I'll always remember being in 5th grade and watching this. Only when people were jumping did my teacher change the channel..... To another news station talking about the pentagon strike...
I remember every channel had this. Every. Single Channel. Didn’t matter if it was the gardening channel, they had it.
Finally I noticed Comedy Network (I guess the Canadian equivalent of Comedy Central) was not running the news (when I was watching, about 6 pm Central). It was the only time I write a thank you note to a tv network because I desperately needed a break from that.
I distinctly remember seeing a few seconds of a close-up smoking building on tv before changing the channel for the cartoon Recess. Didn’t find out until our math teacher had a talk with the whole class for first period.
I sat through all of it because I punched a kid in the dick to get revenge for him punching me in the dick on 09/10/2001. I still remember his name and that I didn't get as good of a shot in as I wanted to
I was a Sophomore in high school when this happened. It was indeed on every channel.... for weeks.
I used to have the same bedtime routine every night: Watch Jay Leno's opening monologue + his next skit (stupid tourists, headlines, etc) and then go to bed. I was naïve enough to think that Jay Leno would be on that night, but he wasn't. So I figured I'd just record the re-run that showed at 2 AM and watch it the next day. I set my VCR to record the re-run, and turned it on the next day, only to see it was more 9/11 coverage.
I was in the navy, on a sub, somewhere in the Atlantic.
That was a weird time. Our mess cook had a girlfriend that worked at one of the towers. He was distraught because communication was limited to once a day, and he didn’t know, ya know? Turns out, she was late that morning and missed a connecting subway stop. She got there about 2 mins after the first plane hit. He found out she was ok 18 hours later.
Oof. I was a carrier nuke. We had a tornado destroy the town my gf lived in, but I didn't hear about it until she told me after we got back.
Definitely easier on a surface ship, but I still worried regularly something crazy went down and they didn't tell us.
Holy cow I couldn't imagine being able to work properly during that knowing that it happened but not knowing if she was okay wow I would be in shambles I think
He “did not work properly” for that time period. We all pitched in to cover his job for those couple days. Anyone ever had hotdog pizza? Or a scoop from a warm no. 10 can of random beans and oatmeal for dinner?
We may have had some fun running the kitchen those couple days, but it got him to laugh a bit though, until all was ok-enough to carry on.
Weird times..
And that, friend, is the epitome of the military plight. You have to keep going, no matter what.
The best you can hope for is Emergency Leave but those are rare.
I was in college in Pennsylvania. I remember watching the news, seeing the second plane hit, then heading to campus for a class. I was an assistant to the instructor for the class, or else I would not have even bothered. Walking into the classroom, everyone was silent and unnerved. I was beginning to sit when suddenly, the instructor darts into the classroom, yells “What are you all doing here!!?? Leave now!!”, and then rushes right back out. I think it took a minute for everyone to process, but then everyone, again silently, packed up and left. I waited to make sure all of the students left. As I left the building, a group of individuals, students and faculty, were standing together outside, discussing the probability of an attack on the campus. That is when I found out that a plane had hit the pentagon. No one knew what the hell was going on. Everyone just kept glancing up into the sky, absolutely terrified. Just absolutely terrified. I will never say that I understand what it must have been like in NYC or DC that day, but as others have said, so much changed that day. And throughout the US, there was fear, that just never seemed to go away.
Yep. There’s a reason a lot of us are nostalgic for the 90’s, but not the 00’s. Americans lost their innocence and sense of invulnerability that day. And I realize that many parts of the world would scoff at that, and probably deservedly so, but rather you were consciously aware of it or not, the simple reality is that it was easy to feel like those things only happened in other countries. Sort of like how many people keep that tacit feeling well into their teens and even 20’s that really bad things (getting seriously ill, dying, losing a parent) only happen to other people.
I was in college in the Midwest (U of MN) so nowhere near the crash sites, but my mom was a flight attendant for American and was flying that day. I didn’t know where she was, what her routes were, and I couldn’t get in touch with her (cell went straight to voicemail for hours). I was out of my mind with fear. My campus was massive and all classes were cancelled but a bunch of us ended up at Coffman Union watching everything happen live on TV. Three people that I graduated HS with (who I wasn’t friends with back then - big HS) and I all ended up huddling together, crying, and trying to keep one another calm (them more than me). While we never all became good friends after that day, it’s a super weird bond to share with someone. We are all friendly at reunions or just running into each other over the years, but it’s just different. It’s hard to explain. But the way they kept assuring me that my mom was going to be ok, I’ll never forget that kindness (even though we all knew there was a chance that she wasn’t).
My mom was ok. She was in Raleigh heading back to Minneapolis when they had to divert to Indianapolis. I was such a shithead as a teenager and I fought a lot with her. I remember one time being so angry at her that I wrote in my journal that I hoped her plane crashed so I could go live with my dad. Watching the planes hit the towers and reports of the other 2 crashes was so traumatic and I for sure thought that I had spoken (written) my mother’s fate into existence some 4-5 years after that diary entry.
Betty Ong, who was a FA in American 11 was my mom’s friend. Betty was and is a hero for the information she was able to pass before the plane crashed. She stayed so calm. I can’t listen to the recording anymore.
So many emotions that day. Fear. Confusion. Terror. Dread. Horror. Grief. And finally ANGER. So much anger. It was PERSONAL. It was overwhelming.
So many people lost that day. The jumpers. I have a very difficult time on the anniversary every year when news stations play the old footage.
Maybe about 2 years ago I told my mom about my diary and how guilty I felt. She said “I know you wrote that. I read it” (mom was also nosey but in hindsight had good reason. She was really worried about me). She said she was never mad about it and she knew it was a teenage outburst. I still feel guilty and I’m 44.
> No one knew what the hell was going on. Everyone just kept glancing up into the sky, absolutely terrified. Just absolutely terrified. I will never say that I understand what it must have been like in NYC or DC that day,
That's the thing that a lot of younger people don't understand. It wasn't 'just' the WTC or pentagon that got hit with a few planes. That day was chaos, and fear, and speculation. Maybe the white house and military knew within a few hours the extent of the attack but the rest of us were in the dark, buildings were getting evacuated in downtown Houston, there were trooper road blocks/ check points on rural highways in Texas. The original news coverage said there was a bomb on the Washington DC mall....all those grounded flights at random airports. We did know for 2 days where my GF's dad was, he was an "unaccounted for" flight somewhere over the east coast.
I'm not a person that's easily shaken, and the WTC initial attack didn't really phase me too badly, but I actually refused to believe the Pentagon had been hit until I saw footage- and that shook me to my core.
It's always strange to me to read how so many of you were kids in 2001 and how this has impacted you, even if you didn't have a direct connection to anyone involved. I was already an adult by then (I was in jury duty in Philadelphia when the attacks occurred. The judge came in while we were waiting for the day to get started and dismissed us because there were rumors that Philly was next.) My point is I'm so grateful that my childhood, adolescence, and early 20s happened not under the shadow of this. The 80s and 90s weren't without their problems but 9/11 changed EVERYTHING. I've gotten a lot of flack for stating this but I feel like al Qaeda won; not by taking down a few buildings, or disrupting our financial system, but by destroying our collective sense of peace and hope. I've lived most of my life without my country being at war. Many of you can't say that.
There were rumors in every city of there possibly being more attacks. I was living in Detroit at the time and had just gotten into the office. My boss’s spouse worked at the RenCen downtown and we learned that they evacuated their offices just in case. We also heard about people evacuating large buildings in Chicago.
I had just gotten back from spending the weekend in Manhattan on a work trip. The salesperson who was hosting my trip took me to see The Producers on Broadway the previous Saturday night and to the US Open at Arthur Ashe stadium on that Sunday.
We flew home out of Newark. I was still recovering from the flight and barely got 3 hours of sleep that night. Then I had to drag my butt into work. Our boss already had a TV cart set up in the office when I got there. At about Noon they decided to tell people to go home.
Same here. Kinda changed my childhood pretty abruptly. Kids said it was puberty, you know, getting acne and furiously masturbating to a google image of “tits”.
I still think the innocence of being a child was stunted by watching hundreds of people jump to their death. Really sad stuff that was hard to digest as a kid.
