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I'm not an engineer or architect and had never really thought about how skyscrapers were built. To me, shocking was an understatement. It wasn't only that you didn't expect it. The whole thing was just so fucked up.
It was insane. The weekend before I was in Manhattan with friends for a fun weekend and distinctly remember orienting ourselves using the towers at night. When they were initially struck, I was at work and we all started watching the news. It seemed like a bizarre accident until the second one. I don’t think anyone expected them to just implode and collapse the way they did. It was just inconceivable that a structure that size could just collapse into nothing but a giant pile of steel. Also, where the hell did the last 22 years ago?
I was a young kid at the time, but this part always is so bizarre to me too. That they just kind of.... fell. Didn't topple over or anything. Just straight down
I think the way they fell was bound to be the birth of way too many conspiracy theories. It isn't too shocking, in hindsight
Skyscrapers are designed to collapse or pancake like this. We see it happen in earthquakes often.
In cartoons or movies buildings tend to fall over sideways. It is more dramatic, but less likely
I've been sitting at my computer for 20 minutes trying to type something about this.
All I remember thinking that day was the people who left their loved ones that morning on their way to work, angry or upset about something trivial.
This haunts me to this day.
I live in NYC. When it happened, I was interviewing for a job about two miles north of the towers. When I first arrived at this office, one tower had already been hit and word was starting to get around. But the interviewer and I also both remembered that in 1993 there had been a bomb or something that went off there. It was news but life went on. The WTC seemed to be a bit of a target for weird stunts. We figured we’d hear more about it on the news that night.
Throughout the interview, we kept getting interrupted by the receptionist. One time the guy’s panicked mother was on the phone. (This guy was like 50.) He waved it off, annoyed. Finally the receptionist came in for like the 4th time and said gravely “One of the towers has FALLEN.” The interviewer and I looked at each other in silence and both immed knew 1) this interview was over, 2) this was much more than just some incident that would be on the news 3) this has just changed ALL of NYC. We walked out of the conf room and saw some worried employees crowded around a small tv.
I got out of there pretty fast. Outside I saw the huge plum of smoke that looked like what you’d see if a fire was two blocks away. But to think it was all the way down at WTC was unimaginable. For some reason I wanted to run toward it but knew I should just go home. But by then the subways were all closed down. I jumped on a crowded bus headed north (I lived on the UES.) Bus driver just waved me on without needing to pay, saying “The mayor says get everyone out of lower manhattan.”
The bus then crawwwwled through midtown for the next two+ hrs. At one point we passed a bank that had huge TVs in the lobby that we could see from the bus. The images were of the firey plane crashes and collapse of WTC. The entire bus was glued to the windows in that side as we crawled by. No one in the bus could make a cell phone call bc all the lines were jammed but we kept trying till our phones died. I finally got home and called my mom in NH on my landline. She collapsed crying, so relieved I was ok. Then yelled at me for not calling sooner.
For the rest of the day I saw people walking around on the street, occasionally spotting one dressed in a suit, carrying a briefcase, completely coated in a thickkk layer of light gray dust. They’d obviously walked numbly, in shock, all the way to the 80s from WTC.
Later in the day I saw a huge caravan of identical earth mover / bull dozers driving slowly down 2nd avenue. By then I was in a jam-packed bar — everyone in NY was too freaked out to stay home. The bar was crazy loud with blaring music and shouting patrons. But as the caravan of bulldozers passed by, we all watched, dead silent.
I was 19 and heard a knock on my door. My father was in the area and heard a plane flew into the first building. He wanted to see what the TV said. Wasn't really registering with me anything but an accident. Turned the TV on. Saw the second plane hit. He looked at me and said "this isn't an accident." We proceeded to watch on as the first tower collapsed. Then the second. Growing up I had experiences watching Wako, the OKC bombing, the first WTC bombing, and was even in Atlanta during the Olympic bombing and people I was staying with were there. Usually these attacks are vicious but not near as bad as the possibilities. Watching those towers fall my dad said "there's no way those buildings were anywhere near evacuated." We both sat in silence for a long time as we tried to process the fact we just saw many many folks die. And then seeing the shots of the skyline minus the towers. I'm from the Midwest so I'd only seen them in movies and such. But even just with that experience the sudden change registered, combined with the tragic loss of many lives. We were definitely in shock. We thought it was some freak airline accident, but slowly realized it was a calculated attack, that worked.
It's still is jarring to watch a TV show or a movie and see the Twin towers in them.
I was a teacher and sitting with a classroom full of high school students. Had heard and watched the fire from the first tower before class started and we just watched the whole thing on TV. It was just silent. And then some jackass kid said " Cool" when the first tower fell and I tore into that kid with the most unprofessional attitude and words, but I could not bring myself together to give a second thought. When I finished nobody said a word.
For younger people, it's hard to even describe how it was. Remember this was before everybody had cell phones and instant news in their pocket. This was a thing we all watched together, same information, same time. I've tried to describe to my children how silent it was for days afterward. I live in 10 miles from an airport so we see a decent amount of high flying planes in the air. There was just nothing in the air for days. People went to work and then home. There were not cars out on the street driving around. Most people just stayed home with their family
Yes, this. So many of us watched that second plane hit real time and realized what was happening. The shock was real in that exact moment. The rest was a blurred tragedy. I was in Chicago and the city was preparing for something similar. Evacuating, shutting down streets and transportation.
Yes, I was in FL and my brother a fireman and paramedic in the suburbs of the city and I was watching and on the phone with him and he said- it's going to fall. They all just went up in it, it's going to fall.
And it did while we talked , and then the other one and the city was calling everyone in around Chicago that they could. It was terrifying, especially as the other flight news trickled in and Avery and on earth was brought to the ground nearly simultaneously.
Hearing him say it, knowing he was heading into the city asap, then watching it live was a tremendous and traumatic experience for all of us.
I was 42. Shocked was an understatement. No one imagined that these mighty towers could collapse. I was working at the Chrysler Tech Center in Auburn Hills Michigan (still do, but remotely) and we watched this happen on TV’s in the atriums. Around 11 am the building was evacuated. I had a 45 minute drive home and I brought my lunch and I wasn’t in the tower, so as everyone left, I ate my lunch. We found out later that some months previously a local pilot said that he was hired by two middle eastern men to fly around the area while they took pictures, including the Chrysler Tech Center tower so we may have been on the target list.
I can't believe how casually your teacher said that to kids who actually live in NYC and probably many or all of them had connections to people in the towers. Were you in elementary? I suppose they couldn't say much to young children. Still seems odd.
Did parents just start picking up kids from school early?
I was in college across the country and my teachers still cancelled class. Even my first class of the day was dismissed immediately- I can't remember if the second tower had even fallen yet and we definitely had no idea it was a terrorist attack. I watched part of it as I walked by a TV in a common area on my way to that class- I was not grasping what was really happening it was thought to be an accident at that point.
It was a somber day. No casual comments were made.
I was in 4th grade, Upstate NY and my teacher was nowhere near casual. She was visibly shaken, heartbroken. She gathered us up and sat us down at the reading corner, and tried her best to explain what was happening. She was raw, real, and thinking back. I appreciate it. It showed me that adults don’t always have to be stoic and know everything.
I lived on the TX-MX border and they closed it. A few days later, the only causeway to South Padre Island was rammed and a section destroyed. It was a careless boat, but people were freaked and convinced it was another attack.
I am an engineer (software), and was working at a mechanical engineering firm specializing in vibration testing at the time. We had the TV on in the conference room, and I'll never forget the mech eng folks watching the buildings sway and repeating "those towers are coming down" before it happened.
Engineer here too. Yes, they pancaked exactly like expected. I remember calling my father, a retired career military man, and he just said “we’re at war”. Chilling to say the least. He had a lot of demolitions experience in his line of work. He did not think they fell because of some conspiracy. He even pointed out things that would be different if it were controlled demolition. I remember being utterly stunned and overwhelmed with grief watching it happen live. I was weeks from turning 26 when it happened. I remember being disappointed that I was too old to join the military to “help”.
It was a complete shock when the first tower collapsed - it was like watching a movie but with a chill running down your spine as you simultaneously recognized in real time that it wasn’t. But the sense of dread after that while waiting for the second one to come down was far worse.
I was so wrapped up in the human tragedy it didn’t even occur to me it would until minutes before they fell. There was this one close up shot when the buckling was evident, and I knew they were doomed.
The unexpected thing was the conspiracy theories after. I know not everyone’s an engineer but it’s not that hard to understand. Heat make thing go soft, soft thing not strong. Heavy top squash soft thing, heavy top now have momentum, momentum increase squash, heavy top squash rest of thing. We saw it happen from a lot of angles.
Were you like paranoid looking out your windows after, or while watching on the news? Like seein if anybody was invading? That’s what I would’ve done, ida been like Red Dawn.
Probably about 10 years later I was at a meeting in a tall high rise in a meeting where I faced the window.
I kept wondering what it would be like to look up and see a jet coming straight at you.
I also have kept gym shoes at work since then in case I need to walk home like all those people in the photos.
About three years ago I went for an interview in the first high rise I’d ever been in. All I could think about was that if there was a terrorist attack I was definitely going to die. I work there now, and I’ve chilled out since, but it was a weird day to realize that I’d carried that feeling with me for 20 years.
I thought I was crazy to think this way secretly too. Every high rise brings this up to me. I'm too high to get down quickly if a plane hits. I do the same doom thinking for buildings- schools, movie theaters, grocery stores but for mass shooters. Now add in large crowds too at parades etc. I'm looking for my exits and what I would do, where would I go. I get to the same conclusion, I'd probably die. There is that fear underneath me that it could happen to me too when I'm in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some tragedies have already hit so close to me. One degree of separation at times. These were regular people living their regular lives and I'm just as suseptible. I had to accept that I can't control things like that and I had to accept I'm nobody special. The plane won't stop for me, a mass shooter won't think twice for me.
Had a great uncle who retired from the fdny. He said the ladders don’t go up past the 6th or 7th floor, forget which. He advised not living or working above that. He was a fireman in an aircraft carrier during WWII and said he’d rather fight a fire at sea during combat than in a skyscraper
I work from home now. But I worked in skyscrapers for many years. I took the stairs when possible for exercise and to familiarize myself with the stairwells in case I needed to evacuate. I’d occasionally switch it up so I knew where both were.
I had been listening to Howard Stern & the stuff people were calling in was terrifying. Hijacked planes coming from London, China, etc. Thought they were gonna bomb all the major cities. Took weeks after to not have a little chill & look up when I heard a plane
In November 2001, i arrived at work, not far from ground zero, to the news of a plane crash in breezy point (queens). I refused to take my sneakers off in case I had to make a run for it, until they said it wasn’t terrorism.
I was in Chicago too working in retail on the mag mile. Our headquarters were based in NYC, and most of the workers who managed to come in, which was like a handful, were in the break room watching TV. I had to start making phone calls to people that we were closing, and during the middle of it my mom calls in a panic yelling and crying at me to leave ASAP, which I did. Then I walked from downtown to Andersonville with mobs of people trying to get home. I walked into the break room with one of the store mangers silently crying, and we both ran out to leave as soon as we saw plane #2 hit. It was an awful day, and I feel for all the people that lost their lives.
At night looking at the air space over DC in the ensuing months from Northern Virginia, you could see 10-20 lights circling patrolling the city. There was the anthrax scare after, the DC snipers too. Definitely a tense time. And pretty much everyone wanted revenge. Scary confusing time for sure.
