Remembrance Archive: Free Republic Threads From 9-11-01 (REPOST)

Free Republic ^ | 9/11/2001 | Creepers

[PLMerite]

I was at work that morning. For me work was in the basement of an agency of the Dept of Defense, outside of Washington, DC. I had come off two decades of shiftwork almost exactly a year prior, hoping to get a “normal” life. Fat chance.

It was an interesting couple of hours while it all unfolded, then the brass decided to close the place for the day and get most everyone out. I remember standing in the parking lot watching an F-16 orbit our cluster of buildings while we waited for security to untangle the traffic so we could get away.

By the time I got on the road, people already had flags and red, white and blue bunting on the overpasses.

I spent the rest of that day glued to radio, tv, the internet and lurking on FR.

[Jack Hydrazine]

Like they said in the intro of the Doctor Who spin-off, Torchwood, “...The 21st century is when everything changes. And Torchwood is ready.”
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=6_8u_1BCRsU

Are you ready?

[redhead]

Keep bumping this...

[BenLurkin]

Wife woke me up with a cup of coffee and the news that a plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. My first thought was of the B-17 which struck the Empire State Building during WWII.

[luvie]

I was getting ready for work and was almost late, because I couldn’t pull myself away from the images on the tv after seeing the live image of that 2nd plane slamming into the building. Then they closed the mall early, and I spend the rest of the day into the night glued to the news channel.

[houeto]

O Lord, may we never forget...

[Nifster]

I know we have some veery bright and observant folks here. I depend on that

[moose07]

Where was I 15 years ago when this started?
At work getting ready to go home at the end of the shift.
Some one rushed in “ ***** have you got your radio on?”
“An Aircraft has just hit the Twin Towers in New York !”

My only response was : “And So it begins....”

[Eleutheria5]

On way to work near WTC. First dropped wife off at her work in Far Rockaway. Heard a noise. Thought it was a car backfiring. Saw in the home where my wife was working that a plane had just crashed into the WTC. Thought it was just a stupid accident. Walked to subway, where I heard the full story. Had to listen to lightweight welfare mom claiming it was all a conspiracy and George Bush doood it, as I saw the towers burning from across Jamaica Bay as the A Train crossed the Broad Channel Causeway. Train went local in Brooklyn. Then stopped at Kingston-Throop station and everyone got off, due to collapse of the Towers. Tried to give blood at a makeshift station, but they said my pulse was too fast. Had a hamburger and walked the Manhattan Bridge, looking to help. Headed due South, past Thomas Street and further. There I saw two firemen, treetrunk legs and arms, covered from head to foot in ashes, looking totally broken and devastated, as though their souls lay crumpled and discarded in all the floating paper, some of which might have closed billion dollar deals, but were now worthless. I concluded that there was nothing more that I could do, if these two giants were left so decimated, and I hoofed it uptown ‘til Penn Station, stopping only to offer to donate blood at a hospital. They said they had all they needed. At Penn Station, I took the LIRR home to Far Rockaway.

[Publius]

The passenger rail advocacy groups of Washington, Oregon and California were scheduled to meet in the San Francisco Bay Area on September 12. Some were to fly into San Jose on the 11th, but I was with a group that went down there from Seattle by train.

As we were entering the dining car on Amtrak’s Coast Starlight, I got the word as to what had happened in New York and Washington. We were at war! We disembarked at San Jose and took Caltrain up the peninsula to the little suburb where we had scheduled the meeting. At the motel, I turned on CNN to find out what was going on. The sky was empty except for fighters, which made the whole experience eerie.

The next day, the meeting never occurred. The Oregon contingent was stuck in Portland because the skies were closed. The California contingent was at their emergency work stations. One of us from the Washington contingent lost a friend when the towers came down.

We left to go back that afternoon by picking up the Coast Starlight at San Jose. The train was already three hours late, and we missed every dispatching window on the Union Pacific going north due to an Amtrak terrorism scare in Utah that turned out to be an engineer missing a red block signal.

We were 16 hours late by Portland. Once we got onto the BNSF tracks in Washington, I could feel the dispatchers in Fort Worth switching us around slow moving freights, and we lost no further time getting into King Street Station in Seattle.

Amtrak had their crews waiting for us, and never did the lights of that station look so inviting. I discovered that with the skies closed, people were renting cars, taking buses and even hitchhiking. Nobody knew that we had a national passenger rail service, however imperfect. Amtrak saved us because if we had flown, we would have been stuck in the Bay Area for weeks. It was a memorable experience.

[Daffynition]

In 1976 Steve Buscemi took the FDNY civil service test when he was just 18 years old. In 1980 Steve Buscemi became a New York City Firefighter. For four years, Buscemi served on one of FDNY's busiest, Engine Co. 55 in Manhattan's Little Italy. He later left the fire service to become a successful actor, writer and director. After 9/11/2001... Brother Buscemi returned to FDNY Engine 55. On September 12, 2001 and for several days following Brother Steve worked 12-hour shifts alongside other firefighters digging and sifting through the rubble from the World Trade Center looking for survivors. Very few photographs and no interviews exist because he declined them. He wasn't there for the publicity. In 2003 he also gave a speech at a union rally supporting higher wages for firefighters and to stop fire houses from closing. He got arrested along with other firefighters. Also not very well known is that in 2012 Brother Buscemi showed up in Breezy Point, NY and quietly assisted in the clean-up efforts of the damage and mass destruction left by Super Storm Sandy.

If this is true, a class act.

http://imgur.com/gallery/DtjID

[AbolishCSEU]

Driving into work. Youngest kid in 7th grade; oldest had just graduated HS the previous year and was working the B shift as a contract for Xerox helpdesk. I was working the A shift. Normally there were hundreds of calls in the queue. Nothing. No calls and our servers kept crashing due to the broadband traffic. A year later, My A+ teacher spoke of the Xerox telecommunications going dead in the twin towers.

[samiam1972]

We had just gotten home (Texas) the night before from a trip to Wisconsin for a job interview for my husband. He had been laid off so we were able to sit in front of the TV all day watching the news. Our daughter had just turned one and learned to walk that day. She had a mom and dad to stumble between all day long. Such a bittersweet memory.

[proud American in Canada]

I was coming home from bringing my son to school; listening to Mike Gallagher on an NYC radio station. He said something like they had been told to evacuate immediately.

The minute I got home, I put on the news. I called my Dad’s second wife (my Mom had passed), and I watched as the second plane hit, and then the first tower crumbling. I said to her, “How many people did I just see die?” I couldn’t stop crying.

At the time, my Dad worked in Chicago, and the authorities had told everyone there to leave, because they were concerned about the Sears Tower.

I couldn’t reach him at his office, and pretty soon there was no way to communicate with anyone; the phone lines were all busy.

I have had many dreams about 9/11 since then. Given the fact that I wasn’t even living in the U.S. at the time, or not a family member of a victim, I can only imagine what torture they have endured.

May God comfort them, forever.

[proud American in Canada]

NEVER FORGET!

We owe it to those souls who endured such ... pain. And pain doesn’t even describe it. I can’t imagine it.

[proud American in Canada]

History is written by the victors and the memory of 9/11 is waning and, if given the chance, many will have us forget both 9/11/2001 and 9/11/2012.

Not as long as we are all posting and communicating.

The thousands of people who lost their lives on 9/11 will be remembered, as will the victims of Benghazi. For which Hillary will pay someday.

Given her state of health, perhaps she already is.