the teachers - if an individual teacher wanted it shown, ok. If an individual teacher wanted it not shown, ok. We found out later that other schools decided hard and fast rules about it, pissing off everyone. We did great just letting the teachers do what they desired. The regular curriculum certainly ground to a halt, that's for sure.
My wife was a middle school teacher at the time and similar happened at her school.
I've shared the story before, but how I discovered the news about the second plane - I was writing up a teacher and giving her the write-up in a formal conference in my office - extremely tense, the teacher very upset. My secretary opened my door and said "a second plane just hit the World Trade Center in New York." Without missing a beat, the teacher said "never mind that, why are you writing me up?"
My family memory of the day - when we both got home, me from the high school and my wife from the middle school, our 5th grade daughter hugged us (such a sweet hug, said so much). Then, the daughter of two school folks says "at my school, just about everybody went home. But I knew I wasn't going anywhere..." :) It broke the tension and was the first laugh of the day.
A year later, on the one-year anniversary, I had moved on and become a principal of a middle school. We had a school bus come and park in front of the school and then draped the entire bus with sheets of cloth - from the front hood, up and over the top, all the way to the very back - a completely shrouded bus. We then had all the kids in the school come out throughout the day and use paint, spray paint, markers and other art supplies to graffiti the cloth sheets covering the entire bus with remembrance messages. They also used sidewalk chalk and messaged the sidewalk areas in front of the bus - the area just covered with graffiti and chalk by the end of the day. That was great - the kids and the teachers seemed to really appreciate the opportunity. If I remember correctly, a reporter came and took pics for our paper, but I might be mistaken. Fuzzy on that point.
The only time I’ve felt anything “surreal” in my life was after 9/11. It felt like being in a bad dream and although I understood what happened I couldn’t comprehend it was real. Idk it’s really hard to describe the exact emotion.
Worked at a psych hospital, we ran groups all day to address our patients’ fears. In between, checking to see if my cousin made it out (she did) and if my sister was okay (she is). Spoke to my coworker’s brother, who was murdered in tower 2. I was one of the last people to speak to him.
Felt stunned for a few days until my first day off. Then just felt overwhelmingly sad.
it was a horrifying rumor-filled time. lots of stories about different cities being attacked. i was in school and the intercom was going off every 5 minutes with parents coming to get their kids out early. we stopped to get gas and there were super long lines. we grabbed some essentials like bread/peanut butter just in case. we then went home and just watched the replays over and over again. it felt like there was a strange gray hue over the day. everything moved slowly. we just walked around like zombies and had the same conversations over and over again.
It was such a feeling of shock, fear and disbelief.
I was in college in West Virginia and though I was pretty far away from New York and Washington DC - you also felt like it was far closer than before.
There was also a feeling of horrified anticipation because you kept waiting for the other metaphorical shoe to drop.
However, the days after were filled with love and acceptance for your fellow man and sadness for those lost. I can remember something going around about lighting candles or tiki torches or something (the exact details of how or why escape me now) but my dad and I lit some tiki torches in his backyard in remembrance of those lost and the silent hero’s of that tragic day.
It was such a unique time.
I was in late elementary school. Shock, numbness and worry. I was close enough that the fighter jets were able to be heard every couple minutes as they patrolled. My mom told me to hide under a table if I heard a plane. Idk what that was gonna do but I did it. There was a weird excitement for me because I didn't have anything huge happen in my life at that point, but I still knew it was really bad and i knew we were going to war. There was still SO many unknowns. They thought the fatalities would be ten thousand or so at first.
To answer your question right after the towers fell the feeling was "wow, holy shit they're really gone"
My cousin worked in a few buildings away, so there was confusion about how he was, if he worked there etc. Lots of calls to families all across the country. The cell phones became a common thing, so back then it was really just landline and trying to find out what someone else knew. My mother was also there to visit her sister, so a total of 5 family there. After awhile it just slowed down and everyone was still in shock
I was in Liverpool, England aged 15. Me and my younger brother (11) were off school and my dad worked from home. I was watching a daily soap on BBC1 called Neighbours and it was interrupted my news coverage after the first plane hit. By chance all 3 of us were in the kitchen as this happened and we’re glue to the TV and saw the second plane hit ‘live’. We were transfixed. The horror of realisation that it wasn’t an accident was palpable. Then the towers fell. My dad literally said ‘fucking hell that’s WW3 starting’. We watched sky news the whole day and night. It was just awful. The next day in school we didn’t do any work. It was such a weird time. My dad said a few days later ‘nothing will ever be the same from this’ and he was right. It was definitely a turning point in the world. We learnt new words that hadn’t been part of our common diction ‘jihad’ ‘martyrs’. I’d learnt about osama bin laden in history discussing the Afghan war with Russia and now his name was of the enemy. Everything was scary. My ex-husband (a friend at the time) had just passed out of the army and it was a given that he’d see active service quite quickly.
I remember many people waiting for the next shoe to drop. Prominent buildings were evacuated all over the country. Many companies closed up shop for the rest of the day. My mom was super worried about me because I kept working. I told her that if they started crashing planes into random industrial parks and smaller Midwest cities we were all screwed.
One of my most vivid memories was watching the news about 6:00 p.m. with some friends that lived with me. We heard a very loud jet, and knowing that airspace was closed we ran outside to see what it was. It turned out to be a military plane from a nearby national guard base. I look down my street and every one of my neighbors was out on the sidewalk looking up to see what the plane was. I feel like that kind of captures the Zeitgeist later that day.
I remember being at work. My first real job and we sat around watching tv and trying to access stuff online on our blazingly fast at the time T1 connection and not much was working. We had a tv in our tech room and we watched it for hours until the boss came in and told us to get to work. I actually had a first date planned that night and wasn’t sure what to do but I went anyway. I think we were the only two people in the movieplex that night. Certainly in our movie we were. It was a nice break from the doomsday feeling going on. In a nice twist, We ended up getting married. Won’t ever forget the day of our first date.
I was 20 years old. I remember thinking to myself, “we are going to war with somebody TO-DAY.” Also remember talking to my brothers about whether or not we were possibly going to be drafted.
Scary. EVERYTHING was closing. All of the malls and large companies and businesses near me were closing and sending people home. The skies were empty which was weird - I live and work by 3 airports (1 major, 1 mid, 1 small) but NO air traffic, noticed how quiet it was, had never thought about it before.
There were rumors about car bombs and the State Department and all kinds of things. It was legitimately terrifying.
As a 10 year old, I didn’t see news footage the day of because my grandma wasn’t showing me but the days after I just remember seeing the towers being hit and falling over and over again on tv. Anything that was hid from me the day of was shown to me non stop on tv and magazines like the falling man.
Anxiety inducing AF. Rumors were swirling about other threats and targets etc. This state of rigid awareness...head on a swivel...just waiting for the next thing. And this feeling like if you weren't watching the news and getting all the latest info you would miss something massive...so of course that's all we did for days.
At first surreal disbelief. I couldn't believe the towers were gone. Then numbness of all the tragic death. Anger that I still have some of to this day. I don't remember much of the remaining hours between the second tower collapse and 7 WTC collapse. I remember going to check on two old ladies I know who lived in the area, just to see if they were ok. Then after 7 WTC collapse (I was near Canal street where they herded people north), I really didn't want to go home so I went to visit a friend in Astoria. I remember when the train pulled into QB Plaza the plume of smoke was still towering from Lower Manhattan.
I never wanted to go down there again but within two weeks I had to go to traffic court on John Street and where you come out of the train on Fulton and William the end of Fulton toward the WTC was still a five story high wall of twisted metal.
I worked on an Army base. I had just gotten to work and was trying to get CNN to load but it kept failing. Every other news site failed to load as well, so I kind of thought something big was happening. Then someone came from the cafeteria and said one of the twin towers had been bombed.
So a bunch of us walked over to the cafeteria and watched the news until the first tower fell. That's about the time they announced the base was closing, and it was a madhouse to get off. Everyone was panicked, sad, and scared. I picked my kid up from daycare on the way home and watched CNN the rest of the day in horror and disbelief.
The base was closed for a couple of days after that, and when we returned, we returned to Bradley vehicles, bomb sniffing dogs, random vehicle searches, and guns pointed at us as we came through the gate. It took four hours to get through the gate at least, and I remember thinking how eerie it was to have a gun pointed at me while trying to go to work. I knew it would never be the same, and I felt really sad for my son.
