I was going to my morning class at 10:00 am.  I hadn't a clue what was happening even as I walked into the classroom.  As students filed in I heard my geology teacher talking about a plane flying into a building, and I heard her say something about how horrible it must be to see an aircraft coming toward you and crashing into your office.  I still had no clue.  I figured it was some small building and a Cessna aircraft or something.  I don't think she had time to get the full idea of what happened either.

After class was over I went downstairs, and in the main lobby a TV was rolled out and it was on Fox.  Dozens of people were glued to the set.  I watched in shock and confusion as I saw video of a huge gaping hole in both WTC buildings.  Then I watched in horror as both buildings came down one by one.  Then came the news about the Pentagon being hit.  That shocked me even more than the WTC.  It was rather clear to me who was behind it, and I was pissed.  After an hour I had to get to my next class, but it was difficult.  It was clear that the teachers had more than just that day's lesson on their minds too.

A few hours later I walked around outside.  I was used to a passenger jet passing close by every minute or two since we were not far from a airport.  I did not see even one jet in a half an hour, and it was a weird feeling knowing that there was not even one commercial jet in the air in the entire US.  I did, however, see a military jet fly by.

I was sleeping in CA, mom called me. The rest is history.

OK, now that I have a bit of time....

I was off work that week.  Getting ready to head to the beach on Friday.  I can't remember much about Monday night.  Pretty sure I watched RAW.  I think dad and I did some farm work Monday evening.

Got up around 8ish Tuesday morning.  Went out to the driveway and got the paper.  Came back into the living room and turned on the TV and opened the paper up.  TV was on TBS or something, started flipping through the channels.  Stopped on MSNBC, saw smoke coming from a skyscraper.  IIRC, the commentators were saying something about a plane hitting what I learned was the WTC.  

I would read a bit of the paper and glance up at the screen every now and then.  On one of those glances, I saw a jet come out of nowhere and slam into the second tower.  I think I yelled HOLY SHIT and woke up the wife.  

I was mesmerized by the events on the screen.  I stayed glued to the TV for the better part of the day.  I wore a path between the living room and the computer room.  I remember almost getting sick when the first tower went down.  When the second went down, I got sick.

Went out that evening to get some staple foods at the grocery store JIC.  Gas prices had shot up about 15 or 20 cents and every station in town had put a $10 limit on gas purchases.  

I spent most of the night glued to the TV watching and listening.  I don't know if I'll ever forget that day.  Much like I'll never forget the TV coverage of Desert Storm and the storming of Baghdad.

I couldn't tell you how many times I've thought about those towers going down.  It seems like I look at my watch every time it is 9:11.  Amazing what significance those numbers hold for us.

Doesn't seem like it was three years ago.  Time flies I guess.

When it happened I had just gotten back from my Statics class at RIT and was drinking coffee in my dorm room waiting to leave for my English class.

I logged online to another forum I go to, and there it was. Then I turned on the TV. Then the Cobras at Rochester's airport took off.

I saw the towers come down.

I missed English but actually went to a later class, but nobody was there. There was a maintence crew working on a drain next to the bookstore  and the admin building. Nobody was working, as one of the workers had turned on their pickup truck and just cranked the radio all the way up.  About 100 students or more and the work guys all crowded around this little truck.  I felt very small.

… I’ll leave it as the most jaw-dropping morning of my entire life; all other personal catastrophes included.

… Still is to this day

sleeping.  mom woke me up and then i watched tv all day.  

Sleeping here in Phoenix, AZ and unemployed at the time. A friend called me and woke me up telling me about it.

Woke up to go to class about 8:00

turned the TV on to catch the news while I fixed and ate breakfast.

Burnt breakfast to a crisp and threw it away without eating it.

Skipped my first of two classes to watch TV.

got an email about my 2nd class saying there was no class and that we should all turn the tv on if we hadn't already.

watched tv, reloaded a bit, cleaned the toys up, went to the range late that afternoon to blow off some steam.

