What medium alerted you on 9/11/2001?

[Mistral]

I had stayed up playing video games w/my roommate until 4am MST. I crawled into bed(it was my day off) and was awoken by my roommate's girlfriend pounding on my door. I roused enough to tell her to F--- off. She yelled thru my door,

"Jesus, (Mistral), I think we're under attack!" I said something about her smoking pot so early in the morning and she told me it was on TV. This chick has one of the strongest personalities I've ever encountered and when the hint of panic filtered thru my fogged brain I came out to the living room. I hadn't even had a chance to read the scrolling yellow ticker at the bottom of the screen when the 2cnd plane smashed into the other tower right in front of my eyes. I hadn't made it to the couch yet and ended up sitting on the floor rather abruptly. I remember an odd corner of my mind noticing we had the Today show on, and thinking, "What a weird place to get news from."

Like most of America, I sat glued to my tv, switching back from NBC to CBS over and over. When the rumors of planes out of LAX being hijacked/unaccounted for came on we got nervous, living near a potential target as we did. I was actually in the car when I heard about the plane in Pennsylvania-I'd smoked all of my cigs and run out to the corner store for more.

 

[bigdaddy]

I was in high school, I watched out of gym and into a classroom and the teacher had a wire out the window and we got ABC. I walked in about 10:04, the first tower just fell before I showed up.

I remember that there were about 5 girls that I wanted to fucking hit in the head for having no god damn clue what the fuck this was.

Then I remember the school announcing something increasingly stupid at around 10:40. Those 35 minutes were very very very long. The local news guy I remember was crying is eyes out. The school basically lied to everyone and the next period I tried telling people the truth but no one would believe me. I was going "The Twin Towers fell, they are gone, planes hit them and they are gone" and the girl I was talking to is like "What like the top fell off?" or something. I'm like "No the towers got hit and the whole thing is in a pile in the middle of NYC, nothing is left they think 20,000 could be dead!"

My math teacher was a fucking asshole and wouldn't let us watch it, because math is so much more important than the day that will define our lives. A day like Pearl Harbor and the assassinations of the 60s.

Then on the bus home we listened to the radio to check for up dates. At home I watched Fox News and they showed people jumping from the towers and the new reporter yelling at the studio for doing so.

 

[Geckothan]

They announced in school in the morning assembly (which I skipped as usual) then I heard people walking around going on about it as if it was happening in our own country and we were all going to die, I just 'd at them. Then I got home and it was all over the news on every TV channel and BBC2 didn't even show The Simpsons that evening because of it. Needless to say, I was pissed.

 

[TGTheodore]

I was getting ready for work and had turned the TV on for background noise. It was between the two attacks.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a building smoking and wondered what foreign city it was. When I finally took a closer look I realized it was the WTC.

--Ted

 

[John Clark]

First heard about it at about 11am US East Coast time on BBC tv.

 

[bigdaddy]

The Simpsons that evening because of it. Needless to say, I was pissed.

I'm sure the 3,000 people who died were really pissed off too.

How old were you at the time?

 

[Harvey]

My dad woke me up and told me. I mostly heard about it on the radio that morning, though the television was on for a few minutes.

 

[Trekker4747]

I was at work and a co-worker got a phonecall from his wife -an unusual event- when he got off the phone with her he told me that she had told him that a plane crashed into one of the WTC towers and then minutes later a second plane crashed into the other.

I then ran into the breakroom and turned on the news and... A large group of people where in out of the breakroom all day watching this event unfold.

 

[Captain Shaw]

I was at work and i heard on the radio a plane had crashed into the WTC.
Now at the time i could not remember what the WTC was and i thought it was a accident also i thought the building would have collapses straight away so thought OMG hundreds of people are dead.
Then when i got home there it was on the TV and nothing could have perperd me for that sight.
I remember scrolling across the TV screen where all these country's that hated the USA releasing press statements screaming it was not us it was not us.

 

[Lindley]

I heard about it in an elevator of Wean Hall at Carnegie Mellon. It was my freshman year and I was on my way to a class.

