I knew someone who worked in the mailroom of the South Tower. One of the highest floors. He told me that after the first plane hit, the folks in the mailroom waited for some kind of instruction on what to do. Then he heard over the PA something along the lines of "we are aware of the situation at the North Tower, please remain in place, we will update you as events occur". He said his boss told him "fuck that, let's go!" and they did. Said all he had time for was to grab his cap and they hightailed it outta there. No doubt that supervisor saved his life!
How did they get down fast enough?! I guess the elevators worked at high speed. I don't remember the time elapse between the two hits, but I don't think it was appreciably long.
Heard on the news this morning an interview with a survivor who was jumping down the stairs about 12 steps at a time. He then stopped to help an asthmatic woman slowly go down the rest of the way. He got her to an ambulance but they wouldn't let him stay with her. Then the tower collapsed on top of the ambulance. He thought she died, but found out a few weeks later at the company's "we survived" party that she was actually alive, and at the party. They emailed each other every year until about ten years ago when he didn't receive an email, and he hasn't heard from her since. The news station also wasn't able to track her down.
So many intense stories from that time. Thanks for sharing. After someone mentioned the time elapse above, I was thinking I might be flying down the staircase in ways I could not previously imagine.
Asthmatic and being around at 9/11 is probably a big reason he stopped hearing from her i would assume.
Still, the fact he slowed down, helped her, thought she did die, and finding out she lived and staying in contact is one of the nicest stories I've heard about 9/11
Yes, I’d definitely be booking it down, but we have the benefit of hindsight. I remember that day, and, at the time, we thought the first strike could have been accidental. Younger folks forget we didn’t yet have smartphones and cell phones themselves were still pretty uncommon so “instant news” wasn’t yet a thing — we had no way of obtaining info other than what we were told.
They also initially reported it was a much smaller plane (a Cessna, if I recall). I suspect that’s because no one could wrap their head around the reality: a hijacked commercial plane was intentionally flown into a major U.S. building.
That's right. I remember watching it live on TV and reporters were theorising how a plane could crash into the tower and what is going on and.... holy shit! Was that another plane that just slammed into the other tower? At that moment, everything changed.
I think a lot of people joined the breaking story after the first impact and before the second. My whole fifth grade class watched the second plane hit on live TV on the CRT mounted up in the corner of the classroom.
CNN had a web site - but it went down. I was half way around the world but I remember thinking either my internet is down or this is really, really bad.
Landlines were in most homes at the time (and dialup internet was common) and they were asking people to stay off the lines unless it was an emergency. People weren't able to make calls because of the heavy usage.
hell i popped on yahoo messenger or whatever and the Aussies were talking about it, that's when I turned on the tv. what a backwards ass way to find out something like this was going on
I remember watching a documentary where people would still say that the other tower ist safe and they still went up with the elevator back to their work place...
I was in the break room of my office in Chicago getting coffee and talking to a colleague when the office manager came in and mentioned a plane hit the World Trade Center. My co-worker and I talked how a pilot could lost control of his small plane to hit the WTC. It was not until we were told that the second tower was hit that we realized the severity of what was happening.
Lots of people probably recalled the ‘93 bombing where the stairwells filled with smoke and were packed with people and ended up being the source of a lot of injuries.
No. I was on the top floor at the lounge a few months before this happened, on a field trip from school.
The elevators were down and we had to walk down 40 flights of steps to reach the next elevator. It was a stream of students from schools all over the country that were visiting on the same day. It took forever. You weren’t moving as fast as the fastest kid, you were moving as fast as the line.
The floors were tall. It took us 25 minutes to get down to floor 40.
It's not even exiting the building in 17 minutes. All they had to do is get below the floor of impact in 17 minutes. Most people below the floor of impact survived. If you were anywhere above the floor of impact, you almost certainly died. So they just had to get a few levels lower and they'd be ok.
