I was waiting for Fallout 3.

I was at home, not feeling well. Turned on the TV after breakfast and saw one tower of the Trade Center burning. Commentator didn't really know (like everybody else at that time) what was going on except for a "plane having crashed into the trade center". Sounded like an accident. What immediately came to my mind was the movie "the Towering Inferno" starring Steve McQueen. This looked like one of the catastrophy movies made in the 70s. At first....
I went to the toilet and when i came back, it was two towers burning ! :blink:
This was so surreal, i still couldn't get it. Two accidents in one hour in both towers ?
And then, they showed the impact in tower 2 as a replay and every question i had before was answered.
Altough i was thousands of miles away from New York, i didn't get any sleep the following night, svcking in every little piece of info that was aired.

The next day, work stood still. Everybody was talking 'bout what was going on and knew that this would have bad, very bad consequences. :gun:

Edit: I was 30 then. Hard to believe this was ten years ago.

I was about 12 and I was in the lunch room in school when we first heard about what happened, then everyone got sent home in case they had relatives in the towers.

I was at school. Weirdly it wasn't mentioned at all that day; it was only when I got home and saw it on the news that I knew about it.

I was driving to a job interview, heard it on the radio, those news made my heart sink.

I honestly remember nothing from that day, so to me it's just like learning about another history lesson (mind you I love history). But you can't really blame me, I was only six and I doubt any advlts told me about it when it was happening. :shrug:

I was in an electrical closet in Becton dikeinson load testing some batteries in a fire alarm transponder cabinet. My partner ran in screaming, "Pack it up!! The plant is shutting down and is on alert. We've got to go to security!!"

When I asked what was going on he explained to me that the towers were being attacked and I said, "[censored]." I didn't believe him.

But in all honesty, do we really need to beat this horse anymore?

I tried to post in the other thread, but as usual, it was locked by the time I hit the "add reply" button.

Anyways,

I was in my 6th grade french class learning a bit le francais when my french teacher was pulled aside...she then started crying told us the world trade center had been destroyed and then the school was dismissed early shortly after.

I didn't know where it was, why it happened, or why I should really care, so I ran home, pretty stoked on getting home early.

When I got home, it was all I saw on TV, and after watching the footage and seeing my parents so shaken up, I didn't know how to feel.

I had intense nightmares of bombs falling in Afghanistan that same night...I couldnt sleep for hours.

I was at work, and had been set up as a dare to ask to sing the national anthem at the end of our team meeting. My boss looked at me funny and said that we'd better get back to our desks so that we could see what was on the news.
"Why, what happened?"
"There's been a plane crash in New York and [co-worker's] family are over there at the moment, so he's a little worried."
I felt bad about my little joke, but didn't think too much of it - sure, it svcked for my colleague's family, but there were plane crashes all the time and the chances of anyone we knew being affected were pretty remote.

So I got back to my desk and looked at the BBC website, which was still in its infancy in those days. I read something about suspected hijackers and clicked away, uninterested. I mean, even though hijackers were more common in the 80s than at the turn of the millennium, the idea of a hijacked plane crashing in a foreign country was barely even newsworthy.

Then a few minutes later, a colleague said that a second plane had crashed, and that started to sound really weird. I wondered what was going on, but the BBC website had gone down through too much traffic. That had to be pretty big, to bring down the BBC. As the hours passed, it started to feel scarier and scarier, because I couldn't remember anything like that ever happening before. Yes, buildings had been blown up and planes hijacked and even sometimes they crashed but that was business as usual for Planet Earth. Something like this was a horrible kind of new, and I grew increasingly frantic as I remembered how many of my internet friends were based in New York.

Forums weren't really big in those days - I kept in touch with my friends through email distribution lists based around old usenet groups. Emails passed back and forth as fast as the internet could carry them, as we rushed to try to get hold of people we knew and make sure they were safe. Collective sighs of relief as each was ticked off in turn: "Carrie just reached him on his mobile; he's fine, but he can't go home."

Through the timezones, we kept stranded people virtual company as they were trapped in their office buildings. A bridge had closed, trapping one girl at her workplace, where she had to sleep overnight. She was scared and upset, but we could keep her talking and make sure that she knew that her friends were only a keyboard away.

A year later, she came to the UK for a visit. She told me she still had problems with her eye from all the dust that had got in there that day.

I think I was at my house when it actually happened, but I remember first talking about it when I was on the school bus driving to middleschool.

I was 23, I guess (since it's been 10 years). I was at the University, going to my classes, oblivious all day long as I didn't meet anybody I knew, and I read the news in the evening. Heard people talking about what was going on in the US and remember thinking, what's going on with them? My last class, the teacher didn't teach, we had a group discussion about what happened... and then I finally got answers. I was like :blink: Got home and looked on the Internet.

I was eight years old doing schoolwork if I recall right. I was homeschooled so I just remember my mom getting a phone call from my grandmother to turn on the news and there it was.

Enjoying down time with a friend. Noticed the news as we walked past a bar with an open front where the tv was on.

Two weeks later I was in Termiz, Uzbekistan, filling out paper work to get into the sandbox..

It was the senior year of high school, school was just ending for the day when a big rumor started going around campus. Everyone was talking about it, but no one had any clear information yet. Someone said there was a fire in New York, others an explosion, then another mentioned a plane crash. I went home and started watching the news, and that's when I saw the second plane hit - I'll never forget that.

I was staying with my other half's parents. I first read about the attacks on Usenet newsgroups, and since it was a known wind-up merchant who first mentioned it, I thought it was just a bad joke until I checked the TV news.

