9/11

[Hollaaa]

I was 22 and had just moved back to the UK from university in NYC. I changed subway train at the WTC every morning at 8.45am when I lived there. We went to swing nights in Windows on the World on the last Friday of the month. The WTC was the main view from our dining room window. I still find it hard on the anniversary, it fact it's got more upsetting year on year, and the first few times I was back in NY it was like a hole had been ripped in the skyline as well as the ground. I kept getting lost in lower Manhattan, in streets I'd walked down all the time, because I'd always used the towers to navigate and they were gone. Overhearing tourists gleefully talk about visiting Ground Zero in the same breath as the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty when active recovery of remains was still taking place made me break down on the subway.

I spent most of the day itself on the phone to friends from uni who were back in the UK, it was impossible to get hold of anyone in the city. I only knew one of my friends who worked in the building was alive because he was interviewed in the British press the next day, he'd overslept and would have got to his office at 9.15 but it was all cordoned off. It was 4 days before everyone I knew was accounted for. My closest friend lived about 15 blocks away and is convinced he'll die prematurely because of the dust he inhaled that day, that week, that month. I don't really like thinking about it, but I know it's important to remember everyone who was lost, or lost someone, or even lost a part of themselves that day.

 

[footylass2021]

I really feel for all the folks in the area who were maybe just walking through that now have lung problems or cancer from the debris. Think of all the asbestos in that building plus the chemicals from the jet fuel etc. I read some of those people were hit hard by covid as their lungs were already damaged.

The after effects are unreal - I developed severe asthma as the dust we breathed in contained toxins posionous to humans such as lead and mercury from all the electrical cables. , also contained chemicals (PCB,s ) that reacted to the jet fuel which is harmful for females and their reproductive organs so I was very lucky to fall pregnant . My mam has to have dialysis now from being 35 onwards because It contained cadmium, which is toxic to kidneys

after I flew home from Ny a month later , it took me 5 years to get on another plane and I still have to have meds to calm me before I get on.

I appreciate everyone has these weird obssesions with 9/11 and loves watching documentaries but it is still a living hell for those that were there , I close my eyes and can still smell burning flesh from survivors, I can still see those who jumped because they wanted to die with Control in their lives still and not be burned to death

 

[Monkeybum]

We had a walking tour when I first went to New York and the tour guide told us whenever it's one of the victims birthdays they put a white rose in their name on the memorial

 

[Geranium]

I was at home because a carpenter was working on our staircase. We were due to go to NYC for the second time in about two weeks to celebrate my 40th. My husband phoned and told me to switch on the tv as a plane had hit the WTC. Like so many people we thought at first that it was an accident involving a light aircraft. The carpenter joined me watching the live footage and we both saw the second plane hit. I was on the phone to my husband who also had the live footage on at work. We watched tv the whole day. We both absolutely love NYC, have visited many times and even after one visit fell very connected to it. We had gone up to the observation deck on our previous visit and I also remember lying on a bench in the plaza below, staring up at the towers against a blue sky. I remember touching and admiring the Atlas statue there.We were both struck by the complex of shops and food outlets beneath the towers, we had no idea that was there. The towers were so immense, it’s hard to appreciate their height and how they stood out on the skyline until you were actually there.
We went back the following year and several times since and have seen the clearing and evolution of the site which was very moving. Atlas survived but was mangled, they placed him temporarily in Battery Park. I cried when I saw him there. He is now near the memorial.
NYC has a powerful spirit than nothing can crush. I have immeasurable respect for it’s citizens and all the heroic first responders, their courage was matchless.

 

[LennyBriscoe]

It’s 20 years on Saturday since the 9/11 atrocities. I was at work when the news filtered through and I still remember the disbelief at what was happening.

Every year I watch documentaries, it still fascinates me (for want of a better word).

Where were you when 9/11 happened? What sticks in your mind the most?

 

[klarakluckbag]

I was at home with my baby, and my husband called to tell me that a plane had hit the World Trade Centre tower. I thought that maybe a pilot in a light aircraft had a heart attack or something, so when I switched the news on to see the tower in flames, I couldn't believe it. That's when the news of the second plane hitting the other tower came in. I just stood in front of the tv with my mouth open, it was such a shocking sight.

Over the course of the day, it just got worse. There was talk of the Canary Wharf tower being a possible danger zone, (I live quite near there) and as the planes were being grounded, any aircraft noise going over my house was really freaking me out. The City airport planes fly quite low over my place, and I can remember watching planes in the sky and feeling very nervous. My best friend lives in Cornwall, we were on the phone to each other for much of the day and she told me to just chuck some stuff in the car and come down to hers, where we would be safer. It sounds silly now, but London was seen as a legitimate target, it really did feel like a war had started and no-one knew what was going to happen.

