Posted on 09/11/2018 6:46:01 AM PDT by US Navy Vet
I was working in Las Vegas and just getting ready to go into the office that day when I saw the towers fall on TV. It was a somber day.
Lived in NJ, working with CSC on FAA contract on DSP program, Departure Spacing Program which routes planes in the air.
Was going in to work and it was after the planes had hit the WTC. My daughter called from MD just outside of DC near Andrews AFB. She advised that a plane just hit the Pentagon AND SHE COULD SEE THE SMOKE.
When I went in to the offices everyone was watching the WTC on TV, I mentioned that a plane had hit the Pentagon and was called a liar.
I related my story and as I finished they started reporting the Pentagon story on the air.
Later in the week my daughter related that when AF1 was coming in to AAFB there were Humvies with twin 50’s at every intersection in he development and troops on the ground.
AF1 flew right over her house with F16’s on each wing and fore and aft.
On the 1st anniversary after, I had scheduled a trip to Mexico. Didn’t realize what day it was until we got to LAX. It was empty.
Thank you for sharing.
Thanks — I wasn’t challenging, I knew this had happened but I was hoping for some personal experience from someone.
I hadn’t yet left for work and turned on the TV. At that moment it was all speculation, “a small plane hit the tower”. It seemed like too much damage, but what do I know?
I remember wondering if it could be terrorism. They mentioned that all planes were being grounded, which was strange because, I swear, in the live shot there was an angle, just for a moment, when I saw an aircraft - thinking “why is that there then?”. It was seconds later that the 2nd tower was hit. It’s amazing how much can go through your mind in an instant. This IS terrorism. WE are under an ATTACK. How many MORE will there be? ...oh no, for those in, what are obviously, hijacked aircraft.
I went into work, a bunch of early birds, they had no idea. They probably wondered what I was going on about. We only had internet access, all of the usual media sources were overloaded, we couldn’t get a live feed. My wife called, she told me “the tower is gone”. Huh? What? What do you mean “gone”? “It fell down” she tells me. I couldn’t process what I was hearing. We ended up finding some Canadian news source that still had enough bandwidth to stream the live feed to us. We watched the replay of the tower falling. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
The rest of that day was just confusion...who? why? I was so naive. Then we heard the name Osama Bin Laden.
At the time I wasn’t tuned into politics much. I had only become a naturalized citizen the year before. So as a person that couldn’t vote I’d ignored much of the political theater that surrounded D.C.. I call myself a “9/11 Republican”, I know there are others. From that day forward the behavior of Democrats disgusted me. I realized how much I’d grown to love this country and their position on many things was angering me. When Harry Reid made the treasonous declaration, “the war is lost”, I just about lost it. They’ve proven themselves to be traitors many times since then. It also made me realize how the left thinks and I became their enemy.
>>I remember thinking that we would finally secure our border now that we were under attack<<
Frankly as much as I was glad to have President Bush instead of gore, we would be MUCH better off today had it been President Trump.
At a medical practice in Kensington, Connecticut Ave, Md. on 9/11. Heard the news on the waiting room TV -so my colleagues and I went to the windows (3rd floor). We could see the smoke at the Pentagon. Shock and fear all day.
RIP to all the patriots who died on that horrific day.
“A lot of guys don’t know if they’re gonna do the job (NY firefighter) any more. I know it’s either this or the Army now. And I like saving lives, I don’t like taking them. But after what I saw ... if my country decides to send me ... to go kill ... I’ll do it now.” - Tony Benetados
“I remember walking down West Streen just remembering, saying how much my brother (Lieutenant Kevin Pfeifer) and I use to love being downtown and doing this job (NY firefighter) ... and um ... and now ... how I didn’t love it any more.” - Chief Joseph Pfeifer
Quotes from the documentary. A must see today. Send a “resist” snowflake the link.
I was living in downtown Manhattan and working on 42nd st and 3rd Avenue, a few blocks from the UN. I remember first getting word on the internet and there was a rumor that the White House had been hit. We all just sat in our cubicles, not knowing what to do. Management decided to send us home, because there were rumors the UN would be hit.
