September 11th....5 years later.

[Mellyrose]

I figured I would make a thread because I'm sure people have things they'd like to share about feelings that may be evoked today. Feel free to post anything pertaining to 9/11 or memorials.

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I was not in New York 5 years ago, but in the Army in basic training at Fort Jackson, SC. I was on a detail at the hospital helping in a unit. There was a TV in one of the staff lounges and as a trainee soldier I didn't care what was on TV, I'd watch. Honestly, I thought there was a preview for a movie on. I thought "How horrible to portray the towers like that in Hollywood." Then I saw CNN on the bottom of the screen.

Just as it was hitting me that this was real, I saw the 2nd plane hit live. So many things rushed through my head. I had friends and family within blocks of there....I'm in the army, are we going to war? The rest of the day is somewhat of a blur to me but it involved frantically trying to get in touch with my loved ones and being very angry at my fellow soldiers who were from small towns and just didn't understand why I was so upset. I felt so helpless being so far away. I would have rather been with my friends and family, even though it was not the safest place to be.


Last night Phil and I took an unplanned trip to Ground Zero. It was really a sight with all of the police, tourists, memorials, protesters and the new photo exhibition. We walked around the area and it's just unbelievable how things look now.

This morning I came into work early. It was very strange walking down to the subway and seeing the time and date displaying - September 11, 2006 - 7:16am. All I could think of was all of the opening sequences in any 9/11 movie, TV show or documentary that showed that exact thing with the morning hustle bustle.

Anyway, I'd like to hear how everyone else's days are going.

[T-Bird76]

This morning I went to a sunrise memorial down on the Connetquot River for the four people from my town that died in the attacks, one of them was someone I knew. It really was a sad experience that made me remember that day rather vividly.

[Midnight Mike]

I was working on that day & I remember one of the Instructors yelling over to me that a small airplane hit the World Trade Center, we did not think anything of it, until another Instructor yelled over that they nailed another World Trade Center & said that it is clearly an attack.

We were shocked, it even became more somber when they hit the Pentagon, one of part time Instructors worked at the Pentagon, so our concerns went to him....

I worked in the World Trade Center for Cantor Fitzgerald and when I workd there, I would look at the window & joke that if there was ever a fire, we would never get out alive.

I was unable to contact my younger sister for several days as the lines were tied up, the express bus's route went past the World Trade Center, when I finally heard her voice, it was like a heavy weight was taken off of my chest...

My wife & I just kept watching the footage on the news and were numb, as we worked around this area and felt part of the story....

For me, the biggest shock was when I went to New York some time later on & there was no World Trade Center, I never had to worry about North or South, if I want to go downtown, I aimed for the World Trade Center.

What really made proud, was that site of the World Trade Center was cleaned up & plans were made for a new building, which goes to show you, that you can knock us down, but, we will get up!

[Futterman]

This may be the fifth anniversary of the attacks, but it's the first one for which I've actually been away from home. And that just makes it all the more important to me.

I was surprised to see (at the last minute, unfortunately) that there were no specific memorials on campus this morning. Instead, I simply decided to go outside and reflect at a picnic table as the sun rose at 8:46am. It's considerably quiet around here, and was a nice way for me to relax before another busy week.

Should go without saying, though, that I'd much rather be back in the city right now to keep an eye on home-sweet-home.

Brian

[PhilDernerJr]

It's eerily cold to me today. I'm sitting at my desk watching CNN's re-broadcast of their coverage from that day. It's 9:59, and I know that in 6 minutes, the first tower is going to collapse.

It's just numbing. As horrible as it is, and even though I was watching with my own eyes from 8 miles away, I wish I experienced it closer than I did. I think we owe it to the victims to have a complete understanding of what happened and what was felt by those who were within two blocks of WTC that day.

[mirrodie]

Amazing that its five years. I was at the Veterans Hospital in Northport, in my residency year.

The waiting room was full of veterans, mostly from WW2 and Vietnam. I heard the commotion after the first plane hit that many of them in the waiting room thought it was a terrorist hit.

I didnt know what to think. The second plane confirmed it. From that day forward, all the entrances to the grounds were sealed. We stopped seeing patients for the day and another resident and I went for a walk on hospital grounds, just to get away from the TV. It was a beautiful day, just like today but just a tad bit warmer. But we had to get outside. The air was calm but we just kept wondering about what was going on right now and what was next. She has an apartment near Union Square and was trying to figure out what was the situation there.


