Annual 9/11 Question

[Anonymous]

Where were you on September 11, 2001, and how did you hear the news about the terrorist attacks on our country?

[Anonymous]

I distinctly remember hearing that beeping on the radio to signal an emergency broadcast… then it said “ this is not a test, this is a real emergency……” except when I try to find it online to share with my kid it says there was no emergency broadcast.
I still find the test triggering back to that day so I know I heard it.

[Anonymous]

In college on Manhattan. Finished one class and was going to another. Professor walked in and said we shouldn’t be having class at a time like this and no one had any idea what he was talking a lot. Returned to my dorm to a million phone calls from my parents.

[Anonymous]

I was in my early morning class freshman year of college. We had just broken for a quick break. A classmate came back in and said she had just spoken with her father and he told her a airplane crashed into a building in NYC. We carried on as usual, really thinking nothing of it. At the end of class, the teacher told us to stay tuned, as classes might be cancelled, because of terrorism. We still didn’t understand the magnitude at that point, still thinking it was some small Cessna.

After class, I went back to my dorm. We didn’t have a TV or computer in our dorm, and the radio news reporting was spotty at best. It wasn’t until around noon when they cancelled classes that we all decided to go down and see what was showing on the TV. That’s when reality set in, once we SAW the extent.

[Anonymous]

I was in grad school in the midwest. I'd already had an early class, then gone back to bed, and my friend kept ringing my room phone (trying to tell me what had happened). I was unfamiliar with New York and it took me a while to understand the scale of the attack.

[Anonymous]

I was working in Rosslyn and watching it on the news. When the pentagon was hit, our ceo said to evacuate.

[Anonymous]

Freshman at GW, second week of classes. I had just walked back from my 8am French class and a bunch of people in my dorm were saying a plane had flown into the WTC. Went upstairs and turned on the tv just at the moment the second tower was hit.

I was in my dorm room wondering if I should go to my 10am dance class when I felt the impact of the plane hitting the pentagon. Then we saw the smoke. I called my mom and woke her up (in California). She told me I must be seeing a new movie or something on tv but then I told her to turn on the news and she believed me.
School hadn’t said anything about cancelling classes so I walked to my dance class. Got there to learn that yes, classes were cancelled for at least the day.
Walked home and could barely squeeze myself between the cars trying to get out of the city. We didn’t know what to do but we kept hearing rumors that the White House was the next target and we live about 4 blocks away.

My dad was still in DC for work after dropping me at school. He was supposed to be on AA flight 77 (Dulles to LAX) but had postponed his trip a few days earlier because he had a meeting that Tuesday morning - at the Pentagon. He was driving there when he saw the plane hit, he immediately turned around and went back to the firm he was working with and ended up driving a colleague all the way to New Carrollton metro station where he had parked his car. Dad didn’t have a cell phone and my mom and I were worried about him until he finally got back to his hotel @4pm and called one of us. I remember my mom was furious at him that he hadn’t tried to reach us but of course he and everyone else was just trying to do their best that day.

My dad came and picked my roommate and I up and took us to dinner that night - we went to La Chaumiere and I think we might’ve been the only people there.

It was a surreal and very scary day for 18yo me, just starting out on my adult journey. A boy on my floor lost both his parents that day - they worked for Cantor Fitzgerald. I remember he left school the next day. My uncle got stuck on the PATH on his way to a meeting at Cantor. He later told me that he was running late and had been annoyed and then so grateful. The big almost coincidences were really scary to me and I started getting panic attacks that fall.

[Anonymous]

7th grade science class. The assistant principal came on the intercom to announce it but he was mumbly and the speaker was bad so no one understood what he said. Then in the next class we went to the library to watch the news rather than actual class. Things I remember from the rest of the day: all the kids who had parents in the city waiting in line to use the office phone at lunch and the fact that math was the only class that proceeded as normal and I’ve never been more grateful for the eternal continuity of pre calc.

[Anonymous]

In English class on the 4th floor of Founder’s Hall at Visitation. Once it became clear what was happening, everyone gathered in an interior location - the mood was one of confusion and heightened excitement/dread, with rumors flying and no one really understanding what was going on. I remember asking a teacher if I was allowed to take out / use my cell phone (which was always in my backpack, turned off, during the day) and she replied yes, this was exactly the kind of emergency situation cell phones were allowed for…which somehow drove home how serious whatever was going on was. It took so long to get out of the city that day

[Anonymous]

Pure pandemonium.

But think for a moment: Imagine if this happened today, in this era of non-stop communication. Would it be even more chaotic? I can’t even imagine.

[Anonymous]

Walking to work in Manhattan. Heard the first place fly overhead and turned around and saw a gaping hole in the tower.

[Anonymous]

Driving across the old Woodrow Wilson bridge to the military base I worked at. The base closed later that day and sent everyone home.

[Anonymous]

At work in DC in a federal building. Saw the first plane hit the tower on a newscast and remember everyone think it was a tragic accident. When the second one hit, we knew it was bad and I left without officially being released and got the heck out of DC. Drove down 395, saw the Pentagon on fire and northbound 395 traffic completely stopped from coming into DC.

[Anonymous]

I was at work and told to go home and while driving i looked up. I remember the most crisp blue cloudless sky that Sept day.

[Anonymous]

Working at a hospital in Maryland. Saw it on a patient's tv in their room. We started prepping for an onslaught of patients, but of course, they never came.