September 11, 2001: Personal Stories 10-Years Later

Originally posted by TerryMcGuire
I was joyous.

I have to wonder how joyous you would be if your daughter, loved ones family members died that day. It's easy to sit back and be unemotional over the deaths of people you don't know but just remember, they are someone's loved ones, too.

I've been away for a few days, on a long trip through a literal hell, and I'm on the way back home now, I was in New Jersey for a couple of days, in Linden, Newark and Perth Amboy, I got close enough to see the skyline of NYC, and chatted with some locals about THAT day... Their perspective was quite unique and enlightening, also I listened to the local radio, and watched local news about upcoming events.... My personal hell, dilemmas and reaching the end of a long road in my life seemed rather insignificant when reflecting on "that day"...

I was a thousand miles away from the events of that day.... Literally and figuratively, I remember someone shouting that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center "its on the news now", I remember thinking out loud "how the hell could that happen".... Later someone urged me to take a look at the television in the break room, it was either CNN, or Fox news (funny, I can't be sure which now)... You could see the tower, the gaping hole and the smoke, I remember thinking that relatively compared to the tower, it seemed small... So my first thought was it must have been a small plane... I had no true sense of the actual dimensions, no real perspective, having never seen the actual size of the WTC towers, it was on a small TV... I remember bits of the speculation among those watching and what was being said by the news anchors.. Then while talking and watching, the second plane hit the other tower, from that moment the memories are much clearer, and then my first instant thought was it was no accident... I sat down and the room was completely silent except for the sounds from the television... Like many that day, the rest of the day we were all focused on that screen, there and everywhere, and later at home through the night.... Personally I'd rather not relive those memories here, and really, the details of what I could write here would be redundant, as unless you were not on the planet that day, you already know all of them. And can I am sure recall them all as vividly as I.

At the end of that day, I remember laying in bed and attempting to force myself to sleep, and my last thoughts were, that no matter what happens from now on, everything has changed, the world will never be the same, and also pondering why... Why would anyone do this?.... Of course years have passed and those questions and at least a million more have come and gone, mostly unanswered, or only leading to more unanswerable questions.

I suppose what I remember most is a profound and agonizing sense of sadness over it all, so many lives lost needlessly and in the most tragic ways possible... But now I find myself thinking and feeling the same sense of sadness over all of the lives lost since then in the wars that have followed, still unanswered questions, and no less sad, we've had many 9/11s since then, though none here in the USA... Hundreds of thousands of people have been killed... Right or wrong, who and why seem irrelevant now.

10 years later, I remember, how could anyone forget it?

Click here to learn more about this warning.

It was Tuesday morning, I fell asleep in my office that day and woke up around 11 a.m. to go to lunch. The hall was dark when I opened the door, and strangely quiet, (basement, steel doors). Meh, I walked out to the car and the lot was strangely barren, and went to the corner pub for lunch and it was on TV. Lots of people started coming in so I got a beer and watched a tower collapse. At that point I suspected that our office closed. But anyway I drove back, and security and cops were blocking the parking lot, so I went back to the pub.

Some friends came in and we went to the next pub a block away, and later they showed a helicopter attack the blew up a building in Afghanistan is what they said. So we finished up to head to my backyard to watch another war on TV like the Gulf War 1. Got things set up and it was still light out, we saw a huge airliner fly overhead, (I recognized it as a 747, like AF1, it was flaked by two F-18's, heading directly west. I said that is probably a decoy of a AF1 flight from Rickenbacker, (just 5 miles to our east). They probably have this going on all over the country for decoys, and I was probably right. A no fly was already in place, and I'm sure it wasn't AF1.

There was no TV war that night, but I got the next day off work too.

To this day I wonder why nobody woke me up at work to evacuate.

