#My911

I was living in Cadiz in Andalucia, Spain. I got a text message from  
someone in Dublin telling me to put on the news. I had not been in  
Spain for very long - just a couple of months - so when I put on the  
news I was very confused as to what was going on. The others who were  
in my apartment at the time, including my younger sister, had little  
or no spanish at all. News reporters in Spain speak very rapidly as it  
is, but as the spectacle in New York was still unfolding at the time,  
this particular woman was racing through the report. We watched the  
second tower get struck by a plane. It did not look like reality. No  
one seemed to know what was happening at all, least of all us. We  
decided to try and find a local hotel that may have an English  
speaking television channel. On our way to the Parador, I received  a  
call from a close friend of mine in Michigan. He is a financial  
advisor and works within a big firm that had offices in one of the  
World Trade Centre buildings. Not everyone had been accounted for. He  
was beside himself.

Over the next number of days we more or less spent all our time  
hanging out in the Parador hotel. We drank a lot of coffee and cola  
cao. We battled to keep the channel on BBC World, but every once in a  
while someone would arrive in before us and set the channel to CNN.  
The coverage from America was quite different to that from Europe. The  
BBC seemed to have a more balanced and inquisitive view. The American  
coverage was all about retaliation and defense.

As English speakers, my friends and I felt very strongly for the  
people of New York and the US, and we felt closely connected to what  
was going on politically in the world. This attack felt very close to  
home for us - our community had been violently struck. I perceived  
that many of the Spaniards around me perhaps did not have as much  
sympathy for the horror the US was going through. I thought that some  
people were even just seeing it as an “us and them” situation. This is  
their problem - they’ve always been obnoxious. We’re not involved in  
this. I put some of this down to the language barrier. There’s not a  
very high standard of English in that part of Spain. To some people,  
particularly to some people my age group, this just looked like a  
scene from a movie that hadn’t been dubbed over yet. As the days went  
by and we continued to watch the coverage in English in the Parador  
Hotel, the Spanish news channels began to drop the story, as did the  
papers. The local people seemed to lose interest in the events much  
more quickly than we ever would. It wasn’t really happening to them.

The following February during Carnival, I saw two people dressed up as  
the Twin Towers. Their costumes were buildings in flames. They had  
little dolls on wires attached to them as people jumping out of  
windows to escape the fire.

Emma Burke Kennedy, Dublin, Ireland

I was a ten years old girl and I lived in Ukraine, when the 9/11 tragedy happened. I was ill, so an all day I was watching TV. About 16 o’clock local time the channel I’ve been watching released the Special Edition news. It was reported about terrorist attacks in U.S. As a child I was extremely shocked! I heard about terrorism and extremism, but I’ve never before faced with it, I couldn’t imagine that some people could kill others in XXI century! As a child I didn’t think about political or religious causes of attacks, I thought only about people. And I understood how awful this tragedy was.

I’m sure that I remember 9/11 for all my life. Today I can say that this tragedy left its mark on whole generation of young people the same age as I’m.  The terroristic acts and militaries interventions became the normal truth of our life. Today we see this world without pink glasses - we understand how many there are conflicts and wars and we understand that such processes is far away from permission.

It’s hard to believe that it has been 10 years since September 11th. The events of that day live vividly in my mind. It feels like it was last week.  At the time I worked as a script coordinator on a television show called “ED.” A few co-workers and I were driving from the city, where we lived, to New Jersey, where the show was filmed.  My cell phone rang as we were approaching the George Washington Bridge and I noticed it was my father.  I recall thinking something must be wrong because my father never called me that early.  When I answered, he asked me where I was and I told him I was driving to work.  He asked me about a plane that crashed into the World Trade Center.  He said it was a Cessna.  I repeated out loud what my father had said so my co-workers could hear, and as we drove over the bridge we could see smoke coming from lower Manhattan. I chatted with my father a little longer, then hung up and turned on the radio news channel.

