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#651 | Wednesday, January 23rd, 2002
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i was getting off the subway at the wall street stop, a bit late for a meeting, my second week of a new job. people were crushing up the stairs, as always. i was waiting at the back of the crowd, had injured my knee three months earlier and could only go up stairs one at a time.
all at once, everyone on the stairs turned to come back down. i couldn't hear the noise from where i was, but the second plane had just hit.
being a new yorker, i thought "hey, there must be someone with a gun on the street. or maybe there was a terrible car accident right above."
and, being a new yorker, i was tough enough to not let such things bother me. i thought, ok, can't go up to the street here. i'll use another exit." i turned to walk north on the platform, headed toward where i could enter my building from underneath. i was nearing the entrance when a woman came running toward me, tears streaming down her face, saying that a plane had hit the trade center and that people were jumping out of the building.
life froze for me that moment, and my brain started to work s l o w l y. the only thought that occured to me was: "i h a v e t o g e t h o m e."
i headed toward the underpass to the uptown tracks. i was halfway down the stairs when LOTS of people started running through, all of them screaming "get out of manhattan! go to brooklyn!"
my brain, still slow, scrambled. i knew i needed to go uptown to go home, but there was no way to tell if the uptown train was running.
then i experienced what a leap of faith is really like. my brain/soul/heart decided that the train would come.
once i made it to the uptown platform, which was pretty empty, i sat on the bench to wait. i realized that i had to tell someone that i wouldn't be able to run if something horrible happened. there was a guy on the platform playing back videotape of the burning building. just as i turned to tell the woman next to me that i couldn't run, the train came. it was about 9:20.
we boarded. but the subway conductors DIDN'T KNOW TO TELL PEOPLE NOT TO GET OFF, and people streamed off the train, trying to get to work.
brain still slow, i knew that was a bad thing. so, like a new yorker, i blocked the doors from closing and tried to shout in as calm a way as possible to get back on the train. folks looked at me, a young professional woman, obviously not nuts. and some of them got back on the train.
i was home by 9:45. when i got off the subway in my neighborhood, my friend elizabeth was on my doorstep, panicked that i was trapped downtown. people were lined up on the street, staring down to the view of the burning buildings. arms crossed. mouths hanging open, mouths covered with a silent hand.
i was in my apartment, trying to call my grandfather, when my landlord yelled upstairs that the first tower had fallen.
when i think of that day, that perfect warmish clear september day, i still cannot fully absorb what happened. my heart still breaks at the horror and the loss, and i thank the universe for helping me to get home safely.
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lisa | 34 | New York
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#652 | Thursday, January 24th, 2002
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I had flipped on CNN briefly before going to work and saw that a plane had hit one of the WTC towers. I thought it was an accident and went to work.
My mother called shortly after I arrived at work. A second plane had hit the second tower. While talking to Mom, we (coworkers and I) gathered in the conference room to watch the news in shock and horror.
I fled back to my office to call my boyfriend. At that time, I was living in Alabama, and he lived in Maryland. He works for Nasdaq, but I knew he was asleep because he was working 2nd shift that week. I woke him up. He was going to have to go to work, even though I really didn't want him to. I was deathly afraid that if the terrorists would go after one financial center, they might go after another. He promised to call often.
When I went back to the conference room, I found out about the Pentagon. My company is in the defense industry, and we had people in the Pentagon that we were trying to find. I called my roommate at that time and couldn't get a hold of her. I went home.
She was awake by the time I got home, staring at the tv. I needed to go back to work to see what was going on, and she came with me, because she didn't want to be alone.
It wasn't until the next day that I found out my company lost two people on the plane that hit the Pentagon. I had met both of them about a month earlier, because I was transferring to their office in January.
I didn't go to class that day, or the next. I spent those two days watching CNN, trying to figure out what had happened. I knew the world was different. I was just trying to accept that.
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Heather | 23 | Maryland
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#653 | Thursday, January 24th, 2002
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I was at work in Stockholm, Sweden (I live in Oslo, Norway) when I was browsing the net, and messages began to pop-up about airplanes hitting the WTC. I followed the news for a couple of minutes, and told my collegues what had happened. Everybody basically dropped what they did, and started surfing the net. It got to the point that the company's server colapsed and we couldn't keep updated.
At this point I called my father in Rochester, NY. He was out in the garden and had not heard the news. He immideately turned on the TV, and he said it was not in NYC but in DC. I said no - the news were clearly sating that it was the WTC. He said no, they were showing pictures from DC on the TV. That's when i realized that someplace in DC had been hit too. It was a strange feeling.
I went to my hotel room, and turned to CNN. I called friends and family in the US, and was releived to find out that everybody was OK. My thought and prayers went out to those killed, and I still have flashbacks and thoughts about the incident that makes my heart skip a beat.
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GSY | 32 | Norway
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#654 | Thursday, January 24th, 2002
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I was in my office when I checked out a Norwegian Net Newspaper on my computer and saw a brief article saying that a plane had crashed into WTC. I wondered how that could have happened and thought it might be terror. When the news about the other plane broke ten minutes later, I had no doubt that this was a terrorist action.
When I came home from work a couple of hours later, we rewieved all we had heard on the news on the radio and had been reading on net news during the afternoon, and could see thet it really was true.
(The first attack happened about 2.15 PM local time.)
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Per | 46 | Norway
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#655 | Thursday, January 24th, 2002
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I walked towards the mess in His Majesty Kings Guard (military,Norway), when a guy came shouting to me that two planes had hit the WTC and one had just hit the Pentagon... It felt like a punch in my face, I thought "now is the time when the whole world is at war.. and I just had to be in the military this year!" I also felt like it was my own countrymenn being hit. I have had an american fiance, and I feel like an american. It was a terrible shock and I felt so bad for everyone on the planes, their families and the entire nation. "I`m glad I have my security in Jesus!" was my second thought when I first heared about the attacks...
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Finn-Erik | 19 | Norway
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