I was on terminal leave from the navy.  I'd flown off the Enterprise just a few weeks before.  

That morning, I woke up in upstate New York, and went to sleep that night in western Virginia.

That may have been the longest drive I've ever done, or at least it seemed that way.  I listened to the radio every minute of that drive.  I remember the updates, for a lot of the morning nobody really knew what was going on.  

I remember hearing Bush on the radio that night, just as I was getting into Virginia.

I remember being pissed, upset, frustrated, not knowing what to think.

I also remember thinking that the guys I was with just a few weeks before were heading to get us some payback.  Turns out they were.  I guess by the time the plane hit the second tower they were turned around, heading for the gulf at flank speed.

I had PT at 0530. Got home, showered, went back to bed. My buddy calls me and wakes me up in a panic, telling me that we're under attack and that the World Trade Centers have been hit. I think he's full of shit. I turn on the TV and my mouth drops. I listen for a little bit to see if it's an accident... that's when #2 is hit. It's no accident. I immediately call everyone I know and IM everyone I know. Most people are in the black and have no clue. One of the worst days ever. I knew that I'd know someone or that my friends would know someone that died.

I was outside smoking a cig, when I walked inside all my classmates where standing still watching the TV.  Then I saw what happened, afterwards I went to visit my girlfriend (at the time) and in her condo was her neighbor waiting to hear the news about their father, the last they heard from his was that they were evacuating the building.  He died on 9/11, Joe Coppo, RIP

I was finishing my shift at work.  I did'nt know about it till some day shift people started coming in.   Having no radio or TV I had to resort to checking the internet which included our lovely forums(can't remember if they were up or not now). My facility went on a disaster mode in case anything was going to happen here in L.A.  Got pretty wild as questions were raised about stuff like "what if terrorists disguised themselves as ambulance crews in order to get into our facility".  Went home a few hours later and stayed up all day watching T.V. with no thought of sleeping.

Sleeping.  I got up for work and turned on the TV.  Didn't want to leave the house, not because I was scared or nervous, just numb.  There weren't very many surgeries that day, so I watched the coverage all day in the lounge during downtime.

I was the squadron's Enlisted secton leader for the day ending on Sept 11th at 0800.
I woke up at 0535 west coast time, made coffee, kicked the cats, called the duty office up to tell the watch to secure the porn and get ready for the day.

At 0555 I was getting sitting on the couch putting on my shoes.
I flipped on the TV to check out the weather and surfed to NBC and saw a shot of a burning building. I figured I missed the channel and ended up on a WGN type station, so I flipped it over to the ABC station.
Same thing.
Then the sound feed came on.
My gut twisted up when I realized that we had been attacked.

I called the duty office and told the watch to call the Duty Officer, CO, XO, OPS, ADMIN and CMC and let them know what happened, then I left for work.

It took me 5 minutes to get past the gate and on base.
When I got to the duty office the senior watch still had on a cartoon video.
I about kicked the shit out of him.

Then I asked if he had made the calls, he replied that it was no big deal and he didn't want to talk to the Officers.
Again I about kicked the shit out of him.

I ended up calling them up, the only one who knew about it was the CMC.
The Skipper had me get ahold of the Duty Officer and start running the "blue book".

In the mean time as people were filtering in to work they stopped by the duty office to watch the CNN feed.
By the time the CO got to work the ready room / duty office was filled.

I was letting people who had family in that area use the .gov phone to call home to make sure they were ok.
One person in our squadron was an uncle that worked in one of the towers, but he had taken his daughter to his ex-wifes house to drop her off, so he was running late and missed being in the tower.

Our sister squadron is down the hall, one of their Enlisted guys had a family member who died that day either in the tower or on the ground.

Watching Headline News while eating some kind of sugary cereal while getting ready for work.