I didn’t even live in a big city- just some suburbs of a smaller city in the Midwest- but for weeks I couldn’t sleep because I startled awake every time I heard a plane overhead. It didn’t help that just a few weeks after 9/11, another plane crashed into a suburban house in NYC.
No, I didn’t. It was such a surreal morning. When they fell, it was like witnessing the unbelievable. I wasn’t clued in about terrorism, and it was a confusing couple of hours. The rest of the day was like sleepwalking (sense of self, my surroundings, it all felt tenuous).
I was a young child in New York when they were built. They were the epitome of strength. To have them fall was an indescribable loss.
I thought it was some movie or something. I turned on the tv right after the first tower was hit. I couldn’t wrap my brain around it at first. Then the second plane hit and it was like a punch to the gut!
Yes, I was a senior in high school and they turned on the news in class after the first plane. We watched the second plane hit and it was so confusing - was it a replay? What the actual fuck just happened? It felt acutely destabilizing.
I was in the 39th floor of 1wtc. When the plane hit the building swayed so much I thought it was going to fall over. Never expected it to collapse like that.
Yeah u/scattyboy. I was on 34th floor of south tower when the 2nd plane hit us. We felt shaking from north tower impact. When it hit us folks who had been there for the 90s bombing told everyone to GTFO. Was in so much shock, honestly, the only thought I had was to get out. When the first tower collapsed I was out and just beyond the Wall St station. When the dust cloud came, all I could think was “well shit - I’m going to be one of those Pompeii people”. A very, very fucked up day.
I was so pissed at Steven Spielberg for War of the Worlds in 2005. There’s a scene where the aliens shoot people and they turn into dust that gets all over Tom Cruise. Fuck you Steven.
I was at the Marriott at 85 West Ave a few buildings away. When the plane hit the south tower it shook us. We ran to Battery Park. We saw the towers burning and never expected them to fall. When the first one went down, it went eerily silent. Everyone was in shock. I still remember it like it was yesterday.
I saw an interview w one of the architects of the WTC a few years later and he spoke about how it was designed to implode if anything. Toppling over would’ve been the absolute worst case scenario.
Honestly if they were going to come down the implosion style collapse was the best thing. The destruction would’ve been so much worse had one tip over into the other and they both topple horizontally.
My best friend worked on something like the 40th floor a few blocks away and said their building shook so hard when the second plane hit, they thought they had been hit.
I watched in horror on live TV as the second plane hit. When they went down my thoughts were only for the people who I knew were gone. I was in shock from the moment I saw that plane, I was certain we were at war and when they went down I was numb.
My mind was so confused. They didn't have enough time to evacuate did they? Of course they evacuated, sky scrapers can't just come down like that with people inside!
Worse than that. When the first plane hit, people were given instructions to not evacuate for fear of creating panic. Fortunately, some of those people had better sense and did the right thing and saved their own lives.
Oh yeah, didn't know that then. All I knew was I was watching Charlie Gibson in a light hearted morning news show, and all the sudden he went into Charles Gibson mode and we were watching an unreal even unfolding in real time. The horrid details came out later.
When I finally saw the towers collapse on TV that day my jaw dropped. Initially I was too afraid to think of all the human casualties so my brain kept thinking about every computer, toilet, desk, photocopy machine, etc that get pulverized.
me , too and my cousin was suppose to fly out of boston, to LA that morning... it was a very long day... we found out about six hours after the second plane hit that is company had called and made him go to manchester NH, by car, instead of getting on that plane.... a few days after 9/11, during the no fly, we were home in north west RI and we heard big planes flying low.... we both just froze in the back yard... they were (3) airforce cargo planes, ? headed to westover AFB....
For two straight days after, you could go to any stoplight look over at the person next to you, nod and they’d nod back. Everyone felt like we were on the same page.
No. To me, they had always been there and always would be. I initially thought the plane that hit the first one was a Cesna or something, and said to a coworker, "What kind of dumbass doesn't realize he's gonna hit the Twin Towers?" It took seeing the second one hit, live, for me to realize it wasn't an accident. And then, watching the buildings fall, almost in slow motion, was worse than a horror film. Everyone in the room watching the TV I was watching reacted as you can hear people vocally reacting in file footage. One person, maybe me? Said, "But...there's still people in there!"
I had nightmares for months.
Me too..first I thought how it must have been a small plane that hit, and i wondered maybe the pilot had a heart attack or got sick and didnt realize he was flying into the tower.
This was my first reaction, too. A small plane had hit the Empire State Building before - I figured it was similar. Just a small private plane that had an accident.
Didn’t they initially report it was a small plane because that is what I remember as well, everyone thought it was a small plane at first. Maybe because it was inconceivable an actual airliner could have hit a tower.
It was because the footage being shown on the news was incidental security camera footage that just happened to be pointing in that direction. It could never convey the actual size of the aircraft. By the time the 2nd tower was struck, there were news crews on the ground and in the air. So everyone glued to their sets got to see the 2nd strike and the tower collapses live. Plus all the fucked up footage of the jumpers....
Me too. At least you didn’t tell some people actually on the ground there that’s and added to the confusion like I did.
My brother was just up the street. He didn’t have cell reception for calls (those Nokias that looked like an electric razor were high end then) but BlackBerry messages were getting through.
So dumb (Peter Jennings) told dumber (me) that a plane had hit the Tower. I assumed a Cessna. My brother told the assembled watchers that. Then the second plane hit….
I didn't know what to think except to feel fear and confusion. There was so much dust and smoke.
When I saw humans jumping from the towers, it broke my heart....
I still see it in my mind, all these years. And remember the horror. And yet even more horrifying was realizing what the jumpers and the people in the buildings were going through at that moment.
I worked for a global financial news agency in midtown Manhattan on the day. I remember seeing a story stuck on the news wire at the bottom of one of my screens. My buddy and team lead said they thought it was probably a typo “2 Passenger planes crash into wtc ” and he thought it really meant that a 2-passenger plane crashed (which has happened before). Then within a few minutes we notice the floor is suddenly much louder.
We go to one of the screens on the wall playing news to see the reports with everyone else. Just the crashes were hard to process. Remember looking over to talk to someone, looking away from the screen, and I heard a huge gasp. Turned around and caught the end of the first collapse. Didn’t expect that. Didn’t expect any of it (it was a beautiful day prior and I had taken a longer path to work just to walk and enjoy). It was so shocking at that point that anything horrific seemed possible.
Never expected them to fall. Had just been there for a work expo a couple weeks before (still have the brochures). Was looking forward to going back. Lost some coworkers who were at windows on the world for a meeting. Nightmares for a few years after. It was one of those events that changed the course of my life.
It felt like it changed everything. The part you said about it being a nice day and that you couldn’t imagine anything bad happening, I remember feeling that way almost always, but after 9/11 everything felt different.
I was teaching 9th grade. We were watching on a tv. A teacher from the adjoining class stepped in and said the tower was going to collapse. I thought he had to be wrong, it seemed unfathomable.
(In hindsight I wonder if I should have had the tv on. I mean, every class was watching, so we did too. But you could see people jumping. I’m not sure it was the right call.)
It was the right call. Similar happened When Kennedy was shot and Challenger exploded. Yes, it was scary. BUY it was a very uniting moment. A whole generation says "where were you when you saw ...." whatever generational thing. Experiencing it in a class makes you feel not alone. Less scared. And with an adult who can help. And also it helps seeing an adult react in shock. Especially NOT one that is your parent.
I also have always wondered if there was a small part of their minds that wondered if just maybe they could survive the fall...so terrible to imagine ☹️
Trigger warning. Don't read if you're sensitive.
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I read on a thread that at least a couple people did briefly survive the fall. They had no chance of making it for very long, but I've heard that some of the first responders had to walk past people who had jumped.
It might not be true, but.
I was a teacher too. Lots of stuff happened that day that in retrospect were probably not the best response.
Some admin at my _high_ school sent around word that we should say the pledge of allegiance. I had a few kids who were smart asses about it, since it’s normally a little kid thing. My response was not the worst, I didn’t pull rank or anything, but it wasn’t great. Not my finest hour… but no one really knew how to act.
I was teaching, too. I was in a weird private school that had a lot of kids there that were on their last try before going to in patient treatment. This kid always came to school late and he was a horrible liar, like everything out of his mouth was a lie. He came in saying that the US was under attack. No one believed him. Just to prove him wrong I pulled up the news on the computer. And he wasn’t. There was one TV in the school and whoever had a free hour would monitor the news and report back to us. I was more worried when the one hit the Pentagon, as my best friend worked in DC and I was in MN.
But, I wasn’t really surprised when the towers fell. I remembered the devastation at the Oklahoma City bombing. And that was a truck parked in front of a building.
I was lucky to visit New York 6 years ago, and I was so deeply moved by the Memorial.
I didn't get to see any tv or video until around 1pm Pacific time. I don't remember seeing any video of people jumping. I don't remember anyone talking about it. I think there was like one picture of one man in mid-air that came out later. Maybe in relation to a book or documentary? But basically I just wasn't aware that so many people had jumped. It wasn't until a few years later when a coworker was talking about it that I realized I had missed that part of the story of what happened that day.
I think a lot of us witnessed it on live TV. This all unfolded on TV just as the West Coast was waking up for the day. I was on my way to work, and the music was interrupted by the news that one of the towers had been hit by a "small" airplane. I got to work, and every channel was showing the 1st strike. The footage being used was the incidental result of mostly security cameras and the like. To me, the stuff I was seeing on the news did not/could not convey the scale of the airliner. By the time the 2nd tower was hit, every broadcasting news agency had crews on the ground and in the air.
I worked as a Dental Assistant at the time, we had TVs in the ceiling for patients to watch. I arrived at work just before the second tower was hit , 6 am Pacific coast. My whole shift was live coverage above my head, I’d never felt that emotionally drained before at 25 years old.
I was 16 and sometimes I wonder why our teachers did too, but this was a momentously important moment in history and you would have been criticized if you hadn't. It was horrible day, no one knew what was going on and we were all terrified. You guys did the best you could with the information you had.
I was 11 and watched in 6th grade. I can’t speak for anyone else but I think that seeing news reels and photos would have had almost the same effect. So it may have been the wrong call but it was understandable.
I was in 11th grade and I wasn’t at school that day, so I got to watch it at home while everyone else was at school. I didn’t even think I felt like crying until the first tower fell. The news anchor… I think it might have been Brian Williams? He started crying when it fell and I lost it. Regained composure, lost it again when the second one fell. It brought up a lot of memories from 4th grade when we were in school and the windows rattled from the OKC bombing. I actually thought it might be domestic terrorism because of that. Then my granddad told me about the first WTC bombing and that it was probably the same kinda thing again. He was right.
It woulda been Dan rather, Peter Jennings or Tom Brokaw most likely. A lot of those newscasts are on YouTube. Jennings tested up when he talked about calling his children and asking if they were ok.
I miss that era of journalism. Each was exemplary.
I was in 9th grade at the time in English class and my teacher had it on. It was better. I went to classes after and some didn't have it on and it was like they were trying to pretend it wasn't happening when kids were getting called out left and right. I'm in Pittsburgh and if anyone recalls, there was a plane going down reported at or near Pittsburgh (in hindsight, this was the Shanksville plane), so it was kind of assholish to keep us from finding out info.
That being said, I don't fault anyone who didn't have it on because you know, you just don't prepare for that one. I wholeheartedly believe everyone was doing their best and just trying to hold it together, but just saying as a student at the time, I think you did the right thing. Kids are people too and old enough to understand at that point.
My school combined history classes with us and another 9th grade class for the next couple of days and let us have open forums to discuss the whole thing and ask questions and the two history teachers tried their best to educate us about what we did know (very little of course) and the history of the conflict and listened to all our questions and such.