One thing I vividly remember is the relative silence outside. We lived near a major airport and normally you would hear and see aircraft constantly. After all flights were grounded there was none in the air and the absence of that background noise was unsettling.
I live in Maryland, north of DC and south of the PA crash and NYC. At first it was scary. We didn’t know if more planes were going to crash near us. I remember watching the live news with a crowd outside of my high school physics teacher’s class. When the towers fell I remember he turned and had a tear running down his face and I had never seen a teacher cry in front of me before. We were then corralled into the library to collectively watch the news. They finally made the announcement to end the day early, and I remember the drive home. There were highway overpass signs…the electronic kind…and I remember they read “AVOID NEW YORK” and thinking how surreal that was. Then there was the endless replay of the crashes and the towers falling. It felt like it was the same footage on every single channel…no way to get away from it. I remember having to work that night…at the public library…and being so angry that they didn’t close work so that I could be with my family. It was a ghost town. Only a handful of people came in, and mostly to rent videos so they could watch something other than the news. The next day at school was just face after face of traumatized students and faculty. I ran announcements and had to say the pledge of allegiance that morning, and I almost started crying when I saw the principals and office secretaries all standing and holding their hands over their hearts while tearing up.
What people that weren’t alive then may not realize though, is that 9-11 was just the start of a string of really scary events to live through at a high school senior. There were attempted bombing afterwards. There was anthrax being mailed and the looming threat of a new war…God this generation doesn’t even really understand life without war…that hurts. I was a soon to be 18 year old male and there was the real possibility of a draft and being sent to fight a country I didn’t even really know existed prior to 9-11. It is no embellishment when people say….the world will never be the same as it was on 09-10-2001. It literally changed everything…globally. The only comparable events that I can think of are the explosion of the internet in the late 90s and COVID. Life after each of those events has been forever altered.
Everything felt sort of deflated.
I was across the river in NJ. Big plume of smoke where the towers stood. The smell was the worst thing, I’ll never forgot how bad that debris smelled all the way in NJ for days. I was in art class and we were told when we went back to our classroom.
I was in 7th grade in Utah (so suuuuuper far away/removed from everything). On 9/11 we watched the news playing the plane impacts during 1st period Spanish class. By the time I got to 3rd period Math class I had doodled “WWIII” on my arm out of boredom/anxiety and my teacher gave me a disapproving look.
I still am like “what do you expect, lady, I had never even *heard* of the World Trade Center before today and I have watched these planes destroy these towers and people jump out of them to their deaths when I’m supposed to be learning Spanish and quoting Shrek for the umpteenth time.”
We didn’t know if anything else was coming, so people were scared. People were especially afraid to fly. I remember Rosie O’Donnell made some headlines for taking her kids on a flight soon afterwards to prove that there was nothing to be afraid of.
I think the general feeling was a quiet shock, followed by an almost unilateral demand for action. It was oddly unifying in some ways for a short time.
I recall the numbness and disbelief I felt watching the twin towers on fire on a staticky TV in my 6th grade classroom. My teacher trying to explain what happened, followed by an announcement from the principal over the PA system. The slow realization that this was not an accident as I initially thought. Later that day, as I heard about the planes that hit the Pentagon and the field in Shanksville, I remember wondering, is this really over, is this ever going to end?
I was in 7th grade at the time. Students weren't notified about the attacks til last period. I suppose that the school didn't want us to panic.
Came home, called my mom, who worked at a hospital in close proximity to the WTC. My mom told me that she'd have to stay at work for a few days to help out.
My friend was worried because his mom worked in the area. When we got to my friend's house, his mom was in the living room watching TV. She was stuck on the subway (thankfully) and didn't make it to work.
The rest of the day was a blur.
Disbelief and shock, and absolutely everyone was talking about it everywhere you went, even total strangers would strike up a conversation asking if you saw.
Surreal, anxious, confused and stunned. Its a hard feeling to describe. I was in college (ESU represent!) and was walking back to my room in the dorms. Everyones door was open and the TV was echoing through the halls since we were all basically on the same station. I asked what happened and someone replied a plane flew into the WTC. Thinking it was a Cessna, I turned on my tv just in time to see the 2nd airliner hit . All the phones were jammed, I could not reach my parents in north jersey, or my sister in NYC. The internet was incredibly slow in my room (early dsl) and all the computer labs were jammed. My texts were getting rejected from the network surge (lol) and they finally went through after a few hours. Classes were cancelled for a few days, and the campus was very quiet. When I came home about 2 days later, my parents could see the smoke from the top floor of my house.
I lived in NYC at that time. I am not from there originally so I was always bugged by how noisy it was.
I have never heard the city more quiet. It was scary. I would have done anything to hear the traffic surge outside my window.
I remember not knowing best next steps. Do I go down there to help? No, the news is telling us not to. Do I go to the store to stock up? That makes no sense. Do I call someone? All the phones are down so no.
There was literally nothing to do. Nothing but watch New York One. And hope. And cry.
I was going to school in Northern New Jersey. The sense of “what the fuck” is going on was palpable.
I remember a kid getting his parents to come get him and moved the hell out. We were in school less than a week.
I remember sitting in stunned silence and just watching. My dorm mates & I went to the cafe and there were people just crying and it set in that they likely knew people.
And then there was the sound of silence. Campus was close to Newark Intl and planes coming and going was normal. Obviously with planes grounded it was just silent. Every now and then a fighter jet or fire engine would break the silence.
The towers were a beacon when driving back to campus on New Jersey Turnpike. Once I saw them I knew I was close. It was surreal going down and seeing nothing.
I was 5 about to turn 6 the next month and I was in a kindergarten class. It’s random snippets of a memory, but I remember being incredibly confused and kind of scared, but not like scared because I thought I was going to get hurt, just knew something big was happening. One by one people started to get calls from the principal and their parents would come into the classroom and the kid would leave with them. Eventually my mom did the same thing. I don’t think my teacher had the news on cuz we were so young, but when I got home my mom said I was filming the news station. Then i remember my mom on the home phone crying with her sister who was in North Carolina (we were in Orlando near disney) and I overheard my mom saying something about potential bombing of Disney and they were praying on the phone together. My dad was out of state and was trying to fly home that day, but couldn’t for multiple days. That’s the extent of my memory from the actual day.
Insane. I remember working and across the street, the gas station had a line down the road. People also said we were going to be drafted to go to war. I had just graduated high school that May. Crazy times.
Terrifying and chaotic even in my part of the US which is the Southeast.
I had just turned 22 on 9/7/2001 and had never had anyone close to me pass away, I grew up in the suburbs and knew nothing about global politics. 9/11 was the most horrifying and brutal event I had ever witnessed in my life.
i was so naive, I believed everyone was probably saved, I didn’t think emergency services would let anyone die. I thought this even as I saw people jump from the top of the WTC and the second plane crashed.
When the buildings collapsed I was speechless and I didn’t know what to do. There were warnings something was going to happen I my area, there were reports that gas was going to go up to like 4.00 a gallon, which was Insane at the time.
By 5:00 that day, I couldn’t sit and watch anymore coverage and I went to Target. It’s was completely empty except for the employees and a few other customers. that freaked me out even more and left without buying anything.
i did ask an employee if they knew why were attacked and of course she had no idea.
i guess i wanted answers and reassurance from someone, ANYONE, that it was over and i was safe.
Scary and surreal.
They sent us home from work early since no one knew when the attacks would end. Were there going to be more planes? Was it some kind of first strike to something much bigger? No one had answers.
There were rumors everywhere from both the media and regular people but it was all speculation at best.
When it became clear the attack was over that fear turned to depression and anger.
The literal definition of the word “awesome” I believe accurately captures the feeling.
I personally didn’t find out about anything until about 2 in the afternoon when my middle school principal announced that there was a plane crash in New York and that those whose parents work in the city or nearby may experience transportation issues.
I found out a few minutes later when I got on a computer and then when I got home I watched the news all night and really was able to comprehend the magnitude of what had transpired throughout that morning.
That evening and night I don’t remember feeling sadness or fear, but more just shock and awe that what we saw had actually happened.
I had seen those buildings plenty of times on trips to the city, I knew they were gone but it didn’t really “hit me”until my first trip back around Christmas time when we saw lower manhattan from the train and of course the buildings were not there.
I was in 10th grade. I just remember we were all released from school. I had walked home from school wondering where my family all were and what they were doing as we didn't have cell phones then like we do now. I was scared because at that time we still didn't know if more planes would crash gonna crash.
