What were you doing on 9/11/01?

[evlblkwpnz 3,418]

I was digging a nightmare of a pool for one of the founding brothers of Firehouse subs. This pool caved in and caved in for 3 days. That third day of digging and caving in the homeowner ran out and yelled "Come here and look at this!". We got out of the hole and peeked our heads into his den to see one of the twin towers with smoke coming out of it on the news. A lot of thoughts entered my mind that day. 

[G O B 3,516]

I was home with the flu, and watched on TV with the wife.

[ChileRelleno 7,074]

I was a long haul trucker pulling a flatbed Westbound I-10 through Texas, I was just East of Ft. Stockton, TX and heard about the first plane on the radio.  I pulled into the truckstop there and watched the second plane hit on the TV.

Everyone there was in shock, fear, angry and a few crying.

There were two Sikh drivers there, just as shocked and angry as anyone else, but some of the stupid rednecks didn't know the difference between an Arab/Muslim raghead and an Indian/Sikh raghead.

The rednecks were muttering, pointing and getting riled, it was going to get ugly if the Sikhs didn't get out of there.

The ignorant assholes started to confront the Sikhs.

Myself and two other drivers kept the people off of them and got the Sikhs to their trucks and on the road.

[jerry52 893]

I was on a call in south Naples Fl when the home owner said a airplane just hit a building in NY.

Saw the second plane hit.

 

[patriot 7,197]

I was in the engineering lab running some tests. I thought someone had a movie running on the lab TV. I didn't think it was real.

 

 

...I still want every single one of those fuckers DEAD.

Edited September 11, 2018 by patriot

[Razorback 72]

I flew into NY at midnight, and sat on the park bench at Newark airport until the sun came up. Gave me a little time to get my paper work in order. I was doing Telecommunication engineering at the time. Watched the towers get hit and fall. Complete chaos at the airport, people running out all at once. I hoped on the bumper of a bus headed to the hertz car rental, got the last car they had, and drove to   Greenwich, Connecticut to hang out with a friend from Arkansas. Got a call around 3pm that day and had to go to the Verizon building across from the towers. After 6 or 7 check points, I got there, picked up some test equipment and went to Garden City to try to get some of the ATM lines back up and going. When the towers fell, it severed most of the communication lines on the East Coast. That's why everybody's calls were getting dropped. My friends and co workers from Arkansas called me right after the 1st plane hit the tower. I told them get your go bag and get to the mountain. A spot were we had prepared in case of an all out attack around Allred Arkansas in the middle of no where. Man I was stuck in NY with no way to get my go bag, get home, and was in a large city under attack. I never have felt so helpless in my life. What a nightmare, I was supposed to be home by the 12th so I could pallbearer for my wife's father who had just passed, but couldn't get back home. I took the 1st flight I could get out of Hartford Connecticut, and was in Brazil and Canada for the next 6 weeks. I'll never forget that day, or how bad I wanted payback. I had heard the name Osama Ben Laden back on New Years 1996 when I took 2 exchange students out for New Years. Turns out it was the son of President Musharraf of Pakistan and a guy from Yemen. The Yemen guy hated America and asked me if I had ever heard of OBL, I answered no, and he said YOU WILL> I Heard it all right. Payback is a bitch too....

 

edited for spelling

Edited September 12, 2018 by Beaver Laker

[sjgusmc21 850]

I was in the Battalion Armory doing inventory when my Marines busted in and told me, 'MSgt., you're not going to believe this...' 

[JohnnyE 81]

I was in my office seven blocks from the White House surrounded by colleagues. We had the TV on and  were all trying to figure out what was going on and working to determine what we were going to do.

At that time, my best friend of 30 years was stuck in bumper-to bumper traffic on his way to work when American Airlines flight 77 flew over South Washington Blvd about 200 yards ahead of him and crashed into the Pentagon. Someone I went on a mission to Taiwan with perished in the Pentagon.

Finally getting out of D.C., I saw the Presidential helicopter fleet heading north from D.C. to, I presume, Camp David, following their usual route. One thing was different, though. This time, it was being orbited by an F-15. Never saw that before or since.

[Capt Nemo 883]

Taking a shit when I first heard about it.   Why is it that everyone just has to bother me on the throne?

[evlblkwpnz 3,418]

Well, it is indeed one of those events where everyone usually remembers exactly what they were doing, even if only taking a dump. 

[montec 164]

I was in college, seen the second plane hit on tv, said we are going to war, and went back to class.  Sad i felt we were going back to the middle east without knowing who did the attack.

[MikeD 541]

I was sleeping in a little that day.  I came down stairs and my dad was watching Fox.  It was right after the second tower had fallen.  The screen was just a haze of dust and smoke.  It was an airial view from across the bay.  Only thing I could make out was a very small Staute of Liberty in the bottom left corner of the screen.  I asked my dad what happened.  He simply said, “They bombed New York.”  I immediately thought nuked and asked my dad what the hell he doing sitting there and letting me lay in bed.  We aren’t far from Wright-Pat Airforce base and if nukes were flying we needed to be getting on the move away from possible fallout if it were hit!  He clarified it was planes, lol...