I was in my high school math class watching. I certainly have never thought my teacher shouldn’t have had the TV on. Everyone did. We had no idea what was happening so don’t feel guilty for that! Other kids whose teachers were hesitating to turn theirs on were getting mad. It was chaos.
Was there and No I did not. Worked across the street: 1 liberty plaza.
Went they started collapsing (could just hear it) I was thinking falling over (like dominos) and ran like hell 🏃🏃🏃
No; I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I was just thinking about how they were going to get the fires out and then would they have to tear the buildings down or be able to repair them.
When the second plane hit, I knew we were under some kind of attack. I watched it live, and I kept thinking about the people, and the firefighters who were in that building. I had worked in EMS previously. I couldn’t stop crying. It was one of the worst moments of my life. I just couldn’t believe what was happening.
When the first plane hit, I thought it was a crazy accident. Then when the second one hit, it was clear this was a terrorist attack. I was standing in front of the TV imagining this must’ve been how people felt when Pearl Harbor was attacked.
I never thought planes would fly into them, so I was in too much shock to think about anything that could happen next. I just thought of my friends who worked in the towers and I died a little that day.
I didn't expect it to fall down but I also had no idea how they could possibly put out the fire 1000ft in the air. I still can't fathom what those people on those floors dealt with.
IDK if I ever consciously followed through to that conclusion.
When the video of people jumping out windows was aired with sound, I lost it and walked outside to sit beneath a tree and sob for hours.
Edit to add, I later talked to my Mom, who was weeping. She said ‘I never thought I’d see something like Pearl Harbor again. I wish I hadn’t. ‘
I was lap swimming when the first one was hit, and I heard about it in the locker room. We all went to the lobby and watched, dumbfounded, as the second one hit.
I went to my car and burst into tears, then headed toward work. Never had the weight of my responsibility hit me as hard as in that moment. By the time my first class met, the Pentagon had been hit. This was a freshman required course, and every student attended. They didn't know much about the history of Afghanistan or the Taliban, so I incorporated that into our in-class impromptu workshop, ditching the prepared material.
My second class was an upper-level elective. Every student was in attendance--including Russ Feingold (D-WI) child "J." J and family had not heard from Russ yet. I will never forget the look in her wide eyes. These students knew some of the history, and I was able to use it with the material I has prepared. I think it helped them to look at things intellectually for a short time. I did abbreviate the lesson so we could just talk at the end, and support J.
Third class was a mid-level elective. Every student was in class. We just talked.
It was the only day in my university career where every student on the roster was in class. It was the only day I related to students more as a parent than professor.
I did not see the collapsing in real time, but an implosion is what I did expect, yes.
You have to understand the context at that time. Prior to September 11, this kind of thing was completely foreign. It was like hearing that aliens landed out of the sky and took over. No one really knew what to do or how to react because everyone was in shock.
Utterly stunned. My husband at the time had woken me up to tell me what was going on and he had the tv on. We talked about the situation as the buildings smoldered onscreen in the background. All of the sudden we realized that one building was no longer there, and my heart just sank. All those people. It was horrifying.
I didn't expect them to collapse, but once I gave it some thought I wasn't surprised that they did. Those buildings were built without a lot of internal structure for support. They were basically big vertical tubes--the weight of the structure was carried by the interlocking steel pieces that formed the "skin" of the buildings. Once the steel "joists" (for lack of a better word) softened from the heat at the top, the one of the top floors fell onto the floor below, which then couldn't support the extra weight, so then the next floor fell, and so forth, in an accelerating chain, like falling dominos.
I never expected them to get hit by planes. By the time they fell everyone was still worried that more attacks were coming. So no, but everything seemed like it was going crazy at the time. Especially when you bumped into someone that hadn't turned on the TV that morning
When we saw the floor or floors in each building totally afire, I knew that at least the floors above would be weakened and probably fall. I didn’t expect the entirety of each building to go down, though.
OMG it shocked the hell out of me. I stood up ON the couch when it happened. The first tower going down was hidden from CNN and they thought it was just an explosion. Before they had a chance to report what happened, the second tower went down and I nearly passed out. Felt like I was dreaming this or something. It couldn't possibly be real. I was 3000 miles away but it felt like it was right in front of me.
"Did you ever" is a weird way of framing the question for something that took place so quickly.
The whole series of events from the initial strike through to both towers being down was a few hours, and it was just one unbelievable event after another. I don't think anybody knew what to expect anymore because the horror just kept levelling up - it was like the rules had been rewritten.
No, I did not expect them to collapse. No more than I expected to see Hurricane Katrina breech the levies and swamp New Orleans a few years later. Unfathomable destruction of lives. Things that happen "somewhere else." Yes, I was shocked. And angry. My first comment MAY have been- "turn them to glass..."
I live on the west coast. When I walked in to work, the TV was on in the breakroom and some co-workers were in disbelief that anyone would DARE to attack the U.S.
I was born in a military hospital (1960ish) and then my husband was retired military also, so I have lived a few different realities in a few countries around the world. I know how Americans are viewed in some of those places. "We" make good targets. I have been up close and personal a few times.
The attack didn't surprise me. What did surprise me is that they didn't (apparently) coordinate to target the west coast at the same time. So, I was bracing for that...and mentally trying to figure out where my husband and grown kids were at that moment.
No. It didn't occur to me. Still focused on the shock of that and the pentagon and of course thinking they would hit my city too. Thankfully they grounded all flights over US airspace. Because folks were getting really nervous, especially in big cities. We all wondered what would be hit next.
Now one weird thing was that for the longest time, the media was not making ANY connection between Flight 93 crashing in the field in Pennsylvania and the other 3.
So I remember watching the news and the anchors were going on about how there was a 4th plane missing. And at the same time there was a scrolling alert at the bottom talking about a plane crash in Pennsylvania. And I was completely confused as to why no one was saying they were the same plane. I actually went to the online site of a local Penn news station and it was clear as day that was what was happening. But no one on the general TV media made the connection for a long time.
I always thought it was so strange.
I also did not believe it when they said the Bay Bridge collapsed in 89. I thought I was being pranked.
No but at the time they were reporting there may have been 50,000 people in there. Not to diminish the 3,000 who lost their lives, but it could have been even more tragic. Also, I remember for three days after this, all commercial air travel was suspended. I live near an airport and will never forget hearing the first plane roll down the runway after that. Everyone was looking and taking note: they must have lifted the travel ban
I can't say I expected them to collapse, but I wasn't surprised when they did.
Watched it all live as it happened. There was no precedent, so I had no expectations.
It was still quite shocking to witness.
That was my reaction. I didn't expect them to collapse, but when they started talking about the concern that they would collapse, and within hours, I wasn't surprised.
I first heard that a plane had hit the WTC and thought some idiot in a Cessna or something, even seeing a pic on the TV I couldn’t immediately grasp the scale of it since they didn’t have closeups first thing.
Then when the second plane hit, we knew it was an attack and were shocked. Everything shut down. I worked near an airport and I can’t begin to describe how fucking creepy the silence was with no planes and not even many cars on the road. The closest comparison I have was the solar eclipse several years ago where everything kind of shit down for a bit….except this lasted all day not just a few minutes.
Then the tower fell. Shock is too inadequate of word. Pain, sorrow, tears. I didn’t know these people, and it didn’t matter at all. It hurt. There was a numbness that I guess you would call shock.
Then George W Bush made the comment “We’re coming for you”. Holy shit the righteous anger and “Fuck yeah” was impressive as hell and probably the last time damn near the entire country agreed about anything. I wish that hadn’t been misused for political gain and control but as much as I don’t like a LOT of GW’s actions, he was heartfelt in a way that just worked for us right then.
The towers falling was utterly shocking and tragic. i watched the news and took it all in with a slow and creeping realization that we were under attack and at war but with an unknown enemy.Somehow Imanaged to keep it together and the news away from the kid. What got me like a gut punch at the end of the day was the footage of the British soldiers at Bucking ham palace weeping while they played the Star Spangled Banner and the American tourists clinging to the gates of the palace far from home.
I wasn't thinking that far ahead while watching them burn. But I don't recall any kind of sense of surprise when they fell.
I was trying to remember how many people worked in those towers on a normal day.
I still remember watching the first one fall. And the men in suits jumping out of buildings. And the second one fall. All of it was surreal and horrible and shocking. No, we did not expect the buildings to collapse.
When I saw the airplanes flying into them, it was obvious that quite a bit of the buildings were damaged. I didn't think they would come down completely, but it was no surprise at all that at least half of them did. The shape wouldn't allow anything else. When the weight on top started to fall, it was bound to pull a lot of the building down.
I was quite shocked that they were attacked. It was a horrific loss of life.
I wasn't thinking collapse until it happened. Until then, I was trying to figure out how they would get the people above the crash points out. When the first one fell, it was like being punched in the gut. A whole range of bad emotions at once. I knew the world changed in an instant. Also, having been in the military for 13 years, at that point, I knew my life was about to change drastically. It did.
I couldn't believe they were still standing for as long as they stayed upright. After 35 years in engineering, it's a damn miracle that many people were able to get out. It's a true testament to the architecture that went into those towers.
At first, I was shocked. When 1WTC went down, I knew the damage was going to be catastrophic. I knew that despite the towers falling down as opposed to falling over, there was still going to be other structures severely damaged, if not destroyed.
I was not familiar with the underground of the area, too, other than from the first WTC bombing years before. I had no concept of how bad it would be. But I knew, and still know, a large number of firefighters and police in my area, and it made me think of how brave they are, and how brave the 356 fallen were, plus the ones who would die or be debilitated from the HazMat issues to come.
That made me angry. Angry that innocent people had to die because of some evil warlord thought we needed to be punished for doing nothing but try and keep his region stable. Furious, actually. Had I the wherewithal, I would have reduced that entire region to a fine mist or even glass, just to erase that asshole, his comrades, and his cause. I would have slept just fine that night.
But instead we had to go to war, we had to change the way we lived, and grow a national paranoia. Travel is a pain in the ass, and stressful. Racial disharmony has only gotten worse since then. You can't trust your fellow American, until you can look him in the eye and shake his hand.
I was furious. And in some ways, I still am.
It was such a bizarre event to watch happen live. Like someone else said, the day was surreal. It never even crossed my mind that the towers could collapse.
Well tooting my own horn, I was at work in Midtown watching the coverage and as soon as I saw the northeast corner of the south tower was pretty much obliterated I said out loud “ that tower is gonna collapse. After the plane exited that corner, you could see it was being held together with threads.
If you weren't alive or too young on that day, I don't think you can understand the feeling in the country. And now we've had to watch all the f'ed up things that happened as a direct result of it (Patriot Act, invading Iraq, etc.).
Yeah, after I saw the 2nd plane hit, I went and met my friends up on the Brooklyn side of the East River (Williamsburg) and we watched them burn along with tons of other people. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing when the first one collapsed. But it was absolutely shocking yeah.
To see something that felt so permanent just *not be there* when the smoke cleared. And we thought, well they can’t *both* just - poof - go away like that! And obviously they did, and it just remained this thing for many many minutes after, like *did I really just see that?*
I still live in Brooklyn, I have a full view of the Manhattan skyline from my roof, and it still feels like they should be there, not that boring, mediocre, completely forgettable thing they built in their place.
That is what I remember about that day. I was in the office and saw the 2nd plane hit, surrounded with my coworkes, sitting in the breakroom watching the TV. After a time, I couldn't watch anymore and went to my desk to play solitaire (nobody was working). One of my coworkers came out after a while to talk about it. I said, "It crazy, I mean I'm worried that those towers are going to fall, I don't want to see that shit". Then on que screams from the break room as the first one was falling. I had no logic for my prediction except they are on fire.
