9/11/01 20th Anniversary

 
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 6:02 pm    Post subject: 9/11/01 20th Anniversary

On the eve of 9/11 the 20th anniversary I reflect on that day. It was a normal routine day. I woke up in the morning getting ready for work. I had the tv on and I see what is reported to be a plane crashing into one of the twin towers. The assumption was it was a small plane that hit the building. By this time I drove to work not far from my home. I worked in the warner center in a high-rise building. I got into my office and I believe by this time the news was another plane had hit the other tower. There was a buzz in the office as people were glued to the news. Nobody was working. I can't remember if the pentagon was hit at this point or the crash of flight 93. It was all a blur. People at work were starting to panic thinking maybe the Los Angeles area will be next. Could our building be hit next? I know it was irrational but people were freaking out. After about an hour at work, management told us all to go home. I went straight home and watched the events unfold in real-time. What a horrible day. Still hard to process 20 years later. God Bless America!
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 6:16 pm    Post subject:

I still remember what I did that day 20 years later....the internet was super slow, all the major websites were slowing to a crawl because they got hammered by people looking for news. I remember being glued to the TV most of the day and when I did go out there was little to no traffic which was quite an eerie sight in LA.
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 6:23 pm    Post subject:

I was there.
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 6:27 pm    Post subject:

I remember reporting for my early shift to cover the market opening in a high rise in downtown San Diego at 7 am. We had TV's in our location and it was already happening as I reported to work.

Since our building was in the flight path of the SD Airport, they offered us the choice to stay or go home and I chose go home which I think pissed off my boss.

Probably the most shocking national incident of my lifetime, I can't think of one worse. I still feel like their needs to be payback, but I am a patriot.
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 6:35 pm    Post subject:

I was driving to work when the first radio report came in. They said it was a small plane, so I pictured an errant Piper or Cessna hitting the WTC. Years earlier I worked in NYC. I sometimes had meetings with Cantor Fitzgerald, a treasury broker dealer that inhabited the highest floors at One WTC. It was so high up that on windy days the elevators would emit a haunting howl. The building would sway and the toilets would spill.

I wonder how many of the people I met there died. I still refuse to look for familiar names among the list of victims.
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 6:52 pm    Post subject:

LakerLanny wrote:
I remember reporting for my early shift to cover the market opening in a high rise in downtown San Diego at 7 am. We had TV's in our location and it was already happening as I reported to work.

Since our building was in the flight path of the SD Airport, they offered us the choice to stay or go home and I chose go home which I think pissed off my boss.

Probably the most shocking national incident of my lifetime, I can't think of one worse. I still feel like their needs to be payback, but I am a patriot.


The closest I can think of is that it was our Pearl Harbor of this generation. Unlike the WW2 generation where they got some form of closure by defeating the Empire of Japan and the Nazis we were never able to defeat the ideology.
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 6:55 pm    Post subject:

My 9/11 was very different than most. A friend and I had chartered a fishing boat out of Santa Barbara that morning to fish off of Anacapa. So we were on a boat in the channel when things started to unfold and had no visuals. Only reports from friends. First we heard was when the captain got a call from his son saying a plane had crashed into the WTC and it was on fire. We didn't think much about it—we figured some idiot had crashed his plane, or at worst it was like the event a few months prior when some yahoo had flown his plane into an IRS building.

Then a bit later the captain got a call from a friend saying that a second plane had crashed into the second tower. So I called a friend who was watching it all on TV at work while the captain's daughter, who was working as the deckhand called her boyfriend). We learned that the planes were full blown airliners, not little cessnas or something and that both buildings were fully aflame and you could see people jumping from the upper stories. It was too surreal to even visualize in the mind. I think the four of us on the boat were a bit shocked and not really processing, so we oddly decided to keep fishing.