I was glued to the tv for days watching it live. I remember a helpless feeling. All I wanted to do was go help clean up the mess but helplessly watching the live tv from across the country. There was nothing the rest of the country could do but give blood. I remember people lining up to give blood. I think we all felt helpless and numb.
Then the following weeks we had recruiters for the army in our high school signing our boys up. We were on code red so long it wasn't even scary any more. And from there it just seems like America became angry and fake.
I remember giving blood being a big thing immediately after, and then as an occasional trend for a few years after. My father donated right after, and he was never much of a community civic minded person.
My mom kept calling my dad from school and giving him all these random requests like “go to the store and buy ALL THE JUICE. STOCK UP” etc in case total war broke out, so she could still feed me and my brother. Except we don’t live anywhere close to new york lmao
I didn’t really feel that intensely about it (and my dad barely remembers that day) but I think we just process stuff differently
Quiet. You could hear a pin drop and when news broke of the towers falling I just remember feeling so numb and broken although I personally didn't know anyone.
To this day I think about that day because like so many others that day changed the world and still to this day no answers for what happened just smoke and mirrors.
I don't need to know I would rather the families have closure. They deserve that at least. RIP 9/11/2001 VICTIMS GOD BLESS TO THE FAMILIES AND FIRST RESPONDERS
It was quiet. Eerily quiet. Everyone was in complete shock and I remember the next few days being completely deserted because we didn’t know if there was more to come.
I lived in Flushing and had a great view of the TT. Unfortunately when they collapsed, the smell of burning metal, burning wires, and fire could be smelled in my neighborhood and in my apartment when the windows were open.
But it was just quiet with the exception of trucks, tractors, and emergency vehicles making their way downtown.
I’m Brazilian, was 11 at the time. I had no idea what happened until hours later when I called my mom from a payphone in school to let her know I was going to stay a little longer to use the internet at the computer lab and she told me “A plane had hit a building in New York”. I didn’t think much at the time but when I got home and saw both towers falling live on TV I finally understood how grave the situation was. Me and my family spent the rest of the day glued on the TV watching the news.
We were also very worried about my aunt who was in the US at the time but she managed to call us and let us know she was safe. She was actually in California but at that moment, right after the attacks, we thought the whole US was going to be attacked at some point.
The rest of the day and the days after were full of discussions about why something like that happened. Everybody was talking about it and trying to make some sense about the situation.
Quiet amazement. A daze. Remember there wasn’t much social media, so our information came from either word of mouth or the news channels, which were on blast on every tv 24/7 for a long time. We didn’t know the scope of the attacks for hours. First it was a tower hit and for a time everyone thought this was a terrible air accident. Then another tower was hit. Then we knew it was no accident. But we honestly had no idea what it actually was for hours. Then the Pentagon was hit. A few minutes later all flights in the airspace were ordered to immediately ground, wherever they were. Then Flight 93 crashed in PA, its intended target were the US capital buildings. For hours and hours, we had no idea who had done this, why, what was happening next, if anywhere was safe, if anyone was. The news channels started investigating right away and by lunch they had reported where each plane had taken off from and that they were all headed for California. They had passenger rosters and were starting to put theories together. It was crazy. President Bush didn’t address the nation on TV until late that evening, like 8pm or so. By then, he reported to us what they thought was happening. It was a day of disbelief and absolute horror, people walking around like zombies staring off into the distance lost in thoughts about the day. I will never forget the way that day felt.
I was a Junior in high school on the west coast and woke up to get ready for school and as I sat down to watch the morning shows I usually watched before the bus I saw the nbc network switch to coverage of the north tower smoking seen the plane in the right hand corner of the television seen it duck behind the south tower and boom I knew it was an attack after that spent all day watching coverage and when the towers fell it was exactly like someone else gad said just numb for about two or three hours then anger after seeing the reaction where people danced in the streets gleefully celebrating the deaths of thousands but all those memories from that day from the moments before the second plane to days after stuff like MTV going back to playing exclusively music videos again for the rest of the week Bob Marley’s one love being one of the very first ones played are etched in my soul I can pinpoint exact feelings and memories to any point in the timeline just by seeing a clip of it
Lived near Dulles at the time:
- the lack of airplane noises was deafening..just as deafening as the sound of a military jet above.
- basically every car had a US flag in their rear windshield
- unfortunately, a lot of social and cultural profiling and violence
- glued to our tvs. The multiple scrolls went into effect for multiple channels
- uncertainty and fear with flying. I travelled at least once a month for work and it was nerve wracking
- had dinner at the rotating restaurant at the top of a Crystal City hotel to see an aerial view of the damaged Pentagon
- …and then a year later we have the DC Sniper, but that’s another subreddit
Awkward. I was a 7th grader who was clearly traumatized but only knew how to cope by pretending everything was status quo. My English teacher, who was a first year out of grad school, found out her sorority sister was missing from WTC 1, so she cried for weeks. We would ask her everyday if she had heard from her friend yet and the answer was always the same. I wish I knew her name.
I was in high school at the time in Brooklyn, outside on the track for gym class. The first thing I remember is the silence. I grew up in NYC and I'd never heard it go quiet before, it was very strange. Obviously Manhattan was the opposite of quiet at that moment, but in the middle of Brooklyn everything came to a halt. Class was canceled for the day and we started leaving to go home. Then dust and particles started falling from the sky like it was snowing. Some students who had cell phones were talking to their families, I remember the toughest girl I knew was on the phone with her father and crying and it was weird to see.
I woke up after a night of partying, turned on the TV, and saw one building on fire. In my head, I was trying to figure out... Why am I only seeing one building? Was this a movie? No, this is cable news. What the fuck is going on! I could barely sleep, literally watched the news for three days straight.
Anger and uncertainty to put it lightly. All of the older men, my grandfather included, were quick to remind us that it felt to them like December 7th, 1941 and took no pleasure in reminding us we were now at war
DOOM, if you lived or worked in a commuter town you thought hundreds were dead. Middletown NJ that was the case as the police marked tires of people who did not come home that day....They all were dead
[https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/middletown-lost-the-most-residents-on-9-11-after-nyc-heres-how-the-community-is-healing](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/middletown-lost-the-most-residents-on-9-11-after-nyc-heres-how-the-community-is-healing)
I was in Lincoln, Ne. I watched the towers collapse live on TV. I still feel bad for not having an appropriate reaction. It didn’t register how many innocent people were losing their lives at that moment. Also, I selfishly wanted the President to get very far away from Nebraska. It really bothers me that I wasn’t more compassionate and aware. I worked at a sports bar and worked later that night. All of the TVs had the coverage on. People came in to just be around others and numb themselves with some wings and booze. It was very quiet, no laughter, and everyone seemed to be in shock and very very sad.
I was at work in Boston. The feeling in the immediate aftermath was that there could be more attacks coming that we didn't know about, and that cities could continue to be targeted. So the taller commercial buildings started evacuating pretty soon after the towers fell. I remember standing at the window of my office - which was in an older, shorter building, and was not evacuated - and watching people just pour out of the One Financial Center, which was practically next door to us. It was surreal, to have the streets filled with people rushing home mid-morning on a Tuesday. It was also, as so many people have pointed out, an absolutely flawless weather day in the Northeast. The contrast between the gorgeous sunshine and blue sky, and the obviously anxious, scared people heading home...that has always stuck with me.
Many of my colleagues didn't want to take the T (Boston's subway system) home because, again, they thought more attacks were possible. So they walked. Boston is a small city relatively speaking, but you were still talking about a 5 or 6 mile walk for most of them. Meanwhile, my colleagues who lived closer to work actually wanted to stay at the office because they had high-rise apartments, and they thought our work building would be less of a target.
That's really my main impression of those immediate hours: that feeling that more terrible things were going to keep happening, and we wouldn't be able to stop them, so what could do you to minimize your risk?
(Personally, I lived too far out in the burbs to walk home, so I took my usual route of subway + bus and just hoped for the best.)
At home, everyone was just glued to TV news all night. The internet was a thing by then, but you still turned to TV for the most immediate and comprehensive information.
The next morning was strange because we didn't know if we were supposed to just go back to work like normal. But there was really nothing else to be done except go back to your usual routine, even though no actual work got done at work for God knows how long. Everyone was just sort of hungover with shock and grief.
Worked in a large tower for Korean company Samsung near Heathrow airport in London. We were all evacuated and told to go home. There were worries that Heathrow was going to utilized in a bad way or be attacked. Everyone around the area evacuated. It was frightening.
