How do you remember 9 years ago today?

I remember Starting work at 5am. At the time I was a garbage man working for Waste Management. My route for that day was to take me to Easy Troy, WI. Just as I pulled up to my first stop and turned on my hydraulic pump a line blew. I had to drive back to the shop which was a hour away. As I listened to the radio an announcer interrupted the morning show and said a plane had just crashed into one of the World Trade towers. It sounded like a tragic accident for the initial news report. When I reached the shop I went upstairs were there was a old TV with a set of rabbit ears. As my truck was being fixed I watched the live feed on NBC as that was the only channel that came in. While watching the second plane flew into the second tower. At that point everybody knew what was happening. My truck was fixed a little while later but nobody could break away from the news. I don't remember if anybody got their routes done that day.

It's needless to say that this day will live with us all forever. I just hope nobody forgets what was felt that day and the proceeding weeks.

Knock knock.

Who's there.

9/11.

9/11 who?

YOU SAID YOU WOULD NEVER FORGET!

Sorry. There is really a complete vacuum of good 9/11 jokes and I'm not original enough to write my own.

That was my first day of classes at college. Didn't know how to handle it.

The college didn't even cancel classes that day, which to this day seems a bit wrong.

Shocked, but not surprised.

I was at work and a contractor got a text that a plane had hit the WTC. I spent the rest of the day trying to contact my sister and make sure she was OK.

It was all a bit surreal for me. I think I was about 14. I was on my way home from NJ when it happened. All I remember is running to my room to turn on my radio when I got home and hearing something a bit different from my local music station.

At the time, I wasn't really self-aware enough to realize that I was more or less in shock all day. Didn't take long for life to get back to normal though.

I was ~2 weeks on my new job (still there). We heard about it and turned on the TV in the conference room. My friend was getting a Level 2 or whatever ultrasound of his child, for which they had to travel to Springfield, I think. My friend called me and asked me what I though. I said "WW3 just started."

Dr. Hess wrote: My friend called me and asked me what I though. I said "WW3 just started."

I walked into the maintenance shop at work, and saw everybody standing around the radio. I asked what was going on, and thats what one of the guys told me. "WW3 just started". For whatever reason, whenever I think about it, I recall the shop being really dark that day.

Sixth grade, eleven years old. Mrs. Johanssen's literature class, sitting next to Jim Arthur. I'd met him about a week before, and then about a week later everybody's schedule was messed around. I haven't talked to him since, and wouldn't even remember him if it weren't for that day.
Mrs. Aspinol, the principle, came over the PA system and told us just the bare-bones of what had happened. I didn't really know until later that day when I got home. Dad got home about an hour later and we all went to a prayer service at church. It sure was a freaky day.
For some reason, one of the things I remember most was Mrs. List telling me of a student about 5 or 6 years old asking if the Statue of Liberty was okay.

I drove into work with a huge berkeleying smile on my face, as we were supposed to close on our first home that day. Guess who was back sleeping in his old crusty ass apartment that night. berkeleyin terrorists.

I was pissed when a co-worker interrupted my work to tell me "A plane just crashed into the WTC!" "SO? Jesus, lemme get back to work." You know the rest.

Honestly, I've never felt so vulnerable in my life. I guess that was the point. The planes hitting the towers was scary enough, but when they hit the pentagon, that's when I got really freaked...especially with the CDC right down the road.

I think it's really important to remember those feelings now and then.

What I was absolutely amazed by was how we, as Americans, acted pretty cool. I was genuinely in fear for the guy who owned the gas station down the street from work, who was obviously of middle eastern descent. I honestly expected to see mosques being vandalized, people being harrassed, etc., and saw NONE of that. Not saying it didn't happen, but I never saw it first hand, and it obviously wasn't widespread if it did.

Then I remember those painful few weeks where I was screaming at the TV every night wondering who the berkeley we were going to bomb, and why it was taking so long. I was really, really, glad that we had a Republican president.

