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#166 | Wednesday, September 26th 2001
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As a resident of New York City, I could see the fresh smoke rising from the Twin Towers at 9:30 am from my school yesterday morning. The fear felt in all 1,000 students in my school was completely insane. I left for home early, and the air smelled like burned materials. It's still smoggy in the air, even where I live in Brooklyn. Debris fell from the sky like dirty snow. Every car is covered in the dusty remains of the Twin Towers. Friends lost parents and uncles and aunts. Teachers and staff members lost children. Most people are still missing.
I walked down with camera in hand to the Brooklyn Promenade around 3:30 pm on September 11th. I felt I needed to photograph this tragic moment; not as something that should be considered a wonderful photography opportunity, but instead as something to prove: we lived through this.
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Candice | 17 | New York
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#160 | Tuesday, September 25th 2001
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well when i first heard what had happened i was in my ecocnomics class and we thought oh, it must have been a little plane that hit the towers, but we got on e internet and we saw the pictures...i couldn't believe it. i didn't find out about the pentagon until my theatre class which is towards the end of the day and i had no clue the towers had collapsed until my mom picked me up from school.that night i watched the news for hours still not believeing what happend. i get goosebumps just thinking about all this.
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Melissa | 17 | New York
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#152 | Monday, September 24th 2001
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No one will ever forget September 11th. Here is how I remember it. It was my sisters birthday. When I woke up I wished her a happy birthday, ate breakfast, and went to check my e-mail. I was in my room and my sister was in the living room watchng tv. She went to put on "The Ananda Lewis Show" but instead it was breaking news. I heard the new announcer say, "A plane apparently crashed into it just moments ago." Then I heard my sister say, "Oh my God." I asked, "Where did that happen?" She said, "The Twin Towers." I ran into the living room just as the second plane hit the building. We live right in Queens and have a perfect view of the Manhatten skyline. So we walked to my dads job to see it from there. He told us that one of the customers said that it looked like smoke was coming from one of the Twin Towers. My uncle said that maybe it was from another bulding. But then they saw a mushroom of smoke as the other plane hit. My sister and I wanted to see the buildings better so we went home to get binoculars. While we were walking home some guy said, "They hit the Pentagon." We were like, "The Pentagon? What's he talking about? They hit the Towers." After we got the binoculars and started walking back to my dads job we ran into an older lady. She said that "it's a shame what happend, they just hit the Pentagon too." As we were walking through the parking lot to my dads job I looked towards the skyline. I said to my sister, "It looks like one of them fell." because there was so much smoke. Then all of a sudden these people come out saying, "Building 2 just fell!." When we got to my dads job we tried to see the other building with the binoculars, but there was too much smoke. After a while there I went to call my sister-in-law from a pay phone. As I was walking there two women came running out of a store yelling, "The other building just collapsed!." A group of people were just standing there looking towards Manhatten. Then I remember a woman had to stop her car and get out. She stood there with us and was crying, she said over and over again, "I can't believe they're gone." When I called my sister-in-law she told me that something happened in Pennsylvania too. I remember how everyone was trying to use their cell phones, or make collect calls but they couldn't. Nothing like that was working right. When I went back to my dads job I heard the first fighter jet go over. It was the first of many. Later on at home, when no planes besides military planes were supposed to be flying, I heard a little propellered plane going over and right behind it were those fighter jets. My brother got some show though. They watched the fighter jets flying in the sky and saw when they hit their turbo buttons, the fire coming from the back and the ground rumbling even though they were so high up. They heard a plane going over and it sounded like a regular plane. They were looking for it but couldn't see where it was. My sister-in-law said that she looked at the houses across the street and saw headlights shining off of them. Then all of a sudden an American Airlines plane flew right above their heads with two fighter jets right on it's tail. People started calling into the police and news about it. We found out on the news that it was carrying military people on it. For a while we saw all the warships in the ocean. I remember the night we had a candle light vigil on my block. Everyone was staring out at the ships. And everytime a plane went over everyone looked up. And then while my friend was ending the speech she wrote, two army helicopters flew over. It was perfect timing and that gave eveyone chills. But the warships all left to do what they were ordered to do. Later on in the night there was a firefighter that found out that his friend, John Moran, was in one of the buildings when it collapsed. My sister-in-law told me that he couldn't read the number he was trying to call because he was crying so much, so she read it off for him. I asked him if he wanted to light a candle. Then we just stayed up on the boardwalk with him and his friend for a while. It was sad to see our heroes the way they were that night. Last night, September 23, there was another candle light vigil. This one bigger, this one sadder. Sadder because we now know how many people from our area are gone. Rockaway lost about 90 people. That's the most out of any other community. The mayor was there. There was donations for a permanent Rockaway Memorial. And there was a big picture in memory of the lives lost. Everyone left their handprint on the picture and I think it's going to be suspended from the Marine Park Bridge. Thats how I remember everything. And that's how I will always remember everything.
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Crystal | 17 | New York
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#119 | Friday, September 21st 2001
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I awoke that morning in my usual ignorant state of bliss. I didn't have class until around two o'clock that day so as usual I was milking all the extra sleeping time that I could. At around eleven I went on to my computer and logged to AOL Instant Messenger. One of my friends from home came on and told me that the end of the world was happening. As usual I figured he was kidding so I replied with, "cool how can I be a part of it." Little did I know that two planes had crashed into the two beautiful towers in the city that I had spent so many days and nights in. I quickly turned on the news and what I saw I could never have been prepared for. It was horrible. The video of the planes crashing into the building just kept being played over and over again. I still can see those videos when I close my eyes. It is a scar that will ne forever in mine mind. That night as reports started coming in of all the missing people I didn't know what to do. I sat in my bedroom and cried. I cried for hours on end just thinking of all the mothers and fathers who had been lost. Thinking of families all over the state, families which were now missing a key person in their lives. I thought of all that and I cried.
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Jonathan | 19 | New York
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#106 | Thursday, September 20th 2001
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I woke up at 11:00 a.m. in New York's Lower East Side. I never turn the television on in the morning, and only listen to NPR if I'm working that day. (I wasn't working that day) So I wake up, make coffee, wash my face, and then check my email.
After logging on to the Internet, I opened my email program. I was completely confused and shocked at what I was reading. I must have received over 30 e-mails that morning which read: "We're at World War 3, call me when you get this!", "Are you okay?!!! Where are you?", "The Pentagon was hit also!", "CALL ME! CALL ME! CALL ME!"
I immediately turned on the television, and that's when I first became scared. Since my roommate and i don't have Cable TV, I couldn't find a single television station that was working! I finally came to one station which was just a blue screen with big white letters that read, "DUE TO THE CRISIS THAT HAS RECENTLY OCCURRED IN NEW YORK, OUR BROADCASTING IS BEING SUSPENDED." Okay, that freaked me out!
I found CBS finally and the images I saw on the television were truly horrifying. Not only was it horrifying to see, but when I finally came to the realization that we live 2.1 miles (5 minutes) from the WTC and my Father works for the Pentagon, I just fell numb.
I moved to NYC from Washington, DC on September 1, 2001. This is all I really feel like talking about right now...
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Tada | 28 | New York
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