I was working at the Library of Congress in DC at the time, and my brother left me a message on my work phone from PA. He said it's all over the news that planes were ramming into the world trade center buildings, and to watch out for DC. I was in the archives which is 2 1/2 floors below the street level. I heard yelling, radios; loud, with the message "Alpha Dog 1! Alpha Dog ! this is not a test Alpha Dog 1!" so after about 10 minutes I try to walk where I heard the message, and there was about 15 or 20 Swat members or Capitol Police rushing people in suits down the hallway. What was weird was this was the LOC not Congressional buildings, I mean they are all connected with a tunnel underground, but I have never seen a cop or anyone near our side. I noticed from the news that some of these people who were being escorted were congressmen and women. The cop told me to get back, this is restricted, but I told him I have to get to the elevators to get out of the building he told me to wait I waited 10 minutes, he told me to "get the F out of here now". When I took the elevator to ground floor I got out to talk to a co-worker and I heard a policeman's radio say the call was made on Capitol Complex Radio that evacuations were being implemented, I took the elevator again to the 5th floor where I worked and started to get my things ready to leave, my boss said "where are you goin?" I said "to pick up my daughter at daycare" the communication didn't exist between the cops and the other departments, so they wanted me to take personal leave to go and get my 1 year old at daycare...I said I'm leaving now....I walked out into Independence Ave and since the Capitol was filled with tourists there must have been 5,000 people in the street, so surreal,,,,everyone seemed to be on a cell phone at that time, people crying, people running, people crying running on cell phones....my goal was to get to my daughter at the Libraries daycare 6 blocks away,,,I hauled butt and got there, my wife was a teacher in DC at the time so she was with her students and couldn't leave, I took my daughter in her stroller and we walked about a mile when I heard a loud helicopter,,,,right out of the tree line was an apache helicopter Holy Mackeral!! it took off towards the pentagon. I made it to my Wife's school about an hour later, and we left from there to our home in Oxon Hill, MD where the sky was filled with the smell of the burning Pentagon, I lived right across the river from Reagan National and it was the quietest time of my life, no sonic booms. I will always live with the memory of that day,

Originally posted by steve95988
here is what i think about this oh poor pitty potty americans on 9/11

Q: What's the last thing that went through the minds of the 9/11 jumpers?
A: Their ankles.

Q: What does WTC stand for?
A: What Trade Centre?

Well, 9/11 sure proves one thing... New Yorkers can really come together in a crunch!

We all have our opinions. Yours is without class.

CJ

It was 2 weeks after we have just had a 17yrs old Chinese foreign exchange student go back home. What a great experience; one i shall never forget.!
I was just pulling up to the driveway from working a 12hr shift, when the radio station broke in and said the reports are sketchy but that there would appear to be an aircraft of unknown size just hit one of the trade towers in NYC.

"that's really odd" i thought, "FAA rules def apply and how they could be completely off their vector or heading given by the air tower is completely unthinkable. the only way that might have happened would be either the pilot would have had a heart attack or he wanted to make a statement"

Turning on the television to CNN, I was watching the smoke pour out of the building and realized that it was ALOT of smoke to be just a twin or single engine aircraft. Within secs of me thinking that CNN confirmed my suspicions, it was a jetliner and it's flight#..

Now even more concerned that it was a passenger plane, my next thought was "hijacked'..had to be.. even if the pilot was dead .. the Co-pilot could take over" as I was thinking this .. I saw the 2nd plane strike! I physical said outloud "OH MY GOD!!!"

I instantly knew USA was under attack, feeling the agitation and slight paranoia building, I brought the phone close to me in case I might get a call, even though I was out of the military for 14years. I FULLY expected to get a call from either from a high ranking NCO or Officer.

My mind started to race as I began to try and logically think what I needed to do to prep in case i was to be called up, I quickly grabbed a piece of paper and pen and started to write down ..full tank of gas to get to station to report in, write a one page letter to my daughters and family, etc..

20mins later or so, I hear Pentagon was hit. Pacing back and forth quickly with the phone in my hand in the living room all alone since gf and kids were at school, wishing someone would call me.. and hour goes by.. no phone call. I'm now seriously getting upset and angry at the situation because of lack of preparation and notification to citizens on such an event.

Where is the public address system/Announcement??!! where's the planning? Where's the phone call I should be getting?? 2 hours goes by, nothing. I'm now past my bedtime to go to work for that night, I call in sick, if I was to fired, FINE! the silence is deafening and the only thing running though my mind over and over is, America is seriously under attack I'm $#_*% sitting here and not one phone call, not one civil service announcement...........WT*~!!

I had realized I had been pacing for an hour and a half, back and forth, and realizing I had to calm down, I made a pot of coffee, and poured me a cup. As I just sat down to watch CNN reports, the first tower began to fall, again I said "NO WAY !!!!" out loud in total shock; sitting there realizing , a wave of depression came over me. Watching the rubble and the even intently with the sound over halfway .. the 2nd tower dropped!!!

My head dropped and instant rivers of tears began to run down my face so much that there was no long any drips off my chin, they turn to tiny streams, I dropped my full cup of coffee and began to weep out loud uncontrollably. (it's really hard to write this even now ) saying over and over again .. NOOOOO, NOOOOO I got off the couch and buried my head in the couch cushion weeping hard and gripping the cushion in sorrow.