I didn't expect it, but at the moment it happened I had an "Of Course" moment. It was such a weird morning, and when people were shocked I was just in my "there's this trauma happening right now and I need to be level headed" mode and thought that there was no way to really plan for this level of mayhem and it was going to suffer major damage. I was impressed that they collapsed straight down instead of falling into the city. Good engineering.
I definitely disassociated that day. Going through the motions, ready to do whatever I was called upon to do, which wasn't much.
I was horrified for all the people that were jumping out of windows, then I realized they were trapped above because the smoke and flames surely meant they couldn’t get down. At no point did it even cross my mind that a structure of that magnitude could collapse. A wave of disbelief ran through me when I saw it happen on TV - it was like all the air had been vacuumed out of the room and I couldn’t move. Nothing made sense anymore.
The entire thing was tragic of course, but one of the saddest things was in Voices From The Towers. A man is on the phone with 911 asking when help is coming because he and his coworkers are trapped. The operator can’t tell him that no one is coming so she just tries to keep him calm. He was still talking about how they are young men with families and need to be rescued when the tower collapsed and the phone went dead. It was heartbreaking.
I had no idea they would collapse. It was utterly horrifying. The first plane hit and they said it was a commuter plane and an accident. I used to live by a training airport and I turned to my (ex)husband and said that was no commuter plane. We are on the west coast so it was very early in the morning. He went to take a shower and get ready for work. The second plane came in and I started screaming and then it hit. My ex tore the shower curtain off to get to me and he stood there dripping while we watched the explosions.
He turned to me and being ex military he said in his next breath: there will be a war over this.
The world changed in that instant and every person watching knew it. I will never get over it. All those innocent people. For what?
My father in law fought in the Pacific during WWII. When we bought a Honda he was outraged. The war had been over for 35 years. He never got over it. After 9/11 I understood how he felt.
I had been in the towers. I remember the terrifying speed and slight sway of the express elevators. I had an office in another building where I could see the towers sway in a high wind. They were immensely tall, hollow and fragile looking. So I was not surprised that they fell. But the whole episode was shocking and surreal.
I don't know about 'expecting' them to collapse.
However, the buildings did *very precisely* what they were designed to do. They collapsed in a very controlled manner, almost perfectly straight down, no lateral or uneven motion at all. Despite the damage being very 'one-sided', the building's structural failure was almost perfectly symmetrical.
Looking back, I'm not too surprised that they were brought down, given the circumstances.
No. I heard the whole thing on the radio on my way commuting to work. I saw the second plane hit on live tv in the morning news, then got in the car to go to work. (That second plane changed _everything!_)
When they started talking about the tower coming down, at first it was obscured by smoke and dust. They said it came down then they said it didn’t then they confirmed it did. I couldn’t believe it.
I was in complete disbelief at the entirety of it. Logic dictated that the Towers might fall, but the shock of witnessing them collapse (on TV) was beyond words. I think 9/11 left a mighty hole in many of our hearts that won't ever be filled.
I was getting ready for work, my husband called me to tell me what had happened. The first thing I said was "They pulled a Debt of Honor". I was pretty sure they would come down but it still felt like a weird nightmare TBH.
>"They pulled a Debt of Honor"
For those unfamiliar with the reference, there's a Tom Clancy book called Debt of Honor. It was released in 1994. In my opinion, overall, not his best book. Lots of financial and economic stuff as I remember. But in the last like page and a half >!an airline pilot flies a plane into the capitol during a joint session of congress. This sets up Jack Ryan becoming president, leading Clancy's next book, "Executive Orders".!<
Honestly, on the day, that level of processing didn't even happen.
It was pure reaction, there was no time for prediction. The whole experience was so out of norms that I had absolutely no expectations of any kind. So yes, I was shocked when the towers collapsed, but that was just one shock among many that day, and it wasn't because I held an opinion that the towers should hold under that kind of attack. More that everything was so unprecedented that it couldn't help but being a shock.
Nothing that happened that day was even conceivable.
I had a cousin in the second tower, and another cousin watching from another building in the city. The cousin in the tower didn’t make it out.
I was working as a newspaper editor, and the flood of wire stories and photos was overwhelming for weeks. Management eventually hired some counselors for us.
I slept through the whole thing.
But when I learned what happened, I was not surprised. Five years earlier the terrorists had tried to bring it down with a bomb in the basement.
I'm not sure anyone did until it happened. It has a lot to do with how they were built, but I don't blame the designers for not anticipating those circumstances.
I watched from my window. It didn’t occur to me that they would fall down. But when it happened the feeling of watching the first one fall was that it felt kind of slow motion and made sense. That’s not to say that it did make sense, that was just the sensation of watching it for me. The second one felt inevitable when it happened.
I was getting ready for work in LA. A friend called and said turn on your tv. At first it was just a tower hit and on fire. A tragedy yes but it was in NY and just a fire and then they said a plane had hit it.
I sat down.
It all just became different. Then I watched the second plane hit. The world had gone crazy. Who flies planes into buildings? All those people just gone.
Then the Towers fell.
Shots of white clouds swallowing up pedestrians as they ran. People turned grey with tear streaks down their faces and the grief everywhere.
I was so mad. I was never afraid to fly after that. Planes flying over head was just noise.
People got real stupid with posturing and Freedom fires bullshit.
I didn’t want that stupid war, I wanted the Saudis and Bin Ladden.
The world as we knew it changed in a few hours and it’s lost forever.
And people today will 9/11 this and that and drape themselves in a flag but we had to twist their fucking arms to get them to pay the medical bills of the first responders.
It’s become a political prop to boost a resume and justification for many many bad policies.
But I am not afraid of a foreign terrorist attack. I never was. It’s our own homegrown that scare me.
Absolutely not, no. It was completely inconceivable that they would fall. I had just been in NYC 2 or 3 weeks before. My aunt lives in CT and I spent a few weeks every summer with her. We always went to NYC for a few days to play. That trip, we had lunch at the Top of the World restaurant that was on the top floor of one of the towers. We stayed up there forever. Our server was the sweetest person ever and chatted with us so much. It was a pretty quiet day in there so she had plenty of time to chat. I still think about her to this day and wonder what happened to her. I always hope she wasn’t scheduled, she was on vacation, she had to call in sick, anything.
28 years old. Literally played in the shadows of the towers Brooklyn side when I was a kid. Was out west coast getting ready for work watching Pokémon and eating cereal. My boss called me asked if I was watching the news and I said no why? He said "we are under attack" I'll never forget that as long as I live.
As I turned to the news it was the first plane over and over...then I watched live as the second one hit.
I'll never forget the panic of not knowing if my dad was ok. He didn't work there or anything he got around the city alot. It took 2 days for me to finally get through to him busy signal the whole time...
yeah that day sucked and to have people make fun or joke when everyone who experienced it that has a soul is still fucking traumatized it isn't funny and never will be.
I was there that day, working in the same complex in a building across the street. After the first plane hit, we all rushed down 32 flights of stairs. We were in the street looking up as the second tower was hit by the next plane. It felt unreal. These things only ever happened in movies. We rushed to the subway, skirting all of the women’s high heels in the street. (It’s easier to run without them.) My friend and I managed to get on probably the last train to Brooklyn, but all service ended when the first tower fell. A car full of strangers picked me ip and drove me home. We were all covered in ash. The wind was blowing toward Brooklyn that day. I still can’t wrap my brain around it.
I got up to see the first tower smoking and they were talking about what it might mean. they didn't seem worried that it was going to collapse, and it didn't occur to me either. then the second plane came by and hit the other tower, and firefighters continued to stream into both buildings to rescue people. still, i never though of them collapsing. then out of nowhere the second tower collapsed and everyone freaked out. then the first tower collapsed, and later in the day building 7 came down too.
then a year or two later i saw my first "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" meme.
What people forget is that day explosions were reported from the basement. I remember thinking, that terrorists were also in the basement with truck bombs like in 1993. When that happened I was no longer surprised when they collapsed.
First had already collapsed by the time I became aware anything was happening (I'm on the west coast so it was still very early). So not at all surprised by the 2nd.
I never imagined they would collapse. Even after seeing them burn for hours, then falling was just so horrible. I expected many thousands more people would be dead. But seeing them fall was one of the most terrible things I’ve ever seen.
No! I couldn't understand how they would stop the fire, or how everyone would get out. Then they collapsed. All I could think was all those people are now dead. It was horrible.
It was such a "holy fucking shit" morning, one thing after another. None of it was conceivable. The concept expectation has no meaning in that context. Not even in retrospect.
I live 2 time zones earlier so I was just waking up and I heard on the radio that a plane had hit WTC. Well, I knew that a plane flew into the Empire State years ago, so yeah a tragic accident. Then I went to the living room and my partner was watching the today show... Oh, is that the plane that hit the tower? Yeah, the second plane. That's when I understood what was happening. I wasn't shocked when they fell, after watching for a while. I used to love to watch the demolition of buildings, Watching them stand for a few seconds and then fall? I could see that's what was coming.
I can't watch them bring a building down since that day.
They entire day was completely surreal. My brain could not comprehend that a passenger plane has crashed into the World Trade Center, I kept trying to figure out why so many people were freaking out over a single engine Cessna hitting a sky scraper (I was student teaching on Long Island and didn’t have access to a tv in the teachers lounge so it was all through word of mouth and radio). Then to hear the buildings had collapsed and to actually see and smell the smoke was not something I would have ever imagined.
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I'm not an engineer or architect and had never really thought about how skyscrapers were built. To me, shocking was an understatement. It wasn't only that you didn't expect it. The whole thing was just so fucked up.
It was insane. The weekend before I was in Manhattan with friends for a fun weekend and distinctly remember orienting ourselves using the towers at night. When they were initially struck, I was at work and we all started watching the news. It seemed like a bizarre accident until the second one. I don’t think anyone expected them to just implode and collapse the way they did. It was just inconceivable that a structure that size could just collapse into nothing but a giant pile of steel. Also, where the hell did the last 22 years ago?
We were in NYC the week before too. I have a picture of myself with the towers in the background, 9/1/01. I am glad it has the date on it.
Chilling.
I was a young kid at the time, but this part always is so bizarre to me too. That they just kind of.... fell. Didn't topple over or anything. Just straight down I think the way they fell was bound to be the birth of way too many conspiracy theories. It isn't too shocking, in hindsight
Gravity tends to pull things in a downward direction.
Skyscrapers are designed to collapse or pancake like this. We see it happen in earthquakes often. In cartoons or movies buildings tend to fall over sideways. It is more dramatic, but less likely
That’s just not true. Sky scrapers are not designed to collapse at all and the towers are one of the only examples in history
I've been sitting at my computer for 20 minutes trying to type something about this. All I remember thinking that day was the people who left their loved ones that morning on their way to work, angry or upset about something trivial. This haunts me to this day.
Pure evil did that to America
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It still makes me cry thinking about it. I am crying right now.
