CDIH

I had gone into the office in Brooklyn that day.
After the 2nd plane hit the second building, everthing just stopped. The streets were empty. We were all glued to the radio that day. It was very overwhelming, to say the least.
In a way, I was glad I had gone into the office that day, instead of staying home.
I did not lose any close loved-ones, but, our neighborhood lost alot of people and pretty much the whole fire dept. It was a very devastating experience and still is in many ways.

I was in class. 9:30 I went to my first class of the day and right when my professor came in he said that a plane had hit the world trade center. this was back when everyone assumed that it was an accident, so we continued on with having class.

I then went to my 11:00 phil class and there are a million wild stories circulating the room...and I hadn't heard any of them since i had been having class the whole time. Finally, my phil. professor comes in and tells everyone what happened and cancelled classes. I then spent the next 2 hours on the phone trying to get in touch with people back in NY.

Not a good day.

i was in bed, the phone rang, it was my mother. she asked me if my best friend was ok and i replied "sure why wouldn't he be?" i could hear the panic in her voice and knew something was wrong. she told me to turn the tv on. i sat in disbelief for a few minutes and called my buddy that deals in commodities and works 2 blocks away from the towers. obviously all of the phone lines were busy. i sat there flabbergasted.

i drove down route 17 and took pictures. crazy shit. you could see the smoke from mahwah!

anyway, i eventually got through to my friend the folowing day and he told me about all of the crazy shit that he saw in the streets that day. he lives in hoboken and had to get a ride across the river on a tug boat. they dropped him off in jersey city and he proceeded to go home and get shit-faced falling down drunk.

it happened 9 days before my 30th b-day and just about a month before my daughter was born.

Quote:I used to get pissed every time I took the Pulaski to the Holland Tunnel. When you drive out from under that covered roadway

doc i know exactly what you mean. Being in maryland at the time, the whole thing was incredibly fucking sureal for me. I wasn't back in New York until thanksgiving weekend, and i went to see a friend that lived in brooklyn. To get there, i get on the BQE, and right before you hit the brooklyn bridge on the BQE you find yourself face to face with lower manhattan. it was the first time the whole thing really registered for me, when i saw the skyline and the towers weren't there.

I was on my way to work listening to the Hillman on waaf, when he cut in in the middle of song to say that a plane just hit the wtc, And that they were gonna stick with the story as it unfolded.
I got to the job like 5 minutes after that, And asked the sparky if he had heard anything about it. He said he didn't hear shit cause I had the radio...Anyways, I told him a plane hit the wtc. He looked at me kinda goofy for a second thinking I was just bullshitting him. But I Turned the radio on and that was that. I remember most of us didn't really do shit for work that day, just alot of talking and theory throwing.

I was the only one at the job that ate out for lunch everyday, So when i got to the store they were all watching the tube, And thats when I saw one of the towers fall. I remember saying out loud to the guys out back behind the counter. "Did that fucking thing just crumble? ..Then a couple of people in the store starting crying, the old lady that worked there started screaming. It was a fucking mess.

Got home around 4 or so, went straight for the puter, threw aim on to check on the misfits from ny/nj that I sometimes shoot the shit with...But I remember just looking at the names and not iming them. What the fuck do you say to someone who just lost someone in shit like that. Its not like I knew if they actually lost someone or not, What type of mood they were gonna be in, Would they even want to type to someone at that point.... Eventually I started iming people and found all were fine, just shook up a bit...

Quote:I got nothing more to say. I'm not trying to defile anything you fucking shithead. Read the thread. Know the facts. Shut your stupid mouth.

Follow your own advice DIG, your gig is getting old and stale. Last I checked you where not a member at that point, we were. We were also in contact with tequila at the time, your were not. So your facts are not factual, your point is absent, your whole position is unfounded, period.

Now to get back to the point of the thread. I was sleeping at the time the first tower was hit, then I got a frantic call. "WE'RE AT WAR", I turn on the TV to CBS news, I see the both towers burning. I was out of it, I had no idea it was the WTC buildings, I though everything was being bombed and we we're under attack. I was ready for the apocalypse at that point to be honest. Then I realized that the towers were hit, just then the 1st tower colapsed and I got up to look out my window. There was dust, smoke, the smell was horrid. My kitchen table was covered in a 3 inch film of soot from the towers. I still have the rag I used to clean off the table.

