23 years ago today

[wassy06]

I bet you can remember exactly where you were.

[steve h]

Yeah...
I remember people celebrating....

[steve63]

It seems a lot less than 23 years. I was still on my tools in the workshop then. We heard something on the radio about a small plane flying into The WTC and thought, accident, someone trying to fly between them. Then reports of a second and thought, obviously not an accident then. We were in The US exactly a year later and they had the names of the dead scrolling along the bottom of the TV screen all day.

[headcoats]

I was round my Mom's messing about with my Buell on the drive and she came out and said you want to see this on the TV and just sat there for a long time just shocked at what I was seeing

[JonW]

Stood outside Radio Rentals in Swindon town center with a bunch of others watching the 2nd plane fly into tower...

I'd just picked up money as I was off to Germany the next morning for work... never seen so many men with guns at Heathrow and so empty an airport...

[dodgyknees]

I was driving home from London and my ex wife told me, I expected a light aircraft accident not what happened ! Crazy and sad all together

[stusco]

Fixing a gas fire in the Inch in Edinburgh saw it on the customer telly

[midlifecrisisrd]

Glasgow Uni kitchens, was on the radio

Steve

[dusty350]

I was window cleaning and saw it on a customers Tv. Went onto a nightshift that night and we were all glued to the news channels watching it.
There has been a ton of documentaries around 9/11, but if you haven't seen it, you must watch the one by the Naudet brothers;



These 2 brothers were making a documentary follow a new Firefighter out of training school. He was posted to Ladder 1 in New York. If I remember correctly, the brothers were due to finish their filming on the 11th when the night shift finished. The last shout was the more than anyone could ever have expected.

Dusty

[arrdy350]

It was my second day of school. 

[donkeychomp]

Shopping with my Mum in Staines. Saw it on a TV display. I had visions of that happening here and got her home pronto.

Alex

[oldbritguy]

Picking the kids up from school when I heard on the radio.
Like Dusty went to work night shift that night and was glued to Sky news between shouts.
343 firefighters lost their lives that day (not forgetting the poor souls in the towers ,NYPD, paramedics, harbour patrol and of course the flight passengers and crews)
Unbelievable that it was 23 years ago
John

[geoffers997]

Watched the thing unfold on the telly and long story short was unemployed for 5 months (I’d been working for an airline). Never went back to the airlines.

Respect to the brave and the innocent.

[chrisg]

Everyone was running away except the firefighters and police, BIG respect. The world changed forever, Bin laden, war on terror, brotherhood uprising.......

[pdxjim]

On a scaffold replacing siding on a house. Homeowners called us all in to watch it unfold on TV. After an hour or so we all just went home.

Was in NYC just a month later, and the scene was surreal.

[mtbmike]

Was unloading my dray lorry back at the yard heard on cab radio reports of first plane hitting tower when I got home put tv on And Watched the rest of the terrible events unfold

[JonW]

Sept 13, 2024 16:48:34 GMT 1 pdxjim said:

Was in NYC just a month later, and the scene was surreal.

Wow, I cant quite imagine the devastation. Very confronting.

I still look back at watching the towers fall and struggle to believe it happened. I'd been up the WTC and stood with my feet on the bar and looked down through the glass floor etc. So many lives impacted and the reverberations of that one day are still felt now. Shocking.

My trip a month after 9/11 was surreal in a different way... I flew to Florida almost exactly a month later for a fortnight and the theme parks were all empty as few Americans would get on a plane. We had booked it a month prior to 9/11 and it was non refundable or we might not have gone. :/

It worked out well for us really as it was totally empty. That was very shocking. No tourists really at all. a different kind of surreal.

It started at the airport, the car hire car company upgraded me from the smallest car in the fleet to a soft top mustang for $25 flat fee as they wanted to use those cars. Spent the week trying to find a radio station playing Ice Ice Baby so I could live the line 'Rollin' in my 5.0, With my rag-top down so my hair can blow'... *

You could do multiple Disney parks in the same day and ride all the best rides you wanted multiple times that same day as you could get off the ride and simply walk back through shortcuts where the queue would normally be and get back on the ride which was being sent out half empty. The only queue was for the front 2 seats and it was maybe 2 rides long. We did the good rides so often we got a bit bored... weird but true.

Multiple parks in a day was easy, not least as you could park close to the door and walk in. You could see your car from the entry gate etc. mad.

At sea world one of the announcers asked the minimal crowd where people were from (a crazy amount of interaction if youve ever seen how many people would normally be there) and no one was from the USA. He actually thanked us all for coming over from other countries.


* - I didnt know that Vanilla Ice also did this song about his mustang, he was a bit obsessed perhaps lol



I wasnt a 5.0 fan... not that quick, very slow soft top and handling wasnt the best lol Fun to have for 2 weeks tho in Florida.

[veg]

I was on leave in Tunisia had gone back to my room to cool down, turned the telly on and watched the second plane live. Went back to the lobby and everyone was watching it. Flew back 2 days later and was crapping it on the flight. Then when I got back to work everything was heightened. Bizarre times. Hit home being in the emergency services and was the only time for a few weeks where there wasn’t the usual ‘banter’ between us and trumpton.

[arrow]

I was driving to work at Jaguar Hailwood on an agency job, just gone over the Runcorn/Widnes bridge. Couldn't believe what I was hearing. Got to work and loads of lads were saying "I hope bush doesn't nuke um".

[chrisg]

Sept 14, 2024 19:09:10 GMT 1 arrow said:

I was driving to work at Jaguar Hailwood on an agency job, just gone over the Runcorn/Widnes bridge. Couldn't believe what I was hearing. Got to work and loads of lads were saying "I hope bush doesn't nuke um".

Where abouts at JLR, I used to inspect the all the power presses in Stamping and all the lifts and cranes in Body in White?  Small world.

[arrow]

All over really. I was in off track repair (electrical) for a while. Mostly collecting data for sub contractors.

[chrisg]

I bet we passed each other every other day 

[arrow]

Sept 14, 2024 22:20:59 GMT 1 chrisg said:

I bet we passed each other every other day 

Sent you a pm.

[compo]

On outage at Didcot A.

[Brigitte]

At work, of course. The old boss came down and told me what was happening. I thought, ah, another revival of "War of the Worlds", I have to finish my work. It did not turn out this way. When I realized this had really happened, I instantly knew civil liberties will go down the drain.

[headcoats]

Never never expected the twin towers to collapse and wasn't there another building nearby that just collapsed too 😳