I just saw that the pentagon was hit at 9:37am est. I woke up that AM and had the singular (ie, never felt this way before or after) compulsion to call my dad (not my parents) upon waking while still in bed. I was so tired and just said, "Dad?" and he said, "Turn on the TV, the Pentagon has been attacked." Then the day unfurled from there. Still feeling sick and about to burst into tears over it. Sorry to make this about me, just feeling emotional and also missing my dad.
I’m with you on missing my dad today. After the second plane hit and it was clearly not an accident, I called mine because he was old enough to remember Pearl Harbor and I wanted to know if it felt similar. We were on the phone together as everything else unfolded that morning.
Hugs to you from one Dead Dads Club member to another.
😭❤️ My former manager told me there is a time in your life before and after your parents are gone and they are markedly different. I could not imagine then and I am glad I didn't waste a second trying, because nothing prepares you for it, and I now have the rest of my life to know exactly what it feels like.
I was on the phone with a tech on a roof in DC fixing an antenna. We were talking about the towers as he worked and all of a sudden he is like holy shit dude a plane crashed into the pentagon. He was like fuck this im calling my boss, im not gonna be on any roofs.
I was living on the west coast and my cell phone ringing woke me up. I saw it was my stepdad calling and assumed it was a butt dial and ignored it. He left a voice mail, so I checked it just to make sure it was, in fact, a butt dial and all he said was "watch your ass out there." I was very confused so I got out of bed and walked to my living room to turn on the news to see if something was going on. All three of my roommates were already watching the news and one of them said "the twin towers are gone."
I have a distant in-law connection to someone who was working on a high floor who, when the first tower was hit, immediately ran for the stairs. They say as he was exiting the building the second tower was struck. Based on this story, it was enough time.
Yeah, they had express elevators from like, floor 1 to 82 or something like that? I heard it mentioned from a survivor in the doc I watched last night. Said she took that first express elevator, then a second elevator to get to her office a few more floors up.
If I recall correctly, he told me he went down the elevator. The panic hadn't set in yet because no one would imagine another plane would hit the South Tower.
That's one of the tragedy of the South Tower- there was time for them to get out - it's one of the rules that changed after - if the building next to you is on fire - you leave as well
I remember the blackout years later - was in a building and instructions were the same - stay put. Remembering hearing that about this - a coworker & I looked at each other and booked it.
yep, the way I was then, I would've done what they instructed and stayed. By the time the 2003 blackout happened, I was at work, it was the afternoon. We were all still raw from 9/11 and worried. Sure enough, security walked thru the halls, tell us all to remain at our desks until otherwise instructed. We all looked at each other and said "Nope!" we all got out of there immediately!!
Thats mad, I would have stayed with the mindset it couldn't have been an attack. I would have convinced myself the plane malfuncted of some sort and was a one off
I can't imagine how terrifying this must have been. Really brings home the individual human stories from that day. I visited the the site a few months ago and it's really got a strange atmosphere there still
Here’s Edna. Looks like a lot of people I know. Hard to think that was her last day. Glad she’s remembered though. Brave, she was fighting til the bitter end.
I took your comment as “she’s pretty…just a regular woman who went to work…..” Somehow the comment makes her very real for me. Like she got up, did her hair, put on some nice clothes like any other day. Except it wasn’t like any other day.
It's burned into my brain. I wish I could go back and stop myself from listening, but at the same time I feel like remembering that man's last moment is the least I can do.
I worked credit card collections at the time, and we routinely called folks at work back then to negotiate payment programs, etc, and they'd inevitably have excuses as to why they couldn't talk, which we'd always share with a bit of a chuckle whenever we got a really creative or funny excuse. Someone stood up & said, "listen to this one, guy just said he couldn't talk bc a plane hit his office building." Then another person says, "thats weird, I just had someone give me the same excuse..." Then there was a third one. Then our supervisor came out, and said, "hey, folks...um, we shut off the autodialer, we're gonna hold off on calls for a minute."
