9/11...20 years later

[Big Salad]

I know the 20th anniversary is not actually till Saturday but I wanted to go ahead and post this as I just signed up to be a volunteer at a 9/11 memorial event in Charlotte this weekend. Some first responders that were there that day will be in attendance along with several local leaders, community groups, etc. The person in charge of it said she expects around 1,000 or more in attendance.

I remember exactly where I was when 9/11 happened. I was in my freshman keyboarding class in High School and another teacher came into the classroom and motioned for our teacher to come out into the hall. When he came back in I instantly could tell from his face that something dreadful had happened. He told us all to stop working and then turned on the classroom tv. To say we were stunned into silence and sudden grief is vastly understating it. Not too much longer the principal called a general school assembly where all students and staff got together and prayed. Of course school was let out early as well and I went home and bawled my eyes out along with my family members.

A lot has happened in the world since: Wars, terrorism, etc and current society still has similar issues even this many years on. It was a day that truly changed the world and if you ever get a chance to visit the 9/11 memorial in NYC I implore you to do so. It will be a sad experience but also humbling in the sense that we do not need to take life for granted and try to live every day to the fullest.

As an American some might say that this day is sadder and more heart-wrenching to think about and reflect on versus other people around the world but I don't think so. This day changed the world period and we all have been affected by it one way or another.

Saturday at the memorial event will be sad but also full of joy in the sense that we will never forget and hopefully the world will get better as a whole if we lay our problems/differences aside and try to make it so.

[villa4europe]

I was at sixth form, went home to watch it on the news and saw the 2nd plane hit as well as both collapse 

Was a crazy day, I would say my generations JFK / moon landing and its impossible to predict or guess what the next event of that magnitude will be

I've been to the memorial, personally I think the way they've done the water features in the footings are really nice and the museum is very sombre and well done 

Without wanting this to sound the wrong way, when I watch the docs and see things about it I do think that the number of people killed is surprisingly low but the damage that was done is incredible, its completely changed elements of the world for the worse, maybe that's just me getting older 

[Peter Griffin]

Nice post and fair play to u for volunteering to work. I too remember exactly where I was at the time and how I first heard about it. My wife phoned me at work and told me a plane crashed into the WTC. My mental picture was a light aircraft had technical issues and the people on board had died and maybe some people on the streets below were very unfortunate. I went to our work restaurant to see it on TV and was just dumbstruck and what unfolded for the rest of the day. I spent the entire day glued to the TV. Luckily, I had no friends or family directly involved.

I have also visited NY many times and have visited the site on multiple times. Flying over NY, I always feel emotional at the gap in the skyline.

 

9 minutes ago, Big Salad said:

Saturday at the memorial event will be sad but also full of joy in the sense that we will never forget and hopefully the world will get better as a whole if we lay our problems/differences aside and try to make it so.

 

And this Sir, is the most important part of your comment 

[mjmooney]

I was on a training course in Hull. Somebody got a text saying there had been some sort of terrorist attack at the WTC, maybe a bomb. When we had a coffee break I went out to the car and and phoned my wife, who was off work that day, as one of the kids was sick. She was watching TV and told me about the first plane going in. I was still trying to get my head around it, when I heard her say "Oh, **** ing hell..." - she had just seen the second plane hit, live on TV. As you say, the world changed. 

Edited September 9, 2021 by mjmooney

[Mark Albrighton]

I was just over two months in to my first job. It was about 2pm GMT I think? A colleague sent an e-mail to the staff, about two lines long. Short and to the point. Our computers didn’t have access to the internet so we were fairly reliant on information being reported through this method. The office had a minute (or two) silence a couple of days later.

Unsurprisingly I can’t offer anything profound or a unique thought. I will say it’s odd the things that stick with me, in this case it was the radio stations just going from song to song with no “banter” in between for the next couple of days. Just announcing what the last song was and what the next song will be, one after the other, until the next news bulletin. That, in it’s own small, insignificant way, was a little bit surreal.

[Chindie]

I was at secondary school, I'd just walked home and opened to door to find my nan watching the live news report. She just turned to me and said there had been a plane crash. Iirc we saw the footage of the second hit live. I also vividly remember going to school the next day and while we were all gathered around the site waiting for day to start a plane went over and there was that horrible over the top hysterical screaming thing teens do in reaction, which in hindsight only seems in increasingly bad taste.

It kinda focused my interests from that point. I wouldn't have done the degree I did had that event not happened. I wouldn't know a lot of the stuff that I now have etched into my brain.

I used to work for a company that had a plaque commemorating it by the door. I always felt quite poignant when my eyes caught sight of it when leaving.

[Paddywhack]

I was a daft 14 year old and it took me a while to grasp the magnitude of the whole thing. I can’t even remember hearing about the first tower being hit, but I assume it would have been my mom who told me when I came in from school.

I remember her coming upstairs to tell me about the second tower and her explaining that it meant it was a terrorist attack and I asked something like, “This is a big thing then isn’t it? It’s something I’m going to remember.”

I’ve been to the memorial in New York, but the museum hadn’t yet opened when I went. It’s not something I’m sure I could handle walking around if I’m being honest. I can’t watch the documentaries. I’ve heard a few of the answerphone messages left by the victims to their loved ones and they break me.

