

Ask HN: What were you doing when 9/11 happened? - twidlit

Another 9/11 anniversary is coming up. Would love to read what any of the HN guys were doing when it happened...
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patio11
I've got a story for you, though it is not mine: I went to Japan to study
abroad in 2002, and was told this on the first anniversary of the attacks by
the professor who was in charge of the program (and who had been the same on
9/11).

The first plane struck the World Trade Center in the late evening, Japan time.
The American embassy contacted the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
approximately one hour later, asking for all possible assistance in securing
Americans. (There are somewhere on the order of 100,000 Americans in Japan at
any given time.)

Prior to word arriving from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to the Ministry of
Justice to the various local bodies in Japan which handle civil defense,
someone in the Kyoto Prefectural Police heard about the attacks on television
and immediately ordered a full mobilization. Cops were called back in in the
dead of night, and went down a list of every hotel in Kyoto asking whether
they currently or habitually had American guests. Simultaneously, someone woke
the Foreigner Registration clerks at Kyoto's several ward offices and pulled
the addresses of every registered American in the city. Including some four
dozen students of my study abroad program.

My professor was awakened at the first ray of dawn by a police lieutenant, who
explained that there had been an attack on America the previous night. He
explained that putting a watcher on every American in the city had strained
their resources, and apologized that they had only time to scrape together
_two dozen police in full tactical gear_ to discourage the, quote,
dishonorable no-account bastards from trying to continue the fight at a small
American school half a world away.

I have had many, many occasions to grind my teeth due to interactions with
Japanese cops, but I always tell myself that, in the balance, we still owe
them one.

~~~
qbert
Interesting. I was actually living in Tokyo at the time and never heard about
the police notifying Americans of the attack. (I am an American citizen.)

I first heard of the attack when a friend called my roommate and told us to
turn on the TV. It was right after the first plane had just hit and they were
still trying to figure out if it was some kind of accident. Shortly after, the
2nd plane hit and it became very apparent that it was no accident...

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jimm
I was in NYC at a breakfast meeting midtown (just south of Central Park). The
restaurant manager interrupted our meeting to tell us that a plane had crashed
into one of the towers. Two of the people at the meeting worked at Sun, which
had an office in the towers. They left immediately, and the meeting broke up a
while later.

Walking to the subway, we could see smoke from the towers (and we were around
55th street). There was some confusion among pedestrians.

Back at my office, there was a TV and we saw what had happened. I tried to
call home, but the phones and my cell weren't working. I emailed my family,
and managed to catch a train back home to CT. The train was full; people were
standing in the aisles.

Edit: A friend had a breakfast meeting scheduled at the Twin Towers that day,
but it had been moved uptown and he was nowhere near when it happened.

------
gaoshan
I was just entering the newsroom of the paper where I was a photojournalist. I
walked in and saw the first building burning on one of the TV's mounted around
the room, the second plane had not yet hit. At that point it still seemed like
a horrible, one-off accident. Then the second plane flew in and it got very
quiet in the normally loud room. A brief moment of shocked silence and then
the newsroom erupted as reporters and editors started reacting.

I started with some local reaction coverage and by that evening was in a car
on my way to New York City. Drove all night taking turns with our reporter and
was within site of the smoking southern end of Manhattan by dawn. It was
horrible to see the thousands of family members wandering around like zombies,
many carrying pictures, still hoping for a miracle.

One side note from that day, my then 3 year old son asked my wife who was
watching the news coverage, "Mom, why do you keep watching that show? You've
already seen it."

------
retube
In Islamabad. Got back to the hotel to flick on CNN, just moments after the
second plane had hit. Al Qaeda were already being suggested as the
perpetrators. Was flying back to London on BA the next morning (was evening-
time in Pakistan) and had to get up at 4am. Popped out to the bazaar to buy an
alarm clock - there was quite an eerie atmosphere in the city. The next
morning at the airport everyone was glued to TVs watching footage of the
planes hit in a repeating loop. By this point Afghanistan and Pakistan were
also in the frame. There was a flight to Kabul so a lot of afghans about too -
everyone seemed genuinely appalled/shocked.

That flight was the last out before BA cancelled all flights for like 2 months
out of Pakistan. Was a bit nerve-wracking.

------
CallMeV
That was the last day I ever used my old pager. I'd had that pager since 1996,
and I hadn't actually used it for anything for a good few months. That
morning, I listened to my instincts and put it on.

I was at a New Age store buying incense and charcoal blocks for the burner
when the pager went off. It was almost 15:00. It had taken till then for the
news to come through.

The pager went off just three further times: when the second plane hit, and
when each of the towers fell, in turn.

That was the last time I ever received anything on that pager service.

------
dangrossman
I was in a high school chemistry class. Something was clearly happening since
teachers kept leaving their classrooms and talking in hallways. Us students
didn't know what was up.

By the time that class ended and I moved on to a history class, people were
talking and everyone knew something happened with a plane flying into a
building. The history teacher pulled a TV cart into her room, announced that
what was happening would be in history books in the future, and had us watch
CNN for the class period.

