A plane had hit one of the towers and it was on fire. A minute after I woke and we were watching the second plane hit the other tower.
I told my wife, "We're at war. Fill the bathtubs with water and make sure both cars are full of gas."
The Pentagon got hit next. Around the same time all the aircraft were grounded.
It was a perfect blue sky day in the Seattle area, and I was outside on my deck looking at the greenbelt. It was completely silent.
There were no cars, no airplanes, nothing.
Then, directly over my house two fighter jets screamed over my house going south. Rattled the windows.
My wife was crying and asking me what was going to happen next.
We were glued to the TV for two days or more.
I was RIGHT HERE, in real time.
Our threads that day were totally amazing.
You can read the suspended disbelief AS the 2nd plane hits, the gnawing realization that instead of the first plane being a random accident, that it was DELIBERATE.
Part of a much bigger plot.
The thread went on into the THOUSANDS of posts.
A totally amazing thread.
What follows is my annual retelling of my story from downtown Brooklyn on that morning of September 11. It was originally posted in (I think) 2005 in the Freeper Canteen thread.
At about 8:40am on that morning, I was walking into the Court building on Adams Street (actually, the Court St. entrance) in Downtown Brooklyn to start serving jury duty. As luck would have it, I had been halfway to the train station before I’d realized that I’d left my Walkman on the kitchen table, so I didn’t bother going back for it. I figured I’d just get a newspaper. Besides, I didn’t know how well I’d be able to pick up AM inside the building anyway.
I sat in a dark room watching a video on How to Be a Good Juror, oblivious to what was going on right across the river. We were told to relax in the room that they have and I looked out the window at the Marriot Hotel. Traffic on Adams St was snarled, not moving. Must’ve been an accident on the Brooklyn Bridge, I thought. (It was a block away.)
People were standing around outside the hotel. Must be waiting for a tour bus or something. What did I know.
Fire trucks and ambulances started flying by on the wrong side of Adams Street, which had no traffic. Okay, traffic doesn’t come into Brooklyn much in the morning, but something was odd here. I had been facing 180 degrees from where I needed to be looking.
Finally, they had made an announcement. America was at war, under attack. The World Trade Center and the Pentagon had been destroyed. The were trying to get coverage on the TV sets in the jury rooms. I don’t think they succeeded. Even if they wanted to, only CBS would be available because it still broadcast from the Empire State Building.
People were beside themselves, many broke down, everyone was rushing for the payphones. I met a woman who had been listening to her radio. She let me share her earbuds. She was shaken and needed a cigarette. I don’t smoke, but I walked her to the smoking room. (There was one on the floor. Quite a few people were there.)
We were dismissed. Not much was going to get done in the Court building that week. Groups of people huddled outside with questions, comments, gossip and hearsay. Some of the lawyers said they saw it happen. What kind of plane was it?
Does anyone know if the trains are running? What about the buses? No trains. No LIRR. A few buses and they’re all packed. It was time to start walking and no one wanted to walk alone. We walked in groups.
Dust was falling from the sky in downtown Brooklyn like a dirty snow that was covering the cars. Papers fell too. We started walking up Atlantic Avenue. People were wandering around with their cell phones out trying to get a signal. no luck.
We took a turn down Third Avenue. I needed to. I wanted to stop at my mother’s house. It was a good resting point for me. The group I’d tagged along with decided to join me. One guy stopped in a hardware store for masks and passed them out.
When we passed Third St and reached the Gowanus Canal, we had our first real look. It was like a scene out of a bad movie. The skyline was there. But the Towers were missing. Just a terrible column of smoke and a cloud drifting our way.
We didn’t stay long. We kept walking. I made it to my mother’s house and said good-bye to the others. Some were walking all the way to Staten Island. One who had joined our group had walked over the Brooklyn Bridge — after having walked down 50 floors of Tower 1. God was looking out for him.
I watched some of the coverage until the trains were running again. I took one that left me about a mile or so from my inlaws, the meeting place for the rest of the family. I stopped in at St. Athanasius on the way. I hadn’t been there since a wedding about 15-20 years earlier. I stayed for a little while and walked the rest of the way.
Thankfully, my wife, who worked at the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge on the Manhattan side had evacuated immediately before the trains had stopped running.
It’s not a walk that I’ll forget ever forget.
TS
I already had been aware of the historic hit by a lost B-25 of the Empire State Building, that there had been clouds, they’d been unable to see, that it had been a legit ACCIDENT.
And so when I heard over the radio of the first hit, I thought, good God, it has gone and happened again, how puzzling that their GPS didn’t manage to help them out.
And I assumed at first it had been a small twin-engine private aircraft, etc.
I immediately thought of that old B-25 from WW2.
I was at college. Saw people gathered around the TV when I stopped between classes for a coffee. Not a lot of folks made to class the rest of the day.
I was at my desk in Elk Grove drinking my first coffee reading WND when a link to a two sentence AP story popped up on the top of the front page. “Small plane hits the top of the World Trade Center.”
I was just arriving at work near the Minneapolis airport flight path. Eerie feeling with no planes at that time of day.
Huge tv screen in the big conference room had the live coverage on.
In the break room, where the only TV in our office was located at the time. Everyone was huddled around as pictures of two columns of smoke were set oblique into the blue skies of Manhattan. While not completely silent, the conversation was spartan of verbosity and contemplative, which was unusual for our group.