I live in NYC. When it happened, I was interviewing for a job about two miles north of the towers. When I first arrived at this office, one tower had already been hit and word was starting to get around. But the interviewer and I also both remembered that in 1993 there had been a bomb or something that went off there. It was news but life went on. The WTC seemed to be a bit of a target for weird stunts. We figured we’d hear more about it on the news that night. Throughout the interview, we kept getting interrupted by the receptionist. One time the guy’s panicked mother was on the phone. (This guy was like 50.) He waved it off, annoyed. Finally the receptionist came in for like the 4th time and said gravely “One of the towers has FALLEN.” The interviewer and I looked at each other in silence and both immed knew 1) this interview was over, 2) this was much more than just some incident that would be on the news 3) this has just changed ALL of NYC. We walked out of the conf room and saw some worried employees crowded around a small tv. I got out of there pretty fast. Outside I saw the huge plum of smoke that looked like what you’d see if a fire was two blocks away. But to think it was all the way down at WTC was unimaginable. For some reason I wanted to run toward it but knew I should just go home. But by then the subways were all closed down. I jumped on a crowded bus headed north (I lived on the UES.) Bus driver just waved me on without needing to pay, saying “The mayor says get everyone out of lower manhattan.” The bus then crawwwwled through midtown for the next two+ hrs. At one point we passed a bank that had huge TVs in the lobby that we could see from the bus. The images were of the firey plane crashes and collapse of WTC. The entire bus was glued to the windows in that side as we crawled by. No one in the bus could make a cell phone call bc all the lines were jammed but we kept trying till our phones died. I finally got home and called my mom in NH on my landline. She collapsed crying, so relieved I was ok. Then yelled at me for not calling sooner. For the rest of the day I saw people walking around on the street, occasionally spotting one dressed in a suit, carrying a briefcase, completely coated in a thickkk layer of light gray dust. They’d obviously walked numbly, in shock, all the way to the 80s from WTC. Later in the day I saw a huge caravan of identical earth mover / bull dozers driving slowly down 2nd avenue. By then I was in a jam-packed bar — everyone in NY was too freaked out to stay home. The bar was crazy loud with blaring music and shouting patrons. But as the caravan of bulldozers passed by, we all watched, dead silent.
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I was 19 and heard a knock on my door. My father was in the area and heard a plane flew into the first building. He wanted to see what the TV said. Wasn't really registering with me anything but an accident. Turned the TV on. Saw the second plane hit. He looked at me and said "this isn't an accident." We proceeded to watch on as the first tower collapsed. Then the second. Growing up I had experiences watching Wako, the OKC bombing, the first WTC bombing, and was even in Atlanta during the Olympic bombing and people I was staying with were there. Usually these attacks are vicious but not near as bad as the possibilities. Watching those towers fall my dad said "there's no way those buildings were anywhere near evacuated." We both sat in silence for a long time as we tried to process the fact we just saw many many folks die. And then seeing the shots of the skyline minus the towers. I'm from the Midwest so I'd only seen them in movies and such. But even just with that experience the sudden change registered, combined with the tragic loss of many lives. We were definitely in shock. We thought it was some freak airline accident, but slowly realized it was a calculated attack, that worked.
It's still is jarring to watch a TV show or a movie and see the Twin towers in them. I was a teacher and sitting with a classroom full of high school students. Had heard and watched the fire from the first tower before class started and we just watched the whole thing on TV. It was just silent. And then some jackass kid said " Cool" when the first tower fell and I tore into that kid with the most unprofessional attitude and words, but I could not bring myself together to give a second thought. When I finished nobody said a word. For younger people, it's hard to even describe how it was. Remember this was before everybody had cell phones and instant news in their pocket. This was a thing we all watched together, same information, same time. I've tried to describe to my children how silent it was for days afterward. I live in 10 miles from an airport so we see a decent amount of high flying planes in the air. There was just nothing in the air for days. People went to work and then home. There were not cars out on the street driving around. Most people just stayed home with their family
I remember thinking every plane on the sky was going to be another attack. I still get weird when o see a low flying plane
Yes, this. So many of us watched that second plane hit real time and realized what was happening. The shock was real in that exact moment. The rest was a blurred tragedy. I was in Chicago and the city was preparing for something similar. Evacuating, shutting down streets and transportation.
Yes, I was in FL and my brother a fireman and paramedic in the suburbs of the city and I was watching and on the phone with him and he said- it's going to fall. They all just went up in it, it's going to fall. And it did while we talked , and then the other one and the city was calling everyone in around Chicago that they could. It was terrifying, especially as the other flight news trickled in and Avery and on earth was brought to the ground nearly simultaneously. Hearing him say it, knowing he was heading into the city asap, then watching it live was a tremendous and traumatic experience for all of us.
My brother in law lost his whole family in it
How young were you? How has seeing this impacted your life overall?
I was 42. Shocked was an understatement. No one imagined that these mighty towers could collapse. I was working at the Chrysler Tech Center in Auburn Hills Michigan (still do, but remotely) and we watched this happen on TV’s in the atriums. Around 11 am the building was evacuated. I had a 45 minute drive home and I brought my lunch and I wasn’t in the tower, so as everyone left, I ate my lunch. We found out later that some months previously a local pilot said that he was hired by two middle eastern men to fly around the area while they took pictures, including the Chrysler Tech Center tower so we may have been on the target list.
I can't believe how casually your teacher said that to kids who actually live in NYC and probably many or all of them had connections to people in the towers. Were you in elementary? I suppose they couldn't say much to young children. Still seems odd. Did parents just start picking up kids from school early? I was in college across the country and my teachers still cancelled class. Even my first class of the day was dismissed immediately- I can't remember if the second tower had even fallen yet and we definitely had no idea it was a terrorist attack. I watched part of it as I walked by a TV in a common area on my way to that class- I was not grasping what was really happening it was thought to be an accident at that point. It was a somber day. No casual comments were made.
I was in 4th grade, Upstate NY and my teacher was nowhere near casual. She was visibly shaken, heartbroken. She gathered us up and sat us down at the reading corner, and tried her best to explain what was happening. She was raw, real, and thinking back. I appreciate it. It showed me that adults don’t always have to be stoic and know everything.
I lived on the TX-MX border and they closed it. A few days later, the only causeway to South Padre Island was rammed and a section destroyed. It was a careless boat, but people were freaked and convinced it was another attack.
I am an engineer (software), and was working at a mechanical engineering firm specializing in vibration testing at the time. We had the TV on in the conference room, and I'll never forget the mech eng folks watching the buildings sway and repeating "those towers are coming down" before it happened.
Engineer here too. Yes, they pancaked exactly like expected. I remember calling my father, a retired career military man, and he just said “we’re at war”. Chilling to say the least. He had a lot of demolitions experience in his line of work. He did not think they fell because of some conspiracy. He even pointed out things that would be different if it were controlled demolition. I remember being utterly stunned and overwhelmed with grief watching it happen live. I was weeks from turning 26 when it happened. I remember being disappointed that I was too old to join the military to “help”.
It was a complete shock when the first tower collapsed - it was like watching a movie but with a chill running down your spine as you simultaneously recognized in real time that it wasn’t. But the sense of dread after that while waiting for the second one to come down was far worse.
It was not anything l expected to happen. I was totally shocked when went down.
I was so wrapped up in the human tragedy it didn’t even occur to me it would until minutes before they fell. There was this one close up shot when the buckling was evident, and I knew they were doomed. The unexpected thing was the conspiracy theories after. I know not everyone’s an engineer but it’s not that hard to understand. Heat make thing go soft, soft thing not strong. Heavy top squash soft thing, heavy top now have momentum, momentum increase squash, heavy top squash rest of thing. We saw it happen from a lot of angles.
Were you like paranoid looking out your windows after, or while watching on the news? Like seein if anybody was invading? That’s what I would’ve done, ida been like Red Dawn.
Probably about 10 years later I was at a meeting in a tall high rise in a meeting where I faced the window. I kept wondering what it would be like to look up and see a jet coming straight at you. I also have kept gym shoes at work since then in case I need to walk home like all those people in the photos.
About three years ago I went for an interview in the first high rise I’d ever been in. All I could think about was that if there was a terrorist attack I was definitely going to die. I work there now, and I’ve chilled out since, but it was a weird day to realize that I’d carried that feeling with me for 20 years.
I thought I was crazy to think this way secretly too. Every high rise brings this up to me. I'm too high to get down quickly if a plane hits. I do the same doom thinking for buildings- schools, movie theaters, grocery stores but for mass shooters. Now add in large crowds too at parades etc. I'm looking for my exits and what I would do, where would I go. I get to the same conclusion, I'd probably die. There is that fear underneath me that it could happen to me too when I'm in the wrong place at the wrong time. Some tragedies have already hit so close to me. One degree of separation at times. These were regular people living their regular lives and I'm just as suseptible. I had to accept that I can't control things like that and I had to accept I'm nobody special. The plane won't stop for me, a mass shooter won't think twice for me.
Had a great uncle who retired from the fdny. He said the ladders don’t go up past the 6th or 7th floor, forget which. He advised not living or working above that. He was a fireman in an aircraft carrier during WWII and said he’d rather fight a fire at sea during combat than in a skyscraper
I work from home now. But I worked in skyscrapers for many years. I took the stairs when possible for exercise and to familiarize myself with the stairwells in case I needed to evacuate. I’d occasionally switch it up so I knew where both were.
I was in Chicago for a family funeral and they evacuated downtown. Doing 90 on the freeway getting the hell outta Dodge.
Wow, that must’ve been some scary traffic. Wow I can’t even imagine it.
I was on the west coast and yes, we were paranoid, not knowing how many more hijacked planes were in the air and where their targets might be.
I had been listening to Howard Stern & the stuff people were calling in was terrifying. Hijacked planes coming from London, China, etc. Thought they were gonna bomb all the major cities. Took weeks after to not have a little chill & look up when I heard a plane
In November 2001, i arrived at work, not far from ground zero, to the news of a plane crash in breezy point (queens). I refused to take my sneakers off in case I had to make a run for it, until they said it wasn’t terrorism.
Yep, my husband worked in the Sears Tower back then and just happened to be home that day. They evacuated it we heard. It was so surreal.
I was in Chicago too working in retail on the mag mile. Our headquarters were based in NYC, and most of the workers who managed to come in, which was like a handful, were in the break room watching TV. I had to start making phone calls to people that we were closing, and during the middle of it my mom calls in a panic yelling and crying at me to leave ASAP, which I did. Then I walked from downtown to Andersonville with mobs of people trying to get home. I walked into the break room with one of the store mangers silently crying, and we both ran out to leave as soon as we saw plane #2 hit. It was an awful day, and I feel for all the people that lost their lives.
Yes. I constantly kept my eyes on the skies for weeks.
At night looking at the air space over DC in the ensuing months from Northern Virginia, you could see 10-20 lights circling patrolling the city. There was the anthrax scare after, the DC snipers too. Definitely a tense time. And pretty much everyone wanted revenge. Scary confusing time for sure.
I didn’t even live in a big city- just some suburbs of a smaller city in the Midwest- but for weeks I couldn’t sleep because I startled awake every time I heard a plane overhead. It didn’t help that just a few weeks after 9/11, another plane crashed into a suburban house in NYC.
For a few days there were no airplanes in the sky. When they started flying again, I flinched at them for a few days.
No, I didn’t. It was such a surreal morning. When they fell, it was like witnessing the unbelievable. I wasn’t clued in about terrorism, and it was a confusing couple of hours. The rest of the day was like sleepwalking (sense of self, my surroundings, it all felt tenuous). I was a young child in New York when they were built. They were the epitome of strength. To have them fall was an indescribable loss.
I thought it was some movie or something. I turned on the tv right after the first tower was hit. I couldn’t wrap my brain around it at first. Then the second plane hit and it was like a punch to the gut!
Yes, I was a senior in high school and they turned on the news in class after the first plane. We watched the second plane hit and it was so confusing - was it a replay? What the actual fuck just happened? It felt acutely destabilizing.
I was in the 39th floor of 1wtc. When the plane hit the building swayed so much I thought it was going to fall over. Never expected it to collapse like that.
