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[huffdaddy]

...six years ago today?


I was at work on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Our market (interest rates) jumped up about four points. Reports of a bomb at the WTC came across our news tickers. There was a big tv screen at one end of the floor which showed the news coverage of the first attack. Meanwhile, the market startes to rally hard. We all saw the second plane hit. Traders began to start clearing out, despite the wild market. We were one of the largest trading exchanges in the world and only two blocks away from the Sears Tower. All of the guys I worked for were leaving, but I had to stay and check their trades. As the market was closing down, the first tower collapsed. By the time I was getting ready to leave the floor, the second tower had collapsed.

After leaving the floor, I didn't even return to the office to drop my jacket off. I went downstairs and headed outside. At first, I tried to stop by a bar downtown, but security was keeping everyone out. People were pouring out of their offices and heading back home. So I headed west to catch a bus. There, I ran into a friend of mine who gave me a ride back to my neighborhood. We had brunch at a Lithuanian restaurant. He headed home, and I went to a nearby bar to watch the news coverage. I didn't have a tv at home, so I spent almost all day and night watching the coverage at the bar.

[kigolo1881]

I just finished my first lecture in college and went to the college store to buy some junk food. There are TVs all over campus and i kept hearing things not sure what it was and didnt think twice about it until i got to the central library.
Thats when i thought to myself that THIS was no accident, especially when the 2nd plane hit the 2nd tower.
By then all the classes were cancelled and I decided to drive home.
And as almost everyone else i was following the news all day long for the next few days, feeling sadness that this was the start of a grim future.
Alot of lives have been taken since then and still is, along with alot of individual freedom all over the world as we know it.

[kato]

I was a tech support agent in TX...got off of work early and this female co-worker (who I was quite attracted to) and I went to go see a movie...

[Fredbob]

I was working in the offices of a business news service where everyone had three flat panel screens and every wall had a large flat screen television. Our company headquarters was located in New York, as were a few hundred of our clients. Almost every screen and speaker was tuned to CNN and the sections of the building were large so the news was echoing like some trippy dream. People were crying because many of them were related in some way to individuals that go into those buildings and the area every day. A co-worker called me from London with people in hysterics in the background because the lines hadn't been switched yet to the US office and people were instant messaging from the Towers asking what they should do because they were trapped and the buildings were on fire. My ex-girlfriend called me, begging me to help her find out how to find out if her brother was dead and my new girlfriend called me in tears, speaking in Spanish because she was so upset that despite being bi-lingual for her entire life she couldn't think in English, asking me to find her aunt who worked in the tower. I had no idea where my father, my sisters, some of my best friends and co-workers were and any one of them could have been there that day.

Most of the people at my office couldn't leave because we were the headquarters of an international information provider and trading resource and the markets around the world were busy that day. After a few hours I sent most of my employees home because all but one had no idea where their family members were and some of them couldn't keep it together.

At the bottom of everyone's screens there were flashing updates every 30 seconds or so as news articles were being completed in real time-that continued for a week or so, especially every time the death list was updated.

There was no escaping it and very little information because many cell phone antennaes were at the top of the buildings and everyone in the country was using the lines that did work.

My roommates and I, we worked together, sent our employees home early, finished the day, drank and played NHL on the playstation for about six hours and then called it a day because it felt like we were drowning in the news and we knew the next days and weeks would be the same.

For months there was a cloud of dust and debri in the area down there and at night the lights made a low hanging kind of mushroom cloud, sometimes black and white, sometimes yellowing, most of the time just grey.

About a month later I got lost, in Northern New Jersey across the river from where the towers had been, for the first time in my life and had the pleasure of getting shouted at by men with M-16s because they were guarding the foundation of the Lincoln Tunnel in the dark. I ended up getting drunk in Hoboken (across the river from Manhattan) with friends in large part because it felt like there was a hole in reality since those buildings had been part of my life since birth.

It was surreal and brutal and it took some people months to cope with it. To put the cherry on top, Bush uses the tragedy to push his whole b.s. agenda on the world for the next who knows how long. Somehow that makes it all the worse.

Anyway, I needed to get that out, thanks o.p.

[joyfulgirl]

i'd just gotten home from japan, an esl job, a coupla weeks earlier, and was living at my sister's place, unemployed, in st. john's.

my mother was in town, and went off early for some sort of drive 'around the bay,' to visit relatives, with my aunt and uncle. i passed on that.

my sis was at work. i got up, had some breakfast...thought about going for a walk...was actually at the door, looking at my shoes, then decided to turn the tv on instead, just to see what the morning shows were talking about, for a minute, before i left.

and there i sat, for the rest of the day.

that's where i was.

[EFLtrainer]

I was sleeping in my house.... 6 AM California time. Didn't find out about it till about 11 AM.

[canuckistan]

Was at home in Montreal when I got a call from a friend: turn on the tv.

The first plane had hit--a horrible accident perhaps? I didn't think so. There was no way given the flight systems on airliners that it could have been an accident--not on auto-pilot--someone was steering. Then we watched in horror when the second hit. Definetly not an accident anymore.