About midway through that class someone popped his head in and said they'd decided to cancel all remaining classes that day.

On my way back to my room, I noticed there was a Red Cross blood donation center set up in the university center. I'm still not sure if that was coincidence or not.

 

[Christopher]

I was on the phone with my father, who'd been hospitalized for some ultimately minor issue the night before. He said something about a plane crashing into the WTC, and I didn't quite know what he was talking about; he seemed to think it was an accident, or at least that's how it sounded to me. Once the phone call ended, I went downstairs and turned on CNN. I saw one tower engulfed in flames, the other invisible within the smoke -- and then as the smoke shifted I came to the horrified realization that the other tower wasn't even there anymore. I can't describe how much that shook me. I couldn't process the reality of it. How could it not be there? I wondered if I was watching some kind of special-effects simulation.

But when the second tower collapsed before my eyes a few minutes later, it became unbearably real. For a second, I saw the movement and I thought it was just the camera shifting, but then, once I realized what I was seeing... I could only pray that it wasn't real, that I'd wake up from the nightmare.

And as horrific as that 3000-person death toll was, we initially feared far worse. There had been tens of thousands of people in those buildings when they were struck, and there was no way of knowing how many had had time to get out.

 

[Kira's Mom]

I was sleeping in because I'd worked late the night before, and my dad woke me up to tell me. I put the T.V. on CNN right away and just watched in horror.

 

[nx1701g]

I was in my chemistry class - we'd just finished watching a video on laboratory safety with a particularly nasty shot of glass tubing going through someone's hand followed by a contact lens getting fused to an eyeball - when we shut off the video we saw flashes of CBS' coverage but we kept turning back on the video until our Chemistry teacher decided to see what was so important.

We watched the news coverage instead of the video following. When I realized it was NYC I had a weird feeling because my family was supposed to have gone to NYC that week but my mother decided at the last minute that she didn't want to go so we stayed home.

As for not being permitted to continue watching it I can understand that because I remember there were debates in the main office about what they should do. The School Psychologist said that they had to be very careful about what was being shown on television because they were worried about reactions to it. Many of the teachers turned it off, except for the political and history teachers, and some tried to have class but gave up.

Oddly I did have math class that day too.

 

[byron lomax]

I'd just come back home from doing a small job for someone, and I was flicking through the channels pretty mindlessly, until I saw footage of smoke rising out of one of the Towers. The news broadcaster was talking about how a commercial plane had crashed into the tower, and just as he was speaking, the second plan flew right into the other tower. At which point it became clear what was happening was even worse than previously imagined.

 

[The Evil Dead]

I was in school, class was interrupted by another teacher...The 2nd teacher told my teacher something in a whisper, my teacher got very quiet, a few moments later there was an announcement over the PA system.

 

[Geckothan]

The Simpsons that evening because of it. Needless to say, I was pissed.

I'm sure the 3,000 people who died were really pissed off too.

How old were you at the time?

11-12'ish.

 

[Aragorn]

I set my alarm to the radio. Even though I was groggy, I did know enough that I didn't set my radio to a talk radio station. Then when they said WTC, I ran out of my room and it was on the TV.

Is it true that some TV stations got complaints from viewers that they were preempting soap operas for news coverage? Or are soap opera watchers just that easy of a target?

 

[J.T.B.]

I was at work, around 7 am MT, and a co-worker walked by and said that a plane had hit the WTC and it was on tv in the break room (the "Today Show" I think) but they didn't know much about it. My first thought was of the B-25 that hit the Empire State Building many years ago, and figured it was a small plane. He went back to his office and I must've had something else to do, but a few minutes later I walked by his office and he said "Come here!" So I went in and he had the radio on and said another plane hit the other tower! That changed everything, you knew immediately that it couldn't be an accident. Then we just started hanging around the tv in my boss's office, not getting much work done.

--Justin

 

[Ethros]

9th November 2001? Don't remember much happening that day

 

[Mistral]

9th November 2001? Don't remember much happening that day

You some kind of smart ass?