Quoted: I was the squadron's Enlisted secton leader for the day ending on Sept 11th at 0800. I woke up at 0535 west coast time, made coffee, kicked the cats, called the duty office up to tell the watch to secure the porn and get ready for the day. At 0555 I was getting sitting on the couch putting on my shoes. I flipped on the TV to check out the weather and surfed to NBC and saw a shot of a burning building. I figured I missed the channel and ended up on a WGN type station, so I flipped it over to the ABC station. Same thing. Then the sound feed came on. My gut twisted up when I realized that we had been attacked. I called the duty office and told the watch to call the Duty Officer, CO, XO, OPS, ADMIN and CMC and let them know what happened, then I left for work. It took me 5 minutes to get past the gate and on base. When I got to the duty office the senior watch still had on a cartoon video. I about kicked the shit out of him. Then I asked if he had made the calls, he replied that it was no big deal and he didn't want to talk to the Officers. Again I about kicked the shit out of him. I ended up calling them up, the only one who knew about it was the CMC. The Skipper had me get ahold of the Duty Officer and start running the "blue book". In the mean time as people were filtering in to work they stopped by the duty office to watch the CNN feed. By the time the CO got to work the ready room / duty office was filled. I was letting people who had family in that area use the .gov phone to call home to make sure they were ok. One person in our squadron was an uncle that worked in one of the towers, but he had taken his daughter to his ex-wifes house to drop her off, so he was running late and missed being in the tower. Our sister squadron is down the hall, one of their Enlisted guys had a family member who died that day either in the tower or on the ground.

What kind of squadron KA3B? F-14 RIO buddy of mine got to his and the jets already had a full load of Phoenix and Sidewinders on the rails...

VAQ-138
EA-6B's.

We had to pull our planes into the hanger because our line parking area was going to be the hot refuel pits in case the ANG in Oregon needed it.

Quoted: What kind of squadron KA3B? F-14 RIO buddy of mine got to his and the jets already had a full load of Phoenix and Sidewinders on the rails...

I had just quit my dot-bomb job a few days before.  We were sleeping in when the phone rang.

Too out of it to run to the phone, my friend left a message which we heard over the speaker.

"There's some terriorist activity going on the east coast."

I got up and turned on the TV to see the first tower burning.  As I sat rubbing the sleep out of my eyes and trying to come to terms with what I was seeing, the second hit occurred.

We spent the next 14+ hours glued to the set.

A few weeks later I began to Google on what it would take to purchase a firearm and and found a link to www.ar15.com.

Quoted: VAQ-138 EA-6B's.

Gotcha. Did they launch? I know all the fighter guys did.

Was at school and the principal was going around telling everyone we need to get up to the library stat.  In the PE locker rooms people kept saying we were being bombed... which just didnt compute.


I changed out and swagged to the library and was like "deeeaammmn, whodunnit?"  The entire school was packed in the library crowded around 2 TV's turned on.

Getting out of bed.

No, no one launched from Whidbey.
The guys who were on DET at Fallon did, and I think the guys who were at Nellis did too.

Quoted: Quoted: VAQ-138 EA-6B's. Gotcha. Did they launch? I know all the fighter guys did.

Quoted: No, no one launched from Whidbey. The guys who were on DET at Fallon did, and I think the guys who were at Nellis did too.

Ok, was curious. Sorry for the threadjack guys. Back on track...

I was in the motor pool at Fort Stewart getting ready for a week long scout platoon air insertion field problem, about an hour prior to us leaving for the birds one of the mechanics came and told us about the first plane, and then we turned on the platoon TV in the CP and saw the rest.

then I got to be on Divison QRF for about a month sleeping in empty barracks on cots less than 100 yards from my nice freshly rebuilt barracks room, all the time wondering when I was to be getting marching orders to wherever.

I worked the midnight shift for Northwest airlines out at LAX and had gone home and was sleeping when a buddy called me and told me of what had happened.  I turned on the TV,and later he came over and we watched the boob tube for the next 12 hrs.
We both knew that your employment at the airline was soon to be over. And for the days that there was no flying of civillian aircraft it was really wierd to have no sound coming from LAX.
While i'm not a violent man but give me  just one hour with that sub-human OBL, that SOB cost alot of good people good jobs and ruined lives.