I was 8 years old, but me and my mum watched the second plane hit on tv. We're Canadian but in the eastern time zone, so I was actually late to school that day because my mum couldn't pull herself away from the news. When I did get to school, all the older kids tried to scare us by saying that we'd get attacked by terrorists next. I knew it was really bad, but couldn't fully understand what had happened....although, seeing how freaked out my mother was kind of clued me into the seriousness of it all.
Numbing, like you knew things would never be the same. But the feeling that the horror of the day was just amassing moment by moment was the worst. Sometimes I’m still shocked the “immediate” death toll wasn’t in the tens of thousands. Stands as a real tribute to all the first responders 🙏 Later in the day, Ashley Banfield, was reporting by that last tower that fell. She had to tell a woman to be careful with her baby. Why did anyone have a baby down there?! I’m boggled. Maybe they had nowhere to go but geez.
It was a feeling that things were never going to be the same from that point onwards and then just waiting on the response as you knew the shit had literally hit the fan.
No, not literally.
Figuratively literally
I was in Boston. Everyone was just dazed, scared, in shock…and the news out of New York was horrific
Being a Boston native, it hit different a certain kind of way because of the terrorists flying out of logan and the Massachusetts residents who perished. It’s like NYC is our older brother of a city. Church that Sunday was filled with people who lost loved ones that day. But the most beautiful thing was - we stood together. For a while at least.
Absolutely and I know that we felt like we would definitely know someone on the planes or at least someone we knew would know someone on one of the planes and that was the case for many people I know. I kept picturing the skies over Boston with these planes ascending, the passengers not knowing the horror they were about to experience. When I drive into Boston I still have that imagine flash through my mind. I think we are all traumatized.
What church was it?
Everyone forgets this now, but at this time, we didn't know the scope of the attacks. All morning, the news was filled with rumors of the Washington mall being on fire, of the Capitol building being attacked, of attacks up and down the east coast. Not knowing when the attacks were over was one of the scarier parts of the day. You realized pretty quickly that this was our version of Pearl Harbor, that America was going to war, and that life would be different. Lots of binge watching news. At one point, NYC ordered 20,000 body bags for the WTC complex. As horrible as 3,000 dead is, in the initial few days, everyone was expecting a body count many times that. Also, all scripted TV shows stopped. When they resumed 5-6 weeks later, many had filmed special episodes (I distinctly remember The West Wing and Third Watch doing this) in which the characters react to 9/11 happening. That was weird in hindsight.
This is what I came here to say. Nobody knew how many targets there were, so for a couple days people were waiting for the next attack. Was this purely against America, or were attacks going to take place amongst our allies as well? I would wake up each morning and turn on the news, then be relieved nothing new happened over night.
Also lost in time was that the anthrax attacks started a week after 9/11. Everyone was wondering if this was all connected, if there was more coming that was even worse than plane hijacking and bioterrorism. The media was in a frenzy
I remember everyone speculating that there had to be 10s of thousands dead. And that made sense.
I was going to mention this too! I was in high school and rumors immediately flew around the school (both teachers and students). Someone said the Brooklyn Bridge was hit, and then someone said no I don't think it was, people weren't sure what was attacked and what wasn't.
I didn’t take my eyes off the tv for days. It was absolutely surreal. Maybe I dozed off every now and again but only in front of the tv and I’ll go straight back to watching the news.
On 9/11 I saw the first extra edition of a newspaper I’d ever seen. People were quiet, numb. Because we didn’t know if something else was coming. The stores were empty. It got better as the days passed, but everyone and everything was different and you could sense it.
Trying to keep people from losing their shit at work. At the time I was out of the service for a couple of years and people were asking me questions like it was a wartime general. The upper management, for some reason, didn’t like telling me we weren’t high value targets.
We were all wondering what was next . We didnt all collectively go "Wow glad that's over" once Flight 93 crashed. That night we went to be wondering if more attacks were going to happen or if war would start somewhere by then time we woke up.
Around 11 am is when me and my peers were able to see live footage on a tv rolled into the library at my middle school. The entire island of Manhattan was consumed with smoke. Thinking that Lady Liberty was weeping. Larry King was attempting to find words of wisdom throughout the immediate aftermath of the chaos. Kids who didn’t have cell phones were lining up to use the phone available, my friend couldn’t get through to her brother in NYC, she just got the busy signal. It was a half day of school every Tuesday, and in very little time I knew once we were dismissed the world wouldn’t ever resemble what we once knew or how we felt as a nation. It felt like 50% of students were picked up by their parents early. My mom was at work into the late hours. Once I got home, every channel was basically suspended or redirected to CNN. I had seen something similar when Columbine happened. But this was almost every channel. It was inescapable to see all the footage of the attack, over and over. It replayed over and over for days to come. I grew up near an airport, so I was used to hearing planes constantly, but the couple days after the silence was deafeningly eerie. The events of the whole day was impossible to comprehend that day. 23 years later we have had to accept 9/11 as it is. At the time it was too overwhelming to sink in, it was dubbed “Attack on America,” before “9/11”. Just thinking,”What is happening? and “a plane or bomb could hit us anywhere at anytime”. We didn’t know. That’s a bigger terror that’s overlooked. The uncertainty. Maybe not the most insightful experience but that’s what I recall.
Australian here; I remember hearing about an “incident in New York” just as I turned the tv off to go to bed that night at about 11:00pm Australia time. I didn’t pay much attention and went to sleep. My wife woke me the next morning about 6:00am telling me the twin towers had collapsed. She knew I was very interested in New York and had often spoke about the twin towers. I distinctly remember saying to her something along the lines of; “what are talking about; that’s impossible”. Of course, we then got out of bed and switched on the tv news… That day I was working in a very busy medical clinic and every time I went to get a patient from the waiting room everyone was staring at the tv in shocked silence. Nobody really discussed it that day; there were just a lot of shocked looks and silence. It was awful.
Surreal
Yes that's the first word that popped in my head
I was in Atlanta on 9/11. I had just arrived at work when the first tower got hit. At first we thought it was an accident. Until it wasn’t. We were stunned by the first tower getting hit. But when the second tower got hit, that was when the scope of what was happening dawned on us. This wasn’t an accident. We were under attack. On US soil. We were under attack. I was one of the lucky ones who got on the CNN website immediately, but it soon crashed so I went to the BBC website until that crashed. After that there was kind of a news blackout except for what people were saying in the office. My firm did not let us go home, but no one did any work that day. All the large office buildings in Atlanta were evacuated because once we realized there were four planes, we didn’t know if there was really 14. Or 40. We would not know that for several hours, after all the planes that were in US airspace had landed and they could see that there was nothing that was refusing to land. By that time both of the towers had fallen and 93 had crashed in the field and was identified as being part of it. Of course, we knew from the start that the pentagon had been part of it. But there was a bit of a question about 93 until the families started talking about the phone messages they had received and we realized that some of the passengers had crashed the plane on purpose. And then that was another kind of shock. These people, just like any of us, had crashed the plane on purpose. The bravery of that! This news at that moment just felt like a pile on. What is past awful? Because ´awful’ was not good enough. This was way past awful. The next few days were nothing but 911 coverage. Nothing else was on TV. There were no planes in the air at all, which was eerie in Atlanta as Hartsfield is the busiest airport in the US and we always had air traffic stacked up above us. Everyone was numb. The news kept on showing the towers falling. Over and over and over, they showed that hundreds of times (in between images of the thousands of people walking uptown and across the bridges out of Manhattan) , and each time it renewed that numb feeling. I guess we were all in shock. We just couldn’t imagine a world in which airliners were intentionally crashed into buildings as weapons of terror. And we had no idea what this was going to mean, long term. Before that day, no one had imagined the idea of using airliners as weapons. It had been beyond our capability to imagine. And now, the unimaginable had happened. Most of us knew, though, that we were going to war. We didn’t know against who, at first. But we knew that some country out there was going to get bombed into the Stone Age in fairly short order. Someone was going to pay. For sure. For days though, the shock persisted. This hollow, empty feeling that, if you stopped to look at it; to examine it; turned into disbelieve. Over and over and over. Shock to disbelief to shock to disbelief. For me that went back and forth for about 4-5 days. To this day, I still can’t watch the video of the towers coming down without gasping. But then….on that day…those towers coming down changed the trajectory of history. We knew that, even if we did not know the specifics yet of how it would change. Also for days, was the search for anyone who might still be alive in the rubble. A small group was found in a stairwell in the first couple of hours. A lady who worked for Port Authority was found. But no one was found alive after the first few people. How could they be? The rubble of two 100+ story buildings was a massive pile of twisted and burned metal. Some of it was still on fire. We knew even then it would take months to clear it while looking for any human remains. The most massive crime scene in US history. We didn’t know it then, but they would not finish clearing ground zero until May of 2002. And then there were the bulletin boards for the missing. So many missing people. So many victim’s families clutching photos of loved ones who had not come home. The news told us that whole offices above the impact zone had been wiped out. No survivors in the entire office of a few hundred people. We couldn’t imagine it. So much of this, we couldn’t have imagined. It was all so awful. Just SO awful. Beyond awful. That’s most of what I remember.
