9/11

[Danni Shears]

It happened around 8:45-9. I imagine many were already at work, hence over 1500 being killed above the plane level. My husband is from North America and the work hours in an office like that are very different than the UK. It is not unusual for my husband and others to be at work from 6 am for a meeting overseas. General start time is around 7:30 am.

Officials have said the toll was reduced by around 70% because it was before many got into the office. Most people in Manhattan offices around then got in from 8:30 to 9:30 and rarely do people have meetings before 9am especially with external visitors. If people in Manhattan worked as you claim with their 8.2 hour days they'd be leaving the office just after 4pm. It's more like 6pm

 

[Libbie]

Are you me? I honestly could have written this. Same age, same reason for turning on the TV, saw the second plane hit and the utter stunned silence of the broadcasters. I didn't move from our sofa until my dad came home from work about 4pm.

I was in my final year of school and 9/11 really felt like it marked a shift from me being a child to adulthood. Such an awful thing to happen.

There's a documentary featuring children who parent(s) died in the attacks. Being a mother now, I don't think I could bring myself to watch it.

Wow, I was upper 6th but can’t quite recall why I wasn’t at school that day!
It was horrific, yes I didn’t leave the TV for the rest of that day, I can remember it like it was yesterday! Such a beautiful autumnal day. Those 20 years have certainly gone by in the blink of an eye!

I did see a snippet of that, I turned it off as it was just too sad! Might have to revisit it another day.

 

[Crazy87]

I was in year 9 at school I stayed behind to use the computers and a teacher came in asking someone to get the news up. At first I thought she said a plane has crashed into the worlds trains centre and remember thinking what’s that! When I got home I put sky news on and I will never forget what I saw so heart breaking. for me princess Diana’s death and 911 where the biggest things in my childhood that i remember

 

[Notredamn]

Teenaged me was home from lunch at school. Joined my mother in watching the events unfold. We had thought a helicopter hit by accident whilst filming or something. Then the second plane hit. For me there was a world before and a world after.
Because of the nature of parents ' jobs at my and my siblings' schools, temporary walls were put up around them and we had security. Where we lived the event also stirred up xenophobia and racism which hadn't really existed beforehand.
I'll never forget the horror the victims must have endured, even now it's inconceivable.

 

[Yel]

Re security and checks

It's worth saying that it's staggering what facial recognition and other AI tech is doing these days. So many terrorist events of the past would now be flagged up and hopefully delt with

 

[HannahC]

I was 9 when it happened and had no idea what had gone on until i came home from school, went to put CBBC on like i always did and the news was on instead. I think the towers had probably just collapsed as i remember there just being clouds of smoke and being really confused. I remember being absolutely terrified and thinking bombs were going to start being dropped everywhere.

Since then i've had a huge morbid fascination with the twin towers. I'm not sure why, maybe because of how much it terrified me and I just need to understand it all? have watched so many documentaries over the years. I would really recommend 102 Minutes That Changed America, also if you can find it it's really worth watching '9/11' the documentary made by the french brothers who happened to be filming the firefighters before the events of 9/11 and ended up capturing the whole day in incredible detail.

I visited the 9/11 memorial in New York a few years ago and it's a beautiful memorial, I actually went on a walking tour taken by a man who had worked in the towers. It was really interesting seeing things such as the church that somehow remained standing even though everything else around it had collapsed. The museum itself is really well done. It was sad but incredibly interesting.

I think the thing I struggle to get my head around when watching documentaries about it is that you have absolutely no idea what is going on in those towers, hearing the phone calls and seeing people at the windows is the only way we know the absolute hell that was going on in there. If that happened today you'd have people in the buildings on facetime/twitter/instagram livestreaming their deaths i suppose. The information you'd have instantly would be overwhelming.

 

[LennyBriscoe]

it is actually awful what people will do for money
I haven't been to NY since well before 9/11 but don't know if I would even want to visit the site, I hate going to graveyards as it is and that just seems like one huge one. Must be very affecting

We went in 2012, well to the area. It was still under construction but it was partially open. Having watched so many documentaries, when I got there it just felt weird.

That is horrific, the people with black books. Death and tragedy can be a morbid fascination, and I’m sure there are horrific pictures on the Internet if you look for them. But it’s something else altogether to buy pictures!

 

[PaddyDomino]

I was on holidays in the West of Ireland and I was in the local shop. I overheard the elderly man, in front of me at the counter, telling the shop assistant that a plane had crashed into a skyscraper in New York. I remember thinking that it must be a small plane, for some reason.
Got back to the holiday cottage and put the telly on, and was so shocked to see what had happened, we stayed in watching it the rest of the day.
A couple of years later, I was temping in an insurance company and they were telling me how they had had an office in one of the towers and had colleagues, who they had dealt with on a daily basis, who had died.

 

[Stillwater]

Thank you for the tv recommendations - The President’s War Room is fascinating. About to start Looming Tower.

 

[Rippedjeanmaybe]

I was only five, almost six at the time and I didn’t know anything about it until I got home from school as I was quite young.