I lost complete track of time of how long I was there, I must have wept myself to sleep or passed out with my face a mess. Woke up with the couch soaked still and me halfway laying on it. I heard the TV still on, so I turned it down a bit..Looking at the rubble, and the aftermath on CNN, getting the updates, something caught my eye...

where were the National Guard? I had fully expected to see no less than a 2 full battalion of soldiers surrounding NYC in martial law of some kind within 12 hours of the attack since 14yrs ago, they told us to have a complete list of places most frequently visited and friends and family updated and would need to be able to report within 8 hours of being called. There were none, zero

My phone then rings, it's our exchange student, calling from a cell phone in China crying and said..
"everyone in China is praying for you right now in the square, I have to go.. but we are so sorry, I said "No one deserves this treatment, no matter what country they live in (name) as I begin to choke up,

I can hear the cries of Chinese people in the background as she tells me me goodbye in a cracked voice. Tears filling my eyes again as i hang up, drooped my head and let the tears falls uncontrollably....

We just had moved into a bigger appartement in our hometown here in Germany. On that day we had a meeting with a woman, who was interested in our old appartement, what would make it easier to get out of the contract and save some money.

On the way home, my wife called her father from a public phone, since we had not yet a connection in our new appartement. He was living all a lone since his wife had died and spent much time watching tv.
He told my wife, that a plane had crashed into a high house in America. We both felt reminded to the accident in Amsterdam in the Netherlands in 1992. Many people had died in their homes, when a Boeing from Israel crashed into the houses.

Back at home we switched on the tv and were surprised, that nearly every channel was reporting about the case. As soon as we saw the live coverage, the second plane crashed in and it was clear, that this was not an accident.
When the first tower fell I yelled: "They really did it!" - I am not sure, who I thought was "they" at the moment. Probably I just could not believe the unbelievable at that moment. But we soon started to wonder, how lucky those around were, because the tower simply dissapeared into dust, instead to fall into any direction on the neighbouring buildings.
Then the very same happened again and we felt, that this was impossible.

Reading through the posts here, I realized that I never had thought about the fact, that many soldiers, who went to Afghanistan and Iraque were children back then. Probably parents feared for their young lifes in 2001...

On Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, I was exactly 7-years-old. (I don’t live in NYC) I was at school, sitting in a classroom. Then over the intercom the principal described what was happening. An airplane hit the North Tower! At first I thought it was a horrible, unfortunate accident, but then another plane crashed into the other Tower. I can’t remember what my friends said, but I bet they were utterly shocked too.

Later that night my family and I watched CNN and other news stations. I was shocked about the destruction, bodies, blood, and death. There were also a bunch of people that were trapped in those Towers. Then I learned that the Towers collapsed…onto themselves. I knew that probably the survivors didn’t survive. Later I learned about a plane hitting the Pentagon and rural Pennsylvania.

I was very scared. I thought we were being taken over by terrorists. I thought the apocalypse was coming.

9/11 was the worst tragedy ever in the U.S. It was the worst news to get. I never cried (I was tough) but I was crying on the inside. I was filled with confusion, anger, and pain. And now…I’m always paranoid and anxious when the anniversary comes….it feels like my heart is gonna explode.

R.I.P. for the people who died on that day. Praise the heroes for risking their lives to save others in need…I thank-you. THANK-YOU!

11 September 2001. I was just a month shy of my 18th birthday, but I had graduated High School the previous May. I was a young, very naive kid, and at this point in time, I was sporting a bald head, thick brown glasses, and the BDU's of a US Army Infantry Trainee.

The day started out as any normal day would. 4am, Drill Sgt steps in, beats a metal trash can with a baton until all are woken. We toe the line, he tells us that our bivouac area was endangered because of some forest fires that were taking place around Fort Benning at the time. That because of this endangerment, our sorry asses had lucked into a free day off while we waited for the fire to be contained so we could start our bivouac training.

We went to PT as usual, breakfast as usual, and had an impromptu class on hand to hand combat in the morning just before the attacks. As we came in from our training, our Drill Sgt received a phone call and we were immediately ordered to quadruple time our asses off back to the barracks. We all ran, and eventually, with our drill sgt sweating bullets, we broke formation and ran like hell behind him to see what was going on to make him act such a way.