I was sick and at home sleeping

Mum woke me up saying the US is under attack and im like suuuuuuuure so I went back to sleep.

She turned the TV on and sure enough, it was all news about the WTC going down etc.

When I went back to school everyone thought I did it...

I woke up in my apartment after my GF had already gone to school. Turn on the TV to my shock, changed channel, same story. Called mom to find out what the fuck was happening. Sat there in absolute horror wondering what the hell was going to happen next. GF called and I wanted her to come home immediately. Retrieved my Sig 220 and had it with me the rest of the day as I watched the tragedy unfold on TV.

I was on a business trip to Toronto thirty miles from Detroit when the report of the first plane came on the radio. I thought it was some kind of joke and switched stations.

When the other station reported a second plane had hit the other tower we knew it was for real.

By the time we got turned around the borders were closed. We went on to Toronto and had to sit there all week watching the story unfold on TV.

Um, wow.  The exact same thing as you.  What class were you in when you heard this/ what university.

 I had dropped my children off at school just before 9 a.m. and was sitting on the front porch with my wife enjoying that beautiful September morning. My neighbor accross the street was thoughtful enough to come outside and alert us to the breaking news. We thanked him and went inside and turned on the television. There we sat in awe of the destruction  before us. I mumbled to my wife "Osama bin Laden" and she said "who?" I explained to her who he was as we continued to watch.

We were watching a live audio feed between two reporters, one of them at the Pentagon when Flight 77 hit. He (the reporter at the Pentagon) suddenly started rambling about an explosion at the Pentagon. At this point I became really concerned about how people were going to react to this event and what else may be coming.  We continued watching as reports of flight 93's demise in  Shanksville, PA started to trickle in.  After things calmed down a bit and I was convinced that there were no more unaccounted for aircraft in the skies I decided to go fill up the gas tank of our car.

 As we were out and about that evening visiting family members we passed several gas stations that were jam packed with traffic. Every one of them had traffic backed up out onto the road.

 I will never forget the tragic events of that day. I will never forget the heroes who selflessly rushed in to help those who could not help themselves. I will never forget watching those towers fall. I will never forget seeing the sky without vapor trails. I will never forget.

Laundrey at home.  Room mate came home and told me to change the channel to fox news.

I woke up at the exact minute the first tower was hit.  It was an abrubt, startled kind of wake-up, and the time completely threw me.  I never wake up this early...


I was breathless as I watched the 2nd plane hit.  "No....no.....no way....not another....oh...shit.  Oh my God."  I knew we were under attack, but not by whom.  I had no guns, and all I wanted to do was kick ass and take names.  But I had no where to direct the anger.





Other events I woke up at the time of incident:  the '94 LA earthquake, Shuttle Columbia, one or two others I cant remember...

I was awakened up by the sound of F-16s screaming overhead . I got up and looked out the window wondering what the hell was going on . I turned on the TV just as the second plane hit . I stood there staring at the TV for a few minutes trying to decide if what I was seeing was real .

I was living at the top of a 1600' hill that gave Me a clear view to the south  , so walked outside to the top of my driveway where there is a vista that faces towards the city and I could see the smoke about 50 miles away . There were 5 or 6 of my neighbors outside looking at the smoke also . It was a very surreal scene with 40-50 military jets in the sky .  No one said too much and after a few minutes . I went back inside to see what I could learn about what had happened .  By 1 pm  I had to leave to leave to go to work but it was a waste of time because no one was out unless they had to be . It was eerily quiet , which is understandable considering that 70-80% of the people in this area commute to NYC to work  .  Eighteen  people from my town didn’t come home that day , including three that were NYC Firemen .

I was in Mannheim, Germany, listing to AFN radio, during the mid-afternoon with the time difference.  The news said a plane hit one of the towers, but made it sound like a small plane and like an accident.  When the second tower got hit I went to the nearest place with cable and everyone there was watching the news and shortly after the first tower collapsed.