It was really something else to be in a room with our veterans. We all watched helplessly but they had a closer tie to it all. They had all faced war first-hand and this was no different.

That was Monday 9-11-01. Later, as the week progressed, anti-arab sentiment was building. And if you know me, my face and coloring resembles a few different culture. So by Wednesday, a few veterans were looking at me and muttering amongst themselves. Later my secretary told me, "Doc, those guys over there didnt want to see you and thought you were a terrorist but I set them straight." Thanks Selma.

I'd already bought my fiancee's engagement ring and I was going to ask on 9/23, after a day-trip flight up to PVD. The new security made for a particularly stressful time for me since I had to take the ring and bury it into my wallet so that no TSA screener accidentally let the cat out that I had a ring on me.

So many things changed at the VA on that day. But one quasi-positive is this: Many of our Post Traumatic Stress Disorder sufferers have since been much more open and healing.

In my life, I despise that day and what it represents. It changed OUR world, not that of other countries though, since we were newbies to this scale of terrorism. Ireland, England, Beirut, Lebanon, that all know it. BUt we were a sheltered child up til that point.

And if those suicider extremists think they'll get 78 virgins, I just hope we prevail and those virgins are wearing titanium chastity belts.

[cancidas]

i was in school in AZ on that morning, as usual asleep due to the time difference. my mother called me early, was probably aroun 0530 or 0600 when the phone rang. she had some problems with the computer and i managed to help her through that. as soon as i hung up the phone rang again, my mother again saying some plane had struck one of the towers. knowing nothing of the wx here i assumed it was some little airplane that got lost in fog and flew into the tower. i went back to sleep.

one of the guys living with me in the dorm was in ARMY ROTC and has PT that morning. they cancelled that and he came running into the dorms to wake us all up. he literally dragged me out of the bed and into the lounge turning on the tv in the process. i sat down on the table and couldn't believe what i was watching. i also thought it was a movie. as i was sitting there my cell was ringing off th ehook, it was FDNY. they were calling all medics, techs and firefighters who weren't on shift to be there asap. i realized i forgot to tell dispatchers i was going away to school and when they called again i told them i was in AZ with no way of getting there soon. my gf then called, saying she got the same message and was scared out of her mind. she didn't know what was going on till i told her to turn on the tv.

that day was probably the worst in my life. i couldn't get through to the freinds i had that were going to polytechnic near there. i couldn't get through to my brother or sister, or my parents. i talked to my gf once that morning and didn't talk to her until two days later when she asked me to marry her. i couldn't get in touch with any of my freinds at FDNY... that was the worst part, not knowing where they were or if they had survived the collapse. my dean had come by, and just like everyone else in the damn school just wanted to "talk." i ended up slamming the door in his face and just sitting in the lounge watching tv. classes were optional that day, and a few hours later i, like all the other flight students, got a visit from the FBI.


i never really appreciated the size of what happenned until i got home. i couldn't get a flight until january of 2002 when i came home for winter leave. i flew through DEN on F9, and since the crew was from my school they had invited me up to jumpseat home with them. it was only a 733, but we did the river visual approach into LGA. seeing the pit from the air didn't prepare me for th enext day when i went down there and stood in the middle. that was the first time since it happenned that i was so overwhelmed with emotion that i just had to sit down right there and cried. one volunteer came by and asked me of i was ok. she saw my work shirt and asked me where i was stationed. i pointed to the south side of the plaza to there the single engine company was (i forgot thier number) and realized finally that if i hadn't been in school that i wouldn't be here today. i spent the rest of my leave down ther ein the pit every day just digging, and to this day i have yet to wash one of the shirts i wore there.

now that i sit and watch tv and listen to everyone bitching and moaning over what is going to happen to the site it just angers me more. there is only one way to honor those that died that day, and in my mind that is to rebuild the towers the way they were. we don't need a "freedom tower" in this country, who the **** came up with that name anyway? and so today, on the 5th aniversary of that day i proudly wear my own work shirt and say that I WILL NEVER FORGET!!

FDNY-EMS: 9-11-01

[emshighway]

I was on a day off, my wife had surgery the day before at Hospital for Joint Disease on 15th Street. The day before I sat on the 13th floor of the Hospital looking out the windows of the cafeteria staring at the WTC commenting to myself what a wonderful view.