[tonyh29]

I worked in Canary Wharf at the time (I worked in IT for an investment bank )

I’d been for a run , was getting a Starbucks and the tv sorta in the background that I wasn’t paying a huge amount of attention to  had a picture of the towers and saying a plane had hit it … went back to my desk thinking someone had flown a Cessna into it by accident. … then the second one hit and the full picture emerged … we all just stood there dumbfounded glued to the screens.

then the rumours started about planes heading to Canary Wharf and Parliament and the tannoy system told us all that if we wanted to we could evacuate / go home … I don’t think anyone did we just stayed glued to the TV’s … or the telephones as some of our colleagues were in New York at the time …. 

watching the various programs this week and when they show the firemen inside the lobby and you hear repeated crash / thumps as the jumpers hit the ground , it still shocks even now , those poor souls .

i still think it’s the biggest event in my lifetime , even with Covid and what not .

Edited September 9, 2021 by tonyh29

[Brumerican]

Even just thinking about how WTC 7 committed suicide after watching it's siblings get hit brings me to tears.

[OutByEaster?]

Are we allowed to refer to it as the Saudi Arabian terror attack yet?

 

[Villaphan04]

I was in my kindergarten class on the day. My mom rushed to pick me up early as we lived in the DC area and didn't know if we were going to have another attack after the Pentagon.

I get to explain/teach the historical significance and impact this had on us since to my high school US history classes tomorrow. (all of whom were born several years after 9/11). Will be very somber. The videos I've picked out are pretty emotional as well

[Brumerican]

1 hour ago, OutByEaster? said:

Are we allowed to refer to it as the Saudi Arabian terror attack yet?

 

Bush is American .

[Brumerican]

[maqroll]

I remember F16s flying right over my apartment in Boston after the towers were hit and feeling a tinge of fear when the Pentagon got hit and the fourth plane was still in the sky heading to DC. No idea of the full scope of the attack and because it was all so massive already, it seemed much more was possible. 

Then the jumpers and then the towers collapsed and the images were just unbelievable. Overwhelming. 

I went to work at the bar that night and learned one of our regulars there was on Flight 11. A really sweet middle aged lady. Really sad night. Her best friend sat at the bar all night. We poured a glass of wine for her dead friend. 

The political reaction in the USA was catastrophic on so many levels. But that's another conversation. 

September 11th will always be really sad.

 

[TheAuthority]

5 hours ago, Brumerican said:

Even just thinking about how WTC 7 committed suicide after watching it's siblings get hit brings me to tears.

 

3 hours ago, Brumerican said:

[Brumerican]

Just now, TheAuthority said:

 

Don't see anything that warrants that in the slightest .   WTC 7 collapsed into it's own footprint despite not being hit and the Larry Silverstein story is true.

Which bit is tin hatty ?

 

[blandy]

14 minutes ago, Brumerican said:

the Larry Silverstein story is true

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wtc-terrorism-insurance/

Quote

While the story obviously contains elements of fact, it’s also partly fiction — most notably the implication, made via the use of scare quotes around the word “fortuitous,” that Silverstein’s decision to purchase terrorism insurance just before 9/11 was no mere coincidence…

Bear in mind, too, that when we speak of “terrorism insurance coverage,” what we’re actually speaking of is coverage that doesn’t have a terrorism exclusion. Such exclusions aren’t uncommon now, but according to the Insurance Information Institute virtually all commercial insurance policies sold in the U.S. before 9/11 covered terrorist incidents as a matter of course (and essentially free of charge), because the risk was considered so remote. Thus, for example, the World Trade Center was fully covered when it was bombed by terrorists in 1993, and insurers paid out an estimated $510 million in damages after that incident. There’s no reason to suppose that the WTC wasn’t routinely covered against terrorist acts right up until the time Silverstein took over the lease in 2001.

Moreover, upon signing that lease, Silverstein was obligated to insure the World Trade Center. There was nothing strange, suspicious, or “fortuitous,” therefore, about his purchasing an all-risk insurance policy — which at that time would have automatically included terrorism coverage — two months before 9/11, because that’s when he became contractually responsible for doing so….It’s a fact that Silverstein took his insurers to court after 9/11 and asked for double the damages. It’s also a fact that he did so on the grounds that there were two attacks (or, in insurance lingo, “occurrences”), not one. But this wasn’t some premeditated scam based on foreknowledge that a terrorist attack involving two planes would occur. The cost of rebuilding the World Trade Center, which in 2004 was estimated at $9 billion, made Silverstein’s court strategy a virtual necessity. Plus, he had obligations to lenders and co-investors, and still owed lease payments of $10 million per month to the Port Authority.

 

[veloman]

8 hours ago, Big Salad said:

 It was a day that truly changed the world and if you ever get a chance to visit the 9/11 memorial in NYC I implore you to do so. It will be a sad experience but also humbling in the sense that we do not need to take life for granted and try to live every day to the fullest.

 

Amen to that comment. Wife and self were in NYC not all that long after this atrocity; at that time, there was no 'formal' Memorial but many hand written pictures and notes from the relatives of the victims. You would have to be 'hard' not to have been moved by it but as OP says it is worth a visit just to pay respects and hope it never happens again. IMO, the only thing that equates to it are the Military Cemeteries in Normandy - Arromanche for example.

[Seat68]

An awful day long etched into my memory. I remember every second as it unfolded. Terrible. 

Last I will say on this thread as they tend to bring out conspiracy theorists. 

[Brumerican]

Just now, blandy said:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/wtc-terrorism-insurance/

 

The only thing that disputes is how "lucky " he really was.