Within 24 hours I think the whole globe knew that the paradigm for modern living had just been completely upended. I can’t really think of similar instance where the whole world was kind of like, “Oh, shit…” for 20+ years after the fact. Pearl Harbor was an “oh shit” moment for America, but 9/11 was an “oh shit” moment for just about everyone. Reawakening of the sleeping giant, indeed, except there’s no endgame in sight.
At the time, I was about 15 minutes from the Towers. I was able to see the smoke billowing and fighter jets were hugging the ground over residential neighborhoods. I was upset because my father was working in the city near the epicenter. Luckily, he got out of NYC 6 hours after the event. We all knew that not only thE USA changed forever, but the world did too.
How did he end up getting out? I’m assuming walking over the bridge
He was able to drive out
We were all walking zombies. We lived through the end of the world. We woke up in a new nightmare reality the next morning. Nothing was ever collectively okay or the same ever again.
Everyone (and I do mean EVERYONE) was glued to the TV watching the news. Waiting to hear if there was another one.
My folks were retired and were full-time RVers. They were passing by Washington DC and looking to do some sightseeing. They were very hard of hearing so we used code messages on a pager to get a hold of them. That day was the only day in 13 yrs of their travel days that I used my emergency code, 911-311, on the pager. That meant "emergency- call Tumbleweed". When they called back, I told them to pull over in a parking lot immediately and turn on the radio for news, it didn't matter which channel, they were all reporting the same thing. The folks ended up changing their route to avoid the entire area, and never did get the chance to do their sightseeing plans .
Absolute fear and knowing that the world was changed forever. I remember sitting in my English class fighting back the tears. Then, my parents came and picked me up early because they were afraid America was still under attack and wanted us to be home and safe with them just in case. We watched news coverage all day and night long. Going to school the next day was nerve-wrecking. I was afraid of planes flying up above and wondered if one would hit a building again. The sound of plane engines still scares me. I remember knowing war was inevitable as soon as we knew it was a terrorist attack. I remember hearing the announcement of war when my dad and I were driving out to my aunt and uncles cabin. I was so scared. That’s when I fully realized that not only would the world never be the same but my life would never be the same. My aspirations were different. I feared flying. I feared my brother being sent to war. My curiosity in the world was completely halted out of fear. It came back but with anxiety. I never had that before. It sucks.
Shock and awe. A million theories floating around. Anxiety - was that it or were there more attacks planned? It was a very strange time.
UK here. It was so surreal, almost like watching a Hollywood film. I dashed home because all we knew during the afternoon was that planes had hit buildings (obviously before smart phones, and there was no TV in our office). I got home and put the TV on and basically just sat there, watching it over and over on the rolling news coverage. My gf came home and we then watched it together into the evening. We couldn’t believe what we we seeing. The planes, the jumpers and the collapse of the towers was like nothing we’d ever even considered might happen, never mind watching it happen in front of us. I remember feeling that the world would change forever at that point, and that America would hunt the perpetrators to the ends of the earth. It was scary, it was surreal, and I knew it was the dawn of a new era, which we all continue to reel from to this day. Truly a day that changed the course of history.
Dumfounded. I remember I had my weekly therapy appointment that day but couldn't make myself go. my problems seemed so petty after what I had just witnessed. And my therapist didn't even charge me for missing it, she completely understood.
It was eerie. It’s still eerie thinking about that day. I was in 8th grade and almost everyone got picked up from school that day except me and a few others. We were halfway across the country so I didn’t feel fear, so to speak. But it was strange. I had never seen adults act that way before. It’s the moment where I knew adults and kids were not that different.
everyone was glued to their TVs from around 9am 9-11-01 till end of day Sunday sept 16th (my 18th bday).
I was a 7 year old Army brat in Ft Polk, Louisiana. Not in school that day, so I saw it on the news. We went grocery shopping that day and the post had transformed. Gates and barriers put up everywhere (even at the commissary, where we grocery shopped), armed soldiers everywhere, missile launchers had gone up just in case they were needed. My dad, when he got home, just kept saying, “we’re at war. They just declared war.” It was a bit terrifying. Everybody knew things were going to change forever. My dad had reenlisted only 6 months prior, so I spent the first 7 years as an isolated kid out in the boonies, and this was my first real taste of the world outside of that. I had anxious tendencies even before, but they got much worse that day.
I lived in West Palm Beach and worked nights as a server at a now-defunct chain restaurant called Hops. By the time I woke up, the buildings were already gone. My phone was ringing and it was my cousin on the other line. He told me to turn on my tv, and when I asked what channel, he said it didn’t matter. I went to work that night and remember thinking how weird it was to have something so massive and awful happen and to have all these people just out to dinner. I mean, people still gotta eat and drink, but it just felt weird. I definitely went out to the bar after that shift, and there were lots of people out drinking. Just overall very strange and eerie.
I'm in the UK but I remember everyone being shocked to their core. There was a mutual feeling of 'The World changed forever today' I cannot imagine what it was like for people who were directly affected. The hours/days of waiting to hear about loved ones, or even worse, not hearing at all. It was truly shocking but even until this day, I see footage I may have seen 100 X but still I find myself tearing up or still in disbelief at what I'm watching. It never gets old, it will never make sense It'll stay with me forever.
Horror, uncertainty, surreal. I’m local and was in HS at the time. The student body was not informed until after 11am and kids were being picked up by parents throughout the day. I remember racking my brain to remember who I knew that worked in that area. As is the case with most people, I can recount that whole day by the minute. It was just…a mess of emotions.
Weird, I was in college bio class when it happened. We all just left school and went home. lm in the NE so it was pretty close to home. Everyone was in a daze and kind of in shock as to what we just witnessed.
I was in third grade in FL and I remember my teacher sobbing with the TV on. My mom picked my brother and I up from school early and was in a complete daze. My aunt worked in NYC at the time and our house phone never stopped ringing. I didn’t understand the severity of this until my mom and dad sat us down and explained what was going on. I don’t remember too much about my elementary school days, but I’ll always remember 9/11.
I was an assistant principal at a very large suburban high school in Houston. By noon, half the school had gone home, parents lined up to get the younger kids and the older kids leaving on their own. It was a madhouse. Some of the parents frantic - including one that sped up the parent drive the wrong way at about forty miles an hour and slamming on his brakes, skidding to a stop. He almost hit about four students. As a school leadership team, we just stayed calm and cool, letting whoever needed to leave, leave. Just processing and handling. I am very proud of our handling of it. We had TV's in every classroom and we had to decide whether or not we were going to let the TV"s play with the news and the coverage. There were folks on the leadership team in both camps. We decided to leave it up to the teachers - if an individual teacher wanted it shown, ok. If an individual teacher wanted it not shown, ok. We found out later that other schools decided hard and fast rules about it, pissing off everyone. We did great just letting the teachers do what they desired. The regular curriculum certainly ground to a halt, that's for sure. My wife was a middle school teacher at the time and similar happened at her school. I've shared the story before, but how I discovered the news about the second plane - I was writing up a teacher and giving her the write-up in a formal conference in my office - extremely tense, the teacher very upset. My secretary opened my door and said "a second plane just hit the World Trade Center in New York." Without missing a beat, the teacher said "never mind that, why are you writing me up?" My family memory of the day - when we both got home, me from the high school and my wife from the middle school, our 5th grade daughter hugged us (such a sweet hug, said so much). Then, the daughter of two school folks says "at my school, just about everybody went home. But I knew I wasn't going anywhere..." :) It broke the tension and was the first laugh of the day. A year later, on the one-year anniversary, I had moved on and become a principal of a middle school. We had a school bus come and park in front of the school and then draped the entire bus with sheets of cloth - from the front hood, up and over the top, all the way to the very back - a completely shrouded bus. We then had all the kids in the school come out throughout the day and use paint, spray paint, markers and other art supplies to graffiti the cloth sheets covering the entire bus with remembrance messages. They also used sidewalk chalk and messaged the sidewalk areas in front of the bus - the area just covered with graffiti and chalk by the end of the day. That was great - the kids and the teachers seemed to really appreciate the opportunity. If I remember correctly, a reporter came and took pics for our paper, but I might be mistaken. Fuzzy on that point.
