#2317 | Wednesday, September 11th 2002
I was sleeping on the couch, when my mom yelled for me to get up, and turn to channel 44 (Fox News), cause a plane just hit one of the twin towers. I was like... "what, how can a pilot be so stupid as to hit one of the towers?". I turned it on just as the second tower was hit, then I knew that this was no mistake... after that I got online to talk to people about it.

Then rumors started to spring up such as "A plane hit camp David, I plane was shot down over PA." Then I was wondering "When the f*ck is this gonna end?" But it had only begun... The terrorists screwed up like Japan did at Pearl Harbor. And they will forever pay!!


Joe | 20 | New York

#2278 | Wednesday, September 11th 2002
September 11th

Back at home, there I sat, at the TV watching as the pentagon and the twin towers were being attacked. I saw the after shots of both being attacked. My family sat there wondering whether they should go to work/school or stay home to let it sink in. instead of staying home, we all went out – to work and school. Later –maybe around 9-10 o’clock- my brother, 2 cousins, 2 aunts, and myself were given the okay to go home. As we were leaving other people were also leaving at the same time. I wasn’t surprised by all of the commotion in the school but what really scared me was all the commotion on the streets, it became a ghost town. There was barely anyone on the streets. There was no traffic and a majority of the stores were closed.

It was never the same since then, people are still afraid to leave their homes because of the attack on September 11th. The commercial build- the economy- had fallen dramatically and never recovered.

laura | 20 | California

#2219 | Wednesday, September 11th 2002
L'undici settembre 2001 ero a Firenze. Io e il mio ragazzo ci eravamo concessi 5 giorni di gita culturale prima di ricominciare con i corsi universitari e, perchè no,per festeggiare il mio 19° compleanno che sarebbe stato il 14 settembre. Eravamo appena tornati in albergo dopo aver visitato Santa Maria Novella e non mi sentivo molto bene.
Accesi la TV, erano più o meno le 14.50 e vidi quello che era successo...
Non riuscivo a crederci, era bruttissimo, non poteva essere vero; vedevo sulla tv i filmati e i servizi della cnn con la scritta "America under attack" o qualcosa del genere. Poi ho pure pensato al film Indipendance day e ho detto:"questi sono gli alieni!!!!"
La sera il megaschermo in Piazza della Signoria con il viso di Bush, giornali in edizione straordinaria e la gente, si, proprio la gente, non sono riuscita a tradurre ad un signore americano quello che c'era scritto sui giornali... Lui mi diceva :"What's the meaning of guerra?" e io pur sapendolo non sono riuscita a dirglielo. Ho visto americani svenire davanti al megaschermo con il discorso del presidente, piangere e domandarsi perchè. Una cosa che non mi dimenticherò mai

Sara | 20 | Italy

#2115 | Wednesday, September 11th 2002
I was at home, getting ready to leave for my 10:30 Spanish class. I had heard a brief report on the radio about a plane out of Logan that had crashed, but I just assumed it was an accident - engine failue, that the plane had crashed into the ocean. Terrorism certainly hadn't occured to me. As I was heading out the door, my aunt called from New York City, wanting to know where my father was. Until she called, I had completely forgotten that he had a conference in the World Trade Center that week. I absolutely could not remember what day he had said he would be there. My aunt then had to hang up, because her building was being evactuated. I immediatly called my dad's office, and got his voicemail. Same thing when I tried to call his cell phone. I just remember crying at that point. I was literally hysterical, on the ground sobbing. I was like that until my mom came home about an hour later. She told me that my dad's conference had actually been scheduled for Thursday. He called a few minutes after that. He had been down in the office gym, watching the coverage. I couldn't even talk to him on the phone, I was crying so hard.
Meghan | 20 | Massachusetts

#2090 | Wednesday, September 11th 2002
I go to Stevens Tech in Hoboken, NJ, though I'm not from around here. The college is small but set on a bluff overlooking the Hudson River, and has a awesome view of lower Manhattan--we're a little under two miles away from the World Financial Center. On a crystal clear day you can see NYC in near-perfect detail. My dorm is one of two on campus that has windows facing east, towards the city. At exactly 9:07 AM I was woken up by my roommate's brother pounding on the door. I answered because that's one of the few things that wakes my roommate up and we'd both been up late the night before. He said, and I quote, "You gotta come see this, the World Trade Center's on fire!" I stared at him for several seconds without understanding, but my roommate was out of bed and halfway down the hall before I even knew she was awake. (Our room is on the west side of the dorm...his was top floor, east side.) I took just enough time to throw on some more decent clothing than pajamas and followed. I spent most of the day either on Castle Point watching the WTC smoke (it was a clear enough day for us to see the flames from where we were), then fall, then smoke some more. I'm not sure when I started taking pictures, but I have a few of both towers and a lot of the second tower collapsing so it must have been early on. When I wasn't on the Point, I was at my computer, sending e-mails to my parents to let them know I was okay. (I wasn't actually, I was in deep shock, but they didn't have to know that...) I would have called, but the phone system overloaded and went down early on, and the cell phone tower was--you guessed it--the WTC. Sometime around 7 PM, my friend Monica got ahold of me. (She had been visiting campus from Oregon for a week--wound up staying two because she couldn't catch her train that was supposed to leave on the 12th.) Anyway, she said that volunteers were needed at the PATH station, because they were going to start sending the WTC ferries there because Jersey City was full. I didn't know what I could do, but I felt I just had to do something. It felt like half the city of Hoboken turned out to help that night. The workers there separated us according to what languages we could speak (in case we needed interperters), those who knew CPR or first aid (I've had disaster training but my card was out of date), and those who didn't belong in the other groups. Half a dozen of us volunteered to go back up to Stevens and collect clean linens that might be needed. It was kind of funny...out of the six people, five were students, and all of them were from different dorms. Made things a lot easier. We got so much stuff from students (who like us, wanted to do anything they could to help, even if it was to give us a clean towel) that we had to get the campus police to drive us back because we couldn't carry it. After that, everyone was sent home because we didn't get as many people as we expected/hoped. I stayed up late, because I was afraid of what my dreams would be like. Eventually, though, I did fall asleep because of the stress of the day and the lack of sleep from the night before. This was the last thing I thought that night, which I wrote down as my hope for the futere: "And when this day which forever changes our lives is over, we sleep only from exhaustion. When that blessed reprieve is over, may we wake to find a world not so much changed as we fear it might be."
~Carrie Andresen, 9/11/02

Carrie | 20 | New Jersey

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