I was last in line. I was tasked to wear a reflective vest, along with my battle buddy, to keep the rear of our formations safe and visible to oncoming motorists. We both gave each other a look as we saw our Drill Sgt go into the barracks and heard the TV come on and immediately go up to a high volume. As the soldiers filed in behind him, I heard many gasps and oh my gods and immediately began to push into the barracks and get the boys moving so we could see what was going on. As I walked into the room and looked to the TV, I had about 5 seconds to register what was going on amid the chaos before they showed the second impact. I fell right off my feet. Many of the guys in the room didnt notice, but the few I stumbled into helped me get to my bunk and take my boots off. They got me coherent to ask what was wrong, and I told them we were going to war. There was no way around it, we would be deployed to a combat zone. Alot of guys in my platoon didnt have military Fathers like I did. My family has been infantrymen for Marines or Army since the inception of both organizations. I knew what an attack like this meant, and when we were instructed to call home and make sure our families were fine, we were told that there was a possibility we would shortly be involved in a full scale war. I called my parents and told them what was going on. They were both at work. Mom had no idea what was going on. Mom was worried, and cried when i told her this meant I was going to war. Dad heard about the attacks on the radio right before I finally reached him. He was already crying, he knew what I was going to have to do.

When the blame was stuck on Bin laden, our training shifted. it did not take days or weeks, the shift was immediate. We began to train triple our time in MOUT Facilities and in mockups of Afghani cities and Iraqi sewers. Our battle cry had at one time been "ooh, Ahh, I wanna kill somebody" and it immediately became "Ooh Ahh, I wanna Kill Bin Laden". It was incessant. We were no longer being trained to be normal infantrymen, but to be top notch terrorist hunter-killers. We were told as much.

Mom and Dad accepted it finally. I went on to do 3 tours of duty, in both Iraq and Afghanistan. I came home alive, some of us didn't.

To this day, I want full disclosure. I want the truth, and I don't believe, even as a highly trained US Soldier, that we are getting it. I want it as much for me as for my 7 friends who died in the wars that followed.

I watched it on TV. I don't personally know anyone who died in the attacks. I was only affected later when a big chunk of my rights were taken away by legislation, along with everybody else's, and the war against a phantom enemy busted the U.S. economy. Oopsie daisy.

I was in 7th grade and I had just left my shop class. One of my friends ran at me exclaiming "We are under attack!". I didn't panic, but I went to the nearest TV in the cafeteria to see what the hell was going on. After a while we all returned to our next classes and watched it all unfold. The teachers kept saying "This is an important day, and will go down in history." I didn't have any immediate feelings about the attacks. I just wondered how we could have let this happen.

On September 11th, I was in the 4th grade in Mr. Childs class sitting by the back window. We were doing some kind of school work and he had the radio on and he said something about an attack on the WTC. I didn't know nor did I care at the moment. I thought it was maybe some kind of fire and the firemen would put if out but then the principal came on the intercom and said that school was cancelled for the day. Score!, I thought. I was just a kid, could you blame me?
So my father pick my sisters, my cousin and I up and took us home and kept us away from the tv. It was my sisters birthday that day so he wanted to rush us out of the house for a birthday lunch and a walk around the mall and took the girls into the bedroom to get ready. He told me to stay away from the tv but I wanted to watch cartoons and I turned the tv on. I couldn't comprehend what I saw. Just a pile of twisted metal and I heard a lot of talk about dead people and planes hitting the towers. Damn, I never even heard of the WTC and the Pentagon. The only building I ever heard of in NYC was the Empire State building, the SOL and Madison Square Garger (and I only knew that because I just saw the Godzilla remake with Matthew Brodrick). I kept watching and I didnt understand and I remember my dad comming out and wasn't surprised. He asked me how I felt and I felt confused and I remember ever single word he said to me. "There are bad people in this world and the bad people want to kill good people to prove a point" I thought the police would catch the bad guys but it was deeper than that.
Now I'm 19. I have my doubts and I've grown up a lot. I look back now and I'm just amazed. I watch a lot of those NatGeo shows on it and every now and then I get a tear in my eye. It's just not fair you know. It's just not right. Humans shouldn't do this to other humans.