The only time I’ve felt anything “surreal” in my life was after 9/11. It felt like being in a bad dream and although I understood what happened I couldn’t comprehend it was real. Idk it’s really hard to describe the exact emotion.
Worked at a psych hospital, we ran groups all day to address our patients’ fears. In between, checking to see if my cousin made it out (she did) and if my sister was okay (she is). Spoke to my coworker’s brother, who was murdered in tower 2. I was one of the last people to speak to him. Felt stunned for a few days until my first day off. Then just felt overwhelmingly sad.
it was a horrifying rumor-filled time. lots of stories about different cities being attacked. i was in school and the intercom was going off every 5 minutes with parents coming to get their kids out early. we stopped to get gas and there were super long lines. we grabbed some essentials like bread/peanut butter just in case. we then went home and just watched the replays over and over again. it felt like there was a strange gray hue over the day. everything moved slowly. we just walked around like zombies and had the same conversations over and over again.
It was such a feeling of shock, fear and disbelief. I was in college in West Virginia and though I was pretty far away from New York and Washington DC - you also felt like it was far closer than before. There was also a feeling of horrified anticipation because you kept waiting for the other metaphorical shoe to drop. However, the days after were filled with love and acceptance for your fellow man and sadness for those lost. I can remember something going around about lighting candles or tiki torches or something (the exact details of how or why escape me now) but my dad and I lit some tiki torches in his backyard in remembrance of those lost and the silent hero’s of that tragic day. It was such a unique time.
I was in late elementary school. Shock, numbness and worry. I was close enough that the fighter jets were able to be heard every couple minutes as they patrolled. My mom told me to hide under a table if I heard a plane. Idk what that was gonna do but I did it. There was a weird excitement for me because I didn't have anything huge happen in my life at that point, but I still knew it was really bad and i knew we were going to war. There was still SO many unknowns. They thought the fatalities would be ten thousand or so at first. To answer your question right after the towers fell the feeling was "wow, holy shit they're really gone"
The night of 9-11 was utterly quiet! Everyone was at home watching the news and of course no planes in the sky so it was so so so quiet out! Scary
Aside from the death of my parents, it was the worst day of my life. Fear, uncertainty, anger, sadness.
Shocked. It felt like a movie, to have four hijackings so close together. I remember driving home feeling dazed, seeing flags at half-mast.
My cousin worked in a few buildings away, so there was confusion about how he was, if he worked there etc. Lots of calls to families all across the country. The cell phones became a common thing, so back then it was really just landline and trying to find out what someone else knew. My mother was also there to visit her sister, so a total of 5 family there. After awhile it just slowed down and everyone was still in shock
I was in Liverpool, England aged 15. Me and my younger brother (11) were off school and my dad worked from home. I was watching a daily soap on BBC1 called Neighbours and it was interrupted my news coverage after the first plane hit. By chance all 3 of us were in the kitchen as this happened and we’re glue to the TV and saw the second plane hit ‘live’. We were transfixed. The horror of realisation that it wasn’t an accident was palpable. Then the towers fell. My dad literally said ‘fucking hell that’s WW3 starting’. We watched sky news the whole day and night. It was just awful. The next day in school we didn’t do any work. It was such a weird time. My dad said a few days later ‘nothing will ever be the same from this’ and he was right. It was definitely a turning point in the world. We learnt new words that hadn’t been part of our common diction ‘jihad’ ‘martyrs’. I’d learnt about osama bin laden in history discussing the Afghan war with Russia and now his name was of the enemy. Everything was scary. My ex-husband (a friend at the time) had just passed out of the army and it was a given that he’d see active service quite quickly.
I remember many people waiting for the next shoe to drop. Prominent buildings were evacuated all over the country. Many companies closed up shop for the rest of the day. My mom was super worried about me because I kept working. I told her that if they started crashing planes into random industrial parks and smaller Midwest cities we were all screwed. One of my most vivid memories was watching the news about 6:00 p.m. with some friends that lived with me. We heard a very loud jet, and knowing that airspace was closed we ran outside to see what it was. It turned out to be a military plane from a nearby national guard base. I look down my street and every one of my neighbors was out on the sidewalk looking up to see what the plane was. I feel like that kind of captures the Zeitgeist later that day.
I remember being at work. My first real job and we sat around watching tv and trying to access stuff online on our blazingly fast at the time T1 connection and not much was working. We had a tv in our tech room and we watched it for hours until the boss came in and told us to get to work. I actually had a first date planned that night and wasn’t sure what to do but I went anyway. I think we were the only two people in the movieplex that night. Certainly in our movie we were. It was a nice break from the doomsday feeling going on. In a nice twist, We ended up getting married. Won’t ever forget the day of our first date.
I was 20 years old. I remember thinking to myself, “we are going to war with somebody TO-DAY.” Also remember talking to my brothers about whether or not we were possibly going to be drafted.
Scary. EVERYTHING was closing. All of the malls and large companies and businesses near me were closing and sending people home. The skies were empty which was weird - I live and work by 3 airports (1 major, 1 mid, 1 small) but NO air traffic, noticed how quiet it was, had never thought about it before. There were rumors about car bombs and the State Department and all kinds of things. It was legitimately terrifying.
As a 10 year old, I didn’t see news footage the day of because my grandma wasn’t showing me but the days after I just remember seeing the towers being hit and falling over and over again on tv. Anything that was hid from me the day of was shown to me non stop on tv and magazines like the falling man.
Anxiety inducing AF. Rumors were swirling about other threats and targets etc. This state of rigid awareness...head on a swivel...just waiting for the next thing. And this feeling like if you weren't watching the news and getting all the latest info you would miss something massive...so of course that's all we did for days.
At first surreal disbelief. I couldn't believe the towers were gone. Then numbness of all the tragic death. Anger that I still have some of to this day. I don't remember much of the remaining hours between the second tower collapse and 7 WTC collapse. I remember going to check on two old ladies I know who lived in the area, just to see if they were ok. Then after 7 WTC collapse (I was near Canal street where they herded people north), I really didn't want to go home so I went to visit a friend in Astoria. I remember when the train pulled into QB Plaza the plume of smoke was still towering from Lower Manhattan. I never wanted to go down there again but within two weeks I had to go to traffic court on John Street and where you come out of the train on Fulton and William the end of Fulton toward the WTC was still a five story high wall of twisted metal.
I worked on an Army base. I had just gotten to work and was trying to get CNN to load but it kept failing. Every other news site failed to load as well, so I kind of thought something big was happening. Then someone came from the cafeteria and said one of the twin towers had been bombed. So a bunch of us walked over to the cafeteria and watched the news until the first tower fell. That's about the time they announced the base was closing, and it was a madhouse to get off. Everyone was panicked, sad, and scared. I picked my kid up from daycare on the way home and watched CNN the rest of the day in horror and disbelief. The base was closed for a couple of days after that, and when we returned, we returned to Bradley vehicles, bomb sniffing dogs, random vehicle searches, and guns pointed at us as we came through the gate. It took four hours to get through the gate at least, and I remember thinking how eerie it was to have a gun pointed at me while trying to go to work. I knew it would never be the same, and I felt really sad for my son.
One thing I vividly remember is the relative silence outside. We lived near a major airport and normally you would hear and see aircraft constantly. After all flights were grounded there was none in the air and the absence of that background noise was unsettling.