After we arrived at work, we flipped on our TV and started watching the news coverage, during which we saw the second plane hit the second tower.  The news reports went from reporting this as an accident to reporting that New York was under attack.  As we all know today, after the Pentagon and the Pennsylvania crash, it wasn’t just New York that was under attack, but the entire United States.  As the day went on it became clear to my co-workers and I that we would not be able to get back home because the police department had ordered closed all the bridges and tunnels to Manhattan. Our production office, which had been managing filming all morning, made the decision to shut down production and began calling local hotels to try to get rooms for the actors and crew to stay for the night.  My coworkers and I decided to drive down the Palisades Parkway to one of the scenic overlooks where we could see Manhattan.  All we saw was a cloud of smoke rising over the city.  After, we drove up to the nearby shopping mall where we wanted to buy a change of clothes and some toiletries for the night. However, by the time we got there the mall had decided to close for the day.  We drove to the hotel and stayed the night in New Jersey.

Two days later, when we returned to the city, I recall trying to get home.  I lived below 14th Street and the closer I got to my apartment the more it started to sink in that life in my city was going to be much different.  There was a cloud of ash and soot in the air, and there was a burning odor like none I had ever smelled. Although I cannot describe the smell, it’s one I’ll never forget.  When I finally got to 14th Street, it was blocked by military vehicles.  The entire city south of 14th had been shut down.  I stopped the car and asked a guy in an army uniform how I could get home to 12th Street.  He asked me for my ID and when he saw my address he let me through and told me that if I went any further than my home I would be arrested. I didn’t feel like I was in New York.

I remember feeling genuinely scared for the first time on September 11th.  Not scared like a burglary on the block had taken place and that it could have been me, but rather, scared in the sense that my country had been attacked on its own soil, which was something I had never considered nor thought possible before September 11th.  I remember the fear sticking with me for several days.  My first recollection of that fear going away was when I began to see on the news not only the country, but most of the world, coming together in support of finding those responsible for doing this to the United States.  I had never experienced such a great degree of unity like that before, and genuinely feel that sense is what helped my fears fade.

Ten years later I am somewhat disappointed that not only has that global sense of unity seemed to have evaporated, but so has that unity from within our country. Republicans point fingers at Democrats and Democrats point fingers at Republicans.  No one seems to agree on anything, and rather than working toward solutions, we seem to argue and place blame.  I hope this anniversary reminds us all that like on September 11th and the days that followed, America is at its best when we rise and work together.

— William H.

When Tower One was hit, Robert instinctually ran out the door and ran all the way home, to his apartment up in Washington Heights.

My cousin Robert’s story is a good one. He is a marathon runner and works for Moody’s, which at the time was located on a very low floor of Tower Two (the first to be hit).

At the time of the first crash, there was obviously a great deal of confusion about what had happened, but the truth was inconceivable.

When Tower One was hit, Robert instinctually ran out the door and ran all the way home, to his apartment up in Washington Heights (just below the George Washington Bridge). He did not look back, even once, and only knew he was running from mayhem.

Unfortunately, because of the phones and myriad other stuck-in-Brooklyn-type complications, it was a day or two before his family happily learned that he was safely at home.

— Elizabeth Cornell

On the morning of 9/11, I was sitting at my desk, working as per usual. A notice came on one of the cable news channels that some sort of plane had hit a big building in NYC. I switched to the report and watched in astonishment as one building burned and people jumped.

I sat, wondering how the pilot had made such a horrible mistake as to hit the world trade center. I also began to blog and send emails about this already major mass casuality incident. 

Shortly thereafter, as the tv continued to blair the details of the first plane strike, my astonishment turned first to horror as another plane entered the scene and smashed into the second tower…and then I began to become angry as my analyst skills began to kick in…and I realized we were actually being attacked, live on television.

I got busy reporting the various details to my colleagues and then watched the plane hit the Pentagon.  I also almost immediately knew that my worst fears about Al-Qaeda and Usama Bin Laden had come absolutely true. 

I am from NJ and in July of 2001 I moved to S. California … however I still owned my home in NJ.  It was early morning my daughter’s friend called her to tell us to turn on the TV and watch the news.  It was the “Today Show,” with Katie Curic that we chose to watch.  I just couldn’t believe my eyes or ears on what I was seeing and hearing and I was so sad and I felt so quilty for not being on the East Coast at that moment.  It was not even two months that we were living in LA and such shocking news coming our way from back East.  We were just glued to the TV set.  Many people here especially native Ca. didn’t seem to care as much as native East coasters … that I did notice.  I did move back to NJ full time … it’s just home sweet home for me.