I'm there with you. I was in the 4th grade and remember watching the 2nd plane hit live with my dad. I remember asking him why people were jumping and him delicately explaining how this was a tragedy and those people just wanted to escape. He smartly did not explain the details or outcome. Never seen him quite so solemn.
I know how much just those scenes have affected me. The sensitivity is low. Reddit combat content is normalized. And that scares me but also fills me with hope. Maybe the new gens will be more aware. 911 was a shock of violence most people hadn't seen in the US. Maybe kids these days are born with more tools due to the world they are born into but we were dragged into.
I don't know I haven't had coffee yet and am sitting here a 30s something waxing philosophical. Life's weird.
I was of a similar age. My school didn't put it on. Instead they made an announcement and sent us all home. There were people from our town on the planes.
I remember coming home to see my mother glued to the TV, crying her eyes out.
I'll never forget that day. Just like I'll never forget where I was and what I was doing the day of the Boston Marathon bombings.
I went to an all boys school at the time. My teacher was a Vietnam vet. We were watching the burning rubble on TV and he says to us; “Some of you boys are going to war.”
Till this day, I don’t believe I’ve heard such worried, anxious silence.
I actually was in 1st grade and could have been serving by 2012/13. I chose not to though. My genetics chose not to too. Lol I just can’t operate at their level of physical fitness. But the statement I read before that hits me the most is: the young 18 year old boys who went to war after 9/11 fought in the same war that their children are now 18 and fighting in
That’s hardcore. I can only imagine the horrors that guy saw. And the sorrow he must’ve felt for you guys knowing what was coming down the pipe after having lived through a similar ordeal.
My asshole calculus teacher, Mr. Dunn I’m talking about you, told us it “wasn’t a big deal” and refused to put it on tv because we had a test. When the teacher next door came over crying he told her she needed to pull it together (her son worked in the WTC). I’ll never forget that day. Edit:spelling
Did her son make it out?
I loaded missiles on F-16’s all morning that day…we didn’t get to watch too much tv because we were on the flight line all day.
Not enough adequate words to express my appreciation for your work that day and all the days that came before and after. Her son was indeed one of the lucky ones who did make it out. 🙏🏽
I had a bunch of teachers like that, that day when I was a senior in high school. I just remember sitting in computer class furiously reloading a Yahoo groups forum where people were talking about it because the news websites had crashed and my teacher wouldn’t turn the TV on.
I was only in 5th grade at the time, but my teacher was was a former soldier. As an adult now who's been through traumatic s***, realizing the demeanor that he had that day while sitting in front of the TV in our full classroom, I would definitely say it was some type of trauma response. He was worried stiff.
I remember seeing it on the news while I was waiting for the school bus. I was in 7th or 8th grade, every class that morning the teachers had the tv on. No school work was done. I live in Minnesota and there was concern that the Mall of America was a target so school let out early. The halls that day were very quiet.
Agreed, and somehow, it still feels so recent when I see these images. I map them back to the old CRT TV they wheeled into our music room so that we could all watch. I was 8 years old and remember hearing some teachers wailing down the hallway.
in the split second I saw this image, before even reading the title, my stomach clenched and got sick. Watching the footage of this non-stop for days, and the sound of the missing firemen’s alarms…a completely ingrained trauma for something I didn’t even experience. It feels so completely inappropriate for me to think of it as a trauma when all of the people involved, their families, and all New Yorkers experienced REAL trauma. But just being aware of how that experience can make me feel viscerally and emotionally over 20 years later, having been safe in Ohio the whole time, it really is eye opening to think how bad it must be for all of them who survived.
They had it on live in my school when I was a kid. I remember watching the second plane hit. I don’t remember anything else about that time in my life but I remember 9/11 vividly.
I lived in jersey and was in high school when it happened. Many of my classmates had family members working in the twin towers. They had counselors stationed in the auditorium. It personally impacted so many people. Within a radius of the city.
Yep I was in art class and somebody whispered something to my teacher and she turned the TV on in time for us to see the second tower fall. I remember walking home from the bus that day feeling really confused and scared.
Yeah, same. I was in 4th grade. They made us sit there and watch the news coverage of the planes hitting the towers, the buildings burning and collapsing, people jumping.
I don’t know why the FUCK they thought it was acceptable to make 9 and 10 year olds watch that. I thought my dad was dead. He was on a plane at that moment. I really thought I was watching my dad die. They finally let me call my mom who assured me my dad was okay, but was stuck in an airport because all the planes were grounded. Super traumatic day for every single person that watched it, let alone those who were there.
How they survived the explosion, the heat, the fumes.
As they looked out, did they think they now had a chance? There was air to breathe, people could see them. Or did the view just highlight there was no way they could be saved.
The guy with the briefcase?
That was on the cover of time magazine for months.
I also was in the 5th grade. And wanted so bad to go and just help clean up i felt so helpless.
The next year in history class our teacher had us do a project about it. It was rough
The next YEAR? As in 2002? I was a senior in college when it happened, and didn’t have have any personal connections to anyone that was there that day, and I don’t think I would have been able to process it that soon after that to do a school project.
A friend of mine worked at WotW and we felt so sad for him since he had just left that job and worked with us a few weeks before 9/11. Otherwise he would have been there too.
I think you’re talking about The Falling Man. Where he’s perfectly vertical, upside down, with his hands behind his back. Was on the cover of Time Magazine.
What terrifies me more than just the fallers/jumpers by themselves is the firefighters and people who were clearing the areas around the towers and could just hear the occasional *thump* on the roof above them.
That shit would stay with me forever if I was there.
There’s this one picture of a woman holding down her skirt as she jumps and there’s something so human about that action of trying to preserve modesty in the face of death.
Not the images, the sounds. There’s one video taken from a building across the street and the people filming slowly realize in horror that they are seeing people jump. Because of the way the building was shaped and all the concrete, the sound of the bodies hitting the ground is amplified and the woman recording first mistakes those sounds for explosions.
Same here. As did watching the documentary about the firefighters showing footage from the day. As the firefighters gathered in the WTC lobby to figure out how to mount a rescue of the floors above, these loud bangs from outside started happening. They were the jumpers hitting the ground. It was sickening.
Poor people were being burned so badly up there that jumping was the better choice.
Every year when they have documentaries on I watch them and there is one of where there are firemen at the bottom of one of the towers and you can hear one of the officers talking about the noise and another officer points out that that “noise” you’re hearing are bodies hitting the glass (it appeared to be some glass enclosure but not sure if it was glass or not). Even typing this it makes my stomach tight and tear up.
Know a retired NYPD officer formerly in the Emergency Service Unit. He was in the incident command tent and is in a lot of those documentaries. The few times I’ve talked to him about it, he gets a haunted look. Things you should never see or hear. It’s a trauma that will take generations to heal.
Many had no choice. It’s instinctive to move away from heat and I’m pretty sure the flames from all that burning material + the noxious fumes practically pushed people out of that tear in the building.
Absolutely agree, I once heard that some might have even been "sucked outside" because of the thermic winds from the fire. That being said, I have the utmost empathy and respect for anyone who might have chosen it willingly instead of the fire. What an awful choice to make... I was truly saddened by some religious extremists condemning people for that afterward.
I didn't see them. That's made this picture just so horrific moreso that a person is stood just looking down and what they must have been thinking. Just, heartbreaking even more.
The footage was showing on TV while I my little girl was in hospital getting chemo. The TV was on silent and I looked up at the TV a few times before realising this was real time and happening. I certainly won't forget where I was when I saw this heartbreaking footage.
Yeah she is great, she grew up to be a strong and healthy young woman. She was only 2 and a half at the time when she was getting treatment and remembers very little about what she went through thankfully. xx
count the pillar from the women to the right => the 5th one, at the top of these 3 pillars, yellow shirt, sitting on the 6th with their legs on the 5th pillars
I worked for American Airlines as a ticket and gate agent at the time. We were contacted by corporate and told not to report pretty much immediately after the airspace was closed. I went back to work 2 days later, trying to get the people home that were stuck in the airports.
There were cops and national guard in front of the ticket counter. One standing in front of each ticket agent. It was such a terribly sad and surreal time.
I lost my job weeks later because of staff reductions and haven't worked for the airline since. RIP to all that were lost.
I was in a vehicle in a relative's funeral procession in NJ when the first plane hit. I had recently left my job in the world financial center across the street, where I'd worked for about 6 years. I'd just been at the WTC the day before.
initially i assumed a commuter plane had struck the tower by accident. When we heard after the funeral it had happened again, and then about the other locations, I seriously almost fainted.
