#489 | Monday, December 17th, 2001
I was getting ready for work. My boyfriend just left for work and I turned on the TV. I saw that they were reporting a plane hit the wtc. I watched and reported to my friend ( who was online ) what had happened. Then I saw the second plane hit the wtc. I about fell to my knees thinking about what all this meant. All I though was , "Oh my God, all those people". I continued to watch then I saw the first tower fall. I cried, I felt so helpless, all those people, dead. Then the second tower, gone! This topped with what happened with the petagon and the plane crash that day really effected me. God Bless all those people!
Audra | 21 | Ohio

#490 | Tuesday, December 18th, 2001
I'm normally up early in the morning to look after the hundreds of emails I get a day. After sunrise seeing that it was a beautiful day. Clear blue skies, pleasantly warm, I decided that I would check the local weather, to see how the day was going to be. It was around 9:00 am. To my surprise when I turned on the TV, I saw the first tower with smoke coming from the top of it, and heard the newsperson say that a plane had crashed into the building. I sat down stunned, while the camera was focussed on the building, I saw another plane approaching the towers, the plane seemed a little low. At first I thought he would pull up, but no that did not happen. The second plane hit the second tower.
What was happening? Are the pilots sleeping? This was unbelievable. I checked to see if this was a news real or just a movie. It was real. Sitting there wondering how and why this could happen, the second tower collapsed, then later the first collapsed. Knowing that in those buildings a lot of people worked, a sick cold feeling came over me. then later another news real from the pentagon stating that a plane had crashed into it, made me realise that there was a war gong on. My day was ruined. Sitting there still stunned with tears in my eyes, I noticed that it was ging onto noon. And a reporter stating that a forth plane was missing.
Around this time a friend called from his workplace, and was listeng to the radio on his lunch time and could not believe that it was real. Hardly being able to talk, I tried to explain, what had transpired over the morning, that it was real and that I had watched this horrifying event on tv. Finally be sucummed with tears, and not able to talk properly, I told him I have to go, and hung up the phone. Later that afternoon, the realization of the fourth plane crashing had been announced. This was really too much. I was parrallised with fear, today was not a day to go anywhere. These events affected me over the next two months.
You see, I have cousins who are computer experts, and travel the world, and are involved greatly with world trade. How was I to call my Aunt and ask if she knew their wareabouts. Since then we heard from one, the other we will not here from until New Years. My biggest fear was, were they at the World Trade Centre, or possibly a passenger on one of the planes. I was always afraid of airplanes, now I'm terrified of them. At that time I was debating whether or not to go to Hawihi, now that is put off indeffinately.
I know how the families of those that were lost in these tragadies feel, and will never be able to forget, the loss, the anger, the fear, the hate that results from such an expirence. And nothing that anyone can say, will ever be able to change it.
America learned that day how to stand together, hope that will always remain.
God bless America, and take away the pain.
Doug | 55 | Canada