Then, finally, on the way home from work one night, I vividly remember saying "Uuuuhhhh. Iraq? Saddam? Really?"

i shared an office with a Naval Academy graduate. we both have some martial arts training. after hearing of the second plane, we spent pretty much the rest of the day thinking of all the things on a commercial airliner that you could use to berkeley someone up. the list is not short.

later in the day i found out that my neice has leukemia.

I was at Forbes Field in Topeka, KS for the Solo Nats. A friend called me over to check out his hand-held TV because a network was reporting on a plane crashing into one of the towers; we were watching as the second plane hit.

Forbes Field is an active Kansas Air Nat'l Guard base; it's dozen, or so, KC135's parked a few hundred yards from the solo courses. The base and the rest of the airport went into lock-down mode. Everyone was in a state of shock, no one was really interested in competing anymore and the event was drastically shortened because of obvious security concerns.

Normally, the skies above Forbes are criss-crossed with numerous contrails from commercial airliners. That morning, there were only three or four and they were all in circular holding patterns. It was a sobering sight.

And Osama Bin Laden still lives. That bothers me more than anything. 9 years, the best spec ops guys in the world, he's still alive. E36 M3.

I remember helicopters flying low and slow over my house when all the news people were saying all flights were grounded.

I was at midway airport in Chicago boarding a flight to Seattle. As we were leaving the waiting area to get on the plane I took a look at one of the terminal tv sets. You can guess what I saw.

It's awful what happened and a tragedy for many families. Someone should pay, but I think the massive media exposure is a big negative that furthers the cause of the wackos and the misguided response has put a pretty good dent in personal freedoms while nine years later the perpetrator is a free man.

I was going flying in the Airknocker that morning. Beautiful day. It was "CAVU" as pilots say.

As I removing the tie-downs, I had the car parked near the plane with the radio on. The announcer (BBC) sounded agitated (unusual for the BBC). So I stopped and listened......

I'll admit that i was temped to go flying. In my area (nw NJ) the Twin Towers are visual at about 500' AGL.

But I thought better of it and just drove home. I stayed home for two days. Never called in. Nobody even questioned my absence.

He's alive, but i doubt he's living as well as he'd like.

I was waken up at about 9am by my future wife. I was in our depot in Flushing in time to see the towers fall from the roof of our depot. A bunch of us went across the street to Shea stadium to load and unload supplies. About noon when the trains started running again I was put into extra service to help move the rush of people trying to get back home.

18:00 I started my regular shift from flushing to LaGuardia airport, which was locked down and guarded by some young men with machine guns. By this time the area was eerily silent and I was just driing through empty streets bringing the soldiers coffee and food from Flushing. I finished up at about 2:00am and went to relive another driver who was manning a roadblock infront of the 109 pct.

Weds morning I went home for a couple hours to pretend to sleep, then went back to work for 18:00 that night. It was much busier as I had people stranded in the hotels around the airport venturing out for dinner or to just get out for a bit. When I finished that night I was sent to Engine 324 in Corona to wait for their turn to be sent in. They weren't but they did have to cover for some missing companies in the area. Spent the day helping get equipment together and fixing an old ambulance that some of them were going to take in after their shift. I stayed there until I was called off about 19:00 thursday.

I went to my fiances in Albany friday where instead of my parents coming up to talk about wedding plans, the two of us met with the pastor in case we had to move the wedding up if my brother was going to be deployed. His guard unit was called up the morning of the 11th and we still hadn't heard from him.

I was a sophomore in high school, days away from my 16th birthday and anxiously awaiting getting my license. I was walking from 2nd hour to 3rd, and a good friend stopped me to tell me what had happened. He had been watching the news in JROTC when the second plane hit. I went to my mom's office to give her a hug before going on to class, in complete disbelief that it was real.