That was strange. I resigned from my former useless companies after almost fighting with the marketing manager on the 28th of August 2001. Then, 2 choices: I go back in France and enjoy the free unemployement money, looking quietly for job or I stayed in Nigeria with all the risks, knowing there was more oil and gas industry jobs there.
I decided to stay. On the 11th in the morning, I passed the last interview with my present company which was pretty positive. I was recruited.
So on the 11th in the afternoon, I was quietly sitting in the sofa, drinking a beer with the proud satisfaction of having done the right choice. I switched on CNN and saw from A to Z what happened.
At the beginning, I thought it was a cruise missile hitting the tower because with the zoomed picture, you could not realize the scale. Then there was the second plane hit. And the whole panic, building collapsing, some rumours of explosions of bombs in the streets etc... It was like watching a movie.

I was ten, so I can't really remember much about it. I do remember that I didn't think much of it, there was always smoking buildings on the tv, from all around the world. It didn't interest me that something had happened in America. When I got older I learned that it was a little more special.

I was in school and they announced it over the intercom. They put the tv's on so we could follow the coverage and they let everyone go home early. At the time, I lived in Jersey and only 30 minutes from NYC. R.I.P. to everyone on that fateful day.

I was 41 then, and in the Navy 17 years at that time, that entire month was and Still Is, A Very Bad one for me.

My Grandfather (Mothers side), my last remaining Grandparent, died on September 7th, my Dad died of a sudden heart attack on September 14, and for all intents and purposes I was separated by the end of that month.

With a final divorce the next August, when I got back from deployment, with the John F. Kennedy Battle Group.

That morning I was an STG1(SW) (that is a Surface Sonar Technician) and the Officer of the Deck on the USS Hue City CG-66, an Aegis Cruiser, tied to the pier at Jacksonville Florida, I had the 4am to 8am watch.

My watch team was responsible for getting the ship under way that morning as we were doing an inspection cycle and had to do a simulated battle problem out to sea, which if we passed, would have passed us for that inspection.

Myself the OOD and my watch team which consisted of a Petty Officer of The Watch and a Messenger of The Watch had secured our station at the Starboard Quarterdeck and turned over everything to the the Bridge to get the ship under way from the pier.

I think it was close to or a bit after 8am when we left the pier with our full crew and the inspection team on board.

We had left the pier and was heading out to the first buoy, when rumors of something had happened in New York began to flash around the inside of the ship.

It was not a few minutes after that the Captain from the inspection team got on the 1MC (Ships Announcing circuit), and told us that we had passed the inspection in light of what had happened in New York.

He said that we had been doing a great job on everything leading up to the battle problem and that he knew we would have passed that with flying colors any way and that the ship had better and more pressing things to do than to go do that battle problem.

And that we were going to drop the inspection team off on a tug boat at the first buoy and head North to the Virginia Capes area to start steaming in a box to provide air cover to that section of the coast line in case of further attack.

And to monitor any other aircraft traffic, and when eventually all aircraft were grounded to catch any others that might be ignoring that order.

Which is described very well, on this http://www.mesotheliomanews.com/veterans/aircraft-carriers/uss-john-f-kennedy-cv-67/ webpage:

"When terrorists attacked the United States on September 11, 2001, USS John F. Kennedy took up Operation Noble Eagle duty, establishing air security over American cities along the mid-Atlantic coast, including Washington, D.C."

All ships that could get under way from Jacksonville that morning did so, and we were all part of the John F. Kennedy Battle Group.

So we dropped of the inspection team off and made flank speed to our assigned area off the coast of Virginia, it didn't take long for us to get there.

Like I said before my Grandfather passed on the 7th and I was not notified (that is another story for the reasons why), my Dad died on the 14th, the ship was on station by then when the Red Cross message with both of them on the same message came that they both had died.

So I was flown off the ship to attend the funeral, and I made it from that ship to Denver, Colorado in less that 24 hours, total luck, if you want to call it that, I am sure it was something else.

I was able to go from my ship on a helo to the carrier, USS John F. Kennedy, I walked from that helo to a mail plane launched from the carrier flew to Naval Air Station Oceana, got off that plane walked to another one that flew me to Peterson Field in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Got a rental car and was at my Dad's house at just after sundown.

I got back to the ship 2 weeks later, I think it was and met them back in Jacksonville on the pier.

And as I already said about combined with being separated by the end of the month, it is the most Devastating Month Of Memories of my life, I lost my Grandfather, my Dad, my family, and the country lost any last remaining part of it's innocence.

I'd been kept behind after school to pick up the pencil crayons because I'd spilled them.

5th grade I think, don't remember how old was since I'm too lazy to just count.

It was a math lesson, our teacher was late and we were getting restless. Finally she barges into the room and, looking shocked, exclaims "something very bad has happened in America!" She turned on the TV in our class room and we all saw the burning towers. I don't remember much after that, but I was home early enough to see the towers fall. Perhaps we got home early.
Shamed to admit that I was more excited than shocked. Similar was when USA attacked Iraq - everyone was so European and America was bad, but I went on about "serves those bastards [Iraq] right!"

For me, I think since I was 5, I don't think much of it. But its sort of like WWII. It was a bad thing that I never had hit me in the face. I think that even If I had seen it on TV at the start it wouldn't have hit me or anything. So it just seems like a history lesson that happened while I was too young to remember. Except that I do remember talking about it the next day.

I was in preschool, and I was home that day. My dad called from work and told my mom to turn on the TV because a plane just hit the World Trade Center. She turned on the TV and I watched as the second plane hit live, I didn't really understand the gravity of the situation until a few years later, but even in preschool I knew that it was very bad.

I was almost 6, in first grade, I don't remember much, all I remember is our teacher showing us a newspaper about it.

I was nine at the time, I had just woke up, turned on the TV, saw the first tower on fire and thought to myself "Oh, something's on fire..."

Then my mom came downstairs and explained what it was, she was on the phone I think. Anyway, we saw the second plane hit.