Author Topic: 9/11  (Read 879 times)

Ben

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9/11
« on: September 11, 2019, 08:32:38 AM »
Man, 18 years already.

First and foremost, a time to remember when nearly 3000 people were killed in a most horrific way. The "lucky" ones were those killed instantly. The others in fire, or if they had the crappy choice, between fire and jumping to their deaths. The scenes of people going out windows sends a chill down my spine to this day.

After all this time, it's getting hard to remember some of the pre 9/11 things we took for granted, like being able to get to the airport 30 minutes before the flight and pretty much waltz through security.

I'll repeat what I say every year when we have one of these threads. What I still remember most vividly, as someone far from the scene, that told me things had changed: I had just finished up Aviation Water Survival training at Lemoore NAS two days before and had taken leave to jump on a plane and head to Hawaii to go diving for a week.

My girlfriend at the time, who lived in DC, called me at zero dark thirty Hawaiian time and told me to turn on the TV. Watching the scenes while on a Hawaiian vacation was weird and made me feel like I shouldn't be there. What I continue to remember though, is the strange and eerie quiet of not a plane in the sky (other than the occasional military aircraft). Hawaii always has the "background noise" of air traffic. To suddenly have the skies quiet was almost a Twilight Zone effect for me. Kind of how they say animals go quiet before an earthquake, it was a "wrong" kind of silence.
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Perd Hapley

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Re: 9/11
« Reply #1 on: September 11, 2019, 09:05:28 AM »
A good Patriots' Day to all.
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MechAg94

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Re: 9/11
« Reply #2 on: September 11, 2019, 09:58:29 AM »
Does anyone remember how long all the planes were grounded?  I was trying to remember. 

I was at work when it happened.  One of my brothers was doing some work in New Mexico.  He was told to shut down and come home and ended up driving to Houston in a rental car.  I heard a lot of people did stuff like that. 
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cordex

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Re: 9/11
« Reply #3 on: September 11, 2019, 10:36:30 AM »
Does anyone remember how long all the planes were grounded?  I was trying to remember. 
I think it was just for a few days.  I know I flew in early October.

Ben

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Re: 9/11
« Reply #4 on: September 11, 2019, 11:24:23 AM »
I think it was just for a few days.  I know I flew in early October.

Yeah, it wasn't more than a few days. I had first thought I might be "stuck" in Hawaii past my return date, but planes started flying I think the day before. I recall there weren't more than 50 people on the flight home on I think a 757. The following year I actually flew back to Hawaii on the 11th, and that plane was probably barely 2/3 full on a flight that is usually booked.  I figured people were afraid to fly on the first anniversary date.
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cordex

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Re: 9/11
« Reply #5 on: September 11, 2019, 11:39:49 AM »
One funny thing ... I clearly remember flying into Atlanta in October of 2001 with a pocket knife, but at that time they should have already been prohibiting all knives, right?

French G.

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Re: 9/11
« Reply #6 on: September 11, 2019, 11:52:24 AM »
Does anyone remember how long all the planes were grounded?  I was trying to remember. 

I was at work when it happened.  One of my brothers was doing some work in New Mexico.  He was told to shut down and come home and ended up driving to Houston in a rental car.  I heard a lot of people did stuff like that. 

My helicopters flew by 3pm, but we were the second thing back in the air after fighter patrols, started moving staff between Norfolk and pentagon.

I'm still mad.

Funny story, recall the time we didn't know what was next. A I figured I was living in target #3 or 4 in the country, what with being a block from the only place in the world building nuclear carriers. So I finally go home from work and Bebop to the local gun store and grab a case of .223. I'm still wearing my Navy utilities, authorized for emergency stops only out in town. Some E-8 jumps me, I told him I figured this qualified as an emergency, and wasn't real nice about it. Everything else sucked for awhile.
AKA Navy Joe   

I'm so contrarian that I didn't respond to the thread.

HankB

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Re: 9/11
« Reply #7 on: September 11, 2019, 12:00:01 PM »
Does anyone remember how long all the planes were grounded?  I was trying to remember. 
I remember we had some astronauts in orbit at the time, and in an interview he said it was eerie - no jet contrails were visible from orbit over the USA for a couple of days.

I was at work, too, and the TV in the conference room was tuned to the news so many of us were watching live when the second plane hit. Up to that point we thought it might be some sort of freak accident ( like when a B-25 hit the Empire State Building) but when the second plane hit, I said something along the lines of "Looks like the Moslems are using kamikaze tactics against us, and we're now at war."

One of my resident liberal colleagues took me to task for saying it was Moslems . . . but she ended up having to eat her words. 
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RoadKingLarry

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Re: 9/11
« Reply #8 on: September 11, 2019, 01:42:00 PM »
I was off work. I'd hurt my leg and Doc said lay off it for a week so I was home watching the morning news when it went down.
Like others here say, when I watched the 2nd plane hit I knew it was an attack and immediately figured it was radical muslims.
My wife was at work and I called and calmed her down some, told her we're too far away from anything important to be in any real danger.
And dammit, I remember the TV station showing clips of muslims dancing in the streets of NJ over it.

