I was in San Juan, about to head to the airport for a flight back to California, I was about to call a cab when I saw the second plane hit the second tower. I instantly realized that we were at war, and that there was no point in going to the airport.
But twenty-two years on, we seem to have forgotten it ever happened.
[Update a few minutes later]
Glenn Reynolds remembers, and he’s angry. So am I.
[Update later morning]
9/11 is a memorial to repeated and ongoing FBI failures, which which no one is ever held accountable.
I was living in Manhattan Beach – moved there for a year to support BOEING. Was getting ready for work when the second plane hit the tower. It was surreal.
Now, it seems like the day ‘We will never forget’ is actually being forgotten. Sad.
I was in my office that morning and an engineer across the hall heard the news about the first plane. My first thought was of the B-25 that hit the Empire State Building in the fog in 1945, not knowing it was a crystal clear morning in NYC that day. I also didn’t initially know it was a commercial airliner that was involved, i was thinkingCessna. So I jokingly asked if the pilot had yelled “Allah Akbar” on the radio.
But it all became clear in an instant when the second plane hit, I immediately said “We’re at war”. Not much work got done for the remainder of the day.
I was driving to work in Colorado Springs when I heard that “a twin engine plane” had collided with one of the WTC towers. Like you, I thought of that WWII B-25 collision. When I got to work and fired up my computer, I saw the tower’s smoke against a clear blue sky and was confused. Not long afterwards, the second tower was hit by another plane and everything was suddenly clear. We were at war. For the next hour or so, the reports kept coming in of the Pentagon attack and a plane crash in Pennsylvania. That night, I had a long talk my my youngest son, a Hospital Corpsman in the Navy. I told him to prepare himself, not knowing it would be several years before he was deployed to Afghanistan.
For those of us old enough, 9/11 was our generation’s Pearl Harbor. I wonder what it must have been like for children too young to understand what they saw that day. It must have been both terrifying and confusing.
I had awakened to our clock radio playing “[Bill] Handel in the Morning” on KFI-640 AM in Los Angeles, and the morning crew was discussing the first airplane hitting the WTC. They, and I, both instantly thought of the B-25 collision with the Empire State Building. I got into the shower to get ready for work, and when I got out, my wife was there, white as a ghost. “Another plane just hit the South Tower.” I was stunned, but the first words I spoke were “We’re at war. And we don’t know who with.”
My sons, 10 and 11 years old at the time, watched in disbelief the televised coverage as each tower collapsed. My younger son said, in shock and sadness, out of nowhere, ‘David always wanted to see the Twin Towers.”
I wonder if they remember that day…
On a construction job I got a call that a plane had hit the WTC. My thought was that some moron in a Mooney had tried more weather than he could handle. Second call was panicky after the second one and they thought it was terrorists. Should we get the kid out of school etc.(1,000+ miles away) Second thought was that a couple of idiots had rented a couple of Cessna’s.
IMO the damage done by them was bad, but much of the reaction far worse especially if you travel at all.
I was at work trying to call my wife on the cell phone about some routine matter, but all I could get was a fast busy signal. Thinking that perhaps I had forgot to pay my bill, I called the cell phone company to see what was up. It was then I was told about a plane flying into WTC-1 and that event was tying up the cell phone network. Then I overheard over the cube walls other employees were setting up a portable TV to find out WTF was going on. We were all watching it when the 2nd plane hit WTC-2. Also not much work done after that. I went home early. This was back when Aaron Brown, formerly of CBS Morning News, had switched to the NYC anchor for CNN. He earned his chops that day. Nothing but respect for him after that. Wish I could feel the same way about CNN today. Instead they’d probably air analysts to tell us why the attack was all our fault.
At the time I had been playing with a new toy. A program called “Flight Explorer” that ran on my laptop at home. It displayed in real time all commercial airline traffic over the continental United States. For us subscribers, you could hover your mouse over an in- flight airplane symbol and even get the full flight information, including destination and ETA. I used to it time and watch for flights that would fly over my house on their way to the regional airport near me.
September 12, 2001 was also a very unique day to those of us who remember using Flight Explorer.
Oops according to Wikipedia AB had worked at ABC News before CNN. My bad.
The first news report I heard simply said that a “twin-engine plane” had hit one of the towers. That could have anything from a Cri-Cri to a 777.
Was living in Colorado Springs, got up, got dressed. Checked my emails before heading downstairs; someone in my circle wrote “Boy, somebody is really mad at this country.” That was enough for me to turn on the raido while I made breakfast.
Two minutes later I was glued to the television. The towers were already gone, something had happened at the Pentagon, and the media was sowing panic about several more missing flights up there. Eventually went to work, MCI Worldcom, where the systems were fairly stressed, but not much we could do about it.
Spent most of the day trying to calm people down. I remember lines at the gas stations and packed parking lots at the grocery stores. I remember going to bed that night and hearing a pair of fighter jets flying long circles in an otherwise quiet sky.
I remember seeing the crescent moon with Venus (iirc) just like in the Islamic flags as I was driving home. I never see people talk about that.
Today, I am less angry with the Muslims than I am with our own government that refused to fight those wars to win, squandered our resources, and took zero responsibility for repeated failures.
After we left Afghanistan, there should have been hundreds of generals committing suicide out of shame. Instead, they all went to work for Chinese companies like Mattis did.
The state department and these other failed institutions should not exist any more. Start from scratch.
What do you do when talking to friends and relatives who are absolutely convinced beyond any rationality that the US government and military were directly involved in “demolishing” the NYC buildings and launched a missile into the Pentagon to deliberately kill people?
Talk up the benefits of living as an ex-pat in France?
I was asleep in my home in Santa Clarita, CA. The phone rang, and woke me up…nobody on line..So, I decided to do some work, went into my office and checked emails while I had the TV on. A terrible accident – right until the second tower was hit.
I called into my hospital and told them I might be away – and was recalled to active duty the next day.
I thank you for your service.