The principal came on the PA and told us what had happened and asked that we take a moment of silence and continue our day as normally as possible. Some students freaked out, wanting to go home and hide in their basement, others went through their day quietly, nervous for friends and family who were in NYC or in the military. It was a quiet day.

When I got home, we learned that all flights had been grounded, which meant my aunt and grandma were stranded in Ireland. They ended up going to the embassy to get instructions and on the list to get home. They ended up spending an extra week in Ireland, worried about everyone here and trying to get home. It was a tough time on everyone in my family.

I was at work, doing an alignment on an Elyria (Ohio) police cruiser, when I heard on the radio that an airplane had crashed into the WTC. I made a comment "oh, like what happened to the Empire State Building in the 50's or somesuch" and went into STFU/GBTW mode.

Then they announced on the radio that another one hit the other tower. I looked up and looked at the guy working in the bay across from me, and we both hauled ass to the break room and watched TV.

No work got done, but OTOH, the customers who happened to be waiting, were too busy watching the TV to worry about getting their car back in a timely manner. And most of the other appointments cancelled.

It was my 2nd week in vo-tech school (junior year of H.S.) and someone who went upstairs to the break room came down and said some crazy E36 M3 was going on, Being he could be the jokester at times we called B.S.

Break came shortly after and as we are walking up the stairs and get to the top and see everyone around T.V's so i proceeded to go to the main office (Big for the day 36in in there) to see the 1st tower half destroyed and not even what seemed like 3-4min later saw the 2nd plane take the 2nd tower out.

I really don't even know to this day if that is what made me join the army (as i knew i was going to anyway) but my guess is it might have been a big contributer to it, i still can not believe the situation to this day but my only hope is all my brothers and sisters out there are doing as well as they can.

Freshman year of high school. A friend ran up to me after Home Room and said someone had bombed the WTC, and he was excited because he was sure it would get all the democrats out of office.

I remember watching the news in my history class and my teacher said, "Remember this day. It's part of history now". Maching band practice was cancelled.

Went home, and my mom gave my brother and sister $100 each and told them to go fuel up their cars and come straight home.

Some posts from Ground Zero. One of the guys on the Miata list who was a doctor in NY at the time.

"Thanks for everyone's concern. Just got back from a very surreal day in the ER. I'll be heading back there in just a couple hours after I get a bite to eat. Just needed to log on and check my e-mail to feel some sense of "normalcy" in light of what has happened. Was just on the roof of my building & looked at the skyline which has now been forever changed.

May God be with us all. (Did anyone else happen to notice today's date is "911"?)"

" 9/12/2001

My home is at ground .75 (3/4 mile from WTC).  Sirens and fighter jets are

common backround noise. There is was no mail yesterday. There are no newspaper deliveries. I can't get my morning juice.

Reports from friends in Brooklyn (across the East River) are that their

cars are under 7 inches of ash and debris, Looks like winter.

My home is on 11th Street in the 'frozen zone'.  There are emergency

vehicles backed up to the corner to the west of me, West Street (8 lane highway) all the way downtown to ground zero. I can see the fire is still burning. The rescue workers can't reach the site as the first wave of rescue workers and vehicles are buried under the collapsed building. We have lost our Fire Commissioner and Deputy Fire Commissioner.

On the corner of 7th Avenue and 11th Street, to the east of me, St.

Vincents hospital has set up triage on 7th avenue itself (another 8 lane highway) and the two sidewalks. The Doctors, Nurses and emergency workers are waiting to help the victims. As I walk North to my office on 72nd Street there are F15's and F16's Flying overhead at about 35000 feet. I can't but help feel bitter that it took them over 5 hours to get here after the second plane hit.

As a people, a city and a neighborhood (yes New York City and the 14

million people that are crammed in here ARE a neighborhood) we felt defenseless and abandoned. We watched the Empire State Building believing it was next, and where was our military to defend us? They shut down Governors Island (about 1/2 mile from the WTC)and chased the Military out of there a couple of years ago, now they're fighting over who gets the rights to develop it.