First thing I did was locate my pals, even some of the people off the board. I got in touch with sean cause he was off working and I wasn't sure if he was in the city. I was even gonna call that cum bah Buttmunch but I heard he was ok.

Like many others I continued watching the news for days non-stop.

Quote:So your facts are not factual, your point is absent, your whole position is unfounded, period.

Biter.

Quote:Biter.

Coon.

Take it else where.

I had woken up early so I could vote in the primary before class, and had the Today show on when the first plane hit. I remember thinking to myself what an idiot the pilot must've been to hit the Trade Center like that, and then went to take a shower, but put on the news channel instead of music. I remember pilots and witnesses calling up to confirm the fact that it was most likely a small prop plane and how it was not an unusual flight path and yadda yadda. So I'm getting dressed now, and the second plane hits, and my heart sunk....but I'm still not thinking straight. So I call my school which is RIGHT by where the WTC was and ask if there are classes, etc, and then called work to tell them that I'd be a bit late since I figured there would be traffic downtown (I work on Wall Street). And then the first tower fell, and I remember just being home alone with no one around and knowing that my friends were in there somewhere.....and I sat and cried....

I called my friend at work and asked her if she was okay, and she told me when she got out of the subway that day, there were papers flying on Wall Street and she thought it was a ticker tape parade, and she told me she didn't know what was going on and that she'd call me later. And then the second tower fell and I was still alone in my house feeling more alone than I've ever felt before, I don't even remember when the Pentagon got hit in the sequence of things, but I remember feeling as if the world was about to end. I remember my brother coming home and having to snap me into some sense of functioning and then I ran out to the store and bought close to $300 in groceries because I didn't know and I was scared....

As much as I'll never forget watching what happened on tv, what affects me even more is the smell my first day back in Manhattan. I remember walking from work to school and seeing the ruins....in a trance, I walked past the police on Broadway and walked up to Church Street right to where the WTC used to be and I started shaking and crying, a cop found me and thankfully realized I had walked there not to be an asshole, but just because I was in a daze and took care of me and walked me to school. I don't know what would've happened to me had that not been the cop that i dealt with.

I don't even know if I made any sense with anything I posted, but oh well.

Quote:Biter

I only bite when someone asks, bitter?

Quote:As much as I'll never forget watching what happened on tv, what affects me even more is the smell my first day back in Manhattan.

Yeah, that smell was around for weeks. It was everywhere.

There's a post office on Canal Street that I sometimes pass on my way into work if I take a different train into work. The one wall of the building takes up almost the entire block and that whole wall was covered as high as a person could reach with flyers from people looking for their loved ones. With more fliers on every phone booth, light pole, and anything else people could tape an 8.5x11 piece of paper to. I don't think I saw any image on TV that really brought home the human loss like those fliers.

Those fliers were haunting. My first venture into the city after 9/11 was a little less than two weeks after, a Friday night that many of us here went to the WWF oa.com outing. A few of us drove into Hoboken (:cough Ladi's a flag killer cough and took the Path in. When we got out at the 34th Street station the fliers were posted everywhere. That station was dead silent as people got off the trains and you were surronded by pictures of people you knew would never be heard from again. Then you came up on the street and the stench was in the air and the streets were almost like a ghost town. It was a totaly new kind of wierd.

I actually still see a few tattered very faded fliers along the streets sometimes. I remember after school started again, I was walking along Broadway by the church and was reading the things that had been posted, and I saw the flier with my friend's picture on it....

I don't know whether it feels good to be "talking" about this, or if I'd rather pretend it didn't happen....

I had stopped into my office on Staten Island, just to pick up a file when the secretary yells "someone check the TV, the radio just reported a plane into the WTC." Being an EMT gears me toward flirting with disaster, so I popped my head into the break room to see what the tv news would show...

I saw that plume of smoke, and knew it was not a small plane as they were saying. I rallied a few of my co-workers and headed down to the ferry terminal to see what was going on. It was then that the second plane hit. Our pagers all went off at once moments later, and we hauled ass back up to the office. I changed into my "work clothes," got my trauma kit and 02 bag, and told my boss I was heading in to help, as they were screaming for EMTs at that point. I treated some folks on the ferry when the first boat of wounded arrived, and then took the second boat over to Ground Zero.