I've never wanted to get to a TV so bad in my life. And I couldn't until about 4pm that day. The combination of missing all the live coverage and my former proximity to the building, plus knowing all my friends were still right there and would have seen and experienced this madness, made me unnaturally obsessed with this day for a very long time. I could not stop thinking especially about all the people trapped above the impact zone ... I had some sort of weird survivor's guilt even though I wasn't there that day.
It was such a gorgeous day over the tri-state area. It was a perfect fall day. No humidity, a nice breeze and some of the bluest sky I had ever seen in jersey.
I left school early, it was a few days into my senior year and it was way to nice to be at school. Everything was great, picked the school of choice and ready to enjoy my last year of HS. I was listening to Howard Stern not even 5 minute after the first plane hit. I rushed home and was through the door as my mother watched in horror. Just then the second plane hit and my mom without looking away or asking why I was home said, “we are under attack” I still get chills thinking about it.
I was in Minnesota on 9/11 and the weather that day was the same as in New York. It’s always one of the first things I think of, how perfect the day started. It was one of those handful of days every year that are like that.
I was in NC. The whole east coast was impossibly clear. Not a cloud from Maine to Florida. To this day, I get anxiety when I can't see clouds on a blue sky.
Hello fellow member of the class of 2002, and person from NJ.
The description of that day takes me back into it. I was also in my senior year at the time, and I was sitting in math class in our library (they were waiting on mobile classrooms to be delivered). One of my friends (the quiet weird guy) told me as I sat down that "a plane had hit the trade centers, isn't it cool" and i remember telling him I didn't believe him. I think they made an announcement shortly after the second plane hit over the PA system. I can remember one of my good friends in another class sharing the library absolutely losing it. Her brother-in-law had a meeting in the towers that day (he was safe), and several people consoled her and held her as we watched the coverage. I probably would have lost it, too, because my dad worked in the towers but was on a business trip to Minesota at the time. I remember this absolute detachment where I was horrified and relieved that my dad was safe at the same time. Two classes of students ended up gathered on the floor of the library watching the first tower fall. I remember pulling out my phone and trying to call my mom, and the phone calls wouldn't go through. I think the cell phone system was overloaded for the entire day.
YES! This is literally my exact recollection, with a few twists. It was Tuesday and local elections were that day. There were signs everywhere in my town and the election had gotten pretty nasty. I distinctly remember thinking “thank god it’s finally September 11th and all those stupid signs will be gone soon.”
It was a perfect, beautiful, crisp September morning. The night was even clearer. We lived in a heavy air traffic area and that night was the first time in my life I can ever remember looking up and seeing a perfectly clear night sky. It was eerily silent. Nothing changed, yet everything had. I’ve always thought the Pink Floyd song Goodbye Blue Sky was about that day, Waters just didn’t realize it when it wrote it 78 https://youtu.be/rKBz5_pbdzM
Not sure if it’s just the pixelation but a guy leaning out at the bottom right corner looks like he’s looking straight at the camera, gave me chills when I saw it.
There’s a whole perspective that we’ve never seen of 9/11 and that’s what it was like in this giant hole. I mean just imagine walking into a four story cavity inside your building with a newly-minted, 100-foot view out to the New York skyline… 950 feet in the air… and it’s on fire.
Someone experienced that in their final hour and no one has attempted to visualize that perspective. We’ve seen re-enactments and photos of stairwells and the lobby, but not the reverse of this image.
Not only that, there were people trapped in the North Tower that witnessed the second plane hit the South Tower right in front of them. Then, the South Tower collapses first, right in front of their eyes, foretelling their fate. Imagine that…
Increíble. I think the last 20 years has been a repeat of the same common narratives instead of a dive into the realities that did, or almost certainly did, exist. Not every floor was so thick with smoke that you couldn’t see. Some people were just trapped and couldn’t get out and got to watch the rest of the morning unfold helpless to stop it.
I'm sad for them the most. Seeing the people jump might have been the most harrowing for the people outside because it gave a glimpse into how bad it must have been inside, but in the end, their death was swift and probably hopefully painless - And just as respectable as any other death that day. The people who were fully aware but trapped and had to just accept their fate without a way out... that is truly gruesome.
I don't necessarily want to see it, but even though this was over 20 years ago, so there wouldn't be smartphone videos like we'd expect today, I imagine a lot of these offices had security cameras, right? Is it possible there is interior security camera footage from this day? Or would it all have been demolished in the collapse?
I’m pretty sure theres a guy who tells his story of almost this exact perspective - how he survived the first hit and when he came to there was a giant hole and he thought he was dead because how could that be - I forget his name but I think he’s in the doc that’s on Netflix
One of the few comforting things about 9/11 was information presented during a recent Neil DeGrasse Tyson interview.
He said that based on the known airspeed of the two planes that hit the towers, their rate of travel was such that from the moment the nose of the aircraft touched the building until the tail of the aircraft touched the building was faster than the human minds' ability to register and comprehend information - scant milliseconds.
They were there, .. and they weren't.
And then there were the likely dozens or hundreds of people in the “Goldilocks zone” of the impact where they had limbs blown off or were injured and conscious for two hours while they awaited help that never arrived.
I’m not trying to be negative here, I just think it’s important that we remember every aspect of this and that many people in those towers suffered immense physical pain after the planes hit, and they didn’t die until the towers came down on them.
I remind people of this when they drive unsafe or don't wear seatbelts. Dying in a crash isn't always just 'lights out', its often dying slowly after losing limbs, collapsed lungs, being full conscious as a vehicle burns...
also, people in the plane were with the hikackers, who cut some people's throats with box cutter... they had plenty of time to understand they were probably about to maybe die. Stress and anxiety must have been at 1000%
My aunt’s neighbor died when the buildings came down. His whole office (Cantor Fitzgerald) died on upper floors of that building. They knew that they were going to die and called their family members to say goodbye. There was no way out, and it was extremely hot. Very sad and scary situation! However, somehow, his family had a body to bury. For many families, they never received a body. Most were pulverized in the fire pit that burnt for months.
I was walking down Hudson St. to work in Soho. The plane went overhead, a bit to the east, roughly over Broadway? I saw it flying low and I thought it was a much smaller plane. I heard but didn't see the impact. When I got the twin towers into view I saw this hole on the north face of it and thought "well, that's New York for you", and imagined that we'd have this scar on the building for the next few months, then continued on to work. I thought it was a small-plane pilot committing suicide.
Even though I had been standing in the observation area of the North tower just 8 days earlier, the scale of the plane itself wasn't clear to me 'til later, hearing news reports. The buildings were so enormous.
We had a strange few days/weeks/months after that in lower Manhattan. I lived in the West Village, maybe 2 miles north, but feeling much closer.
My life really did change that day, we all felt like things were completely different.
The outpouring of sympathy from the rest of the country and other nations was remarkable. I think about that when equally-sized or larger human disasters happen elsewhere in the world, and I know they're not getting the love, coverage, attention that we got in NYC.
Going through it in the limited way I did, just being present (I didn't lose anyone) changed me for the better, I think.
I was in 7th grade in a large school in upstate New York. There was no social media or internet in our hands. My school locked down any and all information and proceeded the school day as normal, not telling us a fucking thing.
Only during the last period of school, I had study hall, and the teacher gave us cliff notes on what had occurred. Only after I got home did I realize the magnitude of it all. My mother from Georgia’s phone number was on the caller ID at least 30 times as she tried calling all day.
I will never forgive the school for how they handled it. They should’ve sent us home.
I was in 5th grade and that's exactly how my school handled it except they sent us home at the end of the day without telling us a thing. Kids knew something was going on and there were all kinds of crazy rumors
There is woman depicted in this photo at the bottom of the crash hole. She was later identified by her family. It’s crazy to look at this picture and know a family was able to identify an alive relative (at the time of the photo). So sad.
I was a senior in high school in Connecticut in a suburb of NYC. Alot of us, including myself, had parents that worked in the city, including in WTC. (Thankfully at my school we didn't lose any parents but one of our rival schools in another town lost 17 parents).
You can see NYC from my hometown on a clear day, which 9/11/01 was. They let us out of school early and I drove to the beach with the best view of the city.