Walking north on West Street people have the look of survivors.  We each

look into each other's eyes as we walk by, hoping, praying the immediate tragedy has not hit this stranger passing on the street closer than it has hit me. I am crying. Everyone is crying.

At 14th Street there is a barricade of military and paramilitary police

who will refuse passage to everyone except residents and emergency workers. There are supplements to the NYPD that include State Police, Out of State Police, National Guardsmen and other military who weren't here yesterday or last week or last year.

Chelsea Piers, 18th street, a Huge Complex, where our soldiers embarked

for Normandy, where people waiting for news of the Titanic, is set up as a triage area. Ambulances, Paramedics, Rescue Squads, Professional and Volunteer from hundreds of miles around are 5 deep, 1 mile long, all waiting helplessly to help the victims. I stop and weep. Everyone is here to help victims that will not arrive. Less than 1000 people have been treated so far (26 hours after) by these well equipped triage centers. I fear there are very few survivors.

People outside of this small island off the east coast have little concept

of the scale of these buildings or the number of people that are involved. Even our president uses numbers like 'thousands'. Thousands were killed on the initial impact. I fear the toll will be in the tens of thousands. All these good people, All this technology waiting and wanting to help, helpless. At the moment we have too many volunteers, too much blood (everyone has been giving blood) and no-one to rescue. What we seem to need are sweatshirts and sweatpants for the rescue workers when they come out of the rubble.

Javits Convention Center, 42nd Street,  NY State police has set up a

staging area. State police are getting out of their cars stamping dust off their feet and faces, picking up more sweatshirts to drive back downtown. This is all they can do. All the avenues and streets are blockaded with heavy equipment. No traffic, just the emptiest canyons New York has ever seem in my lifetime.

Our president spoke of a slow seething anger.  The last time we were

attacked on our own soil, we nuked 'em, twice. In less than an hour yesterday we suffered more loss of life than in any battle in history. Make no mistake:

we are at war.

Everything has changed.

We are all New Yorkers."

Pictures from 10 days before, when things were normal.

http://dalesorenson.com/digital_photography/2001_wtc/index.html

A little more:

His first communique: "Both world trade centers have collapsed after being struck by terrorist hijacked commercial airlineers (looked like a 727 into the north tower and a 777 or 767 into the south tower). the north tower plane was hijacked out of boston.

the pentagon has been hit by a 737 and suffered a partial collapsed.

WE ARE NOT DEFENDING OURSELVES 2 hours after the first attack, there is still no military perimeter established around manhattan island. There is not a jet fighter in sight.

this is a clever, coordinated attack.

I URGE ALL OF YOU WHO WORK IN CITIES TO KEEP THIS IN MIND. It is possible that that is the beginning of a clever, coordinated and not the end.

The attack in NY occured at 9am. Please be careful on the west coast."

A later email:

"Communication acceess from my home went down last nite. These posts will continue but may become sporadic.

As you watch and listen to the media do not let their rosy projections today cause you demoralization next month. As with us all sometimes they are shiny happy people, they do not realize the damage they are causing in the future by taking such a short view today. I pray they don't start making charts showing % complete.

As for moralization, see how quickly we mobilized. If you watch and listen Plane #4 is the loudest proclamation to both us and to our enemies. See how smart we are? See how soft we are? See our resolve and our loyalty to each other? The congress may declare war, but regular citizens on plane #4 listened, watched and acted. They provided the first american response. Our enemies believe they martry themselves by commiting suicide to inflict pain. This is cowardice. The martrys are the american heros on plane #4 that prevented it from reaching its target.

Leadership is by example. words and actions consistant. Listen to what regular americans said and watch what they did.

Listen and watch."

" 9/13/2001 #3

My routine has changed. It is 8am. I now go to my roof and look south in the morning as part of my trip to work. This morning things do not bode well. The smoke is thicker and blacker than yesterday. What I see with my eyes bears little resemblance to what I see on CNN.

