OT: September 11, 2001... Where were you?

[T206Collector]

As I, too, mentioned in another thread, I was on a subway under the towers as the second plane hit. Back then I lived in Brooklyn and commuted to Manhattan every morning. I had heard a "rumor" that a plane had hit one of the buildings as a boarded the 2 train at Grand Army Plaza, heading for midtown via Wall Street area. I figured it was a small prop plane, if anything.

As we got to the downtown stations, Fulton Street, etc., the train didn't stop but just kept going through. Over the speaker we heard there was a "police investigation" so we were going to Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall. When we got there, instead of people getting off as usual, the subway got mobbed by people boarding. They were in tears and visibly shaken. That was how I learned that a second plane had hit.

I got out at Grand Central. As I walked up the stairs to Lexington, across the street from the Chrysler Building, they were evacuating the building, and everyone was looking up expecting a plane to hit it, too. I got home that night by walking over the Manhattan Bridge, under a thick cloud of black smoke and military helicopters whirring above me - and F-15 fighters a bit higher in the sky. There were dozens of people handing out water and graham crackers to anyone who crossed the bridge. My apartment, which once had a view of the Twin Towers in the distance, smelled like burning plastic for quite awhile, as the smoke floated over Brooklyn for what seems like it must've been at least a few weeks.

[bgar3]

Was on the NJ turnpike listening to Imus when Werner Wolf called in to report he had seen a plane hit a tower. Looked to my right and saw smoke. I worked at the Meadowlands, when I left for home our parking lot was filled with ambulances and emergency aid vehicles. When I arrived the next morning, they had all been replaced by heavy construction vehicles.

[WillowGrove]

All these stories bring me right back.

I was in my apartment on Upper West Side in Manhattan listening to the radio getting ready to leave for work. They reported a plane had flown into one of the towers, no one knew much more at that moment. I remember thinking it must be a small private plane.

I left for work but something told me not to go down into the subway so I ducked into my local diner who had a small TV on and sat there for an hour or so. A group of NYers all staring at disbelief at the TV.

Yet I STILL took a cab to my midtown office. All my coworkers were waiting downstairs.

A few NJers who weren't up for the trek home, walked back uptown to my apt, and as we walked north all we had to do was turn our heads to see the smoke. We watched the news the whole dreaded day.

Today here in NYC is the exact kind of weather as 2001. Clear, sunny, crisp.