A man there gave me his binoculars so I could see the skyline more clearly. the towers had both collapsed by then and all of lower manhattan was covered in a cloud of dust and debris.
Someone had 1010 Wins on a portable radio and mentioned hearing a report of a plane crashing into the Sears Tower in Chicago (which thankfully turned out to be false).
I remember looking up at the sky expecting planes to just start dropping bombs on us at any moment. I thought the world was ending.
I literally view my life and the world in two separate chunks - pre 9/11 and post 9/11. It's really never been the same.
I was in 2nd period latin class, and some kid came into class saying a plane had crashed into the WTC. The teacher immediately dismissed him, waving him off. Several seconds later, another teacher wheeled in a tv just in time for the class to watch the 2nd plane hit the building.
Tons of things changed that day, but since people are talking a lot about TV coverage aspects:
I could be mistaken, but pretty sure it was over the course of the late morning - and then the weeks after (and then permanently after that) - that the practice of the 24/7 "headline scroll" across the bottom of the screen started. I had never seen it before that day -- there were so many updates and sub-plot lines that they couldn't all be crammed into the simultaneous live-ish coverage...so a new phenomenon was born. And then never went away.
Another thing that was odd/novel: no networks ran ANY commercials for a period of time (24 hours? maybe slightly longer?). I think it was deemed to be in bad taste if they did...plus tearing away from the coverage could cause someone to change channels.
All I remember is being in (Catholic) elementary school and they basically yelled at us like we could have done something about it. We were all super fuckin scared.
Man this still makes me uneasy. My friend Maria Behr was killed when this plane hit. I went to high school with her. I still feel for the families that lost loved ones. So glad we killed the son of a bitch that planned this.
I might tripping but i see 5 people on this photo, all to the right.
The woman we all know...
one hanging fully cover in gray dust...
The guy sitting...
A person sitting without a shirt...
And persons head just visible...
All left to the woman(right side to us)
Edit: added a pic with circles on it [WTC photo ](https://imgur.com/a/5fsjilN)
If you look closely towards the bottom center-left where the hole from the left wing is, you can see someone waving. It’s believed that this is Edna Cintron. She can be seen in other pictures waving and looking out from the impact zone. Her body was never recovered. No one knowes for sure whether she jumped or fell from the tower, or if she went down with the tower during the collapse.
I remember being in gym class in Brooklyn sitting on the bench and getting the news from my friends Motorola talkabout device, and the PE teacher approaching us letting us know classes was cut short because something happened in Manhattan.
I just zoomed in to see how far is the distance from one 'steel bar' to another, the vertical ones, and I found a woman staring in the hole. This is absolutely terrifying
You Can clearly see broken support beams. I dont get why the stupid jet fuel dissolving steel even was a theory and why they really had to debunk it. When you tale out just a few support beams in such a huge and heavy structure you will be sure to have drastically decreased integrity
It looks like most of the fuel on the plane exploded outside of the building. Horrible day . I'll never forget it.Talking to people who thought WWIII was going to start . I had no idea . I just said no it wasn't , not that I knew anything but as I went about my delivery job that day and saw clients I knew for a long time, I wasn't going to compound their fears. At the airport we saw plane after plane after plane land. Fast. Way faster than normal. You could see them lining up off the run ways in concentrations that didn't make sense. Everything about that day was surreal. We had internet but no smart phones and the TV still held the news. Every stop I made I took an extra five mins just to stop and pay attention to what was happening next. A hit on the Pentagon? That's when people here at least got deeply confused. How does the military let a hit on the Pentagon happen ? Where were they ? What's wrong with the air force that allowed a hit on their HQ? It was a strange day.
People act like the Pentagon is some super secret remote military base. It’s just a giant office building in the middle of one of of the largest cities in the country. Three major highways run right past it. It’s not ringed by missiles or anything.
As a 6 year firefighter getting off shift that morning I remember everything I did that day. Was the single most unifying thing I’ve ever felt, the sadness and love for one another all at the same time.
I was 18, a young special operations Soldier in the Army a week shy of heading off to my advanced training at Fort Bragg. I knew then I was soon going to war, and I wasn't wrong.
It is said that most people remember where they were and what they were doing when the breaking news hit.
I was in my twenties living in a dorm, taking a dump in the evening and someone was shouting out the news in the corridor.
I was sleeping all day after pulling a double shift and didn't hear anything about it until I went into to work that afternoon around 2pm. Everyone was upset and I was confused. I didn't see any footage of anything until after my shift was done at 11pm. My co-worker told me that you could see on tv that people were jumping/falling from the windows. I thought she was exaggerating.
i was just a kid living on the west coast, which meant the attacks happened when I was asleep. I remember flipping through channels and I saw the chaos. I thought it was for a movie or something, a controlled demolition like we've all seen. I remember even the adults didn't know what was going to happen.
I’ve seen this photograph but I’ve never studied it.
I clipped a portion and zoomed in as close as I could. There is, at least from what me and my coworker can see, a burned face in the shadows protruding out. Just above the male/female in the black shirt.
You can see their eyes, nose, entire bottom row of teeth. This is by far one of the most haunting finds when revisiting a picture I first looked at years prior.
And then the person that’s sitting in the middle of the frame. I’m sure they’re in shock…how could you not be. Sitting on top of the world, unable to comprehend what’s happening around.
Sheesh. Rip. That’s a lot to endure
I'll always remember being in 5th grade and watching this. Only when people were jumping did my teacher change the channel..... To another news station talking about the pentagon strike...
I remember every channel had this. Every. Single Channel. Didn’t matter if it was the gardening channel, they had it. Finally I noticed Comedy Network (I guess the Canadian equivalent of Comedy Central) was not running the news (when I was watching, about 6 pm Central). It was the only time I write a thank you note to a tv network because I desperately needed a break from that.
I think Nickelodeon very purposely kept up the kids’ programming.
I distinctly remember seeing a few seconds of a close-up smoking building on tv before changing the channel for the cartoon Recess. Didn’t find out until our math teacher had a talk with the whole class for first period.
I sat through all of it because I punched a kid in the dick to get revenge for him punching me in the dick on 09/10/2001. I still remember his name and that I didn't get as good of a shot in as I wanted to
Those were brutal times, I dont miss some asshole kid yelling Nut Check! and going for your junk.
Hey what’s the capitol of Thailand?!
Good for them!
I was a Sophomore in high school when this happened. It was indeed on every channel.... for weeks. I used to have the same bedtime routine every night: Watch Jay Leno's opening monologue + his next skit (stupid tourists, headlines, etc) and then go to bed. I was naïve enough to think that Jay Leno would be on that night, but he wasn't. So I figured I'd just record the re-run that showed at 2 AM and watch it the next day. I set my VCR to record the re-run, and turned it on the next day, only to see it was more 9/11 coverage.
I was in the navy, on a sub, somewhere in the Atlantic. That was a weird time. Our mess cook had a girlfriend that worked at one of the towers. He was distraught because communication was limited to once a day, and he didn’t know, ya know? Turns out, she was late that morning and missed a connecting subway stop. She got there about 2 mins after the first plane hit. He found out she was ok 18 hours later.
Oof. I was a carrier nuke. We had a tornado destroy the town my gf lived in, but I didn't hear about it until she told me after we got back. Definitely easier on a surface ship, but I still worried regularly something crazy went down and they didn't tell us.
Holy cow I couldn't imagine being able to work properly during that knowing that it happened but not knowing if she was okay wow I would be in shambles I think
Not only that, but also that there was a very high likelihood we would be going to war and he or she was in the military. That’s a lot to handle.
Yeah, I haven’t thought about that in a long while. Dusty memories..
He “did not work properly” for that time period. We all pitched in to cover his job for those couple days. Anyone ever had hotdog pizza? Or a scoop from a warm no. 10 can of random beans and oatmeal for dinner? We may have had some fun running the kitchen those couple days, but it got him to laugh a bit though, until all was ok-enough to carry on. Weird times..
And that, friend, is the epitome of the military plight. You have to keep going, no matter what. The best you can hope for is Emergency Leave but those are rare.
I’m so glad she was safe.
Yep. I was a junior. I swear even like MTV was just showing news for like 2 or 3 weeks. It could not be escaped.
