Posted on 09/10/2007 6:41:30 PM PDT by Milwaukee_Guy
Might be a good time to revisit how we all heard about the the attack on 9/11 and how we reacted to the darkest day in American history.
What emotions were strongest for you on that day?
How did you find out? Did you stay at work? Did you go Home? Who did you call?
Im a fireman..I was on duty.
My captain knows I follow current events...so much so that they give me hell about knowing everything before the newpapers because of FR. He came running and said you want to see this!!
We all stood and watched...knowing, because we too are big city firemen, that what was goin on inside the high rise as it burned was something so, so fearful, and beyond what you could train for.
When it came down... we ..were..silent.
All of our thoughts werent only about the people, the civilians, but about what our brothers were going through all up and own those stairwells.
I will never forget it.
Since then we have seen training films that they dont show to civilians. People jumping..... radio transmissions of dieing firmen screaming fo help... videos of body parts and how to protect the scene etc.
FDNY will forever be the best in the world.
I got into work at about 8:40 am that day and called my mother at about 8:50 am.
I was working at a radio station in Northern California at the time and getting ready to go live on the air at 6:05 PST right after the 5 minute top of the hour ABC News broadcast from New York. The top of the hour story was of a “small plane” hitting the World Trade Center in New York.
After the final commercial, the news commentator, Doug Limerick, came back on and said that a second plane had just hit the other tower. My very first thought was “Muslim terrorists” as I had been exhorting to everyone I knew for the past twenty years that our next big war would be started by them.
I went to music while I monitored the ABC News satellite feed and then I heard that President Bush had been told of the incident while at a school. I rushed to our computer and pulled up FR and read much more information there than I was getting from ABC so I called our local news guy at home and he came rushing in.
We tried our best to keep everyone updated over the next hour or so but the phone calls were overwhelming, so we finally decided that it would be best to pull up the ABC News live feed with Peter Jennings over our airwaves which we did commercial free for the next ten hours or so.
I was at home drinking coffee. I hadn’t turned my tv on...my brother called and told me to turn the tv on we were at war. So I did. And started getting phone calls from friends and my daughter. My daughter was at graduate school in Colorado Springs married to an army officer at Ft Carson. I like everyone else watched tv all day. Went to my brothers that night and further discussed what had taken place. That was my day on 9/11/2001.
I walked in the door...turned on the TV...and the second plane hit...
I knew right away we were under attack...I loaded every gun in the house...the wife and I considered going to pick up the kids for a short while...but when I heard NG fighters scramble from toledo and head east....I thought better of it...I knew if there was an immediate threat locally...it would be shot down..
I watched...I prayed that people would make it out ok....
When I found out very quickly that they were passenger planes with women and children on board...I wept..
When the first tower collapsed I dis-paired...
I realized in horror that the other tower would fall too..I had to have gone into a mild shock....I couldnt believe it.. what kind of monster could do such a thing...
As the other tower fell I felt a cold rage ....all I can say is the middle east can thank their cult god allah that I wasnt the man with the red button...
There would be nothing but glass for thousands of square miles....
To this day....there is a can of whip ass rage that no wise man would open...
And I cannot stand people who would have us surrender the battlefield to this villainous scum...
Bet it was,,Thanks,,,,RA 71-79
Not 3 hours ago I went through the entire scenario of that morning with our 9 year old because the dress of the day tomorrow in school is Red White and Blue.
She was 3 at the time and attended a homeschool based preschool 2 days a week, Tuesdays being one of them. That morning my husband took her because he didn’t have a service call scheduled. I was on my first cup of coffee when a friend called practically screaming about the first plane and telling me to turn on the TV. I turned it on and was watching, and listening to my friend on the phone when the 2nd plane hit. At first I honestly thought it was a replay until he screamed at me that it was a 2nd plane into the 2nd tower.
We lived in Dover, DE at the time, about a mile from the end of the runway of DAFB. The silence of no C-5s was deafening. The first airtraffic sounds I heard were the helicopters. Those choppers were bringing the remains from the Pentagon.
Tomorrow our daughter is wearing a T-shirt that was given to me by a friend who was still NYPD at the time. I come from 3 generations of NYPD. The lettering on the front of the shirt reads “The new twin towers of New York” and underneath is a pen and ink drawing of the skyline of lower Manhattan with a cop and a firefighter standing standing in the smoke of where those towers once stood. The back has an American flag and the shields of both NYPD and FDNY with the words “United We Stand”
Emotions: Disbelief. Anger. Concern/fear that this meant war.
My son and I had only been in Seattle for a week or so and were still on east coast time, sleeping late. I briefly woke up, and since I kept the radio on all night, was able to hear a radio news account of a plane going into a building. I fell back asleep and when I woke up again, I turned on the tv. By that point both planes had hit. I woke up my son and we watched the tv unbelieving as the towers fell.
We had just moved from DC and I spent a lot of time trying to call family and former co-workers, with no luck. Much later in the day, I was able to reach my family, who had been on the phone trying to reach friends in NYC.