Local officials got on TV and reminded everyone that price gouging was illegal and told us how to report offenders. Only saw one local gas station bump prices more that a quarter. An independent c-store next town over raised prices by $5. The middle Eastern owner wasn't too bright. The station was sold about 6 months later.

The empty skies were maybe the most memorable part of the next couple days.
When I went back to work the next week I was gob smacked by the sheer stupidity of the "security theater" that many of our customers had implemented.  I was also a regular tech at the federal courthouse,  prior to all I had to do was show my drivers license, company ID  and my work order and I was allowed free reign with in the scope.of.the work. The 1st time in after I'm pretty well treated like a suspected terrorist because I want to bring tools in to work on the phone equipment.
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cordex

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Re: 9/11
« Reply #9 on: September 11, 2019, 02:26:34 PM »
The 1st time in after I'm pretty well treated like a suspected terrorist because I want to bring tools in to work on the phone equipment.
They're concerned you were going to crash the courthouse into a skyscraper by threatening the pilot with a punchdown tool.

makattak

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Re: 9/11
« Reply #10 on: September 11, 2019, 02:50:59 PM »
I'll do my recollection:

I was working at a small business while going to grad school, doing our normal morning routine until the neighboring business owner popped his head in and said "They just hit the Pentagon".

My co-workers and I were confused as we had no TV and weren't aware of anything happening that morning. We quickly turned on a radio to get reports of what he was talking about.

I didn't see the towers fall in real-time as some others did, but I listened as it was described over the air. All I can remember was I hoped the announcer was mistaken when they announced the first one falling. After reporting the second tower coming down, I knew it was no mistake. Later I saw the video, as well. I honestly don't really remember what I did the rest of that day. Probably spent it watching the news.

I knew a few people who worked in the Pentagon, then, but they all made it out ok.
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MechAg94

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Re: 9/11
« Reply #11 on: September 11, 2019, 04:31:36 PM »
We were able to get the "training" TV in the conference room on with an antenna to pick up local Houston news.  Just after we turned it on, the 2nd jet hit.  We were will talking about it when the towers came down.  By then, half the office was in there watching.
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Unisaw

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Re: 9/11
« Reply #12 on: September 11, 2019, 07:10:00 PM »
I found this recollection that I posted on 9/11/2005:
I was attending a meeting in midtown Manhattan at 44th and 5th Avenue.  Just before going into the meeting, I saw a TV news report that a plane had crashed into the WTC.  However, I only glanced at the screen and it was difficult to get any perspective regarding the size of plane.  While I informed everyone, we went ahead with the meeting.  A short time later, someone arrived at the meeting late and said that he had just seen the second plane fly into the 2nd tower.  At that time, we realized that the US was under attack.  Finally, someone received a call on his cell phone and announced that the first tower had collapsed and that the Pentagon had also been hit.  We suspended the meeting and tried to contact our families to let them know we were okay.  By then, it was difficult to get a call out.  We all went back to our rooms and watched TV -- it was truly horrible to realize that so many people were dead and dying just 3-4 miles away.  I went outside once to see which way the wind was blowing -- I was concerned that there might be a chemical element to the attack.  (In hindsight, that wasn't very smart.)  I ended up catching a train from Penn Station the next afternoon to return to my home in Virginia.  I was quite worried about a follow-on attack at Penn Station, but there didn't seem to be any other way to get out.  On the train out of NYC, there was still a lot of smoke rising from ground zero.  It was a sobering sight that I will never forget.
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Andiron

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Re: 9/11
« Reply #13 on: September 11, 2019, 10:21:42 PM »
I watched the attacks on one of those big ass TV carts they used to push into the classroom. Junior year. Lot of us enlisted in the following years, and other than one suicide,  I don't think we lost anyone from my school in actual combat.
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HeroHog

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Re: 9/11
« Reply #14 on: September 12, 2019, 01:09:58 AM »
I was working at Brass Eagle HQ in Bentonville, AR when it went down. I watched it unfold on my computer at work. After the second plane hit, I TOLD my boss I was going home where I watched it all happen as the towers came down. I was angry, furious, sad, depressed, all at the same time. I still get those feelings when I see footage of it.
PS: on the way home, I stopped at Walmart and bought American flags that I Zip-tied to our car's antennas at half mast.
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Boomhauer

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Re: 9/11
« Reply #15 on: September 12, 2019, 03:06:03 AM »
I was in the eight grade. Walked into English class after gym class to find the teacher had set up the tv on CNN and about 15 mins later saw the second tower hit. Not too long after that the *expletive deleted*ing idiot we had for a principle cut the cable to the classrooms and got on the intercom to tell us to get back to our schoolwork. As if we could concentrate after that on anything...

9/11 was a terrible day, but seeing the *expletive deleted*ing politicians squander thousands and thousands more American lives in the wars has also been just as bad, not to mention the extreme growth of the surveillance state and reduction in freedom. What has happened since the attacks has been an absolute disservice to the fallen.

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Andiron

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Re: 9/11
« Reply #16 on: September 12, 2019, 09:31:51 PM »
Irrelevant to the actual 9/11 thread,  but my last post metioned 1 suicide.  Make that two.  Only found out about it now,  but I knew and liked the kid.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.legacy.com/amp/obituaries/ohio/186325162
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