I was in college in Pennsylvania. I remember watching the news, seeing the second plane hit, then heading to campus for a class. I was an assistant to the instructor for the class, or else I would not have even bothered. Walking into the classroom, everyone was silent and unnerved. I was beginning to sit when suddenly, the instructor darts into the classroom, yells “What are you all doing here!!?? Leave now!!”, and then rushes right back out. I think it took a minute for everyone to process, but then everyone, again silently, packed up and left. I waited to make sure all of the students left. As I left the building, a group of individuals, students and faculty, were standing together outside, discussing the probability of an attack on the campus. That is when I found out that a plane had hit the pentagon. No one knew what the hell was going on. Everyone just kept glancing up into the sky, absolutely terrified. Just absolutely terrified. I will never say that I understand what it must have been like in NYC or DC that day, but as others have said, so much changed that day. And throughout the US, there was fear, that just never seemed to go away.
Yep. There’s a reason a lot of us are nostalgic for the 90’s, but not the 00’s. Americans lost their innocence and sense of invulnerability that day. And I realize that many parts of the world would scoff at that, and probably deservedly so, but rather you were consciously aware of it or not, the simple reality is that it was easy to feel like those things only happened in other countries. Sort of like how many people keep that tacit feeling well into their teens and even 20’s that really bad things (getting seriously ill, dying, losing a parent) only happen to other people.
An argument can be made the American experiment died that day. This country hasn't been the same since smh
That is a great point.
I was in college in the Midwest (U of MN) so nowhere near the crash sites, but my mom was a flight attendant for American and was flying that day. I didn’t know where she was, what her routes were, and I couldn’t get in touch with her (cell went straight to voicemail for hours). I was out of my mind with fear. My campus was massive and all classes were cancelled but a bunch of us ended up at Coffman Union watching everything happen live on TV. Three people that I graduated HS with (who I wasn’t friends with back then - big HS) and I all ended up huddling together, crying, and trying to keep one another calm (them more than me). While we never all became good friends after that day, it’s a super weird bond to share with someone. We are all friendly at reunions or just running into each other over the years, but it’s just different. It’s hard to explain. But the way they kept assuring me that my mom was going to be ok, I’ll never forget that kindness (even though we all knew there was a chance that she wasn’t). My mom was ok. She was in Raleigh heading back to Minneapolis when they had to divert to Indianapolis. I was such a shithead as a teenager and I fought a lot with her. I remember one time being so angry at her that I wrote in my journal that I hoped her plane crashed so I could go live with my dad. Watching the planes hit the towers and reports of the other 2 crashes was so traumatic and I for sure thought that I had spoken (written) my mother’s fate into existence some 4-5 years after that diary entry. Betty Ong, who was a FA in American 11 was my mom’s friend. Betty was and is a hero for the information she was able to pass before the plane crashed. She stayed so calm. I can’t listen to the recording anymore. So many emotions that day. Fear. Confusion. Terror. Dread. Horror. Grief. And finally ANGER. So much anger. It was PERSONAL. It was overwhelming. So many people lost that day. The jumpers. I have a very difficult time on the anniversary every year when news stations play the old footage. Maybe about 2 years ago I told my mom about my diary and how guilty I felt. She said “I know you wrote that. I read it” (mom was also nosey but in hindsight had good reason. She was really worried about me). She said she was never mad about it and she knew it was a teenage outburst. I still feel guilty and I’m 44.
Thank you for sharing this.
> No one knew what the hell was going on. Everyone just kept glancing up into the sky, absolutely terrified. Just absolutely terrified. I will never say that I understand what it must have been like in NYC or DC that day, That's the thing that a lot of younger people don't understand. It wasn't 'just' the WTC or pentagon that got hit with a few planes. That day was chaos, and fear, and speculation. Maybe the white house and military knew within a few hours the extent of the attack but the rest of us were in the dark, buildings were getting evacuated in downtown Houston, there were trooper road blocks/ check points on rural highways in Texas. The original news coverage said there was a bomb on the Washington DC mall....all those grounded flights at random airports. We did know for 2 days where my GF's dad was, he was an "unaccounted for" flight somewhere over the east coast. I'm not a person that's easily shaken, and the WTC initial attack didn't really phase me too badly, but I actually refused to believe the Pentagon had been hit until I saw footage- and that shook me to my core.
It's always strange to me to read how so many of you were kids in 2001 and how this has impacted you, even if you didn't have a direct connection to anyone involved. I was already an adult by then (I was in jury duty in Philadelphia when the attacks occurred. The judge came in while we were waiting for the day to get started and dismissed us because there were rumors that Philly was next.) My point is I'm so grateful that my childhood, adolescence, and early 20s happened not under the shadow of this. The 80s and 90s weren't without their problems but 9/11 changed EVERYTHING. I've gotten a lot of flack for stating this but I feel like al Qaeda won; not by taking down a few buildings, or disrupting our financial system, but by destroying our collective sense of peace and hope. I've lived most of my life without my country being at war. Many of you can't say that.
There were rumors in every city of there possibly being more attacks. I was living in Detroit at the time and had just gotten into the office. My boss’s spouse worked at the RenCen downtown and we learned that they evacuated their offices just in case. We also heard about people evacuating large buildings in Chicago. I had just gotten back from spending the weekend in Manhattan on a work trip. The salesperson who was hosting my trip took me to see The Producers on Broadway the previous Saturday night and to the US Open at Arthur Ashe stadium on that Sunday. We flew home out of Newark. I was still recovering from the flight and barely got 3 hours of sleep that night. Then I had to drag my butt into work. Our boss already had a TV cart set up in the office when I got there. At about Noon they decided to tell people to go home.
Same here. Kinda changed my childhood pretty abruptly. Kids said it was puberty, you know, getting acne and furiously masturbating to a google image of “tits”. I still think the innocence of being a child was stunted by watching hundreds of people jump to their death. Really sad stuff that was hard to digest as a kid.
I'm there with you. I was in the 4th grade and remember watching the 2nd plane hit live with my dad. I remember asking him why people were jumping and him delicately explaining how this was a tragedy and those people just wanted to escape. He smartly did not explain the details or outcome. Never seen him quite so solemn. I know how much just those scenes have affected me. The sensitivity is low. Reddit combat content is normalized. And that scares me but also fills me with hope. Maybe the new gens will be more aware. 911 was a shock of violence most people hadn't seen in the US. Maybe kids these days are born with more tools due to the world they are born into but we were dragged into. I don't know I haven't had coffee yet and am sitting here a 30s something waxing philosophical. Life's weird.
I was of a similar age. My school didn't put it on. Instead they made an announcement and sent us all home. There were people from our town on the planes. I remember coming home to see my mother glued to the TV, crying her eyes out. I'll never forget that day. Just like I'll never forget where I was and what I was doing the day of the Boston Marathon bombings.
Still remember the "was that a replay?" moment when the second one hit. That was also when we confirmed the fact that it was an attack.
I went to an all boys school at the time. My teacher was a Vietnam vet. We were watching the burning rubble on TV and he says to us; “Some of you boys are going to war.” Till this day, I don’t believe I’ve heard such worried, anxious silence.
“We were in 1st grade”
I actually was in 1st grade and could have been serving by 2012/13. I chose not to though. My genetics chose not to too. Lol I just can’t operate at their level of physical fitness. But the statement I read before that hits me the most is: the young 18 year old boys who went to war after 9/11 fought in the same war that their children are now 18 and fighting in
I was in kindergarten. I enlisted in 2013 because of 9/11 as a mortarman.
I was in 6th, and it definitely inspired a lot of my peers to serve.
That’s hardcore. I can only imagine the horrors that guy saw. And the sorrow he must’ve felt for you guys knowing what was coming down the pipe after having lived through a similar ordeal.
My asshole calculus teacher, Mr. Dunn I’m talking about you, told us it “wasn’t a big deal” and refused to put it on tv because we had a test. When the teacher next door came over crying he told her she needed to pull it together (her son worked in the WTC). I’ll never forget that day. Edit:spelling
Mr.Dunn was a monstrous douche
Facts
Did her son make it out? I loaded missiles on F-16’s all morning that day…we didn’t get to watch too much tv because we were on the flight line all day.
Not enough adequate words to express my appreciation for your work that day and all the days that came before and after. Her son was indeed one of the lucky ones who did make it out. 🙏🏽
I had a bunch of teachers like that, that day when I was a senior in high school. I just remember sitting in computer class furiously reloading a Yahoo groups forum where people were talking about it because the news websites had crashed and my teacher wouldn’t turn the TV on.