~~~
Simucal
I was in my high school health class. The principal informed all the teachers
over the intercom to turn off all radios and televisions.

Our teacher told us that today was going to be an important day to remember
and that he wasn't going to be the one to shield us from it. He rolled in a
television and we watched the news until the period ended.

~~~
AndyKelley
What the HELL was the principle thinking?! I detest people, especially those
in authority, whose first instinct is to hide or withhold information.

------
jacquesm
We'd concluded a management buy-out deal the day before, the letters of intent
and term sheets were all signed and I was reading CNN when the first plane
struck.

I switched on the office TV and called everybody upstairs to my room and we
watched dumbstruck as the second plane hit.

After that I told my partners that the deal was likely off, no way the
investors would fund a deal like that in a time of uncertainty, we got the
call 15 minutes later.

We felt extremely connected with America in every way that that is possible
from halfway across the world, one of us had a friend working in one of the
towers and spent a day to make sure she was ok. Half the company was on the
other side of the Atlantic at the time and it took quite some time before I
was able to go there again.

The images of the smoking towers and then later the collapse will never fade,
that's for sure.

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fbnt
I was at home here in Italy, around 3pm or something like that. I was making
websites back then and I used to work from home a couple of days a week, with
my boss constantly on the phone.

After some talking he went like 'Have you seen that plane in NY? With all the
possible places, the pilot manged to crash it into the tallest tower. It's on
TV now, they even interrupted the programs'

So I switched on the TV to check it out, and then we quickly recovered our
discussion and kept talking for another few minutes.

Then, all of a sudden, he went '..shit' in the middle of a sentence, and then
silence for the next 10-20 seconds. The second plane had crashed into the
other tower, with the whole fireball on live TV. I was watching it too. All I
heard then was 'I call you later' and he hung up.

That night I was really expecting serious troubles.

------
iampims
I was playing video games. It was the afternoon in France. When I switched off
the PS2, it took me a few minutes to realize I wasn't watching a movie. I kept
watching TV until late that night…

------
andre3k1
I was in 7th grade at the time in the middle of an English test on Greek
Mythology. My professor, Prof. Sigñore turned on the TV to watch the news
coverage, however, he forced us to finish our test.

I vividly remember a bunch of my friends' parents coming to pick them up at
school as if their sons' lives were in danger. My mom called me to ask if I
wanted to go home, I said no as I had practice that afternoon at school.
Practice ended up being cancelled. There's my story.

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ryne
I'm kind of skeptical to these type of memories, called flashbulb memories,
since most of the time subjects give vivid details and are confident when in
fact it's just made up details they believed they experienced. So AFAIK I
don't remember anything particular about 9/11.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flashbulb_memory>