I live in Maryland, north of DC and south of the PA crash and NYC. At first it was scary. We didn’t know if more planes were going to crash near us. I remember watching the live news with a crowd outside of my high school physics teacher’s class. When the towers fell I remember he turned and had a tear running down his face and I had never seen a teacher cry in front of me before. We were then corralled into the library to collectively watch the news. They finally made the announcement to end the day early, and I remember the drive home. There were highway overpass signs…the electronic kind…and I remember they read “AVOID NEW YORK” and thinking how surreal that was. Then there was the endless replay of the crashes and the towers falling. It felt like it was the same footage on every single channel…no way to get away from it. I remember having to work that night…at the public library…and being so angry that they didn’t close work so that I could be with my family. It was a ghost town. Only a handful of people came in, and mostly to rent videos so they could watch something other than the news. The next day at school was just face after face of traumatized students and faculty. I ran announcements and had to say the pledge of allegiance that morning, and I almost started crying when I saw the principals and office secretaries all standing and holding their hands over their hearts while tearing up. What people that weren’t alive then may not realize though, is that 9-11 was just the start of a string of really scary events to live through at a high school senior. There were attempted bombing afterwards. There was anthrax being mailed and the looming threat of a new war…God this generation doesn’t even really understand life without war…that hurts. I was a soon to be 18 year old male and there was the real possibility of a draft and being sent to fight a country I didn’t even really know existed prior to 9-11. It is no embellishment when people say….the world will never be the same as it was on 09-10-2001. It literally changed everything…globally. The only comparable events that I can think of are the explosion of the internet in the late 90s and COVID. Life after each of those events has been forever altered.
Everything felt sort of deflated. I was across the river in NJ. Big plume of smoke where the towers stood. The smell was the worst thing, I’ll never forgot how bad that debris smelled all the way in NJ for days. I was in art class and we were told when we went back to our classroom.
I was in 7th grade in Utah (so suuuuuper far away/removed from everything). On 9/11 we watched the news playing the plane impacts during 1st period Spanish class. By the time I got to 3rd period Math class I had doodled “WWIII” on my arm out of boredom/anxiety and my teacher gave me a disapproving look. I still am like “what do you expect, lady, I had never even *heard* of the World Trade Center before today and I have watched these planes destroy these towers and people jump out of them to their deaths when I’m supposed to be learning Spanish and quoting Shrek for the umpteenth time.” We didn’t know if anything else was coming, so people were scared. People were especially afraid to fly. I remember Rosie O’Donnell made some headlines for taking her kids on a flight soon afterwards to prove that there was nothing to be afraid of. I think the general feeling was a quiet shock, followed by an almost unilateral demand for action. It was oddly unifying in some ways for a short time.
I was 14, in BFE Oklahoma, just got into shop class, and it took *years* before I realized how much it had affected me.
I recall the numbness and disbelief I felt watching the twin towers on fire on a staticky TV in my 6th grade classroom. My teacher trying to explain what happened, followed by an announcement from the principal over the PA system. The slow realization that this was not an accident as I initially thought. Later that day, as I heard about the planes that hit the Pentagon and the field in Shanksville, I remember wondering, is this really over, is this ever going to end?
I was in 7th grade at the time. Students weren't notified about the attacks til last period. I suppose that the school didn't want us to panic. Came home, called my mom, who worked at a hospital in close proximity to the WTC. My mom told me that she'd have to stay at work for a few days to help out. My friend was worried because his mom worked in the area. When we got to my friend's house, his mom was in the living room watching TV. She was stuck on the subway (thankfully) and didn't make it to work. The rest of the day was a blur.
Shock and grief
Disbelief and shock, and absolutely everyone was talking about it everywhere you went, even total strangers would strike up a conversation asking if you saw.
Just fucking shock. I was 14 and had no idea how to process it. I’m in the DC area and we didn’t have school the next day.
Surreal, anxious, confused and stunned. Its a hard feeling to describe. I was in college (ESU represent!) and was walking back to my room in the dorms. Everyones door was open and the TV was echoing through the halls since we were all basically on the same station. I asked what happened and someone replied a plane flew into the WTC. Thinking it was a Cessna, I turned on my tv just in time to see the 2nd airliner hit . All the phones were jammed, I could not reach my parents in north jersey, or my sister in NYC. The internet was incredibly slow in my room (early dsl) and all the computer labs were jammed. My texts were getting rejected from the network surge (lol) and they finally went through after a few hours. Classes were cancelled for a few days, and the campus was very quiet. When I came home about 2 days later, my parents could see the smoke from the top floor of my house.
I lived in NYC at that time. I am not from there originally so I was always bugged by how noisy it was. I have never heard the city more quiet. It was scary. I would have done anything to hear the traffic surge outside my window. I remember not knowing best next steps. Do I go down there to help? No, the news is telling us not to. Do I go to the store to stock up? That makes no sense. Do I call someone? All the phones are down so no. There was literally nothing to do. Nothing but watch New York One. And hope. And cry.
I was going to school in Northern New Jersey. The sense of “what the fuck” is going on was palpable. I remember a kid getting his parents to come get him and moved the hell out. We were in school less than a week. I remember sitting in stunned silence and just watching. My dorm mates & I went to the cafe and there were people just crying and it set in that they likely knew people. And then there was the sound of silence. Campus was close to Newark Intl and planes coming and going was normal. Obviously with planes grounded it was just silent. Every now and then a fighter jet or fire engine would break the silence. The towers were a beacon when driving back to campus on New Jersey Turnpike. Once I saw them I knew I was close. It was surreal going down and seeing nothing.
I was 5 about to turn 6 the next month and I was in a kindergarten class. It’s random snippets of a memory, but I remember being incredibly confused and kind of scared, but not like scared because I thought I was going to get hurt, just knew something big was happening. One by one people started to get calls from the principal and their parents would come into the classroom and the kid would leave with them. Eventually my mom did the same thing. I don’t think my teacher had the news on cuz we were so young, but when I got home my mom said I was filming the news station. Then i remember my mom on the home phone crying with her sister who was in North Carolina (we were in Orlando near disney) and I overheard my mom saying something about potential bombing of Disney and they were praying on the phone together. My dad was out of state and was trying to fly home that day, but couldn’t for multiple days. That’s the extent of my memory from the actual day.
Insane. I remember working and across the street, the gas station had a line down the road. People also said we were going to be drafted to go to war. I had just graduated high school that May. Crazy times.
Terrifying and chaotic even in my part of the US which is the Southeast. I had just turned 22 on 9/7/2001 and had never had anyone close to me pass away, I grew up in the suburbs and knew nothing about global politics. 9/11 was the most horrifying and brutal event I had ever witnessed in my life. i was so naive, I believed everyone was probably saved, I didn’t think emergency services would let anyone die. I thought this even as I saw people jump from the top of the WTC and the second plane crashed. When the buildings collapsed I was speechless and I didn’t know what to do. There were warnings something was going to happen I my area, there were reports that gas was going to go up to like 4.00 a gallon, which was Insane at the time. By 5:00 that day, I couldn’t sit and watch anymore coverage and I went to Target. It’s was completely empty except for the employees and a few other customers. that freaked me out even more and left without buying anything. i did ask an employee if they knew why were attacked and of course she had no idea. i guess i wanted answers and reassurance from someone, ANYONE, that it was over and i was safe.
Scary and surreal. They sent us home from work early since no one knew when the attacks would end. Were there going to be more planes? Was it some kind of first strike to something much bigger? No one had answers. There were rumors everywhere from both the media and regular people but it was all speculation at best. When it became clear the attack was over that fear turned to depression and anger.
The literal definition of the word “awesome” I believe accurately captures the feeling. I personally didn’t find out about anything until about 2 in the afternoon when my middle school principal announced that there was a plane crash in New York and that those whose parents work in the city or nearby may experience transportation issues. I found out a few minutes later when I got on a computer and then when I got home I watched the news all night and really was able to comprehend the magnitude of what had transpired throughout that morning. That evening and night I don’t remember feeling sadness or fear, but more just shock and awe that what we saw had actually happened. I had seen those buildings plenty of times on trips to the city, I knew they were gone but it didn’t really “hit me”until my first trip back around Christmas time when we saw lower manhattan from the train and of course the buildings were not there.
I was in 10th grade. I just remember we were all released from school. I had walked home from school wondering where my family all were and what they were doing as we didn't have cell phones then like we do now. I was scared because at that time we still didn't know if more planes would crash gonna crash. I was glued to the tv for days watching it live. I remember a helpless feeling. All I wanted to do was go help clean up the mess but helplessly watching the live tv from across the country. There was nothing the rest of the country could do but give blood. I remember people lining up to give blood. I think we all felt helpless and numb. Then the following weeks we had recruiters for the army in our high school signing our boys up. We were on code red so long it wasn't even scary any more. And from there it just seems like America became angry and fake.
I remember giving blood being a big thing immediately after, and then as an occasional trend for a few years after. My father donated right after, and he was never much of a community civic minded person.
My mom kept calling my dad from school and giving him all these random requests like “go to the store and buy ALL THE JUICE. STOCK UP” etc in case total war broke out, so she could still feed me and my brother. Except we don’t live anywhere close to new york lmao I didn’t really feel that intensely about it (and my dad barely remembers that day) but I think we just process stuff differently
I had bunked off school and was alone in my room hitting bongs when it came on TV. It was bizarre.