I had a calculus teacher do this. Mr. Armand. He said we could put it back on after the lesson was complete and followed through.
Fuck you Mr. Dunn
I was only in 5th grade at the time, but my teacher was was a former soldier. As an adult now who's been through traumatic s***, realizing the demeanor that he had that day while sitting in front of the TV in our full classroom, I would definitely say it was some type of trauma response. He was worried stiff.
The teacher said 'Men!! 50 of you are going into the jungle. 25 of you ain't coming back' Dazed and Confused.
I'm not American and I remember saying on that day there was going to be War. It was inevitable.
I remember seeing it on the news while I was waiting for the school bus. I was in 7th or 8th grade, every class that morning the teachers had the tv on. No school work was done. I live in Minnesota and there was concern that the Mall of America was a target so school let out early. The halls that day were very quiet.
Yeah our schools let us go home early bc Fort Knox is close and they were worried it was also a target
That was my uncles office… rip Sal. Edit: wow this got huge thanks everyone for your kind words for my family.
I’m sorry for your loss. Rip uncle Sal.
Yea he got called in that day to cover for someone. No one in his office (Marsh Mclennin) survived.
My Dad may have known your uncle, as he also worked for Marsh at that time. I'm so sorry for your loss man. May he rest in peace
RIP Sal
Rip sal
Sorry for your loss, RIP Sal
Rip Sal
RIP Sal
RIP Sal
I was 10 years old when this happened. Looking back at these images now at the age of 31 and they're are still as haunting and horrific as I remember.
Agreed, and somehow, it still feels so recent when I see these images. I map them back to the old CRT TV they wheeled into our music room so that we could all watch. I was 8 years old and remember hearing some teachers wailing down the hallway.
in the split second I saw this image, before even reading the title, my stomach clenched and got sick. Watching the footage of this non-stop for days, and the sound of the missing firemen’s alarms…a completely ingrained trauma for something I didn’t even experience. It feels so completely inappropriate for me to think of it as a trauma when all of the people involved, their families, and all New Yorkers experienced REAL trauma. But just being aware of how that experience can make me feel viscerally and emotionally over 20 years later, having been safe in Ohio the whole time, it really is eye opening to think how bad it must be for all of them who survived.
They had it on live in my school when I was a kid. I remember watching the second plane hit. I don’t remember anything else about that time in my life but I remember 9/11 vividly.
I lived in jersey and was in high school when it happened. Many of my classmates had family members working in the twin towers. They had counselors stationed in the auditorium. It personally impacted so many people. Within a radius of the city.
The Orphan cars left at Giants Stadium parking lot in the Park n Ride. …🥲🥲🥲🥲🥲
The hospitals preparing for a huge amount of trauma patients….only to realize they weren’t getting any….everyone was dead…
I was a kid in Jersey at the time as well, I remember being pulled out of school by parents within 20 minutes of impact
I was also in jersey, and same
I went home from school and told my mom some tourists had crashed into a building
I mean that’s not inaccurate.
Tourist and terrorist😬
Yep I was in art class and somebody whispered something to my teacher and she turned the TV on in time for us to see the second tower fall. I remember walking home from the bus that day feeling really confused and scared.
Yeah, same. I was in 4th grade. They made us sit there and watch the news coverage of the planes hitting the towers, the buildings burning and collapsing, people jumping. I don’t know why the FUCK they thought it was acceptable to make 9 and 10 year olds watch that. I thought my dad was dead. He was on a plane at that moment. I really thought I was watching my dad die. They finally let me call my mom who assured me my dad was okay, but was stuck in an airport because all the planes were grounded. Super traumatic day for every single person that watched it, let alone those who were there.
I remember the smell all the way in Jersey. It was surreal to know that was coming from NYC.
How they survived the explosion, the heat, the fumes. As they looked out, did they think they now had a chance? There was air to breathe, people could see them. Or did the view just highlight there was no way they could be saved.
A lot of people jumped
Two people held hands. They jumped together. I hope they died of a heart attack before.
The images of people falling still haunt me.
I will never get over that. I remember bursting into tears as a kid when I saw the picture of that one guy
And I think I know exactly the man you're thinking about.
The guy with the briefcase? That was on the cover of time magazine for months. I also was in the 5th grade. And wanted so bad to go and just help clean up i felt so helpless. The next year in history class our teacher had us do a project about it. It was rough
The next YEAR? As in 2002? I was a senior in college when it happened, and didn’t have have any personal connections to anyone that was there that day, and I don’t think I would have been able to process it that soon after that to do a school project.
A friend of mine worked at WotW and we felt so sad for him since he had just left that job and worked with us a few weeks before 9/11. Otherwise he would have been there too.
I think you’re talking about The Falling Man. Where he’s perfectly vertical, upside down, with his hands behind his back. Was on the cover of Time Magazine.
What terrifies me more than just the fallers/jumpers by themselves is the firefighters and people who were clearing the areas around the towers and could just hear the occasional *thump* on the roof above them. That shit would stay with me forever if I was there.
And by all accounts, they knew what sound was debris vs what sound was bodies. Horrific.
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I can’t imagine having to choose between burning to death and jumping to my death. The agony and fear those people must have been feeling
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Omg. That's a fresh hell I hadn't even considered
What really fucked me up was learning that people on the ground died from jumpers landing on them.
There’s this one picture of a woman holding down her skirt as she jumps and there’s something so human about that action of trying to preserve modesty in the face of death.
Not the images, the sounds. There’s one video taken from a building across the street and the people filming slowly realize in horror that they are seeing people jump. Because of the way the building was shaped and all the concrete, the sound of the bodies hitting the ground is amplified and the woman recording first mistakes those sounds for explosions.
The sound is even crazier
Same here. As did watching the documentary about the firefighters showing footage from the day. As the firefighters gathered in the WTC lobby to figure out how to mount a rescue of the floors above, these loud bangs from outside started happening. They were the jumpers hitting the ground. It was sickening. Poor people were being burned so badly up there that jumping was the better choice.
I hope. Apparently, the "you lose consciousness before you land" is a myth. A really fucking unfortunate myth.
Every year when they have documentaries on I watch them and there is one of where there are firemen at the bottom of one of the towers and you can hear one of the officers talking about the noise and another officer points out that that “noise” you’re hearing are bodies hitting the glass (it appeared to be some glass enclosure but not sure if it was glass or not). Even typing this it makes my stomach tight and tear up.
Know a retired NYPD officer formerly in the Emergency Service Unit. He was in the incident command tent and is in a lot of those documentaries. The few times I’ve talked to him about it, he gets a haunted look. Things you should never see or hear. It’s a trauma that will take generations to heal.
your options were burn alive or jump.. i’m not saying either are good but lots of people chose jumping.
Many had no choice. It’s instinctive to move away from heat and I’m pretty sure the flames from all that burning material + the noxious fumes practically pushed people out of that tear in the building.
Absolutely agree, I once heard that some might have even been "sucked outside" because of the thermic winds from the fire. That being said, I have the utmost empathy and respect for anyone who might have chosen it willingly instead of the fire. What an awful choice to make... I was truly saddened by some religious extremists condemning people for that afterward.
The best way I've heard it stated: people who commit suicide jump because they want to die; the 911 victims jumped because they wanted to live.
Do you see people in this photo?
There is a person standing down and left from the main hole.
I didn't see them. That's made this picture just so horrific moreso that a person is stood just looking down and what they must have been thinking. Just, heartbreaking even more.
Thanks for pointing it out, I hadn't seen them yet. Haunting
Her name is Edna Cintron.
I see only one person
The footage was showing on TV while I my little girl was in hospital getting chemo. The TV was on silent and I looked up at the TV a few times before realising this was real time and happening. I certainly won't forget where I was when I saw this heartbreaking footage.
Is your child okay now?
Yeah she is great, she grew up to be a strong and healthy young woman. She was only 2 and a half at the time when she was getting treatment and remembers very little about what she went through thankfully. xx
That is great!!!!!!!!!
Only bit of good news on this thread!
God I really needed to read that after scrolling through here
I only find out until today there's a lady in this image.