I always fall asleep to the TV; so on the morning of 911 I woke up and looked right over the TV. I saw the world trade tower on fire and smoking. The news was not sure what happened but they thought at first it was pilot error. At first I thought this was old news due to two things one there had been an attempted bombing of the trade center before and the second reason was I had an exact dream that looked like 911. It only took me a minute to register this was real and I jumped up out of bed. I watched in horror as a plane hit the second tower. I reached over for my dream notes/notebook and I dropped the book. This is what I wrote in March 1 2001; around190 days; diaster in a major a city,(possible earthquake,nuke explosion, bombing?); the scene that unfolded me before me was of people running away from collasping buildings and smoke engulfing people. In my dream I was watching through a window or maybe a TV I was safe but I felt fear for the people.
When I looked up at the TV that scene unfolded before my eyes down to the smoke, the shaking,people running and the buildings etc. This day shook up my world; this was only the second time I had realized one of my dreams came true. I lived with my sister at the time and I got her we watched the TV upstairs together. I was so scared and in a lot of shock myself. We really thought that this was going to happen to other cities as well. We stayed home listening the news and planes were grounded but if we heard a plane we got real nervous. Then there was a rumour that gas prices were going to increase so then I took the car to get gas and tons of people were there. That was when the gas gouging began to happen. I was able to get gas at the cheap price but by the next day it was $4-$5 per gallon.
The shock lasted for quite a while. I went about my normal life but always had those images in the back of my head. I went to karaoke the next night and they had tons of middle easterners who loved to sing karaoke not a single one was there. The night club is by an airport and when an extremely low flying plane passed over; everyone freaked out. The whole bar stopped and came to look up to the sky. You could hear the plane over the music. Life was weird for a while after 911.
By the way at this point in my life I wrote down my dreams because they were so interesting; it wasn't until after 911 that I began to seek out what my dreams really meant. This is part of where I got the name dreamseeker and part of what drew me to this site in 2004.

At that time I was learning to fly, and I actually had a lesson on the 11th of September...still in my logbook. I live in Australia so when the attacks happened it was late at night. I remember being on the veranda with my house mates having a party with the girls next door when someone said that the World Trade Centre had been bombed. No one really took any notice, this had happened before...no one mentioned that planes had flown into them!

The next morning I got a phone call from my girlfriend telling me to get out of bed and turn the TV on. I asked why and she said "America is under attack". I turned the TV on and the first thing I saw was the planes hitting the towers and people jumping. The hairs still stand up thinking about the people jumping. My first reaction was how could someone actually control such big plane travelling so fast into a building so (relatively) narrow.

I made my way down to my flying school after watching the TV for a bit. A little while after I arrived 2 guys in black suits walked in and wanted to talk to our chief pilot....they wanted all the student flying records . With the records in hand they made 2 piles...one for Australian names and one for foreign names. They took the latter pile with them and I never saw them again...don't know who they were but I would place my last dollar on them being ASIO.

On the morning of September 11, 2001, I awoke feeling so sad....it was around 8:15 a.m. I was crying, but I didn't know why. I've awoken crying when family members made their transition (before being told). I got ready to go to the gym. On the drive there, I couldn't stop crying....I was sobbing uncontrollably. I realized that I was totally out of balance emotionally and I had no clue as to 'why'. So, I turned my car around....(I stopped at a store to buy some water, but couldn't compose myself enough to go inside and buy it) and went home to cry. Then, I saw what had happened. I'd heard that this was going to happen from a number of sources. My colloidial silver manual from the early 90's even named Osama Bin Laden as the culprit...LOL. I've been into conspiracy theory long enough to remember the days that you had to buy such videos at GUN STORES!

So, yes.....911 totally stressed me out.

I've never, ever believed the official story.

I was branded a traitor for being unpatriotic...and not wanting war.

Since that moment, I've suffered anxiety attacks. I've felt that we changed reality, and have had a strong desire to go back before that date and just take a breath. I knew what happened-the day it happened. They messed with time-space........it turns out that the twin towers are a stargate of sorts if you dig deep enough......and I'm still not exactly comfortable with this.....

I was sitting in the student union at my college, eating breakfast with my cousin when the first plane struck the towers... I think I said something about the explosion of it looked cool. I was a bit disassociated from the shock and terror others felt over it. Most classes were canceled that day because people were too distraught. But really the tragedy of it was something I never fully felt. Oh, I felt sorry for those who had reason to grieve, but that was about it.

My good friend called my house to wake me up "wake up you lazy son of a b and turn on the news"
He was walking home to queens, from Manhattan and was freaking out. With mass transit shut down there were droves of people just walking, many of them covered in sut and dust.

I turned on the news and watched the footage in shock like it wasn't really happening, to see the towers like that and all the people running, I was just in the area the week before.

I didn't personally know anyone that lost their lives that day, but let me tell you, the days and weeks following 9/11 were gloomiest and darkest I have experienced. From where I live in queens you could smell ground zero's stench and could see the cloud of smoke that was around that portion of the city.

There was however a certain camaraderie in the streets and the bonds of family and friends were never closer.

Whether the attack was false flag or not, I hope to never have to see another attack on American soil.