#491 | Tuesday, December 18th, 2001
I live less than a mile away from the World Trade Center in Greenwich Village New York City but I was informed by a friend calling from D.C. so I watched the confused news anchor people look at the first burning WTC tower, then saw the second plane hit on the news on TV then ran up to my roof five floors up and could clearly see the burning towers. I was crying in disbelief but I thought that they would be able to put out those fires. On Sixth Avenue and Bleecker Street we were all standing looking up at the towers we look at every single day, now smoking. Two girls who are my neighbors decided to leave town right away, they asked me to come with them but I still had a doctor's appointment. Only one subway was open out of the usual seven or so. On the subway I met two women who had been in the second building that got hit, but they had decided to run home shortly after the plane hit the first building, which was why they were alive. In the doctor's office they had musack on, I guess so patients would not get hysterical, but another patient told me that the Washington Monument had been blown up and the Pentagon too. I was crying because my parents and friends all live near there and DC used to be my home before NY. It turned out that the Pentagon was hit which is right by my friend's house who called me to tell me about the World Trade Center, but nothing had happened to the Washington Monument. When I came out of the doctor's office they searched me and made me show ID and on the street everyone was crying and trying to use their cell phones but none would work and there were lines at payphones on every street. I realized with absolute horror that the buildings had both collapsed and they were just not there any more where I had looked up and seen them every day and I did not know how to process that information. No subways, buses or trains were running at all so every one was just walking and crying, walking and crying, but every one was really nice to eachother. and there were policemen on every corner telling people how they would have to walk home over the Brooklyn Bridge or wherever they had to go. There were no cabs, which never happens in New York. I had to walk very far to get home, like everyone else, totally stunned and dazed. On the way I stopped for health food and used a bank card and it would not work because the phone lines were all messed up. My home telephone would not call out and people said they had to try 150 times before they got through and my phone rang finally. Almost everyone I know called me over the next two weeks, all with great difficulty, to see if I was alive. All my neighborhood was closed at least all week, it is usually full of people at all hours. I could smell burning flesh mixed with cement and chemicals the next weeks when the wind changed and blew the smell into the city (instead of away from the city like it had luckily on the first day). It was the smell of war, I will never forget it as long as I live. I would go outside for five or ten minutes and come back inside and the smell of war covered me so that I had to shower. We had candlelight vigils and prayed for the people who might still be alive in the wreckage and the firemen and policemen trying to pull them out. I held hands and sang and prayed with total strangers in parks and in the street. Posters of over six thousand missing people were all over the city, faces of real people who never got out, everywhere, like wallpaper. A girl I work with lost her fiancee in the buildings. Flags popped up everywhere, people became so very nice to one another. I do not know if I will ever be able to fly in an airplane again. I want to be able to, but I don't know how long it will take before I will. I can only watch the news for a little while at a time now when they talk about the war, it is just a little bit too real. I went down to "Ground Zero" and saw the absolute devastation and cried like a baby. So many people's entire lives are ruined or forever altered besides all the people who died and all who lost precious loved ones. It feels like nothing will ever be the same. My boyfriend and I ate out at a lot of restaurants downtown because they had lost so much business when they had to close and nobody was out much. They were turning blood donors away because so many people had given blood, so eating at the restaurants is one thing we thought to help. I still can not really comprehend the total impact of this destruction, even though it is three months later as i write this, it still seems like yesterday, and every day I hear more bad news resulting from the terrorist attacks. But we are very strong, to be able to survive this and go forward and grow stronger as a result.
sky | 30 | New York

#492 | Tuesday, December 18th, 2001
I WAS ON THE PHONE TALKING TO MY SISTER WHILE AT WORK.. I HAD THE TV ON AND TOLD MY SISTER THE TWIN TOWERS WERE ON FIRE... SHE THEN SAID NO THEY ARE BEING HIT BY A PLANE... IT WAS THEN THAT I SAW THE SECOND PLANE IT THE TOWERS. MY SON WAS GOING TO SCHOOL IN THE BRONX AT THAT TIME AND PANIC SET IN FOR HIS SAFETY... THEN THE PLANE HIT THE PENTAGON AND I STARTED TO CRY AND THOUGHT THIS WAS ARMEGEDDON AND THE END OF THE WORLD... I PRAY FOR ALL THOSE LIVES LOST, FOR OUR SAFETY AND FOR OUR LOSS OF FREEDOM THAT TERRIBLE TRAGIC DAY
DIANA | 42 | New York

#493 | Tuesday, December 18th, 2001
I remember that day like it was yesterday! It was early in the morning, I had just arrived to get my hair cut, when I heard about the first air plane hit the first tower and I thought to myself wow that can not be happening, then just a few minutes after that it happened again to the other World Trade Tower and thats when I knew something was not right. All I could think about then was I wanted to be home with my family. I could not believe what had happened!
When I was going home I had heard that all plane's where grounded, But I could remember seeing a plane make a big circle in the sky to turn around to go back to the Grater Cincinnati Air port to land. Then we heard that another plane had hit the Pentagon and another had been forced down to the ground in Chicago by passengers who we later found out help save another building from getting hit. The day seemed like a big movie! We just could not believe it was going on. But it has changed the USA in many ways. I know where I work, at a bank the rates on Mortgages and Savings and Checking accounts went way down. A lot of people where let go at their job's because what had happened. But as a whole, I know in my heart that we don't take for granted for what we have now, because you just never know what might happen.
Victoria | 40 | Ohio

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