I was in London, England, where I’d been living and studying for a year. My MA program had just finished 10 days prior. I’d handed in my thesis and was in a frantic search to find a job in the UK so I could continue living there (this didn’t work out).  On September 11, I went my university to use the Internet and continue my job hunt.  Around 3 pm, I left and walked up the street to get a haircut, completely unaware of what was happening in NYC and DC.  The hairdresser murmured something about a hijacked plane and my first thoughts went to the Middle East.  After my haircut, I ran a few more errands and arrived home just before 5:00.  I called two friends of mine to confirm plans we’d made for the following night, and when R answered the phone he asked me if I were watching the news.  This seemed kind of an odd way to begin a conversation, and it was not even 5.  I told him I wasn’t.  Haven’t you heard, he asked? Heard what? You’ve not heard the news? No.  R told me about the Towers and the Pentagon and I actually laughed. Oh come, said I, you’re talking about a Bruce Wills movie.  Go turn on your TV, ordered he.  I walked downstairs to the living room and the TV and as I did I asked R if anyone had been killed.

It was a morning unlike any other getting to work, I was making it down the Hardy Tollway to get off my exit to make it to the Continental Employees Parking lot where I was employeed to detail and conduct lite duty maintanance on the Momentum Shuttle buses to the terminals at Houston International. When I arrived to the break room area I noticed there were no buses moving or going out on route. When I entered the room the entire area was filled with all the employees gathered around a 13” TV. I was greeted by no words but SHHH. I made my way to a vantage position of the horror that unfolded and the way we would change as a nation and a people of this earth. For each impact of the towers and for each tower that fell was like a nightmare you could not change the outcome. All our hearts sank in a room of Christians, Catholics, Semetic, and even Muslim. The reports talked of our Pentagon even being hit like it was Dec. 7th over again. The Penn state emergency landing of a jet with survivors.

When the events unrolled later on some of us went outside for air or to get a cigerette. I chatted and with a co-worker in a No fly advent in a busy airport in the midwest in Texas. the quiet was was to loud…you could hear birds cherping in the distance. 

It was evening in beijing when the towers went down and we heard the news in our dorm. it seemed completely surreal, except for the panic of a couple of other students who had parents working in the twin towers. we all broke our language pledge as we talked in english in the hall (against all the rules of only speaking chinese), and we got a letter about it from our program director the next morning, insisting that although it was his country too (a chinese immigrant to america), we really had to observe the language pledge. this was the most important thing to him, which rang so hollow that next morning. out on the street, it was all over the papers, and an old chinese woman had one of the papers and came up to a group of us and pointed at the headline and said something like “now you are getting what you deserve”, right in our faces.  we were rather shocked at her vehemence, and a couple of other chinese shoved her away and said not to mind her, she was crazy, and they felt sorry for the US.  it was very clear to me at that point the depth of the resentment towards america stewing around the rest of the world, and sorry to say, I didn’t feel highly offended by the old lady’s glee at the attacks because I learned a lot that day about america’s place in the world, our policies, our attitudes, and how that comes back around in terms of the rest of the world’s capabilities in terms of feeling sorry for our tragedies or not. 

I am psychotherapist and I work in midtown Manhattan. On September 11, my 8:30 a.m. patient walked in and said the Twin Towers were hit by an airplane. I admit to making a very hasty assessment of her reality testing, concluding that she had to be telling the truth, somehow.

I then heard a knock on the door and it opened. The director of my office leaned in and said we had to evacuate the building. My patient, myself, about 15 other staff members and about 20 patients all started walking uptown. One of the staff volunteered her apartment for us to aim towards. We passed crowds of people walking frantically uptown, all looking dazed. People covered in dust with masks over their mouths were seen.

After walking about 2.5 miles we arrived at our destination and watched the television broadcasts of the terrorist attack for a good hour until we finally stated to figure out how people could get home. I managed to get a train to Brooklyn, met my son’s father there, and we watched the TV, waiting for our son to make it home with no way to reach him directly — like so many thousands if not millions of New Yorkers on that day.

— Andrea S.