A few minutes later, they rolled a tv in & we watched the 2nd tower get hit live & everything else unfold. It was surreal.
Did we work at the same place? I was at work calling customers about delinquent Gateway and Zales accounts on the morning of September 11. The last guy I talked to cussed me out because he claimed we were ‘under attack, why TF are you calling.’ A minute later the whole floor was freaking out, people rushing to the cafeteria to watch the TV.
There are so many calls and voicemails like that too. :( Some families got voicemails with their loved ones saying goodbye and how they love them for the voice message to abruptly stop at the time a tower collapses. One of the haunting ones is the 911 call with the snarky guy who yells something like "OH GOD" and there's a temp loud sound and then silence. :/ I hate war. It should never be needed. Civilians generally pay too heavy a toll even to this day.
I’ve only ever read transcripts from the calls, but those and the ones from passengers on the flights calling their loved ones are rough to get through. So much suffering and so many people preparing for an awful end, but the ones that hit me hardest are the ones who sounded hopeful for a chance they’d make it.
The calls from the passengers always get me. I've heard/read the transcript of Brian calling his wife Julie multiple times throughout the years and I still cry every single time.
The 9/11 Memorial Museum has a little walled off room that is all videos of the jumpers. I was okayish until I got there. Just burst into tears.
Also doing the One World Trade Center after the museum was a bad idea. All I could think about was what it would have been like to be forced to either burn alive or jump.
Sadly there still is quite a lot of footage. :( All haunting af. But I get what you mean. We'd see a lot more first person deaths if we had more tech back then. I'm kind of glad we didn't have it as much because the videos that do exist are so heavy.
People would have been live streaming in the towers that couldn't escape above where the planes crashed. It would have been even more horrific, but at the same time sometimes I feel like it's important to witness such things, almost like it's respecting their wishes and being with them for that time.
It’s so weird! I was in NJ for work a few years ago. Decided to go to NYC on a Sunday morning. Came out of the PATH station around 8 am. There was a light rain falling and almost nobody around.
Should’ve seen it during COVID. I lived in Jersey City in 2020 and only made it into NYC a couple of times, but having been before and since, it was practically a ghost town by comparison.
Funny enough, I’m typing this on a flight back from JFK after a work trip up there this week, so now I’m directly comparing how packed the places I went were versus during lockdown. Crazy.
Was looking at pics of people hanging or climbing out of the windows. The white columns of the buildings that flank the windows seem close enough together that you could maybe wedge your body between them and shimmy down a floor or two, try to kick/punch/head butt in the window?
Idk just wondering what I’d have done. Surely fallen to my death as well.
There was a raging fire of jet-fuel behind them in the core of the building and so they were reaching their head out to breath with the floors completely gone for multiple stories-so any climb at such a nauseating height would have been absolutely terrifying and unwise. Yet some people were trying versions of that but most (trigger warning do need read further if not in a mental space for hard visuals) were purposefully jumping and even swan diving once they comprehended the inevitable. It was quite a few people-witnesses including my friends on the ground had to see the landings. For me I cope with the memory if I think about it as a choice by each person for the last moment of their life to fly.
Those windows are reinforced to prevent people launching themselves out. Some people tried and failed. One guy made it down quite a few floors, but disappeared when the first tower collapsed. He wasn't on the tower that collapsed, but the shockwave probably knocked him off unfortunately
My coworker Ed at Genuity - 110th floor. Finally got to visit the memorial last year. It moved me more than I was expecting. We lost a lot of great people that day.
The two largest and tallest skyscrapers, in the city most known for its skyscrapers. They were nearly an entire city block footprint EACH and 110 floors. They were basically each entire self contained cities.
It really is amazing that there weren't considerably more victims beyond the too-many we lost that day (and continue to lose to this day due to the toxic smoke, dust, etc)
One of the things I remember that I kind of forgot about until just now is that we initially all thought the casualties would be in the ten of thousands.