~~~
retube
Interesting link. Didn't read the whole thing, but the first few paragraphs
seem to suggest the opposite of what you're saying: flashbulb memories are
valid (i.e. not made up, although not necessarily complete) and are remembered
so well as a result of the event triggering surprise or emotional arousal.

~~~
ryne
I guess it's just my bias/skepticism because against flashbulb memories but
this sums up my position: "Flashbulb memories are not special in their
accuracy, as previously claimed, but only in their perceived accuracy."

<http://pss.sagepub.com/content/14/5/455.abstract>

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joshzayin
I was in 3rd grade. Sometime in the middle of the day, a lot of kids started
leaving, but I wasn't sure why. My teacher didn't say anything. I think I
thought it was a birthday party for a kid who had their birthday that day.

I was waiting after school for a carpool to a Hebrew School I went to.
Instead, my mom came to pick me up. I was somewhat confused. My mom eventually
explained, in not very much detail, that people had flown planes into
buildings in New York. I didn't really grok the significance of it then--I was
too young to understand.

It wasn't until later, I think in 9th grade, that I saw a video of the planes
crashing into the building, and then started to grok what had happened. I also
later learned that a relative who worked in the Pentagon would have had a
meeting in the wing of the Pentagon that was destroyed, but it was canceled so
she was in her office when the plane hit. Thank God for that.

------
geophile
Driving to work outside of Boston, listening to the Howard Stern program, then
on WBCN. He reported on a small plane hitting the WTC, but mostly was doing
his usual schtick. Then the second plane hit and he concluded that it was a
terrorist attack. He was a better source of news in those first minutes than
the local NPR station or anything else I could find on my car radio.

Once I got to work, we watched TV for the rest of the day. It was the
strangest, most surreal work day I've ever experienced. There were lots of
rumors going around, with great uncertainty over how many planes were taken
over.

~~~
ja27
I was working at home, listening to a local "shock jock" morning radio show
when they mentioned the first crash. I flipped on CNN on my computer's tv
tuner but mostly listened to the radio. When the second plane hit, it took a
minute for everyone to clarify that it was a second plane. One of the guys on
the radio show said, within 30 seconds, 'this is the work of Osama bin Laden'.

Everyone in our office, near our airport, was told to go home about 10 minutes
after the second plane hit. We were weeks from filing for an IPO, but that
never happened.

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staunch
At the time I was going to sleep at 4AM every day and waking up at around 1PM
or later.

That day I awoke up 5-10 minutes before CNN broadcast the news of the first
plane hitting. This still freaks me out just a little, since I never woke up
this early.

I only switched on CNN to bore myself back to sleep. I sat up in bed when they
announced that the first plane hit. I remember them speculating about whether
the plane was a passenger jet or a small plane. I didn't leave the TV for the
next 12+ hours.

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jason_slack
I was in NYC, less than 5 miles away. I have never seen so many people running
because there was simply nothing else to do with rush of unknown surging
inside you.....

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NginUS
It was the start of the day at work, I was loading the truck to go install a
videoconferencing system. My boss was watching CNN on his computer, and a few
of my co-workers had stopped to watch over his shoulder. I noticed people
gathering & stopped to see what was going on. As soon as I saw, I called a
friend in Queens, she had overslept and was late to work. Her office was close
by, that was her subway stop there at the towers.

------
gcheong
I was in my apartment in Tokyo. The phone rings and suddenly my roommate is
yelling to turn on the TV. I was working for Nikko Salomon Smith Barney at the
time and the next day they started ID and bag checks on entry into the
building. It was a rather eerie feeling to see processes failing trying to
pick up files from NY that, for the foreseeable future, we knew would not be
arriving.

------
Chirael
Running down Wall Street to avoid chunks of falling building and a dust cloud
I imagined must be coming (I was right)

------
kschua
I was getting ready for bed when I caught the headlines and news clip that the
plane hit the tower. My first thought was "How did the pilot had an accident
like that?" I saw like the second plane hit and I was like " __ __, these are
not accidents!"

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meric
I was sleeping. It was in the dead of the night. A phone call in the house. I
woke up, my father was talking on the phone. He rushed downstairs and turned
on the TV. I followed him down. Seconds later the screen was full of dust and
smoke...

------
Shooter
I was asleep, because I worked the night shift at the time. My wife came home
to wake me up, tell me about everything, and kiss me. We watched the news
reports together and she cried, telling me she was so glad I had changed
careers...

------
jasiek
Just got back from school and switched my TV on out of boredom, and there it
was.