By mid-morning things got really eerie out in the channel. There no other boats to be seen anywhere and no plane traffic, which was unusual. We were monitoring channel 16 on the VHS and there constant alerts from the Coast Guard for civilian traffic to be on alert for suspicious activity. Then we started seeing all kinds of fast naval craft out of Hueneme going back and forth. One was the weirdest looking gunboat I had ever seen that buzzed us, clearly scoping us out. The Captain radioed the CG and stated that we were a private craft and asked for advisement. They told him we were OK to continue if we wished, but he advised that returning to port would be best. I called my friend again and he said both towers had collapsed. I kind of laughed thinking he was exaggerating and said something like, "well they can't just collapse . . ." and he reiterated that they had indeed, as in fully pancaked to the ground in an instant. So we started the hour or so boat ride back

By the time we were back at the dock, the whole picture was coming together with the Pentagon crash and flight 93 going down and that thousands were certainly dead. My friend and I got in the car for the drive back to LA with our ears glued to the radio, still having had no visual reference for the scope of the mayhem. I don't think we saw more than a handful of civilian vehicles on the entire drive home and none of the CHP and police vehicles we saw seemed to give a (bleep) about us flying down the freeway to get home.

It wasn't until I got home and finally saw the replays of the days events that I could even start to try and wrap my head around it all.
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 6:59 pm    Post subject:

I was at work, cataloguing government documents for the San Diego City Library.


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PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 7:16 pm    Post subject:

FernieBee wrote:
I was at work, cataloguing government documents for the San Diego City Library.



That doesn't sound like work, that sounds like a party!
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 7:18 pm    Post subject:

DaMuleRules wrote:
FernieBee wrote:
I was at work, cataloguing government documents for the San Diego City Library.



That doesn't sound like work, that sounds like a party!


I think it was a euphemism for tossing salads in the San Diego city jail.
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 8:17 pm    Post subject:

DaMuleRules wrote:
FernieBee wrote:
I was at work, cataloguing government documents for the San Diego City Library.



That doesn't sound like work, that sounds like a party!


It was a good-paying but very boring job . . . and I did it for about 10 years.


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PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 9:00 pm    Post subject:

jodeke wrote:
I was there.



Wait, wha? Really Jo?
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 10:25 pm    Post subject:

watched the second plane hit the tower on live tv...
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 11:22 pm    Post subject:

When the first plane hit and they said it was AA, the first thing I did was try to get in touch with one of my best friends who was a flight attendant with AA. I could not get her. The phone would ring and ring or I'd get a busy signal. It was like that all day.

The following day, I got an email from her. She was not working on the 11th and was at home, but a good friend of hers was on that plane.

I remember going into work and all of the security officers were armed. I work for the electric utility company in Sacramento. We power all of the California government buildings, so didn't know what might happen in our state's capital that day. It was eerie.
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PostPosted: Fri Sep 10, 2021 11:25 pm    Post subject:

I had been in Las Vegas over the previous weekend, and drove home late Monday night. September 11 was on a Tuesday. I was staying at my parents' house at the time and my plan was to really sleep in on Tuesday morning, probably not waking up until after noon. My mom woke up me at what I thought was an ungodly hour to tell me that a plane hit one of the Trade center towers and that they didn't seem to know what the heck was happening on TV. So I got out of bed and we went into the living room to watch the coverage. It couldn't have been but a few minutes later when we watched the second plane hit the second tower live. At that moment, I think everybody knew it had gone from "how could a plane hit the tower?" to a feeling of genuine horror, because you knew that it wasn't two accidents, at that point. We just stayed glued to the TV all day and all night. The whole day just seemed unfathomable.
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 11, 2021 7:07 am    Post subject:

hig wrote:
When the first plane hit and they said it was AA, the first thing I did was try to get in touch with one of my best friends who was a flight attendant with AA. I could not get her. The phone would ring and ring or I'd get a busy signal. It was like that all day.

The following day, I got an email from her. She was not working on the 11th and was at home, but a good friend of hers was on that plane.

I remember going into work and all of the security officers were armed. I work for the electric utility company in Sacramento. We power all of the California government buildings, so didn't know what might happen in our state's capital that day. It was eerie.