The one thing that stuck with me in that regard - hearing stories from ER nurses and docs saying they were preparing for an insane mass casualty event, as you might expect with the scale of this disaster. Thousands if not tens of thousands of dead and wounded were expected. Instead, the hospitals saw almost no one. There really weren’t many people seriously injured. Rather, most people either escaped with no/minor injuries or never escaped at all.
I was 10 when it happened and I remember my mum talking to a neighbour about how they thought it was 30000 dead. Remember finding out it was 3000 a couple of years later and think “oh that’s not too bad”. Obviously it is but that was where my 12 year old brain went
I learned recently that a football game the night before went longer than usual and resulted in a large amount of people oversleeping and running late to work.
My grandmother worked in one of the towers for many years…she traveled there every weekday for work. She was there for the first bombing, but luckily retired a few years before 9/11. I used to visit her at work every year during the summer and they had a great group of people in her office that would fill little me up with candy and sodas. Some of those people are no longer with us because of what happened that day.
I recently visited NYC to show my wife the city and we stopped by the old site…pretty surreal to be back there all these years later and the towers being gone where I used to play as a kid nearly 80 stories up.
I grew up in a small town with a population right under 1000. I was a young, sheltered kid at the time and it was hard for me to grasp that the amount of people we lost that day was 3 times the size of my small community. The world felt so small but so big at the same time.
Went to ground 0 in 2009 was astonished by the surface on the ground left empty, was crazy to me that the new building in construction was still not above street level.
I was a kid when I got to visit them in 1995. When we were standing in front of them, I couldn't believe the size; I'd never seen a structure so large in my life (granted, I was only 12). As we walked in, my dad, for some odd reason, said to me "You know, if this towers ever fell, it would be the greatest tragedy in American history". I'm sure he wasn't the first one to think that, but it was still an odd thing to say as one of the first comments he would make during our visit to them.
It was because it was bombed by terrorists in 1993 two years before you visited. the plan was to blow up the foundation and make one of the towers topple over. The Idea of it being attacked was already in the American consciousness at the time, so a very normal thing for your father to be thinking of.
Not just for one to fall, but the goal was for one to fall towards the other, bringing them both down.
u/creaturefeature16, your dad definitely wasn’t the first to consider it. Morgan Stanley’s Director of Security had them practicing evacuation for years prior because he knew they were a likely target after the 1993 bombing.
He was a hero in two armies, (he's on the cover of We Were Soldiers), and a hero on 9/11. There's a statue of him at the Infantry Museum at Fort Benning.
Even more so than if you were in one - at the top - stood by a window of Windows on the World - the restaurant at the top of one - and felt the building sway in the wind.
"In a video by 9/11 Revisited, Cintron's husband, William, described the heart-wrenching moments before she died.
The footage reportedly shows that he "tentatively identified" her as the woman standing at the edge of the hole for 20 minutes, hoping for rescue.
However, another man, whose fiancée was also in the tower, claimed the woman was actually his fiancée, Karen Juday, based on the clothing she wore that day, as detailed by 911 Revisited.
Other footage reveals two others struggling to survive alongside Cintron, with the emotional sounds of a woman speaking on the phone and sirens blaring in the background."
Oh StoryCorps is so good. All the 9/11 ones make me cry so hard. The poor man who lost both his sons, the woman who didn't know if she should let his ex talk to their daughter cause he thought she was in school. Heartbreaking. So human.
They have lots of wonderful interviews and animations for them, not just for 9/11 but all sorts of experiences from all sorts of people. I recommend watching them.
I was 22 when it happened and was so traumatized at the time by all of the footage, but couldn’t stop watching. Now at an adultier age, I’m pretty glad there’s not more footage available. Honestly don’t know if we could handle it.