I remember very distinctly news reports saying that Air Force planes had been dispatched to catch up with the planes that were in the air and not responding to being hailed. I grew up in aviation so I was paying particular attention--air force jets could catch up to commercial planes quickly enough if they cranked the throttle. The order to shoot down had been given and made public on the news. What else would the jets have done once they caught up to unresponsive airliners that day, wait and see what they'd do? It was clear the country was under attack. They'll hail 3 times and if there's no response that's it--you get a big giant firecracker up your butt. It's no accident flight 93 ended up in a field and not in a densely populated area. Now or never kind of thing.
TV reports said jets were on the way to intercept one airliner in particular that was not on it's scheduled flight path and not responding (flight 93 as it turned out) And I remember distinctly thinking how it must suck to have to make that decision to shoot them down but under the circumstances it was the only thing to do to prevent greater carnage.. Then nothing more about the Air Force jets. Ever again.

A few weeks later we got the "Let's roll hero" story. I'm positive it was utter BS. Flight 93 was shot down. I understand the gov't had to spin it because of the terrible circumstances...but c'mon, enough of us were watching the play-by-play that day. I haven't written very often about what I know about that day but every time I hear about the "Let's roll" hero story I kinda gag because it was so glorified--books, tv movies, widows becoming instant "media stars" in their public grief afterwards. It was all kinda crass but a hell of a lot sexier than being shot down by your own gov't sort of thing. The country badly needed "hereos" who fought back that day--maybe because everyone was so caught with their pants down by the attacks--especially the gov't. I do understand why and I don't begrudge anyone having to spin that--but they went overboard with it. It was a terrible day and a terrible decision that would never, ever have gone down well with John Q public.

A while later the buildings came down. A call went out for blood donations for victims and I remember thinking "Who survives that?"

The whole thing was absolutely horrible.

[Novernae]

I was in Cuba, studying for a semester. We were told about it and followed the American group in to the department office to watch the news coverage for awhile while many of them tried to reach home. The TV stations fed CNN for 24 hours and off and on for a few more days, and then a month later I got to hear Castro give an anti-terrorism speech. It was only a couple of hours (quick and concise by his standards) as he was really loosing steam by then. Cuba offered much needed blood and medical help but were, of course turned down For the next few days we sat around wondering what would happen to the world and us; Discussing whether to go home after things calmed down out of fear that everything might escalate and we might get stranded for longer than we wanted. We figured it was probably one of the safest places on Earth to be at that moment, and nobody chose to leave.

[Tiger Beer]

[Qinella]

I had just woken up and turned on the TV. Couldn't believe it. It was surreal. Had a job interview that day and it was cancelled. Everyone in my little Florida town was paranoid as hell. Even the mall closed. I guess Lakeland Square Mall is next on al Qaeda's hit list.

[Feloria]

I lived in Chicago too, just like OP. I had a cold and was sleeping. My mom called about three times- I heard her on the ans machine saying "wake up! History is being made right now! At first I thought "it'll be on TV later", but she kept calling. Finally I got up, around 9:15-and saw, well, all of it. As I mentioned on the Current Events post- there was a lot of fear in Chicago about the Sears Tower possibly being a target (there have been reports that it was supposed to be). I left my apt around 11:30 PM and just wandered around- there were a lot of people doing the same thing. One of the most notable things was that usually people just walk the streets not making eye contact; we just concentrate on what we're doing-where we're going. But that night everyone was making eye contact, even though we didn't speak. It was like 1am, and there were so many people walking around-we just didn't know what to do with ourselves.

[OiGirl]

I was in my car staked out at the bus stop where a pedophile was known to be approaching my students. When the principal wanted to speak to me about "the situation around the country," I thought he meant there was a national outbreak of bus stop pedophiles...

[helly]

In Korea, just came home from the gym. Usually nothing to watch on TV at that time but decided to flip it on just in case. Watched the first tower flaming, saw the second plane hit, watched both go down and then stayed up all night watching news coverage.

[Smee]

In Astronomy class, sophomore year. It was about 20 minutes before class began, and the auditorium was about 1/3 full. The TV audio was playing through the speakers, talking about the WTC, but I couldn't make out much of it. Our professor came in and said that there were terrorist attacks on the Pentagon and the Capitol Building, and he let us out. As I was leaving the building I walked past a TV which was talking about a plane near Pittsburgh, my hometown.

On the lawn in front of the library, students and police were gathered. Apparently there was a suspicious suitcase in front of the administration building, and someone had phoned in a bomb threat. (There was a lot of misinformation in the hours just after the planes hit.) I went back to my room, watched CNN for hours and tried to calm down and stop my headache and my panic attacks.

[VanIslander]

I was in Montreal spending a month with a good friend (as part of my traveling hiatus). He didn't have a t.v. so I only heard about the towers on the radio (never since have seen any of the video footage). By noon I headed for the Notre Dame hospital to give blood and talked to people on the street along the way, picking up others to join me. About twenty of us entered the hospital and it turns out they had not been preparing anything for this. I contacted several doctors and administrators (I was a journalist at the time, so asking questions, hustling with a sense of urgency and organization was natural then) and we finally got - two hours later - a basement room opened and set up for accepting emergency blood donations (by which time some manager suddenly appeared and took charge of the whole thing). It was eight p.m. by the time I left the building, satisfied that I did something to help the situation and make me feel less helpless. A few days later it's announced that due to overwhelming donations of blood stateside, Quebec hospitals will keep its supply for their own needs. I was a bit irked, doubting whether that first day's efforts made a difference. Oh well...