I walked toward downtown Manhattan toward home, the huge cloud of smoke and ash, people on street corners listening to car radios, a few running toward the carnage yelling names of what I assumed were loved ones. It felt unreal.
Have many memories, but one interesting one is that there WAS air travel. My husband had driven to Vancouver, BC that morning for an important contract meeting. The contractor was to be there too (from somewhere in the South). The Contractor actually DID make it. He leased a small plane and pilot and flew from the South to Vancouver. He did say he got a very challenging look and lecture from a guy in Wyoming when they stopped to refuel.
Just 2 weeks after the attack, Letterman was the first to make fun of President Bush. Then everyone else piled on.
That was the last time I watched any of the late night buffoons.
President Bush told America to go shopping. Most people felt they were no part of the War on Terror. I think it was a huge mistake but wonder why he said that? I know he said it as a message that we should carry on so the terrorists would not win but the effect was to disconnect Americans from the war.
There should have been an effort to keep America fired up, united...why wasn’t there? Instead the military very much felt the saying “America is not at war,the military is at war, America is at the mall” was how it was.
Worked for a bank in Midtown. Was getting ready for a meeting. Our meeting room windows had a clear view of the Towers. A member of my staff was talking to his sister who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. All of a sudden his phone went dead and there was smoke coming from one of the towers.
Two things I remember. We left our building to go further uptown to prepare for business continuity actions. Looking at all the people walking aimlessly through the streets looked like the walking dead on valium.
The other thing I noticed was when I went to Citicorp Center to volunteer to give blood, after about an hour we were told to leave. Later found out it was because there were no survivors to give blood to.
The good: People were helping each other. Saw many crying and people going up to them to calm them down.
The bad: I had to take the ferry across the river and then a train inland to meet my wife. The authorities were asking people who were exposed to dust come on board the ferry first and go to the front. People who weren’t exposed were trying to get over on the system.
The funny: I know nothing was funny that day, but seeing the same people get taken into a building and being scrubbed and hosed down was poetic justice.
I was working at a Port of Entry as a contractor...the instinct of those supervisors on the ground was to close the border. In fact some smaller border crossings were briefly closed. Common sense. Then word came down from above, not to close the border. That seems like a meaningless blip, of course legal crossings would at some point need to open, but the order was not to close them at all.
It did strike me as very odd, and still does that the official word was not to close even temporarily, even while we were under attack and so much was unknown.
We should have shut the border crossings, increased security and then reopened them. We should have secured the entire border ASAP, as a security priority. It has always been a huge question in my mind why we didn’t.
I remember waking my kids after hearing on the radio about the planes. I turned on the tv and continued to get them ready for school and myself for work. We are on west coast time, so when we left to go to school the first tower had collapsed and during our drive we heard on the radio that the second tower had gone done too...I did not want to go to work that day as I worked on the 9th floor in Phoenix, Az . We had the tv on in our conference room at work but around noon there was word of a possible bomb package. It turned out to be a false alarm, but shortly after that our office manager determined that we should close for the afternoon.
The next weekend Sept 23 rd we had a wedding in Las Vegas for my cousin and when we drove over Hoover Dam, there wasn’t a single tourist and in the hotel there silence of the lack of casino machines was eerie. One of the waitreesses said they laid off staff due to such low patronage.
I was an IT manager in a chemical plant. It was first thing in the morning when the plant manager’s secretary came down the hall saying someone had flown a plane into the WTC. Of course, we all assumed that it was a single engine Cessna or some such. As we walked into the PM’s office where there was a TV already tuned to the news, the 2nd plane hit. We stayed there in his office through the Pentagon attack and both towers falling, just dumbstruck.
Another memory, related to that subject:
The day after the attack, September 12th, the government of China announced a list of fourteen countries (IIRC) who's passport holders would not be allowed to fly on any airlines owned by China, the largest being Air China.
The announcement stated that they would be reimbursed for the price of their tickets, and that China apologized for any inconvenience caused by this decision.
All countries on the list were muslim countries.
That was it. No ifs, ands, or buts. End of story.
I get the irony for those guys who ignored instructions.
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