I was in NYC about 70 blocks away. It was really scary. When they finally found Giuliani, they asked him what his advice to New Yorkers was and he said "Go North!" I wanted to flee uptown or to Jersey or Long Island but my Dad to told me to stay with my partner and he decided that we stay put. That was the beginning of a very scary three weeks fearing for my life. After that three weeks, I started to settle down.
I was getting ready for work. I worked for US Bank at the time, and they called maybe 15 minutes after the news broke it to say my office was closed that day
I could not imagine what it must to have been like to be in lower Manhattan at the time. I had never been to NYC until November '04 and we went to Ground Zero. It was silent! We were in the middle of New York City and it was absolutely quiet. Couldn't help but tear up. Been back about 5 times since and took my wife last fall. Must have been surreal this morning.
In June, 2001, I proposed to my girlfriend (who was living in New York at the time); she broke up with me, and decided to stay in NY. In August, 2001, I lost my job (kinda glad she said no! That ring was not cheap!) On Sept 1, 2001, my best friend got married; I was his best man, and put on the cheapest bachelor party in history. On September 10, 2011, I was alone in my apartment all day and found I couldn't sleep that night. I watched some DVDs, and finally, at 5am or so, decided to turn on CNBC and watch the stock market crash again (it had become a strange pastime of mine since losing my job to watch the market collapse and take bitter refuge in the fact that I wasn't alone). When I got to CNBC, the first plane had just hit the WTC; they still thought it was a Cessna, and were scrambling helicopters to film. When the second plane hit, I called my parents and told them to turn the TV on, New York was being attacked. I remember feeling like the world had gone insane, and letting out one of those nervous laughs I get when shit's just hit legitimately the fan.
I was sleeping in bed. My wife had to be up for work at 6, and game at 6:10 or so and said that some idiot had flown his plane into one of the WTC towers. I got out of bed in time to see the second tower hit. My surreal moment that day was going into my office at a Fortune 500 company. I worked outside for them, but had to go to the Portland HQ. None of the inside people there were even talking about it, and it was business as usual because they didn't have on a radio, and it was 10 years ago, so there were no iPhones, Blackberries, etc. to get live info. I got the hell out of there because I had seen what happened, called a contact to cancel my lunch with him, and worked on trying to get my wife out of her 25th story office in downtown PDX. They evacuated them anyhow, but I remember it being impossible to get cell service for most of that day. I remember that entire morning in complete clarity. From that afternoon on for about a week, I can hardly recall a thing. I'll add that my wife was in NYC the weekend prior to 9/11 for Labor Day with friends, and was actually sitting in a courtside box at the match where Lleyton Hewitt went on his racial tirade against James Blake. She left from JFK on Tuesday 9/4, and week later, her flight would have been cancelled.
I was watching C-SPAN. They interrupted their normal morning program (Washington Journal) because the House went into emergency session. They said that a small plane (like a cessna) had crashed into the WTC. I switched over to CNN and watched the coverage there. Then the 2nd plane hit the 2nd tower. Then the Pentagon was hit. It was horrific and amazing at the same time. That terrorists could hit the heart of our financial system and the heart of our military made me question our competence. It was like Pearl Harbor - an act of war and on our soil. At one point, Rudy Giuliani had ordered something like 50,000 body bags. We have good friends who live in PA. He is a United Air Lines pilot and his wife is a UAL stewardess. He almost hitched a ride on one of the planes that went down that day, but ended up waiting for a later plane. They knew every one of the flight crew that lost their lives that day, and they spent a few weeks attending their friends' funerals. I know I had a really tough time watching the replays and new angles of it all as it was happening and for weeks after. It's tough, even today.