Seeing those poor people jumping out of the windows was the absolute worst for me. That's what made me cry, I just couldn't believe what I was watching. It was an absolutely awful day.

 

[dorydaryl]

Like a few others I was 11 and had just started secondary school. I was getting in the car and my parents told me to be quiet as we listened to the radio. We got home to put the news on and caught the second plane live. I can remember the feeling of disbelief as we all watched it live. At 11 I can’t really remember comprehending but when I watch it now I can’t bear the Thought of all those people going into the tower and everyone in the world just watching on.

I think we had the news on all afternoon. I can’t believe it’s been 20 years and we’ve gone from being utterly shell shocked to almost immune to the entire thing now if you know what I mean. It doesn’t feel like 20 years ago, whenever I watch a documentary I’m always shocked at how ages everything feels. And how fast technology has come along, now you can be informed at a push notification and then you had to call someone or text them on a Nokia 3310 style phone.

I don't yet have that feeling of being 'immune', even now, although I kind of know what you mean.

The individual legacies of people there at the time or who lost loved ones still have the power to move and shock to this day.
You rock up at work, expecting a dum-de-dum kind of morning. Sun is shining and you're thinking how nice it would be to make the most of the last days of summer rather than sitting in your office. An hour later you're choosing between suffocating/burning to death or taking that one step out of the window you know will be your last, also knowing you'll never see your loved ones and friends again. Seeing all those around you going through the same thing. People you've just had a joke or (verbal) fight with, or spilled coffee on an hour earlier. It's all going to be over.
It's unbearable.

 

[NeverEnough]

I was working at the time and sitting an exam when it happened so, by the we got out in the evening, I had my usual 90 min commute before I got home. When I walked in and saw it on tv, I couldn’t believe it and I still don’t believe it in the sense of what we’ve been told vs what my brain was telling me.

I don’t agree with “conspiracy theories” being used as general insult, often used by the media; if you believe something could be subject to a conspiracy then theories are a natural consequence and open-mindedness is essential. I’m not some uneducated crank, I have a Masters degree, an inquisitive mind and have learnt over my 50++ years that my gut feeling is usually right. I’m retired now and for the last two days I have cried more than ever over this event.

MSM documentaries don’t cover enough. This video is well hidden (she starts about 4 mins in). I don’t know what happened to part two, it used to exist. Even if you believe none of it, it is still remarkable.

Presentations – Dr Judy Wood

www.drjudywood.com

Like you I am 50+ have a masters degree in and a 20 year career in crime investigation but that is where our similarities end. I don’t trust gut feeling but rely on evidence, and I think most conspiracy theorists are in fact cranks. In fact at the heart of every conspiracy theory is a paranoid mind which is convinced that their lives are being run by unseen forces, which simply rejects such simple things as freedom of choice or culpability,”It wasn’t me mate it was the illuminati”. In fact I would so far as to say that if the world is being by a shadowy organisation who have managed to avoid detection for centuries then that organisation has a remarkable level of competence and SHOULD be running the world. So how come we have the clowns we have now?

Open minds are essential for enquiry but there is a difference between an open mind and a gaping mind that accepts any old shite. The twin towers collapsed because a group of terrorists flew planes into them, and I know this because I watched it happen live in all it’s horror. And no it isn’t what “they” want me to think. It is what happened. To claim otherwise is just to completely divorce yourself from reality.

 

[Renegadedancer]

I visited the memorial and museum in 2019. I have visited New York many times, my first visit was in 1999, the towers were there. Great architecture and something to look at but really nothing more than office buildings Prior to 9/11. How that changed . I found it eerie even being there, like I was intruding and shouldn’t be there . The site is a grave for many people and so personal to their families, it’s haunting. Not a place for selfies and tourism IMO. Although I understand it’s a very significant place of history. The museum had us in tears, the firefighter truck and helmet, the phone calls from loved ones, the pictures of missing people and desperate messages for information, the pieces of metal from the towers, the personal belongings. I found it really heart wrenching and the TV coverage of the anniversary every year makes me emotional.
I remember where I was on 9/11. I was working in an office in a telephone based job. The owners were a husband and wife team, not nice people. As news filtered through, her words were ‘ it doesn’t effect us, we don’t need to waste time discussing it’. What an out and out ****

 

[Smallpotato]

Thanks for the article Hotes, some amazing stories

I wanted to say that I wasn’t implying that the people who had taken footage were ghouls trying to profit from tragedy - I think there would have been so many documentaries made in the years after that they had invited anyone with footage to submit it.


I was talking to my husband about her last night, I’ll have a look at that. Things like that interest me so much - what’s the psychiatric background of someone who goes to such great lengths to pretend she was immersed in one of the worst tragedies of all time

I went to ground zero in 2005 on a college trip. I was told by my teacher not to speak to anyone with black books.

the people with black books were selling photographed and negatives of the wreckage and the bodies. It was horrifying.