Every military installation in Europe got locked down and it was very strange living overseas afterward.

In CA about to go to sleep....didn't get much sleep that day....

I was working at Robert-James sales on Walden Ave in Buffalo NY.  Listened to every bit of it on the news, ate lunch at the local applebees becuase they had a TV.  Called my dad and told him what happened that night since he had been working alone and had no TV at home.

I was asleep. Literally.

I was enrolled in colege and I should have been in my 8:00 algebra class but I overslept. I didn't get up until like 12:00 that afternoon because I had to go into work at 1:00. Oddly enough, I didn't turn on my tv while I was busy getting dressed for work. It was odd because I have a tv in my bedroom and I usually turn it on and watch it while I'm busy getting dressed. This particular day I didn't do that. That day---of all  the days---I chose not to watch the tv! Some timing huh?

Anyway, I got dressed and got into my truck and I was just thinking about what I was gonna have to do at work. At the time, I was working on a peanut farm in south georgia and part of my responsibilites included doing maintainence work on some of our equipment. It was getting close to harvest time and we had to get our peanut combine fixed soon if we had any intition of being ready for the harvest. Well, on that day, me and my boss had to carry our combine to the local tractor dealership in order to repair the parts of the machine that needed to be either fixed or replaced. Well, that was what was on my mind on that fateful day. While thinking about (and driving to) work I decided to turn on my radio. I was expecting to hear music but I heard something else altogether. What I heard was some kind of monotoned mumbling and talking rather than the expected music. I initially thought something was wrong with my radio so I turned it up (because it was turned down kinda low at the time) so that I could hear more clearly. What I heard pushed my thoughts of work out of my mind and I began to focus more clearly and to listen more carefully to what I was hearing. I began hearing words and phrases like "terrorist attack", "world trade center" and "pentagon". By the time I finally got to work, the hair on my neck was standing up at full attention and my gut felt like somebody had put their fist into my stomach and had twisted everything up in the process. I got to my boss's house, threw my truck into park and made a beeline to his frontdoor. There was a window in the frontdoor and I could see through it and see that my boss and his wife were in their den glued to the tv. They saw me at the door and waved me on in. I came in, quickly closed the door and promtly asked them "what's going on in new york?" They looked at me like I had lost my mind. My boss asked me "You don't know????" I said "No, I overslept this morning and I didn't watch any tv before I got here. I just heard something on the radio about some attacks in new york." Again I asked "what's going on?" They both then began to describe everything that had happened up to that point (and, by this time,  it was around 1:00 pm). they had their tv tuned into CNN and we all just stared at the tv while we continued to talk.

It was THEN that I began to feel IT.

My initial reaction when first hearing the news while listening to my radio was shock and surprise. But as I stood in my boss's den watching his tv----and watching the nearly constant replays on the planes flying into the building and the towers eventually falling----I began to feel something else coming up like a flood from deep within my soul. It was like a hot burning sensation that started in my stomach but began to rise into my heart and lungs. It---the IT that I referred to above---was a deep forming---yet righteous---anger.  I was standing there in front of the tv watching the replays on cnn, and as I continued to talk with my boss and his wife,  I recall, at least one time, clinching my fist in the vain hopes that I could strike a blow at our invisible foes.

I spent the rest of the day angry. Very angry.

Three years later that anger still lives within me and I don't guess it'll ever go away.

We, somehow, manage to accomplish a little bit of work that day but i was glad when quitting time finally came. I got in my truck, turned the radio back on, sped back home, got inside, immediately turned the tv on and I was glued to both it and several internet forums for the rest of the day and night. I also made a new rule that night. From that day forward, I would ALWAYS turn on the tv and watch the news whenever I was busy getting dressed for either work or college or whatever. I've kept that rule to this day 3 years later. I don't want to ever be out of the information loop like that ever again.

