I was working at the Department of Commerce. Earlier that morning I changed buses at the Pentagon as usual.
A coworker and I left to go home around 10:30am. We felt it was unsafe to stay in our government building next to the White House. We caught a cab. Went across the 14th Street bridge before they closed it. Another passenger in the cab was going to Rosslyn, so we headed up the GW Parkway past the burning Pentagon. Got stuck in traffic and was listening to the radio when they announced that each of the Towers fell.
Got home around noon and was glued to the TV for the rest of the day.
I had just got home from school with my best friend (I was 12/13 years old, I still can't believe it was that long ago) and my Mum was glued to the TV as the news had only broke within the hour over here. I remember her explaining to us what had happened and we watched the news for most of the night.
That's a really interesting perspective ... not only being in another country, but being young. Most of us responding were in our early to mid 20s in 2001. I'm really curious to know how people who were children/young adults perceive the day's events now that they are older.
I was working for the same company I am now, though we were more in "Internet start-up mode" which meant that I worked longer hours, hoping I'd retire early
( ... )
I couldn't reach my own mother in DC, and became irrationally worried -- what if she was at the Pentagon??
In conversations with other group members, this seems to be a common thread. A lot of people lost track of time or place. My dad worried that I was on a plane (he'd recalled that I was traveling to the East Coast, but that was actually a trip I would take two weeks after 9/11). Another friend's mother had worked at the Pentagon three years prior, but upon hearing that a plane hit the building, my friend's first concern was whether or not her mother was there.
I was coming into work when I heard that the first plane crashed into the World Trade Center.
I got to work just as news came out about the second plane crashing into the WTC.
All of the major web sites were clogged, so my fellow employees (mostly Jewish who were born abroad) and I surfed to an Israeli news site to get information. They were running everything they got as is, without doing any fact checking. (That last bit was noted on their web site.) Israel was going nuts because the initial reports were that it was a Palestinian attack, so they were shutting down access to Israel by anybody. They were also running the passenger rosters of the downed planes, which turned out to be quite accurate.
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A coworker and I left to go home around 10:30am. We felt it was unsafe to stay in our government building next to the White House. We caught a cab. Went across the 14th Street bridge before they closed it. Another passenger in the cab was going to Rosslyn, so we headed up the GW Parkway past the burning Pentagon. Got stuck in traffic and was listening to the radio when they announced that each of the Towers fell.
Got home around noon and was glued to the TV for the rest of the day.
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In conversations with other group members, this seems to be a common thread. A lot of people lost track of time or place. My dad worried that I was on a plane (he'd recalled that I was traveling to the East Coast, but that was actually a trip I would take two weeks after 9/11). Another friend's mother had worked at the Pentagon three years prior, but upon hearing that a plane hit the building, my friend's first concern was whether or not her mother was there.
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I got to work just as news came out about the second plane crashing into the WTC.
All of the major web sites were clogged, so my fellow employees (mostly Jewish who were born abroad) and I surfed to an Israeli news site to get information. They were running everything they got as is, without doing any fact checking. (That last bit was noted on their web site.) Israel was going nuts because the initial reports were that it was a Palestinian attack, so they were shutting down access to Israel by anybody. They were also running the passenger rosters of the downed planes, which turned out to be quite accurate.
Not much work got done that day.
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