I remember when people began hurling themselves to their deaths and the broadcaster (I think Dan Rather?) being literally shocked into confusion at what we were all seeing. You could hear the disbelief and horror in his voice for a few seconds before he regained his composure.
i was in 9th grade, teachers were told to not talk about it. my 80 year old english teacher wheeled in the tv and said, "i taught your principal when he was your age. he can't do anything to me. everyone needs to see this"
I was in 6th in social studies or English (same teacher.) He kept it on and they kept all students in the classroom they were in until we were bused home early. My parents were still at work so I just sat for hours watching the news with my younger sister.
I was also in 5th grade! But I lived in a commutable distance to nyc in NJ so we were on FULL media lockdown, no tvs at all for that day. Makes sense- almost everyone had a parent working in the city, many in those buildings, and no elementary student actually knows the building their parent works in. Kids just started getting picked up one by one and few came back the next day.
I remember the sounds of the impacts of the fallen being captured before the towers fell. I can’t remember who caught the footage, but it included video of rescuers in the lobby of one of the tower’s. You heard the sounds and the you could see the realization of what it was on their faces.
I believe, not long after that, a random elevator delivered a group of survivors to the lobby even though they all had seemed to stop working some time prior. If I remember correctly, that group escaped before the collapse.
The elevators weren’t working but there was a group of people trapped in one who dug their way out through the elevator shaft into an adjacent bathroom on the 50th floor. They then took the stairs and made it out 5 minutes before the tower collapsed. They are probably who you are thinking of.
That very well could be. Everything about that time has blended together in my memory. The most relatable content of the time for me was the episode of South Park where one of the moms spends weeks/months laying on the couch watching the 24-hr news coverage.
Eh, I think you’re right though. I just watched the French brothers’ documentary (the one I think you were referring to) and they specifically show those people coming out of an elevator he said.
Pretty sure the fire fighters in the lobby mentioning the sounds of bodies hitting the awnings and such was from the Naudet brothers documentary
They got caught up on accident. Trying to record the mundane tasks fire fighters do on the daily and then all hell broke loose and they stuck with the fire department the whole day documenting everything from their perspective
I cannot watch the footage again, but I swear when my classmates were watching the news in our physics classroom that someone on TV said something about debris falling out of the towers, and then cutting to a lot of very, very clear shots of the jumpers. All of the broadcasters were simply speechless with horror. I remember at least a good ten to fifteen seconds where no one on TV said a word, and no one around me made any noise. Numb with shock.
The footage wasn’t edited and released until much later. 25 years later, all of us realizing together what we were seeing continues to be one of the most surreal experiences I’ve ever had.
I think I had the Today Show on. Somehow Matt Lauer is tied to that day in my mind. As I recall, it took a lot of stations a bit to start coverage due to A. initial reports the first strike was accidental and B. access to the area became highly restricted very quickly.
I can understand. But as difficult as it is, this is why everyone should. I’d like to go. I’ve heard some of the audio, and linking it to faces would be extremely emotional, but necessary.
And I’d rather do it at the museum than via some kids YouTube stream.
Other than the WWII museum in New Orleans, it’s the best museum I have ever been to. Give yourself like 4 hours to get through everything. It is deceivingly enormous.
I'm not a crier...but this was the point in the museum where I suddenly burst into tears without warning. I'm not sure how much more there was to see but I cut my visit short right there and then.
To this day I have never experienced such an abrupt and uncontrollable reaction to something.
I hope to go back one day but might skip that room.
My relationship to TV and online news has not been the same since 9/11. I watched the Today Show to wake up in college and grad school, but then I watched it EVERY DAY. I will hit up CNN or a local news channel online 15 times a day still.
The trapped people and the people who made the other decision stuck with me for a very, very long time. In the initial footage and news coverage, it was ubiquitous. It was live on air. It conveyed in a way nothing else could the mortal peril that many were placed into - normal Tuesday morning one minute - this poor woman looking out a gash in a building the next.