Most of the patients I treated that day were minor injuries. Most were firefighters, cops and fellow EMTs with eye injuries or simple traumas. I was on the pile for a while, acting as a litter bearer and securing remains when we found them. Where I was, we found no live victims. There is nothing more frustrating than that fact, that you can't help because there's no one left to help.

Quote:They bombed the WTC?

Interesting factoid: the official FBI case reporting name for the 9/11 attacks is PENTTBOM (PENTagon/TradeTowers BOMbing), because the planes were used as weapons of mass destruction.



Oh, btw, I have a tribute to the towers on my website-NYCPhoto-Images with a New York Accent



Edited By Is Don on the phone? on Aug. 02 2002 at 9:36

I know it's not really on topic, but I checked out Don's site and saw some of the pics

The one thing that really got to me is just how big the towers were.



You see the World Financial Center buildings now, and it's hard to picture that the two towers were more than twice as big as them. It saddens me a bit that I'm starting to forget exactly what they looked like withouot having a picture to remind me

I was working at my desk when someone ran into the office and said a plane hit the WTC. At first I thought maybe it was some sort of sick joke that someone on the radio was playing.

I walked down to the front doors of our building...the WTC is directly across the water from where I stood...All of a sudden the second plane hit...I stood there in disbelief as tears began streaming down my face.

The first thing that crossed my mind was that Pat Cooper worked in Manhattan and I ran up the stairs and tried to call his office. The whole day all you heard were the radios playing throughout the office...everyone else was either crying or sitting in complete silence.

At one point most of the building had crowded into the CEO's office to watch the horrific footage on the television. That vision of the plane hitting the WTC will play in everyone's minds forever.

I will never forget that moment when the second plane hit...It wasn't an image on tv or a picture in the newspaper...It was right in front of my eyes...:-(

I read the O&A thread vaguely, but I didn't comprehend it. Then some people in my office started yelling about it. We spent the day in my boss's office watching it on tv. When the tower fell, it was as if the room breathed in at once, and the walls actually moved.

We left at about 2, and I drove home stunned & crying. A few months ago I watched a show about it, & it brought back all the sadness and fear.

For awhile after, I really thought we were going to war too, like someone else said.

I am a service tech. I spend my entire day in and out of gas stations, fixing pumps, underground storage tanks, PC based control systems, etc.... When I heard I was on my way to do a software upgrade at an Exxon station. I had never been there and pull in to see a full fledged turban wearing gentleman and am thinking...."Ugh".

As it turns out, this old man was the nicest guy you could imagine, had moved here from india some 25 years ago, and has a teenage son, who joined us later in the day, that despite his semi turban (you know the ones the kids wear), speaks plain ols Americanized English. A very nice family altogether.

Anyway, after spending 6 or 7 hours with these folks, some drunken fuck pulls in and looks at the old man and yells "Why the fuck did you bomb my country?".... in very slurred drunken speak. the man didn't understand what he was saying, and this Asshole continues to berate this guy.... who now just has a confused and scared look on his face. I finally had enough and told this guy to shut the fuck up, THIS man had been with me all day and didn't bomb shit. WELL..... Mr. Too much to drink at 3;00 p.m. decided he was gonna be a badass.... and starts to get out of his car. I quickly pushed his door shut, and explained that it wuld be best if he took his drunken ass home before I called the police and let them know his condition.

"Fuck you" he says.
"Fine, the other option is that I remove you from your vehicle in a very painful manner and beat some fucking manners into you". I was actually disappointed when he drove off.

The whole point here is that at first, my personal outrage had me very unsettled, to the point I was ready to walk off the job, until i realized that my customer was just a guy trying to make a better living for his family. yet that seemed too hard to grasp for a racist Asshole.

Quote:For awhile after, I really thought we were going to war too, like someone else said.

I can't tell you how many times I thought it was "on" when I heard a helo or a jet fly by while I was on the pile. Hell, seeing military aircraft over New York was freaky enough...

Still, to this day, I haven't seen televised footage of the planes hitting. Hell, I haven't seen more that 15 minutes of total footage, newspaper articles, or whatever of the events that took place on 9/11 and the aftermath.