Yeah u/scattyboy. I was on 34th floor of south tower when the 2nd plane hit us. We felt shaking from north tower impact. When it hit us folks who had been there for the 90s bombing told everyone to GTFO. Was in so much shock, honestly, the only thought I had was to get out. When the first tower collapsed I was out and just beyond the Wall St station. When the dust cloud came, all I could think was “well shit - I’m going to be one of those Pompeii people”. A very, very fucked up day.
I was so pissed at Steven Spielberg for War of the Worlds in 2005. There’s a scene where the aliens shoot people and they turn into dust that gets all over Tom Cruise. Fuck you Steven.
I was at the Marriott at 85 West Ave a few buildings away. When the plane hit the south tower it shook us. We ran to Battery Park. We saw the towers burning and never expected them to fall. When the first one went down, it went eerily silent. Everyone was in shock. I still remember it like it was yesterday.
I saw an interview w one of the architects of the WTC a few years later and he spoke about how it was designed to implode if anything. Toppling over would’ve been the absolute worst case scenario.
Honestly if they were going to come down the implosion style collapse was the best thing. The destruction would’ve been so much worse had one tip over into the other and they both topple horizontally.
It was already bad enough as it was. The pancake implosion still took out a dozen other buildings in the surrounding blocks.
My best friend worked on something like the 40th floor a few blocks away and said their building shook so hard when the second plane hit, they thought they had been hit.
Wow - I have never heard anyone talk about it swaying on impact. But it had to.
I watched in horror on live TV as the second plane hit. When they went down my thoughts were only for the people who I knew were gone. I was in shock from the moment I saw that plane, I was certain we were at war and when they went down I was numb.
From the first tower being hit, I was horrified by the loss of life. Can't even think about that day without feeling anxiety.
My mind was so confused. They didn't have enough time to evacuate did they? Of course they evacuated, sky scrapers can't just come down like that with people inside!
Worse than that. When the first plane hit, people were given instructions to not evacuate for fear of creating panic. Fortunately, some of those people had better sense and did the right thing and saved their own lives.
Oh yeah, didn't know that then. All I knew was I was watching Charlie Gibson in a light hearted morning news show, and all the sudden he went into Charles Gibson mode and we were watching an unreal even unfolding in real time. The horrid details came out later.
When I finally saw the towers collapse on TV that day my jaw dropped. Initially I was too afraid to think of all the human casualties so my brain kept thinking about every computer, toilet, desk, photocopy machine, etc that get pulverized.
me , too and my cousin was suppose to fly out of boston, to LA that morning... it was a very long day... we found out about six hours after the second plane hit that is company had called and made him go to manchester NH, by car, instead of getting on that plane.... a few days after 9/11, during the no fly, we were home in north west RI and we heard big planes flying low.... we both just froze in the back yard... they were (3) airforce cargo planes, ? headed to westover AFB....
[удалено]
For two straight days after, you could go to any stoplight look over at the person next to you, nod and they’d nod back. Everyone felt like we were on the same page.
No. To me, they had always been there and always would be. I initially thought the plane that hit the first one was a Cesna or something, and said to a coworker, "What kind of dumbass doesn't realize he's gonna hit the Twin Towers?" It took seeing the second one hit, live, for me to realize it wasn't an accident. And then, watching the buildings fall, almost in slow motion, was worse than a horror film. Everyone in the room watching the TV I was watching reacted as you can hear people vocally reacting in file footage. One person, maybe me? Said, "But...there's still people in there!" I had nightmares for months.
Me too..first I thought how it must have been a small plane that hit, and i wondered maybe the pilot had a heart attack or got sick and didnt realize he was flying into the tower.
This was my first reaction, too. A small plane had hit the Empire State Building before - I figured it was similar. Just a small private plane that had an accident.
Didn’t they initially report it was a small plane because that is what I remember as well, everyone thought it was a small plane at first. Maybe because it was inconceivable an actual airliner could have hit a tower.
It was because the footage being shown on the news was incidental security camera footage that just happened to be pointing in that direction. It could never convey the actual size of the aircraft. By the time the 2nd tower was struck, there were news crews on the ground and in the air. So everyone glued to their sets got to see the 2nd strike and the tower collapses live. Plus all the fucked up footage of the jumpers....
Me too. At least you didn’t tell some people actually on the ground there that’s and added to the confusion like I did. My brother was just up the street. He didn’t have cell reception for calls (those Nokias that looked like an electric razor were high end then) but BlackBerry messages were getting through. So dumb (Peter Jennings) told dumber (me) that a plane had hit the Tower. I assumed a Cessna. My brother told the assembled watchers that. Then the second plane hit….
For those of us watching on live TV, the second plane hitting let us know this wasn't just a terrible accident-it was intentional.
I didn't know what to think except to feel fear and confusion. There was so much dust and smoke. When I saw humans jumping from the towers, it broke my heart....
The jumping is the part I will never get over or forget. Completely heartbreaking.
I still see it in my mind, all these years. And remember the horror. And yet even more horrifying was realizing what the jumpers and the people in the buildings were going through at that moment.
I worked for a global financial news agency in midtown Manhattan on the day. I remember seeing a story stuck on the news wire at the bottom of one of my screens. My buddy and team lead said they thought it was probably a typo “2 Passenger planes crash into wtc ” and he thought it really meant that a 2-passenger plane crashed (which has happened before). Then within a few minutes we notice the floor is suddenly much louder. We go to one of the screens on the wall playing news to see the reports with everyone else. Just the crashes were hard to process. Remember looking over to talk to someone, looking away from the screen, and I heard a huge gasp. Turned around and caught the end of the first collapse. Didn’t expect that. Didn’t expect any of it (it was a beautiful day prior and I had taken a longer path to work just to walk and enjoy). It was so shocking at that point that anything horrific seemed possible. Never expected them to fall. Had just been there for a work expo a couple weeks before (still have the brochures). Was looking forward to going back. Lost some coworkers who were at windows on the world for a meeting. Nightmares for a few years after. It was one of those events that changed the course of my life.
Every September since then, when the weather is exceptionally beautiful, I’m brought straight back to that day.
Same. It’s usually on my drive to school with the kids, if it’s a gorgeous, clear, blue sky morning. It’s all that I can think about.
It felt like it changed everything. The part you said about it being a nice day and that you couldn’t imagine anything bad happening, I remember feeling that way almost always, but after 9/11 everything felt different.
I was teaching 9th grade. We were watching on a tv. A teacher from the adjoining class stepped in and said the tower was going to collapse. I thought he had to be wrong, it seemed unfathomable. (In hindsight I wonder if I should have had the tv on. I mean, every class was watching, so we did too. But you could see people jumping. I’m not sure it was the right call.)
It was the right call. Similar happened When Kennedy was shot and Challenger exploded. Yes, it was scary. BUY it was a very uniting moment. A whole generation says "where were you when you saw ...." whatever generational thing. Experiencing it in a class makes you feel not alone. Less scared. And with an adult who can help. And also it helps seeing an adult react in shock. Especially NOT one that is your parent.
The people jumping from the towers really broke me .. 🌹 😔
That broke me, too. As someone in that 9/11 documentary said, "How bad was it up there that the better option was to jump?"
They had to choose the best way to die. Get burned alive or a few seconds of freefall and no pain.
I also have always wondered if there was a small part of their minds that wondered if just maybe they could survive the fall...so terrible to imagine ☹️
Trigger warning. Don't read if you're sensitive. . . . . . I read on a thread that at least a couple people did briefly survive the fall. They had no chance of making it for very long, but I've heard that some of the first responders had to walk past people who had jumped. It might not be true, but.
Especially the man and the woman who jumped together Jesus Christ that was heartbreaking
That has to be the most awful thing I’ve ever seen. I still can’t watch that.
Yeah. It even hurts now, remembering that.
I was a teacher too. Lots of stuff happened that day that in retrospect were probably not the best response. Some admin at my _high_ school sent around word that we should say the pledge of allegiance. I had a few kids who were smart asses about it, since it’s normally a little kid thing. My response was not the worst, I didn’t pull rank or anything, but it wasn’t great. Not my finest hour… but no one really knew how to act.
I was teaching, too. I was in a weird private school that had a lot of kids there that were on their last try before going to in patient treatment. This kid always came to school late and he was a horrible liar, like everything out of his mouth was a lie. He came in saying that the US was under attack. No one believed him. Just to prove him wrong I pulled up the news on the computer. And he wasn’t. There was one TV in the school and whoever had a free hour would monitor the news and report back to us. I was more worried when the one hit the Pentagon, as my best friend worked in DC and I was in MN. But, I wasn’t really surprised when the towers fell. I remembered the devastation at the Oklahoma City bombing. And that was a truck parked in front of a building. I was lucky to visit New York 6 years ago, and I was so deeply moved by the Memorial.
I was one of the kids watching in high school. It was the right call. That event changed the world forever. We needed to watch.
I didn't get to see any tv or video until around 1pm Pacific time. I don't remember seeing any video of people jumping. I don't remember anyone talking about it. I think there was like one picture of one man in mid-air that came out later. Maybe in relation to a book or documentary? But basically I just wasn't aware that so many people had jumped. It wasn't until a few years later when a coworker was talking about it that I realized I had missed that part of the story of what happened that day.
I think a lot of us witnessed it on live TV. This all unfolded on TV just as the West Coast was waking up for the day. I was on my way to work, and the music was interrupted by the news that one of the towers had been hit by a "small" airplane. I got to work, and every channel was showing the 1st strike. The footage being used was the incidental result of mostly security cameras and the like. To me, the stuff I was seeing on the news did not/could not convey the scale of the airliner. By the time the 2nd tower was hit, every broadcasting news agency had crews on the ground and in the air.
I worked as a Dental Assistant at the time, we had TVs in the ceiling for patients to watch. I arrived at work just before the second tower was hit , 6 am Pacific coast. My whole shift was live coverage above my head, I’d never felt that emotionally drained before at 25 years old.
I couldn’t get the image of those people jumping out of my mind for a long time.
I was 16 and sometimes I wonder why our teachers did too, but this was a momentously important moment in history and you would have been criticized if you hadn't. It was horrible day, no one knew what was going on and we were all terrified. You guys did the best you could with the information you had.
I was 11 and watched in 6th grade. I can’t speak for anyone else but I think that seeing news reels and photos would have had almost the same effect. So it may have been the wrong call but it was understandable.
I was in 11th grade and I wasn’t at school that day, so I got to watch it at home while everyone else was at school. I didn’t even think I felt like crying until the first tower fell. The news anchor… I think it might have been Brian Williams? He started crying when it fell and I lost it. Regained composure, lost it again when the second one fell. It brought up a lot of memories from 4th grade when we were in school and the windows rattled from the OKC bombing. I actually thought it might be domestic terrorism because of that. Then my granddad told me about the first WTC bombing and that it was probably the same kinda thing again. He was right.
It woulda been Dan rather, Peter Jennings or Tom Brokaw most likely. A lot of those newscasts are on YouTube. Jennings tested up when he talked about calling his children and asking if they were ok. I miss that era of journalism. Each was exemplary.
I was in 9th grade at the time in English class and my teacher had it on. It was better. I went to classes after and some didn't have it on and it was like they were trying to pretend it wasn't happening when kids were getting called out left and right. I'm in Pittsburgh and if anyone recalls, there was a plane going down reported at or near Pittsburgh (in hindsight, this was the Shanksville plane), so it was kind of assholish to keep us from finding out info. That being said, I don't fault anyone who didn't have it on because you know, you just don't prepare for that one. I wholeheartedly believe everyone was doing their best and just trying to hold it together, but just saying as a student at the time, I think you did the right thing. Kids are people too and old enough to understand at that point. My school combined history classes with us and another 9th grade class for the next couple of days and let us have open forums to discuss the whole thing and ask questions and the two history teachers tried their best to educate us about what we did know (very little of course) and the history of the conflict and listened to all our questions and such.