There is a new change in scenery. Rudy ordered 6000, now 11,000 MORE body bags, some will not need bags as they were immolated on impact. Since 4 hours ago when I went to bed West Street is now lined with 18 wheeler style refrigerated trailers. I start counting, I get to 30 and quit. I am standing in a neighborhood called 'The Meat Packing District', how ironic. There are empty refrigerated trailers for as far as I can see in both directions. It will still be days if not weeks before the rescue workers will reach the victims in the building.

We have lost hundreds of firemen. As I walk past the firehouse a few blocks from my office, at 66th street, there is a pile of flowers taller than me and about the size of a large SUV. Firemen and people are crying and embracing.

The Red Cross Headquarters is across the street. There are thousands of people milling about. There are hand written signs saying "we need your blood, but not today, please come back".

I cry for the families that may never find out what happened to their missing.

I fear for the pakastani's, indians and visually apparent Arabs, I see fear in their eyes.

I fear for the world in what is being unleashed."

"9/15/2001 #8

The smoke plume has turned white. I understand tower 7 is gone. Perhaps this is the end of the echos of the deafening crash into our lives. at least for now.

The politicians are gone. The aging jet fighters are not continuously circling today. besides the sirens the city is getting quieter. more somber less shock. distressing smells are coming through my window. i will not leave.

It is clear that NYC has overwhelming support from the world.

It is easy to tell by listening to the foreign talking heads on tv, which are talking the talk and which ones are lying to our faces, shaking in their boots in fear of the reprecussions of the overplayed hands of their allies in crime.

I can now get a subway at 14th Street. I walk by Saint Vincents hospital (my normal everyday walk to work). St. Vincents triage has been brought back inside the hospital and the police are now allowing one lane of traffic down 7th avenue. It unusual for me to be working on a saturday, I have some important items to pick up that were shipped in yesterday for saturday delivery today.

I stop at my local newstand and buy my newsday (there is one left) from the arab newsguy a process i've done for 3.5 years. He avoids eye contact, he's trying to not be seen. I make eye contact with him and see fear, I smile and say thank you. He has nothing to fear from me or my city (if i can help it).

we are burying the first of the hero rescuers today. the eulogies are beautiful, and too many, too painful.

For the first time I see groups of people obviously going to wakes and shiva calls. Usually these signify the end of a process of grieving and a new beginning. But these are only the first.

There is a feeling of capitulation. The people wandering the streets of manhattan with pictures of their loved ones are somehow aimlessly wandering, is heartbreaking. Bus stops and walls everywhere are shrines, I can't even look, it's too morbid. But some of them are beginning to realize they must believe what they have watched and listened with their own eyes.

the media won't take no answer for how many dead. they are fabricating and estimating their own. It is making me very angry. Why can't they follow the mayors lead? They still are not at ground zero and the press is taking the number of reported missing as an estimate of the death count. They are making it easy today and much harder tomorrow. People are taking 'souveniers' off the street, morbid. The army reserves have arrived and are quarreling with the NYPD who is in charge. ugh."

"Can anyone help Received 9/14/01 12:56PM

We need 30,000 uniquely numbered plastic key tags ( added by me - for body identifiers). Like the ones that supermarkets register you with and you put on your keychain for coupons and discounts at the checkout. Does anyone work for Food Emporium, Safeway, Genovese, Stop & Shop, etc, that may have boxes of these they can donate?

sorry, no new news from ground .75 yet today, we're up to our ass in allagators. These key tags will help in draining the swamp."

