Where were you on 9/11?

With some Americans at a meeting. I said it was barbaric.

I was at work, on the counter at the bank.

A customer came in and said that there had been this huge plane crash in the USA. We had no access to any more information, not the mobile phones like now.

I only found out the true horror when I had got home and put the tv on.

Still picture George Bush’s face as he was told about it, looked completely in shock and disbelief.

Just getting ready to start my shift at the local hospital. My brother (then fireman) called me into the living room as the first plane hit.
It was surreal & shocking!
Saw the second plane hit, that’s when he realised it was a terrorist attack.
Every night this week I have watched some documentary/ old news clip on this attack as I do every year.
I feel incredibly sad for the many workers, passengers on those planes. Especially those emergency workers all killed helping people. The bravery of those fire & rescue running into those burning, half collapsed buildings.
People are still dying all these years later due to breathing in all those materials.
We must never forget this tragedy & what those monsters tried to accomplish.
The strong people of New York & America will never allow that to happen.

My father had recently died and I was spending a couple of days with my mother helping her sort paperwork and other matters. I remember going into a shop and unusually the news was on and someone was saying a light airctaft had flown into one of the towers. The full magnitude of that horror became apparent later. I remember calls to my husband, like everyone we just couldn't believe it. My youngest had just gone into year 7 and was on a residential school trip, he also rang me with "have you heard"

Heard on my car radio as I drove to visit my Mum in her nursing home.
Something none of us will ever forget.

I was 41 working in the metro centre Gateshead and was just coming out of work. I got into my car and had radio two on and they were saying about a plane crash that’s what I heard. I switched the television on when I got home and just sat watching it unbelievable.

I was at work and my husband was on a business trip in New York. Someone came down from another department and said they had heard on his car radio about the attacks. I was horrified, we had no mobile phones in those days. Somehow he managed to get a message to one of our sons to say he was ok. In fact he was in an office on the other side of the river and saw the second tower come down.

DH and I had just finished a thirteen mile bike ride round Derwent and Howden reservoirs and had stopped for a coffee at the visitor centre. There was a small portable tv on the wall and everyone there thought they were watching a disaster movie until we all realised what it was. We drove home in total shock and put our tv on. Sat there in floods of tears.

I watched a tv programme recently on Netflix about it. It was as shocking then as it had been at the time and left a generation of young Americans in total disarray.

I was at home, I had taken a year off work, can’t recall why the TV was on, I flicked channels to see the appalling footage everywhere.
MrJ was working at Swindon hospital (new building), the site shut down, he came home, lots from our village congregated in our local, hushed voices.
I had seen that skyline so many times driving on business from JFK airport to Westchester.

In the evening I'd arranged to meet a good friend in a pub and although I was still reeling from the event and not feeling at all sociable I met her and was amazed that she didn't react at all to the news. Months later she told me that she can't feel empathy but doesn't know why.

I was at home when I got a phone call from my son, who was driving hastily out of London. At that stage it was thought there could be similar attacks in any major city. He just told me to switch on the television. I remember wishing passionately that my offspring lived in some obscure village rather than the capital.

Both of my sons had worked briefly at the World Trade Centre, but mercifully were not there that day. They easily could have been.

My sister and I walked into her house after collecting our Mums death certificate just as it came on the TV. She had died three days before. It was odd, I didn’t feel I had the right to grieve until much later as so many had died so young and so violently whereas my Mum died peacefully and with the hope of heaven.

Eerily, I was watching a neighbours funeral cortege set off just as Steve Wright on Radio 2 was announcing that it seemed a plane had flown into a skyscraper in New York.

I imagined it was one of his routine unfunny 'jokes'.

PS My father had died a few days previously, and I remember being glad he didn’t know about it.

I have already mentioned this on the GM thread. It is still clear in my mind until this day.

When 9/11 happened, I had been decanted to the local high school, in charge 120 pupils, because my own school was being extended.
I passed a number of staff, crowded around a TV. I was horrified, when I saw what was happening, for my MIL was in New York, visiting my BIL and SIL, who worked for the Scottish Government. She was due to fly home that day.
I frantically phoned my husband. Of course, we couldn't contact MIL.
My BIL was stranded in Philadelphia, not knowing if his wife and mother were safe.
It wasn't until the next day, we managed to contact MIL, we were frantic.
She had flown out, not long before the attack and had gone straight to bed, oblivious to everything that had happened.
It was three months, before BIL could get back into his apparent, which had to be fumigated and deep cleaned, due to rotten food. His fridge had to be destroyed.

My dd was doing school work in her bedroom with her telly on. Suddenly she appeared in the lounge and told me to switch the TV on. It was horrific to watch especially the second plane knowing there was nothing to be done. The voices of the people on the doomed plane was dreadful.

I had got home from my part- time job and unusually turned on the TV to watch the news whilst I ate a sandwich. Just at the time when the second plane hit the building. Unforgettable .

I was at home and switched on the TV for no good reason. The sentence 'an aircraft has flown into the Twin Towers' just didn't make sense. Then I saw the other plane fly into the second tower. It seemed in bad taste to watch it but I couldn't stop myself.

I was working in a day hospital for learning disabled adults. The TV was on and showing the horrific footage. The staff members were horrified and appalled and quite worried especially when it seemed like there unaccounted for planes in the air. However we had to maintain calm demeanours so as not to distress the patients .

I was at work in a nursing home. We had the TV on in the lounge. When the regular programming was interrupted with the news report of the attacks on the twin towers we watched in shock. One member of staff was just coming on shift, she remarked to one of our residents that it was a horrible film they were watching and the resident said "it isn't a film, its the news from New York."

I had just got home from my part-time job at the surgery and turned the TV on, as usual. It was Breaking News, My youngest son and his friend were painting the outside of my house, to make sone money. I ran out and called them in to watch the TV. What a sad day 😂

I didn't find out about it until the evening.

I had a day in the house completely alone, pottering around doing chores and reading (I rarely put the tv or radio on in the daytime and had no mobile phone back then.)

I put the tv on in the early evening and couldn't believe what I was seeing. Those poor, poor people. Horrifying.

The full horror struck me when I learned that the planes were full of passengers; until then I thought the pilots were suicide bombers.

I was in the canteen at work, some of us were just going back to work; the television was on and everyone stopped and looked at the tv in horror wondering what was happening. It was utterly shocking.

I was doing my rounds at a London Teaching hospital and on the Cardiology ward the TV sound was on which was very unusual. Like others we thought the first was a nasty accident until the horror dawned. It is not something I will ever forget.