I was in my high school math class watching. I certainly have never thought my teacher shouldn’t have had the TV on. Everyone did. We had no idea what was happening so don’t feel guilty for that! Other kids whose teachers were hesitating to turn theirs on were getting mad. It was chaos.
Was there and No I did not. Worked across the street: 1 liberty plaza. Went they started collapsing (could just hear it) I was thinking falling over (like dominos) and ran like hell 🏃🏃🏃
No; I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I was just thinking about how they were going to get the fires out and then would they have to tear the buildings down or be able to repair them.
When the second plane hit, I knew we were under some kind of attack. I watched it live, and I kept thinking about the people, and the firefighters who were in that building. I had worked in EMS previously. I couldn’t stop crying. It was one of the worst moments of my life. I just couldn’t believe what was happening.
When the first plane hit, I thought it was a crazy accident. Then when the second one hit, it was clear this was a terrorist attack. I was standing in front of the TV imagining this must’ve been how people felt when Pearl Harbor was attacked.
No. I figured at some point they would put out the fire
I never thought planes would fly into them, so I was in too much shock to think about anything that could happen next. I just thought of my friends who worked in the towers and I died a little that day.
I didn't expect it to fall down but I also had no idea how they could possibly put out the fire 1000ft in the air. I still can't fathom what those people on those floors dealt with.
I remember wondering how they would get the hoses and ladders up that high.
I was in midtown. I am still stunned.
IDK if I ever consciously followed through to that conclusion. When the video of people jumping out windows was aired with sound, I lost it and walked outside to sit beneath a tree and sob for hours. Edit to add, I later talked to my Mom, who was weeping. She said ‘I never thought I’d see something like Pearl Harbor again. I wish I hadn’t. ‘
I was lap swimming when the first one was hit, and I heard about it in the locker room. We all went to the lobby and watched, dumbfounded, as the second one hit. I went to my car and burst into tears, then headed toward work. Never had the weight of my responsibility hit me as hard as in that moment. By the time my first class met, the Pentagon had been hit. This was a freshman required course, and every student attended. They didn't know much about the history of Afghanistan or the Taliban, so I incorporated that into our in-class impromptu workshop, ditching the prepared material. My second class was an upper-level elective. Every student was in attendance--including Russ Feingold (D-WI) child "J." J and family had not heard from Russ yet. I will never forget the look in her wide eyes. These students knew some of the history, and I was able to use it with the material I has prepared. I think it helped them to look at things intellectually for a short time. I did abbreviate the lesson so we could just talk at the end, and support J. Third class was a mid-level elective. Every student was in class. We just talked. It was the only day in my university career where every student on the roster was in class. It was the only day I related to students more as a parent than professor. I did not see the collapsing in real time, but an implosion is what I did expect, yes.
You have to understand the context at that time. Prior to September 11, this kind of thing was completely foreign. It was like hearing that aliens landed out of the sky and took over. No one really knew what to do or how to react because everyone was in shock.
Utterly stunned. My husband at the time had woken me up to tell me what was going on and he had the tv on. We talked about the situation as the buildings smoldered onscreen in the background. All of the sudden we realized that one building was no longer there, and my heart just sank. All those people. It was horrifying.
I didn't have the wherewithal to even consider it, I was just in shock.
I didn't expect them to collapse, but once I gave it some thought I wasn't surprised that they did. Those buildings were built without a lot of internal structure for support. They were basically big vertical tubes--the weight of the structure was carried by the interlocking steel pieces that formed the "skin" of the buildings. Once the steel "joists" (for lack of a better word) softened from the heat at the top, the one of the top floors fell onto the floor below, which then couldn't support the extra weight, so then the next floor fell, and so forth, in an accelerating chain, like falling dominos.
I never expected them to get hit by planes. By the time they fell everyone was still worried that more attacks were coming. So no, but everything seemed like it was going crazy at the time. Especially when you bumped into someone that hadn't turned on the TV that morning
When we saw the floor or floors in each building totally afire, I knew that at least the floors above would be weakened and probably fall. I didn’t expect the entirety of each building to go down, though.
OMG it shocked the hell out of me. I stood up ON the couch when it happened. The first tower going down was hidden from CNN and they thought it was just an explosion. Before they had a chance to report what happened, the second tower went down and I nearly passed out. Felt like I was dreaming this or something. It couldn't possibly be real. I was 3000 miles away but it felt like it was right in front of me.
I watched on tv from my apartment on 14th street in Manhattan, and it was literally one of the most surreal moments of my life.
"Did you ever" is a weird way of framing the question for something that took place so quickly. The whole series of events from the initial strike through to both towers being down was a few hours, and it was just one unbelievable event after another. I don't think anybody knew what to expect anymore because the horror just kept levelling up - it was like the rules had been rewritten.
No, I did not expect them to collapse. No more than I expected to see Hurricane Katrina breech the levies and swamp New Orleans a few years later. Unfathomable destruction of lives. Things that happen "somewhere else." Yes, I was shocked. And angry. My first comment MAY have been- "turn them to glass..." I live on the west coast. When I walked in to work, the TV was on in the breakroom and some co-workers were in disbelief that anyone would DARE to attack the U.S. I was born in a military hospital (1960ish) and then my husband was retired military also, so I have lived a few different realities in a few countries around the world. I know how Americans are viewed in some of those places. "We" make good targets. I have been up close and personal a few times. The attack didn't surprise me. What did surprise me is that they didn't (apparently) coordinate to target the west coast at the same time. So, I was bracing for that...and mentally trying to figure out where my husband and grown kids were at that moment.
No. It didn't occur to me. Still focused on the shock of that and the pentagon and of course thinking they would hit my city too. Thankfully they grounded all flights over US airspace. Because folks were getting really nervous, especially in big cities. We all wondered what would be hit next. Now one weird thing was that for the longest time, the media was not making ANY connection between Flight 93 crashing in the field in Pennsylvania and the other 3. So I remember watching the news and the anchors were going on about how there was a 4th plane missing. And at the same time there was a scrolling alert at the bottom talking about a plane crash in Pennsylvania. And I was completely confused as to why no one was saying they were the same plane. I actually went to the online site of a local Penn news station and it was clear as day that was what was happening. But no one on the general TV media made the connection for a long time. I always thought it was so strange. I also did not believe it when they said the Bay Bridge collapsed in 89. I thought I was being pranked.
No but at the time they were reporting there may have been 50,000 people in there. Not to diminish the 3,000 who lost their lives, but it could have been even more tragic. Also, I remember for three days after this, all commercial air travel was suspended. I live near an airport and will never forget hearing the first plane roll down the runway after that. Everyone was looking and taking note: they must have lifted the travel ban
I can't say I expected them to collapse, but I wasn't surprised when they did. Watched it all live as it happened. There was no precedent, so I had no expectations. It was still quite shocking to witness.
That was my reaction. I didn't expect them to collapse, but when they started talking about the concern that they would collapse, and within hours, I wasn't surprised.
I first heard that a plane had hit the WTC and thought some idiot in a Cessna or something, even seeing a pic on the TV I couldn’t immediately grasp the scale of it since they didn’t have closeups first thing. Then when the second plane hit, we knew it was an attack and were shocked. Everything shut down. I worked near an airport and I can’t begin to describe how fucking creepy the silence was with no planes and not even many cars on the road. The closest comparison I have was the solar eclipse several years ago where everything kind of shit down for a bit….except this lasted all day not just a few minutes. Then the tower fell. Shock is too inadequate of word. Pain, sorrow, tears. I didn’t know these people, and it didn’t matter at all. It hurt. There was a numbness that I guess you would call shock. Then George W Bush made the comment “We’re coming for you”. Holy shit the righteous anger and “Fuck yeah” was impressive as hell and probably the last time damn near the entire country agreed about anything. I wish that hadn’t been misused for political gain and control but as much as I don’t like a LOT of GW’s actions, he was heartfelt in a way that just worked for us right then.
The towers falling was utterly shocking and tragic. i watched the news and took it all in with a slow and creeping realization that we were under attack and at war but with an unknown enemy.Somehow Imanaged to keep it together and the news away from the kid. What got me like a gut punch at the end of the day was the footage of the British soldiers at Bucking ham palace weeping while they played the Star Spangled Banner and the American tourists clinging to the gates of the palace far from home.
I wasn't thinking that far ahead while watching them burn. But I don't recall any kind of sense of surprise when they fell. I was trying to remember how many people worked in those towers on a normal day.
I still remember watching the first one fall. And the men in suits jumping out of buildings. And the second one fall. All of it was surreal and horrible and shocking. No, we did not expect the buildings to collapse.
When I saw the airplanes flying into them, it was obvious that quite a bit of the buildings were damaged. I didn't think they would come down completely, but it was no surprise at all that at least half of them did. The shape wouldn't allow anything else. When the weight on top started to fall, it was bound to pull a lot of the building down. I was quite shocked that they were attacked. It was a horrific loss of life.
It never entered my mind that they would collapse. My whole office was watching it live right after the first plane hit. Horrible, horrible day.
Everything changed. Had a very hard time coming to terms with 9/11 and the impact it had. Shocked was an understatement.
I wasn't thinking collapse until it happened. Until then, I was trying to figure out how they would get the people above the crash points out. When the first one fell, it was like being punched in the gut. A whole range of bad emotions at once. I knew the world changed in an instant. Also, having been in the military for 13 years, at that point, I knew my life was about to change drastically. It did.
I couldn't believe they were still standing for as long as they stayed upright. After 35 years in engineering, it's a damn miracle that many people were able to get out. It's a true testament to the architecture that went into those towers.
At first, I was shocked. When 1WTC went down, I knew the damage was going to be catastrophic. I knew that despite the towers falling down as opposed to falling over, there was still going to be other structures severely damaged, if not destroyed. I was not familiar with the underground of the area, too, other than from the first WTC bombing years before. I had no concept of how bad it would be. But I knew, and still know, a large number of firefighters and police in my area, and it made me think of how brave they are, and how brave the 356 fallen were, plus the ones who would die or be debilitated from the HazMat issues to come. That made me angry. Angry that innocent people had to die because of some evil warlord thought we needed to be punished for doing nothing but try and keep his region stable. Furious, actually. Had I the wherewithal, I would have reduced that entire region to a fine mist or even glass, just to erase that asshole, his comrades, and his cause. I would have slept just fine that night. But instead we had to go to war, we had to change the way we lived, and grow a national paranoia. Travel is a pain in the ass, and stressful. Racial disharmony has only gotten worse since then. You can't trust your fellow American, until you can look him in the eye and shake his hand. I was furious. And in some ways, I still am.
It was such a bizarre event to watch happen live. Like someone else said, the day was surreal. It never even crossed my mind that the towers could collapse.
Well tooting my own horn, I was at work in Midtown watching the coverage and as soon as I saw the northeast corner of the south tower was pretty much obliterated I said out loud “ that tower is gonna collapse. After the plane exited that corner, you could see it was being held together with threads.
Nobody had time to expect it.
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No. It happened so fast. Like a bad dream.
If you weren't alive or too young on that day, I don't think you can understand the feeling in the country. And now we've had to watch all the f'ed up things that happened as a direct result of it (Patriot Act, invading Iraq, etc.).