I learned today that a colleague of the last decade was held by security in the lobby of WTC7 all morning - all during the fires and the people who made the other choice - and were let out a little before the first tower collapsed. WTC7 would go on to collapse later in the afternoon after the structural damage from being near WTC 1 and 2.
I do too! I check a few times a day to see if some shit is going down that I need to know about or somehow be prepared for. And my god, the eerie stillness that landed like a door slamming shut that morning, sucking all the air out of the room. Even all the way across the country where I was living. It was warm and breezy and you could hear a pin drop in my usually bustling city.
Totally agree. I described in a different sub - i have some prolonged periods of tinnitus (thanks covid) and that spatial low volume high pitched whine like what a movie sounds like after an explosion. It felt like we were all existing in that.
I drove a few hours home from grad school to my parents’ house that day shortly after the towers collapsed. And admittedly while I stayed off the highways, it was like a ghost town everywhere. Collective profound shock.
Totally agree. I was 17 when it happened. When I watch the footage every year, it's like reliving it all over again. It's so awful and heartwrenching. I make myself watch it to remember.
I was 13 and I remember how sick to my stomach this made me feel. Just knots for days. I had absolutely no friends or family in NYC and yet it felt like it hit so close to home. I live 3 hours from the city, but it felt like my hometown was attacked. I think that’s how every American felt at the time.
Similar age, I was 14. Our school chose not to tell us, but the other middle school did. The French teacher traveled between both schools and spilled the beans since she’d been in the car, and it was all over the radio. By lunch though, my really great America history teacher turned on the news for us, citing that history was happening right now and she’d be a terrible history teacher to hide it.
We live in Ohio, but I had family in Maryland that worked in DC. At the time I must have only seen the towers, because I had no idea the pentagon had been hit. I got home and my mom gave me tightest hug and said, “Uncle M, Aunt C, B, and K are all… ok, all accounted for.” God that pause was so long. It felt like time stood still. She mentioned them specifically because my aunt worked near the pentagon. Not knowing that it had also been hit, I thought for sure she was going to say they were traveling and on one of the planes since they traveled for work a lot, including NYC.
Eighth graders traditionally took a class trip to DC. Not my class.
I was 11 and I remember it happened on a Tuesday because I had after school detention, and that was always on a Tuesday. I hadn’t told my mom yet cuz I knew her husband was gonna whoop my ass, so I was just going to show up home late and hope I came up with an excuse before then. When this happened, I remember I was wearing a red and black striped polo with black Jean shorts. My teacher turned the tv on right as the second plane hit. I remember laying in the yard with my friends Nate, Steven and Brandon after school, and we lived near DFW, so we remarked how crazy it was there were no planes in the sky. Everyone got to go home that day, even kids with detention, and I remember literally thinking “thank god for 9/11”, cuz I was gonna get my ass beat otherwise lol
Here is another one for you; after the attack, a disgusting remark was made by someone that the collapse of the world trade made his tower the new tallest one. That someone was voted president of the USA and is on his second term right now. The more you know. what a way to piss on the memory of those people. I am not even american and it infuriate me.
Everyone in those towers would have had the ability to upload videos in real time. People would have been live streaming, loved ones would be on FaceTime seeing what their loved ones were going through in real time, knowing there was nothing they could do, and their last moments would be recorded forever by people posting to socials. Even the small amount of voicemails related to specific individuals is already traumatic enough to hear.
With all of the distasteful memes and jokes made about tragedies in today’s age, I’m glad we never got anything super personal like that. Would be even more devastating to see, especially for those affected by it.
My (now ex) husband works for a company that converts analog recordings to digital ones. He says the most popular home video recordings he gets are of births and 9/11. He’s seen 9/11 from every conceivable angle. There’s tons of footage out there that hasn’t made it to the internet.
Everyone commenting on getting live video from inside the towers... don't forget about from inside the planes! If mobile devices had been as common as they are now, the second tower and pentagon planes may have never reached their targets.
