Where were you when you heard about 9-11 ?

[LadyZod]

I was asleep. I usually woke up at 9am to get to work by 10am.

My dad called and woke me up and told me to put on the TV. He said something was going on in NY (where we were originally from.)

I watched a bit, thought nothing of it... "just an accident." Got dressed to head to work. Bam second plane.

Got in the car feeling uneasy about my hour commute to work. Put Howard Stern on to get the play by play.

A plane hit the Pentagon. We're under attack.

The highways were deserted.

I got to Lauderdale in less time than it usually took me from Miami, but I had to pick up a coworker who needed a ride.

His folks invite me in. My friend is running late due to everyone staring at the TV. His dad tells me one of the Towers went down. We watch TV for a little while waiting for my friend to finish his shower.

His dad says: Hey look they're showing the footage again of the tower going down.

I look at the screen. It says "live." It's the second tower.

We finally make it into work, 45 minutes late. Everyone is standing in the breakroom watching the TV. This goes on until almost noon.

The boss says, go home to your families. Nothing's going to get done anyway. I take some stuff to work from home for the next day, in case this is a prolonged thing.

I finally break down and cry on the way home.

[HardyGirl]

I was at home, watching the news.

[rche]

I was getting ready to get on a plane to go play some music in the NW. We had to reschedule that tour.

[cjefferys]

I was staying at my parents' place for a few months at the time (saving up for a house down payment) and I woke up because my dad had the TV set really loud (I was working afternoons and usually slept in). So I got out of bed to ask if he could turn it down and he basically said "You gotta see this, a plane hit the World Trade Center and all hell is breaking loose!" I ended up watching CNN for the rest of the day in stunned silence. I called in "sick" for work, I cross the border into the US to go to work, and on that scary day you didn't know what was going to happen next, I was honestly worried about the US shutting down the border, and I didn't want to get stuck in the US and not be able to get home (turns out that didn't happen of course, but one of the international bridges in Niagara Falls did temporarily close down that day)

[JWLJN]

Sleeping on the living room couch. I had just graduated from high school in June and was taking a year off, so I was staying up very late at night. My mom had saw the breaking news online and quickly switched NBC onto the tv and woke me up to tell me. The small plane that flew into the Empire State Building in the '40s was all that I could think of. When we saw the second plane hit...just like everyone else...the thoughts changed just as the world did.

-J\/\/

[Toy Timelord]

I had just mailed off my college application, and was walking back to my house when a neighbor mentioned the twin towers were struck by a plane. I put the news on and shortly thereafter, watched the second one live.

[Nostalgiabuff]

I also had a friend from high school who was killed in the Pentagon. he was there working on the renovations to provide for his wife and 2 young children

[Nostalgiabuff]

what I remember most about that day is how scared I was and how I cried as I watched the news. all I wanted was to have my children and wife home with me so I could hold them and be sure they were safe. the rage came the next day. I was on standby that morning to appear for a deposition right there and was on my way to my office in Westchester to wait for the call when I heard about the first plane on the news. the building where my office was, shut down because of the threat still pending. there were still planes unaccounted for

[Wee67]

I was in my office in the newsroom in Washington, DC when one of my colleagues told me look at CNN.

When it was clear this was not an accident, we dispatched our Maryland bureau north to go to NYC.

When the second plane hit, we started sending crews to important sites in DC. One of our photographers was crossing the bridge from DC to VA when the plane hit the Pentagon.

It was the first and only time I felt palpable fear in a newsroom.

[Rallygirl]

I had just gotten off working overtime on third shift and stopped to visit my mom on the way home. She had the tv on in the other room when we heard the news bulletin. We took our breakfast into the other room and watched as the second plane hit. After the second plane hit, Ed was speeding his way home from work, because as the owner of a private airfield, he knew law enforcement would be there very quickly.

[JediJaida]

I was out putting up flyers for Fernando Ferrer in that year's mayoral election. When we heard what had happened, everything ground to a halt.