Nice to see you hig.
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 11, 2021 7:23 am    Post subject:

I also remember being angry at the security at Logan International Airport for letting the hijackers through. The terrorists did their homework, they picked the right airport. I took an early morning flight out of that airport for Amsterdam a couple of weeks prior to 9/11 and at the security checkpoint I forgot to take my belt off. I set off the alarms. The security workers looked bored, they just waved me on without checking what set it off. I could have been carrying a weapon. They simply didn't give a damn.

I later learned that the person in-charge of Logan's security was the Mayor's former chauffeur driver. That's how government works.
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 11, 2021 9:07 am    Post subject:

My wife was in Sacramento, and when I found out & saw that air transportation had been grounded, I called her up & said I was coming to get her. Spent the day/evening driving to Sacramento & back.
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 11, 2021 9:46 am    Post subject:

Omar Little wrote:
DaMuleRules wrote:
FernieBee wrote:
I was at work, cataloguing government documents for the San Diego City Library.



That doesn't sound like work, that sounds like a party!


I think it was a euphemism for tossing salads in the San Diego city jail.


Fernie would proudly cop to that sans euphemisms, tho.
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 11, 2021 9:50 am    Post subject:

Omar Little wrote:
hig wrote:
When the first plane hit and they said it was AA, the first thing I did was try to get in touch with one of my best friends who was a flight attendant with AA. I could not get her. The phone would ring and ring or I'd get a busy signal. It was like that all day.

The following day, I got an email from her. She was not working on the 11th and was at home, but a good friend of hers was on that plane.

I remember going into work and all of the security officers were armed. I work for the electric utility company in Sacramento. We power all of the California government buildings, so didn't know what might happen in our state's capital that day. It was eerie.


Nice to see you hig.


Same. Damn, talk bout 20 yrs past. I was off work and saw 2nd plane live. Stand story. I went to play hoops at gym and listen to Stern on route. I hadta decompress. I shot around in empty gym fer an hour.
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PostPosted: Sat Sep 11, 2021 10:12 am    Post subject:

non-player zealot wrote:
Omar Little wrote:
DaMuleRules wrote:
FernieBee wrote:
I was at work, cataloguing government documents for the San Diego City Library.



That doesn't sound like work, that sounds like a party!


I think it was a euphemism for tossing salads in the San Diego city jail.


Fernie would proudly cop to that sans euphemisms, tho.


I was told it's not gay if you don't like it.

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PostPosted: Mon Sep 13, 2021 12:11 pm    Post subject:

jonnybravo wrote:
jodeke wrote:
I was there.



Wait, wha? Really Jo?

Yes. I was in New Jersey, sadly for my sister's funeral. I was watching the morning news when the first plane hit the tower. It looked like the pilot had lost control of the plane and accidentally hit the tower. I didn't give it much thought.

About 15 minutes later the second plane hit. I said to myself, that was no accident, and hoped somebody was doing something.

Shortly after the second hit, I heard jets flying overhead. Again I said to myself, they're going to hit neighborhoods now, and got very nervous. I ran outside and saw fighter jets headed to New York or Washington, I'm not sure which.

I went up to the Orange mountains, There is a spot where you can look through binoculars and see New York. I saw the smoke plumes, they were visible without binoculars.

Later in the day some family members and I went to New York. We couldn't get close to the towers we were stopped at Canal St. I saw some dusty, exhausted firefighters, looking very sad.

All flights were grounded. It was about a week before I could get a flight back to Los Angeles.

911 conjures 2 memories for me, both sad.
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PostPosted: Mon Sep 13, 2021 12:34 pm    Post subject:

I remember getting the initial report from Howard Stern. My girlfriend (now wife) had our stereo set as an alarm clock of sorts. It was a little surreal when they broke into their West Coast feed to go live. We got up and watched on TV.

My girlfriend had a cousin who did high rise window washing in NYC and the family was trying frantically to find him. Turns out he was farther uptown that day at some other building.
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