I was 12 when this happened. Eastern Europe, my local TV stations just switched to US news feeds, at some point the TV translators gave up and the TV stations just aired the footage raw. As the only one somewhat fluent in English in my family, I was put on translation duty.
That was a rough evening.
I can't imagine it. I can't. You just clock in to your job in the morning, then boom. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide. All you can do is pick your death.
Do you hold on to hope, try to the last, wait, believing someone will come in to save you? They must, right? You live in New York, the capital of the world, there's no more advanced place on this whole planet, there's technology and procedure and process in place. Someone must come. Surely they must.
Do you make peace with your fate and wait for it to arrive?
Do you hold on to the little control you have in this situation and jump?
I was working in a small town pub in England. I went to the shop to get some cigarettes, and the women on the till were listening to the radio, and saying something awful had happened in NYC but there wasn't a load of information.
I ran back to the pub and put the TV on, and the whole day people just sat there watching this terrible thing unfold.
I don't know if this is a fake memory or not, but I swear we were watching when the second tower was hit, and then they collapsed.
It was the first time I'd experienced live coverage of something like that.
It was a beautiful, sunny morning and my birthday was (is) the day after. It felt weird waking up on the 12th, thinking all of those people had expected to do exactly what I had the day before; gone to work, come home, gone to bed and to sleep, and that they didn't get to do that. They had no idea when they went to work that morning that they weren't going to ever come home.
All these videos and photographs of 25 years ago have me walking around with the feeling that I have a five pound block of ice in my gut as I remember the horrible events that I witnessed live on TV as I was getting ready to go to work.
I went to work in New York for a job about 4 months ago I had a month in downtown NYC for this traveling work contract I took up.
On maybe day 10 I decided to go visit the 9/11 memorial. I’m from the generation of being a kid who experienced 9/11 via a tv box on a cart being brought into the classroom suddenly.
I never realized the trauma we have from that day for me it was sitting silent for over two decades. I went to visit the memorial that day on a whim said it’s good weather I have a free day let’s start off by paying tribute and than I got there and I don’t know why but a flood of emotions and adrenaline hit me like a fucking train I had tears flowing like a water fall from my eyes as I looked a the names of the survivors I just couldn’t bare the flashbacks of the falling angels that I saw live that day here I was 30+ years old balling my eyes out making other folks cry. Standing there at the void of what once was is surreal web of emotional experiences and has an atmosphere to it that just can’t be described.
I was 9, and I'm so glad you said this because as the years go by, the impact this has had on my psyche has only grown. It's a flood of trauma and emotions that took a very long time to materialize.
I'll never forget waking up late for school, going upstairs to the living room and my mom watching the news in absolute horror, sobbing. The images of the planes crashing playing over and over again.. and the world changing overnight.
I was about to turn 5 and and all I remember is watching my mom cry over two burning skyscrapers. It’s one of my earliest memories. Most of my life I’ve been fascinated by 9/11 footage. I think it’s my inner child trying to understand the horrors my mom saw and felt that morning. I always associate this day with the first time I saw my mom crying and how my 5 year old self was confused and afraid over her heart breaking.
Same. I feel like all of us who lived thru it have unprocessed trauma. We truly remember the shock & pain of the day. I’m thankful for all the discussion on the 25th anniversary.
To this very moment of my life, I cannot believe and also thank all the Air Traffic Controllers who got literally every plane in the landed safely so quickly. Literally imagine that. And also, our great AMAZING NEIGHBORS to the North in Canada - take a good read about the folks in Northeastern Canada where EVERY SINGLE flight coming in from Europe to the US had to land. It’s called Operation Yellow Ribbon. CANADIANS took in stranded Americans for days until they could travel home. It’s really moving.
After 25 years it is still horrific to see the footage of the lives lost. I was there. I worked around the corner from the towers. Fortunately I was late to work that day. From my rooftop in Brooklyn I saw the planes hit and the towers fall. There was a poem published in the New Yorker right after the attack.
