Where were you when you heard?

[Dinosdeuce]

I was DZCO for practice jumps into Falcon stadium. I just called drop approved when the pilot told me to stand-by. I waited about a minute and transmitted again, got aonther stand-by. I'm thinking WTF, is he just BS'ing with some one on the radio. So again I transmit and this time he says we have to RTB ASAP. I'm a little agitated at this point. I get in the truck and head back to the squadron to find out what's going on. It didn't take long.

ATC was going crazy trying to get all aircraft on the ground as quickly as possible and they weren't fooling around. Got the tv turned on and saw the 2nd jet impacting.

A significant emotional event that I will never forget.

[hobowh]

I was in bed, roommate knocke on my door and woke me up jut in time to see #2 hit.

[gnihcraes]

wow, some of you are "young" ha ha... making me feel old now.

just arrived at work, co-worker said a "plane" hit the world trade center... Huh, ok. I'm thinking small private plane... then after a bit got the real story as #2 hit, then they started shutting down work thinking we were the next "target", so we closed up all locations. Including places that would never have been a "target". Stupid waste of money. I even said I'll stay behind and keep things running, but was forced out by management. Go figure. IT/Government.

kc.

[Great-Kazoo]

driving to dmv for plates. the news was vague regarding what was going on, but it didn't sound good. took 2 hrs to get through to family back in NY. 2 cousins were @ work in tower 1. one of them remembers someone pulling him off the floor as it was collasping under him. next thing he knew he was standing in midtown. he had no idea how he got there. my BIL's sister was missed her train, caught the next one 15min later. as she's walking up the stairs from the subway, she see's something fall about 20-30 feet from her. she looks up as the 2nd plane hit.
my neice drove across the 59th street bridge as they were trying to close it to traffic.
my brother was home sick,, tower 2 took out the center of the building he worked at,they never found his partner or any of their desk.
I took our daughter and mother to ground zero Dec, 8, 2001 to see what was left of buildings i remember watching them build. A comment our daughter made reflected the irony of it all. She pointed to an OPEN For Business sign, and said. Only in NYC could there be so much carnage and yet a beauty shop was open for business

my sister said during that day emergency vehicles were roaming the streets all around the island speakers blaring , for everyone not an emergency responder to stay inside and off the streets.

[DD977GM2]

I was staying at my then GF apartment near Leetsdale and Illiff. My Dad woke me up and I watched the 2nd plane hitting. I then called my daughters Mom and said Im coming to get her and heading to the mountains to our cabin. My Dad was packing up and locked and loaded. Well at the intersection of I-25 and Evans, some gal rearended me and seperated my shoulder and gave me a concusion when my head went through the back windshield. My GF came and followed me to my Dads and I was glued to the TV the rest of the day. I dont remember much since my concusion etc, but I do know the rage in me and the desire to be back on my ship in the Med and the deisre to head straight to the Red Sea or the Persian Gulf and launch some of my "Birds" on the cocksuckers responsible for this.

[68Charger]

Saw it on the news in the morning- watched the 2nd plane hit, and at that point realized this wasn't any accident- so I better got to work.. heard about the Pentagon on my way in... (have about a 45min-1hr commute)

not that I could do much to help people there- I just new it was going to be chaos at work, since I worked on a financial network for a major telco..

most of our customers are stock brokers- spent the next week joining a conference call at the beginning of the day asking "what can I do" and just hacking away at technical issues all day.. until the stock market opened on the Monday following 9/11 (that day was a Tuesday, and all stock markets were closed the rest of the week.. even though we were technically ABLE to open markets on Wednesday- it was the right thing to wait)

the story of Cantor Fitzgerald was talked about on the news today- that particular one really rings with me, I was up late Sunday night turning up a redundant circuit to their sales office in CT, since all of their trading was done from the their offices in the WTC.. so they had a fully redundant network connection going into the 1st trading day post 9/11. There was a story about the CEO that happened to not be in his office when the 1st plane hit because he was dropping off his daughter for her first day of kindergarden- otherwise he would have surely perished.

I remember the people working in Manhattan that worked their asses off to get things as much back to normal as possible- I volunteered to go there, but planes were grounded for days, and they wanted me one the phones to work issues... but it's the first responders that deserve our respect for how they dealt with the situations..

[pickenup]

At home, sitting at the table, drinking a cup of coffee.
Had the TV on, but wasn't paying attention, UNTIL the news hit.

[theGinsue]

I was sitting @ a red light @ Powers Blvd & Platte (24Hwy) in Colo Spr on my way to work @ Peterson AFB (was AD USAF back then) when I heard the smart a$$ D.J.'s announce the first place hitting the WTC. I remember thinking that of all of their jokes, this is the worst and most tasteless yet.

A few minutes later I was working my way around to a back gate and more info was coming in from additional sources. That's when it hit me that this wasn't a bad joke; it was real. I made it through the gate about 20 minutes before they started to get locked down.

Everyone I worked with started rolling in behind me about 5 minutes later - we all had looks on our faces like someone had hit us in the head with a shovel. Since we didn't have a T.V. around, we tried getting info via CNN.com (yeah, I know) but EVERYBODY on base had the same idea and the limited bandwidth was slammed.

We had a radio in the shop and heard about the second plane - then, eventually the Pentagon.

About 2 hours into the whole ordeal the base went to FPCON (Force Protection Condition) Delta ~ actual attack in progress. Everyone was sent home that wasn't absolutely mission essential (even those marginally mission essential were sent home). My building, a fire station, and a dental lab were the only buildings with people in them on that side of the base but it still took well over an hour to get out of the gate which we were practically right next to. Except for searching for a newspaper late on Sep 12th (I'll share that story some other time; hint: bear encounter)I sat @ home for the next several days just watching the news and waiting to be told to report back to work.

[Mtn.man]

Didn't know about it for a week, was in the wilderness and had no contact with the outside world.