The first two videos on my news playlist are replays of Fox reports as things were happening. One of the commentaries before the 2nd plane hits suggests that someone thought it was a small commuter plane that hit the first building. No one wanted to believe terrorism until there was no way to avoid it. What I remember were the endless posters and the candles.
I’m on the west coast. I was listening to a regular morning news radio show when they interrupted to bring in a breathless reporter who stated that one of the World Trade Center towers had been hit by a small commuter plane, just as you described them saying. They said the building was on fire as a result. At first, I didn’t think much of it, I pictured a small plane and a little fire, maybe smoke coming out a window.
I turned on the TV, I think to Fox news. The video showed a serious fire and a huge, gaping hole. It was an inferno. The building looked to me like a torch on fire, and I knew that there were lots of casualties. It did not seem to me like it could have been a small plane, but I shrugged that off as bad information in the heat of the moment. I woke up my wife and told her she needed to see this. She woke right up. We watched and then the second plane came in and hit the other tower. It hit me instantly. We were under attack.
Anyway, they did initially think the first one was a commuter plane, I don’t know what made them think that, maybe they just couldn’t believe it was anything else and there was no debris.