I went to work out in the wood lot splitting firewood.  A short bit later I heard 2 loud booms.  It turned out to be a jet breaking the sound barrier.  At the same time a power transformer blew up about a mile outside of downtown Dayton and set a overgrown field of grass on fire.  The local news reported that Dayton had been bombed before they figured out what had happened.  I remember that night a couple local gas stations were gouging at just over $2.00 a gallon and people were lined up trying to get it.  I remember sitting with friends that afternoon and one friend was frantic saying he was getting to Canada.  I was pissed the hell off over that comment.  I verbally condemned him calling him a pussy and a traitor and told him to just go then and don’t come back after we mopped up.  He was just really scared.  I felt bad about saying all that later.  He is a great guy and American, he just doesn’t handle stress well, lol.   Crazy days for sure...

[csspecs 1,987]

I had just finished hauling out the garbage. And finished breakfast when someone called to turn on the TV.. The trash guys just stopped and went home, everything pretty much stopped moving for the whole day and most of the next day..

I recall that Solo cups pretty much went out of stock until February.. And that pretty much every night there was a news report of someone getting killed putting a flag pole into power lines..

My sisters co workers all got decontaminated by Hazmat after a box exploded in the back stockroom covering 50+ people at the store in white powder... One of the people at the distribution center apparently thought it would be a great prank, ended up that the morning before the box was opened that a person 20 miles away tested positive for anthrax.. So the entire area was on high alert for any white powders on mail or boxes... So the panic of being sprayed by white powder resulted in one of the co-workers having a heart attack and another couple to have asthma attacks, which stressed out several other people who started throwing up.. So when Hazmat arrived they had all the signs of a terrorist attack and responded accordingly.. Which just sent the whole situation from an solid 9 on a scale of 1-10 straight to 11...... The box blew up at 11 pm and by 2 am over 100 emergency responders five government helicopters, a half dozen news helicopters, a couple armored vehicles and about 20 FBI guys where there... It was quite the event.. I think the prankster is probably still in prison..
 

Lots of crazy stuff happened right after 9/11, honestly the world changed and never went back to how it was.

Edited September 16, 2018 by csspecs

[netpackrat 566]

I was sound asleep (maybe I could get a job at the FBI; they were asleep on 9/11 too).  Wife had gotten job in new city and went on ahead of me, I was still in my hometown packing to move.  Got woken up by phone call from her telling me to turn on the TV.  TV was packed...  Got on the computer, news sites were all slammed and dialup ISP was going slow as fuck (small town, rural Alaska prior to them getting cable modems) so I couldn't see anything.  Finally found a site that would load.  Not very interesting all in all.

My brother's story was slightly more interesting than that.  He was at NASA Langley doing engineering at the time and when they went to Threatcon Charlie, he decided to un-ass the base before they went to Delta and all of the traffic on and off was stopped.  Another relative worked for one of Alaska's senators, and saw the smoke pouring out of the Pentagon on his way in to work.  He pulled over and called the office, asked if there was any point to coming in?  Nope, boss is "elsewhere" right now, go home.

[DLT 1,646]

I was driving my newborn daughter to McAllen for a doctor's visit.  First heard about something happening when I parked the car and noticed people freaking out   I walked into the building and saw the 2nd plane hit live.  

[HB of CJ 1,263]

I was just one hour post op from major lower back surgery just transfered from recovery to my private room 3 miles from a B52 capable regional airport with a long thick runway when a nurse or somebody was crying and screaming in the hallway.

Medford Oregon. Providence Hospital.  Third floor.  North side.  Big window.

My RN who was super good and very cute asked her what was wrong and the person in the hall screamed that "They just NUKED the Pentagon!!" .  Lots of running in the hallways.  Loud scared voices.  I was very stoned via a Morphine pump.  Ah shit!

Talk about being in exactly the wrong physical condition and the worse possible location.  They just finished fusing THREE back disks.  I had a broken back for years and didn't know it.  Yeah I am tough.  Anyhow, through my morphine fuzz, (great stuff) I understood that if it was WW3 there was nothing I could have done about it.  I was totally and completely fucked.

My RN told me days later that the floor was supposed to have 12 RN nurses.  Primary care med surg floor.  NINE RN nurses abandoned their patients.  The floor was down to only three.  Several hours later when things settled down the nurses and other staff returned to the hospital and their jobs.  Nobody was fired.  Seems most the hospital staff ran for the hills.

Interesting for several hours let me tell you.  I was resigned to a quick horrible death.  Big surface H bomb burst on the runway.  Medford Oregon remains a B52 dispersal base in time of emergency.

Long post.  Sorry.   I do not hit this forum that frequently nowadays.  My bad.

[evlblkwpnz 3,418]

Now that is a nightmare experience. I can't imagine thinking that it might be on and knowing full well that I can do nothing about it should it face me directly.

[sjgusmc21 850]

Imagine what the population would have done if they had live media like we do now, when Pearl Harbor was hit.....

[Cav_Trooper_19D 1]

I was a junior in high school sitting in 2nd period, Mr. Samples History Class. We had a TV in every room so when the news hit of the first plane the whole school witnessed the second plane. It was sureal to watch in real time. The unity of America was incredible the first couple years after. If you never lived through the Sept 11th tragedy...you probably only know the US as a divided place. We were once all Americans in a Patriotic sense. I was also in Army JROTC and that day caused many of us to seek a military career in one form or another which may have not happened otherwise. It fueled me to continue on to ROTC at my University. I remember one of the Seniors when i was a sophomore was heading to Afghanistan. He was in the first boots on the ground. He made it through his time. We lost 4 KIA’d in Iraq of my little town of 2,000 people. Mostly MP’s over the course of OIF I - OIF VII or 2003-2011. We have about 6 townships, boro, or municipality that made up the school district. So i know there were more than just my town. There was an outpouring to join the military. These are the things I remember that stems from Sept 11th.