I remember bringing up the knowledge I gained in University of structural design with concrete and steel in high rises, and predicting that those towers would come down if they didn’t get the fires out. Steel softens and bows to stresses when it gets hot. It was a prediction that I don’t gloat about, but I bring up often when remembering that day because of the 911 deniers who claimed the buildings were demolished, and anyone who knows about structural engineering would have, and did, predict it.
I’m sure many of the FDNY and first responders did too. They may have held hope that they had time, but I believe that kind of courage should be remembered.
Just waking up and hearing some strange stuff on the radio, went to the TV room and started watching. Didn’t go to work that day.
I was right across the river.
After having been in WTC2 for the first attack 8 years earlier and predicted this very kind of double-strike followup attack that same day, it was my worst nightmare come true.
Getting ready for work in Stamford, CT. From the beach we could see the plume of smoke. It took awhile for me to feel it was real, seemed like a movie. When I got to work many of our officers had lived through the earlier bombing in the Trade Center and had relocated the offices to Stamford as a result. They were really shaken and left immediately to get home to their families.
Sitting at my desk at work. The girl who worked in the opposite cube had just come in. Her phone rang. It was another co-worker calling to tell her a plane had hit the World Trade Center and he would be late as he was watching the news coverage.
We went into the lounge and turned on the TV. Got there just in time to see the second plane strike the other tower. The bimbo NBC reporter said “obviously we’re having air traffic control issues”. I immediately thought “no, dimwit, that’s some sort of terrorist attack”.
Things were tense for awhile because we were getting calls from customers in D.C. about the flight that ultimately crashed in Shanksville, PA. They were warning us that it was headed for Pittsburgh. The US Steel Tower in downtown Pittsburgh is one of the tallest in the country so we assumed someone was targeting all tall buildings.
Our boss, who had been on a long conference call since before we got there, finally came out and had NO idea what had been happening. He closed the office and sent us all home.
I was in my kitchen having coffee and watching Fox and Friends. My daughter was overdue with her first baby and we just prayed she wouldn’t go into labor that day. Our Dr. set her up to deliver at out local hospital instead of going into Boston. My husband was on business and had just driven from Long island to Northern N.J. He had no idea how he would get home but the Tappen Zee had not been closed.
That baby was born 4 days later and we’re celebrating his 18th ,this weekend in California.
My daughter’ 16th birthday.
They were reading the list of dead at the Trade Center moments ago on Fox News.
One of the readers had "Some People Did Something", Omar's message on his shirt.
I believe that he was not allowed to continue.
Too controversial??
I was here also. Reading the morning news on FR and waiting for the markets to open with the TV on when the SHTF. I called my wife at work and told her what was going on, but due to the type of work she was doing she didn’t have access to the news. Then I called my Mom and told her to turn on the TV. She asked what channel, and I told her “any channel.”
I continued to post and watch the news like hundreds of other Freepers that day.
It was primary election day in Minneapolis. I was awake most of the night doing lit drops and putting up lawn signs near freeway entrances. I finished about 5AM and thought “Hey, I can get a few hours of sleep before work”. I stood outside a convenience store, drinking a Pepsi and looking up at the stars and wondering what the day would bring.
Little did I know...
I got into work about 8:00AM and a guy told me that a plane hit the WTC. My first thought wasn’t terrorism. It was “Oh jeez, some small plane out of a local airport must have gotten lost in the fog/clouds and hit the building”.
A short while later, the other tower hit and then I realized that the you know what had hit the fan.
When the first plane hit, my boss asked what I thought.
I told him, “We’re at war. The muslim terrorists were unsuccessful in 1993 and this was them ramping up their efforts.”
He didn’t believe me until the second plane hit.
Every morning when I drive into work, I would listen to a talk n news station.
On September 11th I didn’t. I had just bought the Allman Brothers Greatest Hits CD, so I was rockin’ it on the highway. Statesboro Blues, the Whippin’ Post, Jessica and Elizabeth Reed were sung by me and boys all the way in.
When I got to work, my friend Jerry was outside waiting for me. He said a plane had hit the WTC. I, being a history geek, said ok and started telling him about the B-24 that hit the Empire State Building in WWII...
By the time I put my bags down and we started walking to the conference room (with TV on), my friend Cris shouted to us, “Another one just hit the other Tower!!”
I knew then that was no accident.
I can still smell the fresh coffee (I’m in the Central time soon, so around 7:45ish, we had to be in at 8:00) feel the coolness of the hallway, and hear Cris so clearly all these years later.
At work. The first sign I knew something was wrong was the internet wasn’t going anywhere fast. Admittedly, this was in the days of dial-up, but any sort of internet slow down makes me wonder if something else more serious is happening somewhere.
Ditto with power fluctuations on the electrical grid like the New York blackout a few weeks ago which set off my battery backup alarm in Florida.
I was at my desk in the office, texting a co-worker who was in the Corpus Christi office. We were going over training plans and chatting about the weather.
We had this blowhard from regional office in that day, so we had a meeting at 8:00 to hear what he had to say.
When the news broke about the first plane, I thought about the B-25 that crashed into the Empire State Building in 1944. It was surely an accident.
We were in the meeting when the security guard opened the door and announced the second plane had hit as well as the Pentagon.
I didn’t get much done that morning but kept up with the news on FR and the radio.
I went home for lunch and as I was waiting at a red light, Air Force One flew right in front of me at very low altitude, landing at Barksdale AFB. I remember thinking, “On any other day, that would be weird.”
When I came back to the office from lunch, the office door was locked. So, I went home and watched the news. I remember I was numb.