I remember walking on an elevated pathway over a parking lot that had an excellent view going all the way downtown. We could actually SEE all of the black smoke from what was left of Tower One, and Tower Two was in a bad way as well.

We crossed the walkway, and wandered around for a bit before heading back. It was only about a half hour or so, but we saw that BOTH towers were gone and we were really shaken up.

The buses were a mess that day, and all subway service had been suspended. I managed to get on a bus going home, but it was literally packed to the gills.

One woman got on after me, with two babies, and without even saying anything, I snagged one and told her to take care of the infant. The toddler I was holding onto didn't even make a peep at being handled by a stranger; it was eerie!

The bus moved at a snail's pace, but eventually, I managed to get a couple of seats in the back for both me and the babies mother. She was in such a state of shock, she wasn't speaking much (I don't think she spoke a lot of English, but it's been thirteen years, so I might be wrong.)

When she finally got off the bus, she opened up her stroller and I just handed over the toddler when she had the little one settled.

She managed a kind of shaky sounding "Thank you." and I said "You're welcome." just as shaky.

I managed to get home, but it was really freaky for the rest of the afternoon. There were literally NO planes in the sky, and I live maybe ten minutes away from LaGuardia airport. The silence was deafening.

Stuff slowly went back to what passes for normal, but I will never forget that day.

[thunderbolt]

In my work van looking for irrigation parts, I had Stern on the radio and heard it as it happened. Later a client let me in his house to watch the news. For the next week or so it was really quiet out there, it was located in a main air traffic area between Tampa and Orlando and there was not a plane in the sky except military.

[SentientApe]

I was at home, having just turned on the news.

My wife had already left for work (she had a longer commute time), and I had just turned on the morning news and watched the reports of the first tower being hit. A terribly unfortunate accident. When I got out of the shower a few minutes later, they were replaying the footage of the second plane hitting the second tower -- which had occured while I had been in the bathroom. I knew immediately that neither plane strike had been an accident, and that our country was under some sort of terrorist attack.

I headed to work and, during the commute, was amazed at how many people had not even heard the news yet. When I arrived at my building, the television monitor in the lobby was carrying the live feed. In the couple minutes while I waited for the elevator, I watched LIVE as the first tower collapsed to the ground. What followed was the single most nerve-wracking elevator ride of my life.

As soon as I got to my office (located, naturally, on the very top floor of the building), I jury-rigged an antenna to one of our AV carts to get television reception, and we got very little done that morning while watching the news unfold -- including the attack on the Pentagon, reports of multiple hijackings, live footage of people leaping to their death, rampant speculation, etc. -- and the second tower collapse.

Within a couple hours, the call went all over Chicago to abandon all buildings in the city's extended downtown area. As one of the Fire Marshalls, I rushed to evacuate the floor -- my efforts were hampered by various family members calling me repeatedly to "Save yourself -- get OUT of the building NOW!" And I would like to again go on record that if they had stopped calling me, I would have been out much earlier. I was literally the third-to-the-last person out of the building, followed only by the Security Guard and the Building's Head Maintenance person, who locked the door as we walked out.

And then the REAL difficulty began: trying to get out of the crowded downtown area. Fully aware that that at least one major U.S. city was under terrorist attack, and recalling the Sarin gas incident in the Japanese subway, there was no way I was going to go into an underground tube crammed with hundreds of thousands of sitting ducks. And, of course, every taxicab in the city was in the process of evacuating the thousands of people who came to the same conclusion. I had the good fortune to flag down a taxicab (actually, I owe it to my unprecedented whistling ability) and, together with another person from my office, shared the ride to the city's far north side, where I gave her the cab for the rest of her journey, and walked home the remaining mile or two.

[EmergencyIan]

I was at work and a coworker came down the isle and said a small plane had hit the World Trade Center. I was in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, at the time.

I already had a flight planned to NYC on the 14th. I actually made that flight.

- Ian

[pmwasson]

I was driving to work and heard it on the radio as the second plane crashed. I wondered if I should still go to work or turn around and watch the news at home. I decided to go to work, but we all just watched the television, so not much got done.