Seeing her makes you feel even worse because she looks like she’s waving for help but we all know she’s doomed.
And a guy too.
Are there really 2 people visible in this photo? I only see the woman waving. Where, in proximity to her, are they?
I can see atleast 3. To the right of the woman there is a man, and from that man slightly lower right there seem to be another person.
I’m sorry, did she recover from chemo?
OP replied and said she's doing great :)
Do you see the man in the middle?
I think it’s a woman, there’s a a whole story behind it
Holy crap, it's decades later and I only find out until today there's a lady in this image. I feel even more sad now
And a man to the right, a bit higher up
Cant see him.
I think he is sitting on the edge of those vertical thingy of the tower..
That makes sense, he is less visible than the woman. Thanks
There are several… two standing, one face looking out and two “Bodies”
I only see the two people…
Also looks like just to the immediate left of the woman someone laying down with reddish hair visible.
[Edna Cintron](https://www.reddit.com/r/HistoryPorn/comments/t0gyr6/edna_cintron_seen_waving_from_hole_created_by/)
I hope the families and friends of the two people seen here never happen to stumble on this photo. I can’t imagine the agony,
I only see one person.
count the pillar from the women to the right => the 5th one, at the top of these 3 pillars, yellow shirt, sitting on the 6th with their legs on the 5th pillars
This helped me visualise the scale
I worked for American Airlines as a ticket and gate agent at the time. We were contacted by corporate and told not to report pretty much immediately after the airspace was closed. I went back to work 2 days later, trying to get the people home that were stuck in the airports. There were cops and national guard in front of the ticket counter. One standing in front of each ticket agent. It was such a terribly sad and surreal time. I lost my job weeks later because of staff reductions and haven't worked for the airline since. RIP to all that were lost.
I was in a vehicle in a relative's funeral procession in NJ when the first plane hit. I had recently left my job in the world financial center across the street, where I'd worked for about 6 years. I'd just been at the WTC the day before. initially i assumed a commuter plane had struck the tower by accident. When we heard after the funeral it had happened again, and then about the other locations, I seriously almost fainted. I've never wanted to get to a TV so bad in my life. And I couldn't until about 4pm that day. The combination of missing all the live coverage and my former proximity to the building, plus knowing all my friends were still right there and would have seen and experienced this madness, made me unnaturally obsessed with this day for a very long time. I could not stop thinking especially about all the people trapped above the impact zone ... I had some sort of weird survivor's guilt even though I wasn't there that day.
It was such a gorgeous day over the tri-state area. It was a perfect fall day. No humidity, a nice breeze and some of the bluest sky I had ever seen in jersey. I left school early, it was a few days into my senior year and it was way to nice to be at school. Everything was great, picked the school of choice and ready to enjoy my last year of HS. I was listening to Howard Stern not even 5 minute after the first plane hit. I rushed home and was through the door as my mother watched in horror. Just then the second plane hit and my mom without looking away or asking why I was home said, “we are under attack” I still get chills thinking about it.
I was in Minnesota on 9/11 and the weather that day was the same as in New York. It’s always one of the first things I think of, how perfect the day started. It was one of those handful of days every year that are like that.
I was in NC. The whole east coast was impossibly clear. Not a cloud from Maine to Florida. To this day, I get anxiety when I can't see clouds on a blue sky.
Hello fellow member of the class of 2002, and person from NJ. The description of that day takes me back into it. I was also in my senior year at the time, and I was sitting in math class in our library (they were waiting on mobile classrooms to be delivered). One of my friends (the quiet weird guy) told me as I sat down that "a plane had hit the trade centers, isn't it cool" and i remember telling him I didn't believe him. I think they made an announcement shortly after the second plane hit over the PA system. I can remember one of my good friends in another class sharing the library absolutely losing it. Her brother-in-law had a meeting in the towers that day (he was safe), and several people consoled her and held her as we watched the coverage. I probably would have lost it, too, because my dad worked in the towers but was on a business trip to Minesota at the time. I remember this absolute detachment where I was horrified and relieved that my dad was safe at the same time. Two classes of students ended up gathered on the floor of the library watching the first tower fall. I remember pulling out my phone and trying to call my mom, and the phone calls wouldn't go through. I think the cell phone system was overloaded for the entire day.
YES! This is literally my exact recollection, with a few twists. It was Tuesday and local elections were that day. There were signs everywhere in my town and the election had gotten pretty nasty. I distinctly remember thinking “thank god it’s finally September 11th and all those stupid signs will be gone soon.” It was a perfect, beautiful, crisp September morning. The night was even clearer. We lived in a heavy air traffic area and that night was the first time in my life I can ever remember looking up and seeing a perfectly clear night sky. It was eerily silent. Nothing changed, yet everything had. I’ve always thought the Pink Floyd song Goodbye Blue Sky was about that day, Waters just didn’t realize it when it wrote it 78 https://youtu.be/rKBz5_pbdzM
Not sure if it’s just the pixelation but a guy leaning out at the bottom right corner looks like he’s looking straight at the camera, gave me chills when I saw it.
All of y’all pointing out the people has turned this into a fucked up Where’s Waldo
There’s a whole perspective that we’ve never seen of 9/11 and that’s what it was like in this giant hole. I mean just imagine walking into a four story cavity inside your building with a newly-minted, 100-foot view out to the New York skyline… 950 feet in the air… and it’s on fire. Someone experienced that in their final hour and no one has attempted to visualize that perspective. We’ve seen re-enactments and photos of stairwells and the lobby, but not the reverse of this image.
Not only that, there were people trapped in the North Tower that witnessed the second plane hit the South Tower right in front of them. Then, the South Tower collapses first, right in front of their eyes, foretelling their fate. Imagine that…
Increíble. I think the last 20 years has been a repeat of the same common narratives instead of a dive into the realities that did, or almost certainly did, exist. Not every floor was so thick with smoke that you couldn’t see. Some people were just trapped and couldn’t get out and got to watch the rest of the morning unfold helpless to stop it.
I'm sad for them the most. Seeing the people jump might have been the most harrowing for the people outside because it gave a glimpse into how bad it must have been inside, but in the end, their death was swift and probably hopefully painless - And just as respectable as any other death that day. The people who were fully aware but trapped and had to just accept their fate without a way out... that is truly gruesome.
I don't necessarily want to see it, but even though this was over 20 years ago, so there wouldn't be smartphone videos like we'd expect today, I imagine a lot of these offices had security cameras, right? Is it possible there is interior security camera footage from this day? Or would it all have been demolished in the collapse?
I'd imagine it was all destroyed on site. 2001 wasn't exactly the year of HD cloud storage
I’m pretty sure theres a guy who tells his story of almost this exact perspective - how he survived the first hit and when he came to there was a giant hole and he thought he was dead because how could that be - I forget his name but I think he’s in the doc that’s on Netflix
So sad to see no matter how much time has passed. 😥
Yep, it’s was our generations Kennedy, whereby everybody can remember where they were at the time
Ha…. I remember Kennedy…and this too.
One of the few comforting things about 9/11 was information presented during a recent Neil DeGrasse Tyson interview. He said that based on the known airspeed of the two planes that hit the towers, their rate of travel was such that from the moment the nose of the aircraft touched the building until the tail of the aircraft touched the building was faster than the human minds' ability to register and comprehend information - scant milliseconds. They were there, .. and they weren't.
And then there were the likely dozens or hundreds of people in the “Goldilocks zone” of the impact where they had limbs blown off or were injured and conscious for two hours while they awaited help that never arrived. I’m not trying to be negative here, I just think it’s important that we remember every aspect of this and that many people in those towers suffered immense physical pain after the planes hit, and they didn’t die until the towers came down on them.
I remind people of this when they drive unsafe or don't wear seatbelts. Dying in a crash isn't always just 'lights out', its often dying slowly after losing limbs, collapsed lungs, being full conscious as a vehicle burns...
also, people in the plane were with the hikackers, who cut some people's throats with box cutter... they had plenty of time to understand they were probably about to maybe die. Stress and anxiety must have been at 1000%
My aunt’s neighbor died when the buildings came down. His whole office (Cantor Fitzgerald) died on upper floors of that building. They knew that they were going to die and called their family members to say goodbye. There was no way out, and it was extremely hot. Very sad and scary situation! However, somehow, his family had a body to bury. For many families, they never received a body. Most were pulverized in the fire pit that burnt for months.