At around 8:50 my wife called screaming for me to put on the TV. I watched and like everyone else thought it was a small plane. I said to myself (as talking to some old EMS friends) "well guys, you are going to be busy today". I was at the 1993 bombing and was the EMS communications officer for about 18 hours. We went into the hole and I knew this was much worse. Then I saw a black blur and said to myself "what the hell is that" at the same time the second plane hit.

My wife called again screaming for me to get her out of the hospital. I tried to calm her down and told her I was going to go down and help at the WTC but she demanded I pick her up. Then the first tower fell and I grabbed my old badge and figured I wouldn't make it over the lower bridges so I headed from Glendale to the Tri-Boro Bridge. I flashed my badge out the window through street after street but it still took me hours to get down to the hospital. My mind said to go to WTC but my heart said I had to get my wife. I picked her up just as Tower 7 fell. We made our way to the midtown tunnel. It was the eeriest feeling. Here it was the middle of rush hour and we were the only car around.

I got my wife home and settled in and once she fell asleep I made my way to the scene. It was nothing like I have ever saw before. I have been in some hell holes but this was THE hell hole. I saw a supply truck with respirators and grabbed a few (probably saved me from heath issues now).

I looked around and was astonished that there wasn't anything recognizable. Where did the desks, chairs, computers, anything go? It was all dust. I grabbed a fire fighter and asked about anyone trapped. He said they got a few out right away but nothing else. I headed over to a tent and it was being set up as a morgue. I spoke to on of the Medical Examiners and he said they were just receiving parts, nothing else. I couldn't find anything to do but pass some buckets. After a few hours I could see my services weren't needed and went home. I went down a few other times but there was so many people helping that I felt I was in the way. Instead of going down I helped hook up out of town rescue workers with places to stay. My wife wanted to go a week later and I got her in but didn't feel right just being there to look. A few tourist were snapping away and this got me pissed. This wasn't a tourist site!!

After a week I found out Carlos Lillo, a FDNY Paramedic was one of the missing. Carlos and I went to Long Island City High School. I was already working at Astoria Volunteer Ambulance and he became interested. I gave him the info for joining and was pleasantly surprised to see him there. I trained him as best I could then joined EMS. I worked my way around and became a Lieutenant. Carlos joined EMS and I was his boss out of Elmhurst.

I spent almost the next year going to so many funerals I lost count. Carlos was found and luckily his family could have closure.

Within the last year the funerals have started up again. This time from the rescuers who survived that day by out running the falling building but can't outrun the toxins that were absorbed from days, weeks, months of exposure.

[Iberia A340-600]

I was only 9 at the time and didn't really understand what was going on. I was in Dr. Brand's fourth grade class room in Nyack, New York when the first plane hit the towers. I don't remember much of the teachers reaction but I remember having code red and we had to close the blinds, turn off the lights, and hide under our desks for the day.

We had been having code red drills the previous days so we just thought it was another drill until other kids in my class started to be picked up. My teacher asked if any of our parents worked in the city and told us that they would be late in picking us up if they had gone to work today. It was not until 3:00, 30 minutes before school ended, that I was picked up and learned what had really happened.

I remember not being shocked or even sad. I had never heard the work "hijacking" before and I couldn't even remember what the twin towers where. I remember coming home to the tv on and my sister crying softly in a chair while we watched tv and I saw the events that had happend earlier that day. My sister lost maybe 30 friends that she had gone to High School with that day. I remember going over to my friends house later that day with a smile on at how beautiful of a day it was. My friends where told that the Liberty Science Center had caught on fire and I informed them of what had happend as if it was nothing.

I can't help but feeling slightly guilty at my reaction to the whole thing. I do know other kids my age that re-acted more mature then me on that horrible day.

We all remember were we where on that day. I have had numerous conversations with friends about that day and we all agree that our recations where the reactions of typical 9 year olds. We talk about it now like we should have back then. We know how horrible it was.

It took me five months to finally realize the full blow of things. It came to me while watching Home Alone 2 while the boy is on the top of the North Tower, I started to cry on the couch and it all just hit me.

It took me a while to feel safe going into the city again but I had no problem flying, I flew in January 2002 down to the Bahamas.