"9/14/2001 #5

The widely scattered showers turned out to be a heavy rain.  The

Northerlies have come in but they are promising to gust to 35. Yesterday it was August in NY. The rescue workers were being hydrated with IV's by the doctors then going right back to work. Today it is fall, the weather is hydrating everything. The smoke is white. The good news is the air is clear. They have lowered the frozen zone down to canal street which is south of me, but my home is still the egress path from the site. The supermarket has had bare shelves since tuesday nite which elicits strange feelings I had not mentioned earlier. With trucks allowed into parts of my neighborhood I believe that they will now be able to do what I took for granted on Monday. Deliver food to the supermarket and restaurants, pick up garbage, deliver mail. Maybe i'll even be able to buy a newspaper. I haven't read a newspaper all week. I wonder what is happening in the rest of the world. Even BBC has had new york all the time, frankly i'm getting sick of it. I'd like just a plain normal thursday nite in front of the television. I suppose from now on thursday nite ER will seem trite.

Mel hoagland mentioned how well the press was behaving.  A good

point and I agreed until this morning. They're using the gut wrenching interview with the CEO from Cantor Fitzerald in a sensational manner.

The subways still aren't stopping down here so i walk through

the rain, 1/2 mile uptown I find a 10th avenue bus. As a Rule I don't take the busses because they are slow and horribly overcrowded. I am unfamiliar with the bus routes, but ask the driver if this goes to 72nd street, he says yes, I get in. 9:15am on a friday in september I am the only passenger until 34th street (well into midtown).

I sneeze. The bus driver says, 'god bless you'. I say 'thank you'. The warm fuzzy feeling in my belly from this genuinely concered interaction makes me proud to be a NY'r.

In manhattan 14th, 23rd, 34th, 42nd, 57th, 66th street are

called transverses because they are large multi-laned two way 6 or 8 lane thoroughfares that are somewhat conducive to crosstown traffic. If you don't take a transverse crosstown think of Jimi Hendrix song, crosstown traffic. If you want to go crosstown on a bus you must take a transverse and you get 1 free transfer. the idea is that you take one bus north or south to the nearest transverse, then transfer to an east/west bus to finish your trip. Even though I was the only person on the bus and he knew I was going to 72nd street, the driver still picked up the microphone and announced each transverse over the PA system.

The maximum number of people at any one time on this city bus

for the 3.5 mile trip was 7. Each person that got on or off the bus was warned by the driver: "be careful and watch your step". Truely a New York City experience.

I have been attempting to keep my friends and staff to some

degree of normalcy. I am worried that some of them are depressed and morose. I have been checking on one of my friends daily. He lives in my neighborhood (my neighborhood being the same apartment building). He denies he is suffering, but it is obvious that he is. I pressed him last nite. Companies that he has designed web sites for are wiped out, he shows me their websites are down. The people, not his friends, but people that he had interacted with, their condition still unknown but probably vaporized as is their website. Another friend of his is ok, but the charitable work he was about to start to do was funded by companies that were in the WTC. He cried to me that the plane that hit the first tower went by our building, within 1000 feet. I realize that while I "KNOW" that, I had never 'realized it', nor had I felt the kind of pain from it that he was both experiencing and denying. We must be vigilant to watch and emotionally support our friends and neighbors.

World-wide trauma from vital lifes has ripped the fabric of

society. There are few people on the planet that will escape being more than 3 or 4 people removed from the scars. it's Like getting kicked in the balls, it takes a few seconds before the incapacitating pain disables you. You know it's going to hurt, so you better get out of the street before you double over. These scars will run for generations. They can fade ONLY with our own vigilance. I vow to do what I can to not let the hatred, intolerance shown to the world and to my little island by our 'fundamentalist islamic' enemies permiate me or the people I interact with. We must fix this problem AND then make sure we don't pass the seeds of hatred and intolerance to future generations.

President Bush is correct that this is a different kind of war.

No empire has withstood and overcome this type of guerilla war. It will be a difficult challenge. The kind of challenge that the USA can succeed at.

It will get worse before it gets better.  We focus on the

future. There are better times ahead. I have my sights set on three towers, the worlds tallest building in the center. Hatred and intolerance for intolerance."