As it Happened: Real-Time 9-11 Coverage on Free Republic

Free Republic ^ | September 11, 2001 | FReepers

[Starrgaizr]

At 7:52am EDT, under the innocuous title "World Trade Center," Oldeconomybuyer posted the first thread, writing: CNBC reports a plane has hit the World Trade Center in NY. No details...

At 8:04-8:05am EDT on September 11, 2001, the following comments, among many others, appeared on several threads:

Holy Cow!! Another plane just hit!! / Another plane just flew into the building! / OMG!!!! Huge explosion out the side!!! / A SECOND PLANE JUST NOW FLEW INTO THE SECOND TOWER!!! / 2 ND EXPLOSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! NOW / Another plane flew into the second tower. / TERRORISTS!!!! / O' the humanities! What the Hell! Another plane. I'm dreaming or what? / Dear God! They just hit the other tower. / Jesus, another one just flew into it. / A SECOND plane just flew into the tower. This IS DELIBERATE! / Second explosion. Just heard it in Brooklyn. IN the OTHER Tower. That seemed like a BOMB!!!! / I just saw a second plane hit the other tower-- looks like an attack. / Oh my goodness! / Just saw the second plane hit the other tower / Second impact on the other building !!!!! / This is unbelievable!!!!! / Most definitely terrorism / Oh MY Gosh! Another Plane just flew into the 2nd tower! / ANOTHER PLANE CRASHES !!!! UNBELIEVABLE !!!! / HOLY CRAP Another plane just slammed into the tower!!!!!!!! / SECOND PLANE FLIES INTO OTHER TOWER! /

At 8:08am EDT HalfIrish wrote: It takes a lot of cash to smash two jets, don't you think? Can you say Osama bin-Laden?

At 8:09am EDT, on another thread, Catspaw wrote: Osama bin Ladin.

The morning just got worse. At 8:44-8:45:

Fire in the Pentagon WWIII / Explosion in Pentagon, too!!! / WHITE HOUSE BEING EVACUATED !

We all know how things ended.

At 8:51: ALL AIRPORTS IN NATION SHUT DOWN BY FAA !

At 9:02-03: I just saw from my window. TOP OF THE World Trade Center just collapsed!! OH MY GOD! PEOPLE ARE CRYING HERE! / OH MY GOD...THE WHOLE BUILDING JUST COLLAPSED! oh sweet Jesus...look with kindness and mercy upon our dead / Does this mean that we're going to war? No, we are AT war!

Then: Second Tower just went!!! HELP US! / What parts of the Pentagon has been hit? My brother is there.

For all of the gut-wrenching real-time coverage on Free Republic, follow this link to the Remembrance Archive: Free Republic Threads From 9-11-01

NEVER FORGET. STAY ANGRY.

[Nexus]

They disconnected all the TV's and internet

WHAT? A major attack on our country and they tried to keep you in a bubble??? What the heck school did you go to! Would they do the same in a WMD attack? Appalling.

[yonif]

A very liberal high school in MA. Thank god I was only there one year only. They tried to keep us in a bubble alright.

[yonif]

thanks for the ping

[zeaal]

I remember the roll calls here at FreeRepublic for known NYC area Freepers. Sadly, not all answered the roll call. Rest In Peace.

[Celtic Conservative]

I was at home, asleep. (I work nights) My wife woke me up just in time to watch the 2nd plane hit. We sat, dumbfounded and stunned , watching for hours and hours. When we could no longer deal with the images we were confronted with, we sat on the couch , holding each other, My wife asking Me "will it ever be o.k. again?". I had no answer for her. I went to work that night, having gotten no sleep, surrounded by an crowd of zombies. Not a single one of us had been asleep for over 30 hours. We just looked at each other, not saying a word but the fear, anger and disbelief on all of our faces and minds was obvious. The unreal silence was occasionally punctuated by the repeated blasts of f 16s from the local AFB going to full afterburner immediately upon takeoff.

CC

[Conservative4Ever]

Here on the west coast I had just arrived at work. The nightshift crew said a plane had just flown into the WTC. FoxNews was on the TV and we watched in shock as the morning unfolded. Disbelief and horror over the attack on our country. Two things I remember in great clarity...maybe others have it stand out in their memories too...how clear and blue the sky was that day in NY. Not a cloud in the sky, no haze. Just that brillant blue sky. The second thing was a documentary I watched many months later....two french brothers were doing a documentary on a fire house in Manhattan. One of the brothers was filming some fire fighters checking out a gas leak on a street in lower Manhattan. His camera panned up as the men working in the area looked up and watched in disbelief as the first plane flew into the first tower. The looks on their faces as this huge shadow passed overhead then you saw the plane slam into the tower. Those two things stand out the most from many, many impressions and images from that day of horror. I will never forget. Never. From time to time I read the original FR thread from that morning. I didn't catch it until later in the day. What a wonderful live time commentary of that day. Freepers are the greatest.