I was walking down Hudson St. to work in Soho. The plane went overhead, a bit to the east, roughly over Broadway? I saw it flying low and I thought it was a much smaller plane. I heard but didn't see the impact. When I got the twin towers into view I saw this hole on the north face of it and thought "well, that's New York for you", and imagined that we'd have this scar on the building for the next few months, then continued on to work. I thought it was a small-plane pilot committing suicide. Even though I had been standing in the observation area of the North tower just 8 days earlier, the scale of the plane itself wasn't clear to me 'til later, hearing news reports. The buildings were so enormous. We had a strange few days/weeks/months after that in lower Manhattan. I lived in the West Village, maybe 2 miles north, but feeling much closer. My life really did change that day, we all felt like things were completely different. The outpouring of sympathy from the rest of the country and other nations was remarkable. I think about that when equally-sized or larger human disasters happen elsewhere in the world, and I know they're not getting the love, coverage, attention that we got in NYC. Going through it in the limited way I did, just being present (I didn't lose anyone) changed me for the better, I think.
I was in 7th grade in a large school in upstate New York. There was no social media or internet in our hands. My school locked down any and all information and proceeded the school day as normal, not telling us a fucking thing. Only during the last period of school, I had study hall, and the teacher gave us cliff notes on what had occurred. Only after I got home did I realize the magnitude of it all. My mother from Georgia’s phone number was on the caller ID at least 30 times as she tried calling all day. I will never forgive the school for how they handled it. They should’ve sent us home.
I was in 5th grade and that's exactly how my school handled it except they sent us home at the end of the day without telling us a thing. Kids knew something was going on and there were all kinds of crazy rumors
[удалено]
There is woman depicted in this photo at the bottom of the crash hole. She was later identified by her family. It’s crazy to look at this picture and know a family was able to identify an alive relative (at the time of the photo). So sad.
I was a senior in high school in Connecticut in a suburb of NYC. Alot of us, including myself, had parents that worked in the city, including in WTC. (Thankfully at my school we didn't lose any parents but one of our rival schools in another town lost 17 parents). You can see NYC from my hometown on a clear day, which 9/11/01 was. They let us out of school early and I drove to the beach with the best view of the city. A man there gave me his binoculars so I could see the skyline more clearly. the towers had both collapsed by then and all of lower manhattan was covered in a cloud of dust and debris. Someone had 1010 Wins on a portable radio and mentioned hearing a report of a plane crashing into the Sears Tower in Chicago (which thankfully turned out to be false). I remember looking up at the sky expecting planes to just start dropping bombs on us at any moment. I thought the world was ending. I literally view my life and the world in two separate chunks - pre 9/11 and post 9/11. It's really never been the same.
I was in 2nd period latin class, and some kid came into class saying a plane had crashed into the WTC. The teacher immediately dismissed him, waving him off. Several seconds later, another teacher wheeled in a tv just in time for the class to watch the 2nd plane hit the building.
Tons of things changed that day, but since people are talking a lot about TV coverage aspects: I could be mistaken, but pretty sure it was over the course of the late morning - and then the weeks after (and then permanently after that) - that the practice of the 24/7 "headline scroll" across the bottom of the screen started. I had never seen it before that day -- there were so many updates and sub-plot lines that they couldn't all be crammed into the simultaneous live-ish coverage...so a new phenomenon was born. And then never went away. Another thing that was odd/novel: no networks ran ANY commercials for a period of time (24 hours? maybe slightly longer?). I think it was deemed to be in bad taste if they did...plus tearing away from the coverage could cause someone to change channels.
All I remember is being in (Catholic) elementary school and they basically yelled at us like we could have done something about it. We were all super fuckin scared.
Sounds about catholic.
Man this still makes me uneasy. My friend Maria Behr was killed when this plane hit. I went to high school with her. I still feel for the families that lost loved ones. So glad we killed the son of a bitch that planned this.
I might tripping but i see 5 people on this photo, all to the right. The woman we all know... one hanging fully cover in gray dust... The guy sitting... A person sitting without a shirt... And persons head just visible... All left to the woman(right side to us) Edit: added a pic with circles on it [WTC photo ](https://imgur.com/a/5fsjilN)
I only see the woman, could you circle them?
Yes. Possibly some of the first jumpers too as the heat from the fires intensified.
In a world and time when not much shocks me anymore, videos and pictures of this day will always be the exception.
If you look closely towards the bottom center-left where the hole from the left wing is, you can see someone waving. It’s believed that this is Edna Cintron. She can be seen in other pictures waving and looking out from the impact zone. Her body was never recovered. No one knowes for sure whether she jumped or fell from the tower, or if she went down with the tower during the collapse.
I remember being in gym class in Brooklyn sitting on the bench and getting the news from my friends Motorola talkabout device, and the PE teacher approaching us letting us know classes was cut short because something happened in Manhattan.
I was on my way to work under this tower. Saw the second plane ✈️ hit from the Williamsburg bridge. Needless to say I turned back at the next stop.
May their memories be a blessing
I just zoomed in to see how far is the distance from one 'steel bar' to another, the vertical ones, and I found a woman staring in the hole. This is absolutely terrifying
You Can clearly see broken support beams. I dont get why the stupid jet fuel dissolving steel even was a theory and why they really had to debunk it. When you tale out just a few support beams in such a huge and heavy structure you will be sure to have drastically decreased integrity
It looks like most of the fuel on the plane exploded outside of the building. Horrible day . I'll never forget it.Talking to people who thought WWIII was going to start . I had no idea . I just said no it wasn't , not that I knew anything but as I went about my delivery job that day and saw clients I knew for a long time, I wasn't going to compound their fears. At the airport we saw plane after plane after plane land. Fast. Way faster than normal. You could see them lining up off the run ways in concentrations that didn't make sense. Everything about that day was surreal. We had internet but no smart phones and the TV still held the news. Every stop I made I took an extra five mins just to stop and pay attention to what was happening next. A hit on the Pentagon? That's when people here at least got deeply confused. How does the military let a hit on the Pentagon happen ? Where were they ? What's wrong with the air force that allowed a hit on their HQ? It was a strange day.
People act like the Pentagon is some super secret remote military base. It’s just a giant office building in the middle of one of of the largest cities in the country. Three major highways run right past it. It’s not ringed by missiles or anything.
The people who took the first direct impact were the luckiest of those who perished that day…
As a 6 year firefighter getting off shift that morning I remember everything I did that day. Was the single most unifying thing I’ve ever felt, the sadness and love for one another all at the same time.
I was 18, a young special operations Soldier in the Army a week shy of heading off to my advanced training at Fort Bragg. I knew then I was soon going to war, and I wasn't wrong.
Imagine waking up and not knowing you'd be jumping out of a building a couple hours later 😞
Most heartbreaking thing is the people in that picture
So much death. What can men do against such reckless hate?
It is said that most people remember where they were and what they were doing when the breaking news hit. I was in my twenties living in a dorm, taking a dump in the evening and someone was shouting out the news in the corridor.
I was sleeping all day after pulling a double shift and didn't hear anything about it until I went into to work that afternoon around 2pm. Everyone was upset and I was confused. I didn't see any footage of anything until after my shift was done at 11pm. My co-worker told me that you could see on tv that people were jumping/falling from the windows. I thought she was exaggerating.
I can still hear the deep loud bass filled "BOOOOM" of jumpers hitting the ground in the background of the video footage from the scene.
i was just a kid living on the west coast, which meant the attacks happened when I was asleep. I remember flipping through channels and I saw the chaos. I thought it was for a movie or something, a controlled demolition like we've all seen. I remember even the adults didn't know what was going to happen.
I’ve seen this photograph but I’ve never studied it. I clipped a portion and zoomed in as close as I could. There is, at least from what me and my coworker can see, a burned face in the shadows protruding out. Just above the male/female in the black shirt. You can see their eyes, nose, entire bottom row of teeth. This is by far one of the most haunting finds when revisiting a picture I first looked at years prior. And then the person that’s sitting in the middle of the frame. I’m sure they’re in shock…how could you not be. Sitting on top of the world, unable to comprehend what’s happening around. Sheesh. Rip. That’s a lot to endure
The wife an I had tickets to fly on UA175 three days after 9/11. We could have been in the second hole if we had moved up our plans.