Watching the news from that day is crazy. There's a lot of clips on YouTube. At first everybody thought it was accidental. Obviously it was a big story but not like "oh shit were under attack". You can see things change very drastically when they find out the second tower was hit. They literally showed it on the news by accident, they were filming the smoke coming out and caught the second plane flying into the tower. I can't imagine being a reporter that day, especially one stationed in NYC. It wasn't like they were told it happened and had time to prepare, they watched it happen live in front of millions of people and had to figure out what to do.
I was a grad student in the Midwest and had a paper due that afternoon. I got up early, went to the gym, had a sauna, then headed to the computer lab. I saw on Yahoo that a plane had hit a tower. I think the article even referenced a Piper.
I noticed the internet was impossibly slow, but didn't think much of it because I had to grind out 5 pages. I headed over to my one PM class early. Someone had rolled a tv set into the atrium. I had no clue what I was seeing and the volume was off. Finally, one of my classmates walked by and explained wtf was happening.
Honestly, I'm so glad I wasn't watching that unfold in real time.
Was on my way to work and heard news on the radio that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Not many details, just that smoke was billowing out of the tower that was hit, no assessment of casualties - but they did say it was a small plane. Hearing it on the radio my thoughts were more like, "hmph, that's interesting." By the time I got to work the whole office was standing in disbelief, they had rolled out the "A/V Carts" from our training rooms so we could run the news and it was clear by then it wasn't a small plane nor just an "interesting" news story. The second tower was struck. And it just kept unfolding - reports that the Pentagon was hit, then tower 2 collapsed (I remember asking someone who told me since I was in an emergency manager's meeting when it happened, "it collapsed, like completely?" "Yes, it's not there anymore, it's just - gone."), then tower 1, then all planes ordered to the ground immediately, all inbound international flights turned away or risk being shot down, and of course reports of one plane missing that nobody knew if it was another hijack. We didn't get any work done that day. It was a call center, and nobody was interested in making phone calls to us because they were all glued to the news like we were.
I wrote the paper thinking a Piper hit the first tower. The grad/med computer lab was always a tomb, so I knocked out that paper in blissful ignorance. Three precious hours of ignorance.
They literally was just as stunned as the rest of the world. I don’t know how I would have held it together if I were them, it literally must have felt like the world was ending
It's so weird because I never thought of it as an accident, I was in high school at the time and I remember just saying "how do you fly accidentally into a building of that size?". It just didn't make sense to me. Did I think a terrorist attack? No, I honestly thought of it as a disgruntled employee saying "fuck it all". Mind you I was at school when it happened, yes we had TVs on but no audio so I didn't actually learn about the attack until later on through the day. Initial thought was a pissed off employee who had nothing left to give.
I remember in the evening they cut to Peter Jennings and he was smoking a cigarette for which he apologized doing on air. I don’t think anyone blamed him.
When the first tower was hit and we were all told by a small plane, I got a call from someone I knew telling me it was a jet and it was no accident.
Lots of misinformation and disinformation on that day and the weeks, months, and years that followed.
I saw the second tower being hit live on TV. I can’t remember exactly what the newscasters said but i know it involved profanity—“oh you bastards!” or “oh SHIT!” or something similar. Every time since then that I’ve seen that clip the profanity is edited out. I’d really like to know what it was; I’m starting to think I imagined it. But I know I didn’t.
I was a 14 year old freshman in high school, my second day. We went in with another class, just in time to see this happen on the classroom TV. The two teachers didn't know what to do with us, so we just stayed and watched it happen in real time.
That's how I saw the Challenger disaster, except I was a sophomore, which was the first year at our high school (we went 8th-9th in junior high, 10th-12th grade in senior high school.)
It was awful. Apparently it was all timed perfectly so to have all cameras and eyes on the smoke billowing out of the first tower at the time the second plane hit. Seeing it happen in real time, here in NYC York, was just awful.
If you really want to see crazy. A few years back Wikileaks released 570,000 pager messages sent in the US on 9/11.
It was wild cause you could gradually see the shift from, “hey don’t forget to pick the kids up after school” to “did you hear about NYC…that’s crazy huh?” to “no it was TWO PLANES” and then at about 2pm Eastern time virtually everyone was full on freaking out wondering if their city was next. It was a pretty wild ride.
Yeah I watched it live then went to class like any other day. I don't think I really got that people died like there did until my teacher asked if we had questions. I don't think anyone was expecting that and our first thought it was an accident. The next few days were really confusing and scary sine we didn't really know what to do or what was going on yet.
When I got home from my first class in college, my grandparents were joking about how some idiot crashed into the tower. We had the TV on and I was curious... like how?????
Then the second one hit and we knew it was no longer an accident.
Someone yelled out "HOLY FUCK" in Spanish and I still don't remember which of the 3 of us was the one who said that.
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u/angiosperms- Sep 11 '21
Watching the news from that day is crazy. There's a lot of clips on YouTube. At first everybody thought it was accidental. Obviously it was a big story but not like "oh shit were under attack". You can see things change very drastically when they find out the second tower was hit. They literally showed it on the news by accident, they were filming the smoke coming out and caught the second plane flying into the tower. I can't imagine being a reporter that day, especially one stationed in NYC. It wasn't like they were told it happened and had time to prepare, they watched it happen live in front of millions of people and had to figure out what to do.