I have experienced something else so horrible but at an older age. I was just two blocks away from the Atocha train station in Madrid when bombs went off in the comuter trains. I can remember the shock and pain of that day but not as clearly as I can remember September 11th. I was on one of the same trains that got bombed the day before at the same time. I can remember feeling extremley unsafe after the events of March 11th and I can remember how scared I was to move around Madrid.

It took me a year and a half to get back on one of those trains and when I did I ended up crying and wanted to get out of the train.

I hope I can speak for my generation when I say we remember were we where on September 11th and we understand how horrible it all was. At the time we may have not but as we have grown older we have started to understand. We will strive to make changes in the future to make sure such a horrible event does not take place again.

As the fifth anniversairy passes I just realize how strong America is. At the time of pain and tragedy we all came together as a community to help each other, that takes amazing strength and wisdom and we pulled it off.

At a time of such horrible things nothing matters...

[hiss srq]

On that particular day I was actually in Sarasota but in flight school and high school at the time. I was quite excited about the president being in town and had went to SRQ the night before to see AF-1 land at SRQ. The next day I was very anxious to see on TV the presidents events here as at the time I was developing intrests in the polityical world and had joined my schools Republican party. It was all really a blur to me because from the second the second plane hit I was in tears and calling my mom and stepdad in NY like mad. That Saturday i was supposed to be flyuing up to come home for my biological fathers 2 year. ann. of his passing. As things were still no place near normal by that point yet I ended up cancelling that trip home. I could not get in touch with anyone untill about 8 pm and at that point my family thankfully had made it home. My stepfather was at a business meeting that day in Brooklyn and my mother was in the office in Inwood. That day I made a resolve to join the USMC as soon as I graduated and go out there to fight for the US. Unfortuneately that did not happen for medical reasons. This year I spent at Booker Elem. down here in a service for it all. The media was intense here from all ends of the nation. I have been to ground zero many times since it became more accessable and it still it leaves me near tears to this day.

[glennstewart]

I remember that "night" very clearly. It was about 11pm here in Sydney. I'd just left my ex-girlfriend's house for the train trip home into the city. The minute the first plane hit... mobile phones in every carriage started to ring. The whole train went into chaos.
By the time my train trip ended, people were rushing everywhere through Sydney streets. I think everyone knew. Every TV was switched over. I made it home to unfortunately watch the second plane hit.

We were in complete disbelief!!

Heading to work the next day was a little crazy. I worked in same tower block as the US consultate (Sydney isn't the capital - the embassy is in Canberra). The entire forecourt was covered with flowers and well wishes. I've never seen so many flowers and letters...
An attack on New York, was like an attack a big brother.

[PhilDernerJr]

Glad to have read that, Glenn. Politics aside, I'm grateful that allies like you and your country are there for us in such times.

[mirrodie]

Phil, having just been to Darwin Australia, where FOUR TIMES as many bombs were dropped there in WWII, compared to Pearl Harbor, I too am proud and grateful to have Oz as an allie!

[JRadier]

I had the day off from school and was behind my computer to do some homework (was 14 back then), and heard on the radio 2 planes had hit the towers in NY. But as they often joke on that channel, I didn't believe it at first. After a while they repeated it and I went down to turn on the TV. The rest of the day I didn't see much else then that TV that afternoon and evening.

[Matt Molnar]

On 9/11/01 I was planning on sleeping in. It was my 22nd birthday, I was unemployed, not in school, and I don't remember what I did the night of 9/10, but it was either a late night at my girlfriend's house or a late night sending out resumes.

At 8:56am the house phone rang. I woke up and walked over to the phone and saw it was my dad's cell. He liked to call me when he got to work to wake me up to make sure I wouldn't sleep all day...I was annoyed that he would do it on my birthday, so I went back to bed without answering.

A week or two before I had visited his latest office for the first time and was amazed at the view they had of the Twin Towers...which were 4 blocks directly west.

I always listen to the radio when I'm trying to sleep, usually WFAN does the trick. When I got back in bed, I turned it on, and of course Imus was on. I hate Imus, and I was about to change it, when Warner Wolf came running in to the studio to say a plane had hit the World Trade Center.