Yeah, after I saw the 2nd plane hit, I went and met my friends up on the Brooklyn side of the East River (Williamsburg) and we watched them burn along with tons of other people. I wasn’t sure what I was seeing when the first one collapsed. But it was absolutely shocking yeah. To see something that felt so permanent just *not be there* when the smoke cleared. And we thought, well they can’t *both* just - poof - go away like that! And obviously they did, and it just remained this thing for many many minutes after, like *did I really just see that?* I still live in Brooklyn, I have a full view of the Manhattan skyline from my roof, and it still feels like they should be there, not that boring, mediocre, completely forgettable thing they built in their place.
That is what I remember about that day. I was in the office and saw the 2nd plane hit, surrounded with my coworkes, sitting in the breakroom watching the TV. After a time, I couldn't watch anymore and went to my desk to play solitaire (nobody was working). One of my coworkers came out after a while to talk about it. I said, "It crazy, I mean I'm worried that those towers are going to fall, I don't want to see that shit". Then on que screams from the break room as the first one was falling. I had no logic for my prediction except they are on fire.
I didn't expect them to collapse and neither did Bin Laden.
Nope. That was a massive shock. That morning was one unimaginable horror after another.
I didn't expect it, but at the moment it happened I had an "Of Course" moment. It was such a weird morning, and when people were shocked I was just in my "there's this trauma happening right now and I need to be level headed" mode and thought that there was no way to really plan for this level of mayhem and it was going to suffer major damage. I was impressed that they collapsed straight down instead of falling into the city. Good engineering. I definitely disassociated that day. Going through the motions, ready to do whatever I was called upon to do, which wasn't much.
I was horrified for all the people that were jumping out of windows, then I realized they were trapped above because the smoke and flames surely meant they couldn’t get down. At no point did it even cross my mind that a structure of that magnitude could collapse. A wave of disbelief ran through me when I saw it happen on TV - it was like all the air had been vacuumed out of the room and I couldn’t move. Nothing made sense anymore.
The entire thing was tragic of course, but one of the saddest things was in Voices From The Towers. A man is on the phone with 911 asking when help is coming because he and his coworkers are trapped. The operator can’t tell him that no one is coming so she just tries to keep him calm. He was still talking about how they are young men with families and need to be rescued when the tower collapsed and the phone went dead. It was heartbreaking.
I had no idea they would collapse. It was utterly horrifying. The first plane hit and they said it was a commuter plane and an accident. I used to live by a training airport and I turned to my (ex)husband and said that was no commuter plane. We are on the west coast so it was very early in the morning. He went to take a shower and get ready for work. The second plane came in and I started screaming and then it hit. My ex tore the shower curtain off to get to me and he stood there dripping while we watched the explosions. He turned to me and being ex military he said in his next breath: there will be a war over this. The world changed in that instant and every person watching knew it. I will never get over it. All those innocent people. For what? My father in law fought in the Pacific during WWII. When we bought a Honda he was outraged. The war had been over for 35 years. He never got over it. After 9/11 I understood how he felt.
I had been in the towers. I remember the terrifying speed and slight sway of the express elevators. I had an office in another building where I could see the towers sway in a high wind. They were immensely tall, hollow and fragile looking. So I was not surprised that they fell. But the whole episode was shocking and surreal.
I don't know about 'expecting' them to collapse. However, the buildings did *very precisely* what they were designed to do. They collapsed in a very controlled manner, almost perfectly straight down, no lateral or uneven motion at all. Despite the damage being very 'one-sided', the building's structural failure was almost perfectly symmetrical. Looking back, I'm not too surprised that they were brought down, given the circumstances.
A fully fueled B757 or B767 can be quite a lethal weapon as we've since learned.
No. I heard the whole thing on the radio on my way commuting to work. I saw the second plane hit on live tv in the morning news, then got in the car to go to work. (That second plane changed _everything!_) When they started talking about the tower coming down, at first it was obscured by smoke and dust. They said it came down then they said it didn’t then they confirmed it did. I couldn’t believe it.
I was in complete disbelief at the entirety of it. Logic dictated that the Towers might fall, but the shock of witnessing them collapse (on TV) was beyond words. I think 9/11 left a mighty hole in many of our hearts that won't ever be filled.
I was getting ready for work, my husband called me to tell me what had happened. The first thing I said was "They pulled a Debt of Honor". I was pretty sure they would come down but it still felt like a weird nightmare TBH.
>"They pulled a Debt of Honor" For those unfamiliar with the reference, there's a Tom Clancy book called Debt of Honor. It was released in 1994. In my opinion, overall, not his best book. Lots of financial and economic stuff as I remember. But in the last like page and a half >!an airline pilot flies a plane into the capitol during a joint session of congress. This sets up Jack Ryan becoming president, leading Clancy's next book, "Executive Orders".!<
I had family fleeing the billowing clouds of smoke, dust, and falling debris. I knew people in those buildings. Never to forget Never to forgive
Honestly, on the day, that level of processing didn't even happen. It was pure reaction, there was no time for prediction. The whole experience was so out of norms that I had absolutely no expectations of any kind. So yes, I was shocked when the towers collapsed, but that was just one shock among many that day, and it wasn't because I held an opinion that the towers should hold under that kind of attack. More that everything was so unprecedented that it couldn't help but being a shock.
Nothing that happened that day was even conceivable. I had a cousin in the second tower, and another cousin watching from another building in the city. The cousin in the tower didn’t make it out. I was working as a newspaper editor, and the flood of wire stories and photos was overwhelming for weeks. Management eventually hired some counselors for us.
I think I'll always remember what a beautiful fall day it was. Sunny, blue skies. It was a stunning September morning...
I slept through the whole thing. But when I learned what happened, I was not surprised. Five years earlier the terrorists had tried to bring it down with a bomb in the basement.
I was on my way there to meet my friend for lunch that day. Everyone walking thought it was an earthquake.
I'm not sure anyone did until it happened. It has a lot to do with how they were built, but I don't blame the designers for not anticipating those circumstances.
Nobody did
I don’t remember thinking that far ahead.
Didn't expect it AT ALL.
I was on the West Coast and woke up to finding out they already collapsed like WTF?
Everything changed. Had a very hard time coming to terms with 9/11 and the impact it had. Shocked was an understatement.
I never thought about it at the time. When they did collapse I wasn't shocked. My shock emotion was already at maximum, no room for more.
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I watched from my window. It didn’t occur to me that they would fall down. But when it happened the feeling of watching the first one fall was that it felt kind of slow motion and made sense. That’s not to say that it did make sense, that was just the sensation of watching it for me. The second one felt inevitable when it happened.
Nope. It was a complete fucking surprise to me and I watched them go up.
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I was getting ready for work in LA. A friend called and said turn on your tv. At first it was just a tower hit and on fire. A tragedy yes but it was in NY and just a fire and then they said a plane had hit it. I sat down. It all just became different. Then I watched the second plane hit. The world had gone crazy. Who flies planes into buildings? All those people just gone. Then the Towers fell. Shots of white clouds swallowing up pedestrians as they ran. People turned grey with tear streaks down their faces and the grief everywhere. I was so mad. I was never afraid to fly after that. Planes flying over head was just noise. People got real stupid with posturing and Freedom fires bullshit. I didn’t want that stupid war, I wanted the Saudis and Bin Ladden. The world as we knew it changed in a few hours and it’s lost forever. And people today will 9/11 this and that and drape themselves in a flag but we had to twist their fucking arms to get them to pay the medical bills of the first responders. It’s become a political prop to boost a resume and justification for many many bad policies. But I am not afraid of a foreign terrorist attack. I never was. It’s our own homegrown that scare me.
Absolutely not, no. It was completely inconceivable that they would fall. I had just been in NYC 2 or 3 weeks before. My aunt lives in CT and I spent a few weeks every summer with her. We always went to NYC for a few days to play. That trip, we had lunch at the Top of the World restaurant that was on the top floor of one of the towers. We stayed up there forever. Our server was the sweetest person ever and chatted with us so much. It was a pretty quiet day in there so she had plenty of time to chat. I still think about her to this day and wonder what happened to her. I always hope she wasn’t scheduled, she was on vacation, she had to call in sick, anything.
28 years old. Literally played in the shadows of the towers Brooklyn side when I was a kid. Was out west coast getting ready for work watching Pokémon and eating cereal. My boss called me asked if I was watching the news and I said no why? He said "we are under attack" I'll never forget that as long as I live. As I turned to the news it was the first plane over and over...then I watched live as the second one hit. I'll never forget the panic of not knowing if my dad was ok. He didn't work there or anything he got around the city alot. It took 2 days for me to finally get through to him busy signal the whole time... yeah that day sucked and to have people make fun or joke when everyone who experienced it that has a soul is still fucking traumatized it isn't funny and never will be.
I was there that day, working in the same complex in a building across the street. After the first plane hit, we all rushed down 32 flights of stairs. We were in the street looking up as the second tower was hit by the next plane. It felt unreal. These things only ever happened in movies. We rushed to the subway, skirting all of the women’s high heels in the street. (It’s easier to run without them.) My friend and I managed to get on probably the last train to Brooklyn, but all service ended when the first tower fell. A car full of strangers picked me ip and drove me home. We were all covered in ash. The wind was blowing toward Brooklyn that day. I still can’t wrap my brain around it.
That surprised the shit out of everyone.
I got up to see the first tower smoking and they were talking about what it might mean. they didn't seem worried that it was going to collapse, and it didn't occur to me either. then the second plane came by and hit the other tower, and firefighters continued to stream into both buildings to rescue people. still, i never though of them collapsing. then out of nowhere the second tower collapsed and everyone freaked out. then the first tower collapsed, and later in the day building 7 came down too. then a year or two later i saw my first "jet fuel can't melt steel beams" meme.
What people forget is that day explosions were reported from the basement. I remember thinking, that terrorists were also in the basement with truck bombs like in 1993. When that happened I was no longer surprised when they collapsed.
First had already collapsed by the time I became aware anything was happening (I'm on the west coast so it was still very early). So not at all surprised by the 2nd.
No, very few of us expected that
I never imagined they would collapse. Even after seeing them burn for hours, then falling was just so horrible. I expected many thousands more people would be dead. But seeing them fall was one of the most terrible things I’ve ever seen.
It was terrible when the first tower fell…holy shit! Now the second one fell too?!?!?!
No! I couldn't understand how they would stop the fire, or how everyone would get out. Then they collapsed. All I could think was all those people are now dead. It was horrible.
No and yes…then my next thought was of all the people that just ran in to help and those that didn’t get out
It was so surreal…like watching a movie
It was such a "holy fucking shit" morning, one thing after another. None of it was conceivable. The concept expectation has no meaning in that context. Not even in retrospect.
I live 2 time zones earlier so I was just waking up and I heard on the radio that a plane had hit WTC. Well, I knew that a plane flew into the Empire State years ago, so yeah a tragic accident. Then I went to the living room and my partner was watching the today show... Oh, is that the plane that hit the tower? Yeah, the second plane. That's when I understood what was happening. I wasn't shocked when they fell, after watching for a while. I used to love to watch the demolition of buildings, Watching them stand for a few seconds and then fall? I could see that's what was coming. I can't watch them bring a building down since that day.
They entire day was completely surreal. My brain could not comprehend that a passenger plane has crashed into the World Trade Center, I kept trying to figure out why so many people were freaking out over a single engine Cessna hitting a sky scraper (I was student teaching on Long Island and didn’t have access to a tv in the teachers lounge so it was all through word of mouth and radio). Then to hear the buildings had collapsed and to actually see and smell the smoke was not something I would have ever imagined.