God Bless the souls of the innocent men and women and children lost to this cowardly act of terror.

God Bless the fire fighters, police and military serving our great country. God Bless America.

9-11-01 Never Forget

Flags at half staff today.

Red

[Starrgaizr]

Thanks to all for your stories.

[proud American in Canada]

Thank you once again, Starrgaizr....

I have posted pictures of 9/11 on the "chat" area of a music forum I belong to. We can never forget. Yes, it's painful. Yes, we will be flamed for "wallowing."

But, imo, when the major news channels refused to show pics of people jumping, that showed me they didn't want to accurately present what was happening. They never will.

It's up to the Internet, esp. FR, to keep the flame alive.

[proud American in Canada]

I am interested! please ping me whenever you want to. :)

[proud American in Canada]

Re #50:

What a terrific post.

I spent all day posting 9/11 pics on a music forum. people seem all too eager to forget, to "move on"...

But we can never move on. If we do, then we do a great disservice to those people who faced the choice of dying in an inferno or taking the hand of a stranger and jumping into oblivion. We do a disservice to the brave people who ran, instinctively, to help their fellow human beings.

No, America is not a country who will ever forget those of us killed in war... And that was a first strike in a very long war.

[proud American in Canada]

me too...

I told people later... we all ran to our computers to talk, and all anyone said was God help us!

Thank God for FR!

[bootless]

Thank you for your stories...

I live in Northern Cal, and my radio alarm went off at 7:30 AM, always tuned to KSFO (conservative ABC affiliate). I didn't hear Lee and Mel - I heard Peter Jennings say that the second tower had just fallen. I still remember lying there, still sideways on the pillow, thinking, "WHAT?!!" Then turned to Fox News in my room - my then 9 year old son was asleep still. I saw the footage, read the crawls frantically, and was just in a state of shock.

I had to bring my son to school - it was not cancelled - and didn't want him to see all that just yet right before I brought him to school. He's quite perceptive, and I knew we'd deal with it later. So I turned the Cartoon Network on in the living room before I woke him up, made his cereal, and we got ready.

Funny thing, he was kind of crabby that morning, but he got a bigger hug than usual as I dropped him off. I drove all the way to work (30 miles) at 55 mph - very unusual for me - listening to Melanie Morgan read a news update that one of the hijacked planes was headed for San Francisco. That was Flight 93. As I looked around at the other drivers, they were all in kind of a fugue state. No one drove very fast. It was a atately procession down the freeway.

When I finally made it to the office, I finally cried - hard - and got a big hug from my friend whom I work with. Of course, we got nothing done that day. Spent the day with the TV on, just horrified at Petah Jennings and amazed to see that Dan Rather was slightly more tolerable than usual. Then, finally, the local Fox station fed Fox News for the rest of the day, and that was much better.

When I picked my son up, he asked me what had happened, because the teachers were really upset, and people kept coming into the classroom to whisper messages to the teacher. So, I told him what happened, and we went home to what Fox. He informed me that he wanted to go to New York so he could help find people. My heart just about burst.

We didn't watch a lot of coverage when he was awake, but once he got to sleep, I was glued to Fox and FR until about 2 - 3 AM every night for weeks. I got very little sleep, and as I got my son to sleep, I stayed and watched him for a long time, praying that he would be able to grow up and live his life.

Those moments are still fresh when I think about them.

Thank God for Free Republic ... and for our President. I suspect we may never know what he helped avert.

[rintense]

What a beautiful story. Children as so perseptive and have such innocent wisdom. The Friday after the attacks, the National Day of Prayer, my best friend, her hubby, little girl (who was 3 at the time), and I drove into Grand Rapids to drop off money at a donation drive, and later light candles. On our way, the 3 year old said, 'are the bad men going to try and get us? I'm scared.' It was the most innocent and geuine thing.

I have so much respect for parents who showed/explained to their children the events of that day. The 3 year old heard about it from her mom, and her mom explained it in only terms that a 3 year old could understand- that bad people, people who don't like us, hurt and made a lot of people sad on 9-11.

To the parents out there, God bless you. I believe that this generation of young children will be one of the most patriotic and compassionate generations we've ever seen.