I woke up and made it to my 1st high school class (i didn't have a first hour) of the day. I walked it late and started to explain when I saw everyone in the room glued to a TV set including the teacher, he didn't say a word so I figured it was something important. I saw down as the first tower was burning. After 3-4 minutes I watched as the 2nd plane hit live. Same with both the first and second tower collapse. Everytime I see that or think about it, I get mad. Really mad, not just some surface argression that can be released through physical means.. Mad as in my heart feels as if it could feel no remorse for ANY person who got the least bit of joy from this act. It still does.

Interestingly enough, I had just turned 18 and started looking at what I would need to do to get a gun.. Much like airwolf. Google did me a great service turning up this site, as its shaped alot of the beliefs I know hold today, and showed me how wrong the left was. Last 2 years have been interesting for me to say the least.

11th grade; spanish III, second class of the day, 3rd period--someone mentioned it to my teacher, we got wind of it; got a full report 30 mins later.....

My first day at my new job was September 10, 2001. On the 11th, I was at the city building getting my Police I.D. and trying to learn the city with another guy. We watched the news for a while at the city building. Nobody could believe that it was really happening.  

It started out as just another day at the phone company.  I work in a rural area in the switchroom.  At about 9:30 I logged onto Scott Trader to get an opening quote....no ticker (seems so very trivial now) and after several minutes of nothing I turned on the TV to see if there was any news.  When I saw what was going on I started our security proceedure & made sure all of our standby equipment was at the ready. We were instructed to fill up all our vehicles as a precausion. I distinctly recall the local jackass at the gas station raising his prices by 10:00am from about $1.50 to over $2.00/gal & folks were lining up. The mom & pop gas station that is about 9 miles from town was open & the lines weren't long so I filled up there.  I told them what "jackass" had done & the owner said "Our prices are staying where they are until we run out."  Since then we make a point of avoiding "jackass" and taking time to drive out to "mom & pop" for our fuel needs. Also now, mom & pop will open up at any hour for us if we need fuel in an emergency.

Being on the West Coast, I was still asleep.. seems I'm always asleep when these things happen: 9/11, the Columbia, earthquakes..

It's waking up to shit like that, that makes you old.

It was a Tuesday, and that was one of my days off (I worked Wed-Sat 4x10 back then) so I was asleep until about 9:30 or so when the phone rang.  It was my wife's friend Tara, who was supposed to get married that day...and I figured she was just calling us to let us know what time she wanted us to meet her.  When I answered the phone, her voice was all shaky...she said "Turn on the TV!"  I asked what was up...she said "Someone just flew planes into the WTC and the Pentagon!"  I turned on the TV and the rest, as they say, is history...

My friend, Shawn, who was best man at my wedding in 1996, was working at the Pentagon that day...the plane hit just down the hall from his office...he barely escaped with his life...but then he's always been a lucky SOB...

Oh, BTW...Tara never did get married that day...or ever...turns out that was a good thing...she later found out the guy was a violent alcoholic...

Wow...three years gone by already...seems like it was yesterday...guess it will always be that way...

I was sitting on the couch in my office going over some paperwork when I decided I would turn on the tv. Nothing special going on so I went to the kitchen to get more coffee, I come back and all hell had broke loose. I sat there stunned for a minute thinking that it was terrorism or just an accident. Then the other plane hit. Then the pentagon and flight 93. I was at a loss for words for a week.



eta........I also was freaked out at no planes flying overhead. My office was about 1 mile from the airport. Just silence, so wierd.

I had gotten up early and was playing playstation. For some reason i decided to turn it off and flip through chanels. I noticed all of the chanels were showing the same thing. Then I saw the second plane. It was one of the scariest memories i have.

I was home sick from work. I turned on the Today Show just as they began to broadcast their first live feed of what initial reports told them was simply a fire at the WTC. Soon, they began to report that a small private plane may have crashed into the WTC.  I remember staring in disbelief as the live shot showed the 2nd impact.  I spent the rest of the day watching a terrible day in history unfold.