Now knowing the reason my dad had called, I immediately regretted not answering the phone and jumped up to call back. At the time he had a stupid habit of turning the phone off when he wasn't using it though, and it was off when I called him. I turned on the TV and there was Chopper 4 with a bird's eye view of the giant gray cloud oozing out of the north tower. I pondered how a plane could hit the tower on a perfectly clear day, but as I had spent my entire adolescence in Clintonian Utopia, not for a second did I think it was anything but an accident. Mechanical problems, coupled with really bad luck, I thought. I called my mom, who was at work just down the block from home.

The eyewitnesses calling in to all the news shows all said it was a small plane. Obviously none had actually seen it, they were all full of ****.

I switched back to Channel 4 whose chopper was north of the towers. And then....

BOOM

A few seconds after the massive fireball came out of tower 2, through my window I heard what sounded like muffled thunder in the distance. I had just heard the second shot of World War III from 12 miles away.

But even at that moment, my naive mind didn't believe it was nefarious. Chopper 4's angle, at first glance, did not show the plane going in, it just showed the explosion. I thought it must have been gas lines in the second tower disrupted by the disaster in tower 1, or perhaps an overzealous news copter had gotten too close to the tower and smacked into it.

The reporters were dumbfounded as to what might have caused the second blast. But then the weather reporter, Janice Huff, said she saw something in the video before the fireball...another plane. And sure enough, when they replayed it in slow motion, you saw the second jet for a split second before the massive fireball.

Utopia was over.

I tried calling my dad a few more times to no avail.

Not long after, reports of a car bomb going off at the State Department in Washington D.C. came in. Cameras aimed at the buildings showed nothing wrong, but soon the real news came in...a plane had hit the Pentagon.

I called my mom back. Half jokingly, half scared ****, and not believing the words coming out of my mouth, I said "we're under attack."

A little while later she came home just to see what it looked like on TV. Just as she was about to leave, tower 2 collapsed. For the first time in my life I was cursing in front of my mom. HOLY ****! HOLY ****! I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Having not heard from my dad, and imagining that everything within several blocks of the tower would be decimated, my stomach sank and I considered the possibility that my dad was not coming home.

The north tower collapsed, and soon after my dad called. He was extremely shaken but on his way home, as he and a co-worker had jumped in his car after the second plane hit and headed east...the last car over the Williamsburg Bridge before the NYPD sealed it off. He was still shaking when he got home and the rest of the day...he couldn't get over the horror of seeing people willingly jumping out of the buildings to avoid burning to death.

The next day my dad learned that a friend he worked with, a sort of curmudeonly eccentric guy, had seen a Middle Eastern man in the lobby of their building looking up at the burning towers and talking on a payphone, acting very pleased at what was going on. He called the cops when he finally got back to his house out in Suffolk that night. Soon after, he got a knock on the door from a couple of state troopers...he needed to go with them, they said, the FBI wanted to talk to him about what he had seen, and the troopers were going to drive him to an awaiting helicopter down the road which would fly him back to Manhattan. "I'm afraid of helicopters," he said, "I'm not going." Somehow they persuaded him to go though, and he did.

I remember the first death toll estimates leaked by a congressional staffer to one of the news stations after a closed-door briefing that night: 10,000. I remember being boggled that night when they said 350 firefighters were still missing. I remember not being able to sleep right for a couple of weeks. What would come next? I would stay up watching Fox News Channel every night until I simply couldn't stay awake anymore, usually 4 or 5am.

People always ask me what it was like having my birthday that day. I always say it was a terrible day of course, but compared to so many others, it could have been so much worse. I was lucky no one I was close to was affected.

The closest connection I had with a victim was more one of "that could have been me" than actual friendship...a guy I had gone to high school with had taken from time off from college to make some money, much like myself. He had just joined the electricians union, which is something I had considered doing. September 11th, was the second day of his first apprenticeship...with a contractor that was doing some work in the offices of Marsh & McClennan on the 95th floor of Tower 1.

So while friends give me plenty of well wishes on what used to be a happy day, more so now than before, I don't try to forget what happened in 2001. I hope by retelling these stories we keep the memories fresh in the minds of those reading and of ourselves.

Today I found this previously unrelased footage of the day's events, shot by a couple from the window of their Battery Park City apartment just a few hundred yards from the towers. The raw sound and uniquely close angle make it disturbing, but something everyone should watch. http://www.revver.com/view.php?id=59686