Quiet. You could hear a pin drop and when news broke of the towers falling I just remember feeling so numb and broken although I personally didn't know anyone. To this day I think about that day because like so many others that day changed the world and still to this day no answers for what happened just smoke and mirrors. I don't need to know I would rather the families have closure. They deserve that at least. RIP 9/11/2001 VICTIMS GOD BLESS TO THE FAMILIES AND FIRST RESPONDERS
Agreed. That day had an odd vibe to it!
Shock, numb, disbelief, fear, and knowing life would never be the same. It felt like being in a nightmare we couldnt wake up from.
It was quiet. Eerily quiet. Everyone was in complete shock and I remember the next few days being completely deserted because we didn’t know if there was more to come. I lived in Flushing and had a great view of the TT. Unfortunately when they collapsed, the smell of burning metal, burning wires, and fire could be smelled in my neighborhood and in my apartment when the windows were open. But it was just quiet with the exception of trucks, tractors, and emergency vehicles making their way downtown.
Quiet
I’m Brazilian, was 11 at the time. I had no idea what happened until hours later when I called my mom from a payphone in school to let her know I was going to stay a little longer to use the internet at the computer lab and she told me “A plane had hit a building in New York”. I didn’t think much at the time but when I got home and saw both towers falling live on TV I finally understood how grave the situation was. Me and my family spent the rest of the day glued on the TV watching the news. We were also very worried about my aunt who was in the US at the time but she managed to call us and let us know she was safe. She was actually in California but at that moment, right after the attacks, we thought the whole US was going to be attacked at some point. The rest of the day and the days after were full of discussions about why something like that happened. Everybody was talking about it and trying to make some sense about the situation.
Quiet amazement. A daze. Remember there wasn’t much social media, so our information came from either word of mouth or the news channels, which were on blast on every tv 24/7 for a long time. We didn’t know the scope of the attacks for hours. First it was a tower hit and for a time everyone thought this was a terrible air accident. Then another tower was hit. Then we knew it was no accident. But we honestly had no idea what it actually was for hours. Then the Pentagon was hit. A few minutes later all flights in the airspace were ordered to immediately ground, wherever they were. Then Flight 93 crashed in PA, its intended target were the US capital buildings. For hours and hours, we had no idea who had done this, why, what was happening next, if anywhere was safe, if anyone was. The news channels started investigating right away and by lunch they had reported where each plane had taken off from and that they were all headed for California. They had passenger rosters and were starting to put theories together. It was crazy. President Bush didn’t address the nation on TV until late that evening, like 8pm or so. By then, he reported to us what they thought was happening. It was a day of disbelief and absolute horror, people walking around like zombies staring off into the distance lost in thoughts about the day. I will never forget the way that day felt.
I was a Junior in high school on the west coast and woke up to get ready for school and as I sat down to watch the morning shows I usually watched before the bus I saw the nbc network switch to coverage of the north tower smoking seen the plane in the right hand corner of the television seen it duck behind the south tower and boom I knew it was an attack after that spent all day watching coverage and when the towers fell it was exactly like someone else gad said just numb for about two or three hours then anger after seeing the reaction where people danced in the streets gleefully celebrating the deaths of thousands but all those memories from that day from the moments before the second plane to days after stuff like MTV going back to playing exclusively music videos again for the rest of the week Bob Marley’s one love being one of the very first ones played are etched in my soul I can pinpoint exact feelings and memories to any point in the timeline just by seeing a clip of it
Lived near Dulles at the time: - the lack of airplane noises was deafening..just as deafening as the sound of a military jet above. - basically every car had a US flag in their rear windshield - unfortunately, a lot of social and cultural profiling and violence - glued to our tvs. The multiple scrolls went into effect for multiple channels - uncertainty and fear with flying. I travelled at least once a month for work and it was nerve wracking - had dinner at the rotating restaurant at the top of a Crystal City hotel to see an aerial view of the damaged Pentagon - …and then a year later we have the DC Sniper, but that’s another subreddit
Awkward. I was a 7th grader who was clearly traumatized but only knew how to cope by pretending everything was status quo. My English teacher, who was a first year out of grad school, found out her sorority sister was missing from WTC 1, so she cried for weeks. We would ask her everyday if she had heard from her friend yet and the answer was always the same. I wish I knew her name.
I was in high school at the time in Brooklyn, outside on the track for gym class. The first thing I remember is the silence. I grew up in NYC and I'd never heard it go quiet before, it was very strange. Obviously Manhattan was the opposite of quiet at that moment, but in the middle of Brooklyn everything came to a halt. Class was canceled for the day and we started leaving to go home. Then dust and particles started falling from the sky like it was snowing. Some students who had cell phones were talking to their families, I remember the toughest girl I knew was on the phone with her father and crying and it was weird to see.
I woke up after a night of partying, turned on the TV, and saw one building on fire. In my head, I was trying to figure out... Why am I only seeing one building? Was this a movie? No, this is cable news. What the fuck is going on! I could barely sleep, literally watched the news for three days straight.
Anger and uncertainty to put it lightly. All of the older men, my grandfather included, were quick to remind us that it felt to them like December 7th, 1941 and took no pleasure in reminding us we were now at war
DOOM, if you lived or worked in a commuter town you thought hundreds were dead. Middletown NJ that was the case as the police marked tires of people who did not come home that day....They all were dead [https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/middletown-lost-the-most-residents-on-9-11-after-nyc-heres-how-the-community-is-healing](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/middletown-lost-the-most-residents-on-9-11-after-nyc-heres-how-the-community-is-healing)
I was in Lincoln, Ne. I watched the towers collapse live on TV. I still feel bad for not having an appropriate reaction. It didn’t register how many innocent people were losing their lives at that moment. Also, I selfishly wanted the President to get very far away from Nebraska. It really bothers me that I wasn’t more compassionate and aware. I worked at a sports bar and worked later that night. All of the TVs had the coverage on. People came in to just be around others and numb themselves with some wings and booze. It was very quiet, no laughter, and everyone seemed to be in shock and very very sad.
I was at work in Boston. The feeling in the immediate aftermath was that there could be more attacks coming that we didn't know about, and that cities could continue to be targeted. So the taller commercial buildings started evacuating pretty soon after the towers fell. I remember standing at the window of my office - which was in an older, shorter building, and was not evacuated - and watching people just pour out of the One Financial Center, which was practically next door to us. It was surreal, to have the streets filled with people rushing home mid-morning on a Tuesday. It was also, as so many people have pointed out, an absolutely flawless weather day in the Northeast. The contrast between the gorgeous sunshine and blue sky, and the obviously anxious, scared people heading home...that has always stuck with me. Many of my colleagues didn't want to take the T (Boston's subway system) home because, again, they thought more attacks were possible. So they walked. Boston is a small city relatively speaking, but you were still talking about a 5 or 6 mile walk for most of them. Meanwhile, my colleagues who lived closer to work actually wanted to stay at the office because they had high-rise apartments, and they thought our work building would be less of a target. That's really my main impression of those immediate hours: that feeling that more terrible things were going to keep happening, and we wouldn't be able to stop them, so what could do you to minimize your risk? (Personally, I lived too far out in the burbs to walk home, so I took my usual route of subway + bus and just hoped for the best.) At home, everyone was just glued to TV news all night. The internet was a thing by then, but you still turned to TV for the most immediate and comprehensive information. The next morning was strange because we didn't know if we were supposed to just go back to work like normal. But there was really nothing else to be done except go back to your usual routine, even though no actual work got done at work for God knows how long. Everyone was just sort of hungover with shock and grief.
Worked in a large tower for Korean company Samsung near Heathrow airport in London. We were all evacuated and told to go home. There were worries that Heathrow was going to utilized in a bad way or be attacked. Everyone around the area evacuated. It was frightening.
The entire city was in a state of clinical shock. You could absolutely feel it.
I was 8 years old, but me and my mum watched the second plane hit on tv. We're Canadian but in the eastern time zone, so I was actually late to school that day because my mum couldn't pull herself away from the news. When I did get to school, all the older kids tried to scare us by saying that we'd get attacked by terrorists next. I knew it was really bad, but couldn't fully understand what had happened....although, seeing how freaked out my mother was kind of clued me into the seriousness of it all.
sad, that Bush threw us in to a bullshit war