re: Where were you- 9/11 25 years ago

I was at work (we all watched the news coverage together).

Once the first tower collapsed, I had the terrible feeling that it probably wouldn’t be long before the second tower did the same thing.

Tragic.

The South Tower was struck second but collapsed first (56 minutes).

The North Tower’s sequence from initial damage to collapse was ironically exactly double that duration (102 minutes).

Fifteen years after the attack, one of my kids married someone who was in 3rd grade in Alexandria,VA in 2001. The entire school body was out on the playground at their school and felt the ground shutter from the impact at the Pentagon crash.

Religion of Peace.

In Manitoba north of Winnipeg on a fishing trip with colleagues and Pfizer representatives. We’d been out of touch for 4 days fishing and were driving back to Winnipeg to catch our flight home.

I finally got a signal on my cell and my phone rang and it was my secretary. She called and told me about the first plane hitting the towers. I told her to keep us informed.

She called back right as we pulled into the Winnipeg airport and let us know a second plane hit the other tower and that our flights might be cancelled.

We got to the airport and it was mayhem. Our flight was cancelled and we watched the towers collapse at the airport.

A local news group interviewed us (Americans) but I’m not sure if it made TV. We were pissed and wanted some heads to roll and said it to the reporters.

We got rooms at a local hotel and went to rent vans. The rental company told us if we took them to the US they’d report them stolen. We talked to our companies and they said screw that, get your asses across the border as it might be closing. We cancelled those hotels and took off.

We drove south to the border figuring it would be on high alert. We had three vans filled with people, luggage and fishing equipment in flight containers. We got to the border, a little shack with one guy who didn’t even come out. He simply asked if we were Americans and waved us through. I’m not sure he even knew it had happened.

We drove to Sioux City and unloaded the vans. One of the Pfizer guys wives coordinated car rentals for our group to divide up and head home.

It took us almost 20 hours driving to get home. Crazy day for the world.

They did try to charge us thousands of dollars penalty on the vans but we sic’ed our travel department on them and they decided to drop the penalties.

TLDR: Fishing on the Winnipeg River

Watching the Today show in my senior English class when it all went down

I was a Sophomore at LSU living in Oakbrook. Remember gripping the sofa seat so hard as the second plane hit, getting up, knowing this was a huge disaster and we were under attack. Worst day watching all the TV coverage, classes getting cancelled. I'll never forget that night, when Bush spoke on TV, I looked out my window and 90% of the windows in Oakbrook had candles burning. I cried my eyes out.

In San Diego with the fam, waiting to board a Southwest flight back to New Orleans. We had our seat cards, in line, when an announcement at the gate said there was an incident in New York and boarding would be delayed.

I went to a lounge with a TV. Lounge was full of military. The reaction of soldiers when we saw the second plane hit was...grim.

We were stuck in San Diego for around a week.

Getting ready to go to class. Was in my sophomore year at LSU

Sophomore year University of Houston.

Had spent the night at GFs place studying history and math with her. Got call from fraternity brother that morning. We watched the plane crash into tower 2. Drove up to UofH and spent the rest of the day in the quad with all my fraternity brothers and the rest of the students and professors on campus.

Was a very sobering experience.

Im not eligible for military service because of childhood surgery, but I definitely would have been one of those who enlisted on 9/12 if I had been able to.

My Grandparents house before heading out to work at Podnuh’s BBQ(at its peak still the best BBQ I’ve ever had to date).

God Bless those people and their families.

Living in Sydney, Australia at the time. It was around 10:00pm the night of September 11 when stuff started going down. I was just about to go to bed when news broke about the first plane. Once the second plane hit I knew it was on. I stayed up until 4;00am watching the news. Got about two hours of sleep and then went into work. Not much work got done that day; a tv was brought in and we mostly just watched/listened to that. Being the only American around my co-workers were a little weird around me, like they didn’t know what to say. I worked in the western Sydney suburb of Bankstown, which has a large Muslim population. For about two weeks after the attacks the place was like a ghost town; they were scared to come out. It was nice.