I was at work. My coworkers came downstairs and said something bad had happened. They were trying to get information on the internet, but were not having any luck because the sites were overloaded.
They asked me to check... on my very right wing sites... Sure enough, Free Republic was up and running and had the news.
Just as soon as commercial air travel resumed, went to Boston's Logan Airport on business. Very eerie traveling in those days, but immensely gratifying, too. Travelers were thanked for flying, staying at hotels, renting cars, etc. and sincerely, too. EVERYONE on the airplane spoke with each other, including the flight crew. It was a much different world, and in so many ways, I mourn its passing. How quickly some forget...
My son was in bed sick that day. He had the TV on and yelled for me to watch with him because of what had happened. We were watching when the second plane hit the tower.
A relative actually worked at the twin towers. Everyone was worried because she could not be reached for most of the day, but she had a doctor’s appointment that morning. By the time she reached work, they were not letting anyone in.
I was on the computer (not FR evidently). My daughter called and told me about the first plane. As we talked, and I turned on the tv, we watched the second plane hit. At first, the view I had made me think it was debris falling from above. I was concerned about others I had worked with for several years. I was afraid one of our consultants was on one of the planes.
My husband's business, in Tulsa, OK, evacuated too. He turned up before noon that day.
After driving about a mile or so, the driver pulled the bus onto the shoulder and said that, though it was against regulations, he was turning on the TV. The reception of the 12" B&W TV was bad. The best reception came from channel 7, WLS-TV from Chicago.
As we neared the Cicero facility to pick up more passengers, all commercial airplanes had been ordered down.
After a ten minute wait, the driver came back on board and annouced that the bus would be turning around and taking everyone back to there station. All money was refunded, but that was the least concern to everyone I talked to.
By the time we reached the Indianapolis Avenue stop, the second tower had fallen.
By the time I called a cab and got home, most of the speculation had begun. Because I live near to the Gary airport, the afternoon was eerily quiet and upsetting.
As a kid I had loved flying. My parents first took me on a vacation when I was either 8 or 18 months old. Going away continued solidly until around 2001, not because of September but for other reasons.
Those dirty rat SOBs actually made me afraid to fly, somebody that loves airplanes and flying. And they took that love and turned it into fear. Thinking to myself “What’s gonna happen? Will there be a Marine on board? A policeman?”
It’s pretty bad when somebody who was flying for their entire lifetime suddenly doesn’t want to fly much.
My husband was working in Sacramento. I was taking him to work. Don’t remember the exact time, but the news came on the radio that a plane had flown into some building in New York.
We both just looked at each other, both frowning as we just couldn’t seem to wrap our minds around what was being reported.
I said “What the hell are they talking about?” He shrugged of course. I told him I’d call him as soon as I got back home and could find out more info.
My reaction was anger...tears-running-down-my-face anger.
Wow!
My TV was on from the night before, tuned to Fox News.
My eyes opened minutes after the 1st plane hit.
I listened to the jerks on the news saying this was an accident.
I immediately knew it was not.
Then, I saw the 2nd plane hit and I jumped out of bed quite unnerved.
I called my husband who was out walking and told him to come home.
I watched horrified thinking about the lives that were certainly lost above the point of impact. Thinking about this brazen act of war, and thinking that whoever did this would be annihilated within the week.
Never thinking the towers would collapse, I wasn’t too concerned about my 6 FDNY nephews and my NYPD lieutenant son.
Then when the South Tower fell, I screamed. I called my relatives who had firemen sons. All were safe except one. Thomas Foley, FDNY Rescue 3 had not been heard from. They got the call at 9:10am. His shift ended at 9am, but I’m sure they were all told not to leave.
It was at that point I thought about my son, the cop. Thank God he called his wife to let her know he was safe.
When the Pentagon was hit, I totally lost it. Fearing for our country and not just New Yorkers.
Rescue 3 lost 9 men that day. Nine days later, Tommy’s firefighter brother and brother-in-law and his Dad found his jaw bone and leg bone and a necklace that he wore.
Remains of only 2 of the 9 from Rescue 3 were ever found.
And I’m still waiting for that annihilation to happen.
I share you’re sentiment. This is war. We SHALL win. Those cowards will rue the day they attacked our civilians. Political option idiots can go to hell. Clinton had 8 years of political option and did nothing. He was weak and our nation paid the price.
I was in northern British Columbia, Canada. I was staying at a B&B run by a nice French Canadian woman.
I came downstairs for breakfast that morning and she came running around a corner and said, “Ken, you’ve got to see this!”
I walked into the kitchen and saw the replays of the airplanes crashing into buildings on her small TV. I must have gotten the most stone cold look of hate on my face because her eyes got really wide and she looked very unsure of what I was about to do. All I said was, “This is war.”
I couldn’t cross the border for the next couple of days so I just stayed there. She cooked dinner for me one night and made me feel like part of the family while we visited with her daughters and grandchildren.
I’ll be ever appreciative of their hospitality.
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