 

[under the ivy]

I was only 8 but I remember getting home from school with my Nana and she told me to ‘sit down and watch the news because something bad has happened in America’. I remember seeing the Towers collapse on TV.

When I visited NYC a few years ago I visited the site of the Towers and the memorial. Although it’s a ‘tourist’ attraction and is busy, there’s a solemn atmosphere.

I like watching the documentaries too. I need to catch up on the ones on iPlayer.

 

[brumbrum16]

I have a friend of a friend who is one of them people who says they can see ghosts etc and they come through to her to pass messages on to people, basically cut a long story short.. She was in America a few years ago and visited the 9/11 memorial and she said all she could see was people walking around crying & screaming and calling out, she said these were actual ghosts of those who have lost their lives. She immediately left the area and has said its something she can never unsee. The same at the museum too, they were just walking around crying and screaming! She hasn't returned to America since x

 

[Kaylarina]

I was at school - my teachers husband was in NY and was supposed to be in the towers for a work meeting, but it got pushed later at the last minute. I remember how deathly quiet the whole school was.

I’ve visited Ground Zero a number of times - first in 2004 and I was amazed by how small I found the area. I always expected it to be such a big area.

I can’t quite believe it’s been 20 years.

 

[LemonPledge]

I remember that day so vividly. It's the only time (aside from when my Grandad died) that I've heard my dad sob. My parents lived and worked in Manhattan for years, the WTC was very familiar to them and several of his former colleagues lost children.

My friends boyfriend was working in the South Tower. When the plane hit the North his company were like "well you can leave if you want but there's no reason to". In hindsight it's crazy to think that's the attitude they took! Luckily he decided to leave. My friend said it really struck home seeing so many cars sat in the car park of their local train station - some weren't moved for weeks - people who had taken the train into work and never come home.

 

[L3moning]

The one that often gets forgotten in all the talk of the terrorism that's happened since 9/11 is Bali.

 

[grumpycat]

The memorial really is the more eerie place I’ve been. The air feels heavy. the memorial is beautiful though. I remember seeing the sea of names and not comprehending just how many people died. I hope that the 20th anniversary goes on without any kind of disruption

I didn’t get time to go in the museum but I’d love to in the future. New York is an amazing place, covid delayed my third trip there and I cannot wait to go back.

 

[Gym&Tonic]

You know it’s really lucky that social media didn’t exist then and camera phones were only in their infancy because I dread to think what would have been shared online. Not just images of jumpers etc but people trapped inside would have no doubt filmed and uploaded, as happened with Grenfell Tower. It doesn’t really bare thinking about does it?

 

[Prgirl_cesca]

It’s 20 years on Saturday since the 9/11 atrocities. I was at work when the news filtered through and I still remember the disbelief at what was happening.

Every year I watch documentaries, it still fascinates me (for want of a better word).

Where were you when 9/11 happened? What sticks in your mind the most?

Have you watched the 2 new documentaries on the BBC this week? My husband is a 9/11 obsessive and we have seen every doc going but these two were incredible.

I was in the shower having come home from holiday the day before and my mum rang the landline so I ran down soaking wet and she told me to put on the telly as she had heard about a plane crash in NYC. I was a teenager and not very worldly so I didnt quite get the magnitude of it at the time.

 

[Columbo]

The thing that always sticks in my mind is watching the news live and seeing the second plane hit and the penny dropping that it wasn’t an accident.

Watched the Under Attack documentary on ITV the other night and found some of the calls from people trapped inside the building absolutely harrowing. One woman was asking the operator if she was going to die, I think I read that nobody on the floors above the point of impact survived so I think that lady probably didn’t make it

The whistles/ distress signals from fire fighters inside the building. Gut wrenching.

Also the recordings from air traffic control when they realised there was a plane headed for the Pentagon and mobilising the fighter jets to the United 93 flight.

Bloody hell when you really think about it, the terrorists brought America to it’s knees that day

 

[LennyBriscoe]

I was coming back from swimming lessons and we heard it on the radio. Does anyone know if there’s any new docs coming out or recommend any maybe I haven’t seen?

There are two on the iPlayer - ‘The President’s War Room’ and ‘Surviving 9/11’. National Geographic and the History Channel normally have documentaries and All 4 (or it might be on Channel 4 again) often show ‘The Falling Man’ which centres on a picture of someone who leapt from one of the towers, and trying to find out who he was.

The President’s War Room was brilliant. Little things I hadn’t thought of - really small things - like technology was so much worse back then but they were saying the equipment in the underground bunker was at least 20 years old. The logistics of trying to get the President to safety when there were still so many planes in the sky and threat of his plane being a target before they even left the runway