I went back to my dad’s and he had the tv on watching it and I remember seeing it on the tv and asking what had happened. I’ll never forget that and since then I’ve grown up hearing about it and watching documentaries, it’s heartbreaking.

i went to New York in 2018 for my birthday and I visited ground zero and the memorial. It was very sad to see.

 

[Monkeybum]

I was at work in a Jobcentre. I remember someone phoning from another office to tell us but it didn't seem real until I got home and saw it for myself. Me and my sister sat and watched without moving for the whole night. A lady from work was over there and a friend was flying out that day, she got redirected to Nova Scotia.

I went to Ground Zero when I did NYC and our tour guide told us we must do the 911 museum. Its so beautiful and hauntingly done, I cried so many times walking round

 

[Hodgies]

I was 23 and was at work. It sort of filtered through that something had happened in New York but we couldn't get onto the Internet to check as it was just frozen. Wasn't until I got home later on and put the TV on that I realised the full horror of it all. I had been to New York 2 years before, I've got loads of stupid pictures of me and my friends on the roof of the WTC and it's in the background of so many of my other pictures. I haven't been back since then but I would find it incredibly upsetting to visit ground zero if people weren't respectful.

I've watched numerous documentaries on it over the years and I still can't get over the view of that second plane coming in. Then the collapse of the towers was just awful. When you hear recordings from the emergency services telling people to stay where they were as they would get rescued and then obviously that wasn't the case. It seems unfathomable that they collapsed like that.

 

[Youre a wizard Harry]

I was 9 years old and I remember coming home from primary school, with the footage showing on tv of the towers burning. I didn’t really understand what had happened, other than something bad had happened and lots of people had died. As an adult now, I can’t quite comprehend just how many people died and the lasting effects.

I visited the memorial and museum a couple of years ago, and I agree with other posters who have said it’s eerily quiet. I went on a busy day, lots of people around the pools and yet it felt so quiet.

The under attack documentary on itv is very good. I hadn’t watched many documentaries about 9/11 before, I’d like to watch more.

 

[Felix08]

I was 10 and I was coming home from school. My parents were really worried because my grandparents where in America at that time. Not in New York though.

Nan remembered watching it live on tv and thinking it was a movie!

 

[Pixipoppy]

I was 12 and I remember coming home from one of my first days back in school after the summer holidays - I walked into the house and my mum was watching the news which was unusual. I asked her what it was and in my memory we actually saw the second tower get hit? However I may have embellished that memory because I don’t think the timing is right. I remember seeing pictures of Osama Bin Laden and hearing the word “taliban” which I thought was weird because at school we were reading Shakespeare’s the Tempest and there was a character called Calliban. I’d also never really heard of a terrorist attack before, after that day it’s all I heard in school. I was terrified there would be a nuclear war. I don’t think the magnitude of what happened really sunk in, I was too young to feel grief about something so unconnected to me.

 

[PollyPerks]

I was 26, working in an Outpatients department. It was a quiet afternoon, and I remember seeing the Outpatients Sister coming by with an odd expression on her face, and she said, "New York's in flames, planes have crashed into the World Trade Centre". My colleagues and I went straight onto our computers to find out what had happened, then we went to the Children's Outpatients, which was empty that afternoon, as it was the only part of the department that had a screen, usually for showing cartoons. We watched the news for a long time, and I remember seeing the footage of the second tower falling over and over - I actually have no idea if I saw this happen live or if I just saw a repeat of the footage. Then I went home and watched the news for hours. I found the lack of places in the sky for the next day or two really eerie - where I lived and worked was right on the flight path to Heathrow so there would usually be a plane every minute or so, and a sky without planes felt so odd.

 

[QueenieBee-BopALula]

I was working in a funny old building, which had a mezzanine over looking a larger working area below, my mum had called me, and told me that a plane had just gone into one of the towers, and my first reaction was to laugh, not that it was funny, more that I couldn’t believe what she was saying. I was on the BBC news website, and shouting over the mezz area, telling everyone in the office what was happening.

Seeing that first plane going into the first tower was horrific, and the whole aftermath still makes me shudder.

Thanks for the national geographic recommendations, will check them out x

 

[Smallpotato]

I was 15, and we were due to fly out to America on the 15th to see family. School let us out early so I got home around 1:30pm, and I saw the second plane hit with my Mum. I remember asking her if it was a big plane, and we couldn’t believe it. My dad got home and was on the phone all night to try and change our flights.

 

[HannahC]

These are all such sad stories

Spoke to my parents about it earlier and my dad said he heard about it at work but the news was that it was a small plane and then became apparent it wasn’t. He said they just could not get on to the internet at all the whole day and then everyone just went home early.

Mum was with us at our friends house after school and just remembers watching both the towers collapse; we looked up the timings and it was about 3/3.30 UK time.

They were in the documentary on channel 4 recently called 'Children of 9/11: Our Story' it was very interesting. Their mums have all been through so much but have managed to raise some really well adjusted kids.

 

[Lucie1001]

When I went to the 9/11 museum I bought this book, 102 minutes. It’s brilliant (strange word to use considering what it’s about but), follows loads of different people in the towers (those who got out and those who didn’t). I would really recommend it, read it a few times now and it still really pulls at the heart strings x