It’s still beautiful and sad to read
\*Try to Praise the Mutilated World BY Adam Zagajewski Try to praise the mutilated world. Remember June's long days, and wild strawberries, drops of rosé wine. The nettles that methodically overgrow the abandoned homesteads of exiles. You must praise the mutilated world. You watched the stylish yachts and ships; one of them had a long trip ahead of it, while salty oblivion awaited others. You've seen the refugees going nowhere, you've heard the executioners sing joyfully. You should praise the mutilated world. Remember the moments when we were together in a white room and the curtain fluttered. Return in thought to the concert where music flared. You gathered acorns in the park in autumn and leaves eddied over the earth's scars. Praise the mutilated world and the gray feather a thrush lost, and the gentle light that strays and vanishes and returns.
I have seen higher resolution video of this part ! the dark black era had a floor with desks and you could see people moving about ! these people were waiting to be saved ! may they RIP !
I got to work just hearing on the radio about the first plane hitting, thinking it was just a small plane or something... I got into my office and asked if anyone heard about it, They told me a second one hit, immediately had an "oh shit" this wasn't an accident moment... No work got done that day.
That was the same thing we thought, I was 15 and just finished PE class and heard a plane hit and we though it was an accident, then someone said another plane hit and other one and we were like that was intentional... we ended up watching it on the news the rest of the day in various classes
Seeing these desperate folks hanging on to survival; in shock and alone above NYC makes me feel so sad and angry. The loneliness they must have felt looking out is terrible to contemplate
I always wondered if those people were truly expecting rescue. Is that a good thing? Maybe a positive outlook in their last moments, they survived and the rescue operation was underway. Or maybe it was exhausting hoping and hoping and hoping and rescue not coming.
Imagine the sounds the building was making as it was about to collapse on top of them. I hope their deaths were as quick as possible when the time came and weren’t suffering for days impossible to recover in the carnage.
I would say yes, I do believe most people assumed that they would be rescued, and no one thought for a second that the towers would collapse. That wasn’t even fathomable until it happened. Also, it should be mentioned that there was a rescue operation underway by every fire station for many miles around.
I worked in public access tv in Seattle and people used ys as a place to put extra footage they captured (1999 WTO) and a couple who had been in an apartment staying with friends posted footage of people jumping. They had no idea, but many more people had to jump than I ever imagined.
That poor woman and the rest had no expectation that the building would collapse.
I thought they could get helicopters up there or something, but it was so shocking
These are the kind of videos that at a certain age, all American young people should be required to view in school. You have to experience the gut wrenching horror to be impacted by it, sadly. We are forgetting, or have already forgotten. I’m so sorry Edna.
I think one of the worst was watching footage some years later of the firemen staging in the lobby of one of the towers and hearing the horrible sound of people hitting the roof overhead after they jumped...or hearing them describe the concrete in the courtyard.
I still have this burned into my brain, i was in school and i cant ever forget it , especially the jumpers …. You know that they’re not gonna make it, but you have that moment of hope because that’s their only option and you realize reality is watching your history is happening and you’re just there. I was a junior in high school and I can still see the whole thing happening and I also remember how quiet the day was.
You looked up in the sky, and there was not a single plane in sight, it was quiet you knew the world changed half my friends went into the military most came home. Some didn’t the world keeps changing, but this was such a drastic change that I explained it to people now and it’s just hard to fathom.
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u/Forsaken_Republic_98 20h ago
I knew someone who worked in the mailroom of the South Tower. One of the highest floors. He told me that after the first plane hit, the folks in the mailroom waited for some kind of instruction on what to do. Then he heard over the PA something along the lines of "we are aware of the situation at the North Tower, please remain in place, we will update you as events occur". He said his boss told him "fuck that, let's go!" and they did. Said all he had time for was to grab his cap and they hightailed it outta there. No doubt that supervisor saved his life!