Where were you 9/11 2001?

[Clippy]

At the time, I was a permie doing Support.

The company I worked for had been taken over about 6 months earlier by a large US competitor.

There had been some redundancies and the remaining staff were re-located to a new office in Berkshire.

As part of that move, I also had to support the European HQ in West London and would shuttle between the two sites a couple of times a week.

On that day, I was returning from the London office and had just pulled off the M4 when I heard the news on the radio.

I immediately thought it was a terrorist attack and hoped I was wrong but soon after the news broke of the second plane which confirmed by suspicions.

The rest of the day was spent in the Berkshire office which, with hindsight, I'm glad about as I can only imagine what the atmosphere was like in the London office.

Found out later that one of the senior execs in the London office had a brother who was killed as he worked in one of the towers.

Also, a good friend of mine was in NY on holiday at the time staying in, I believe, the Marriott next to the towers and luckily had flown out the day before.

[Flashman]

At work trying to get on the internet to see what the fuss was about.

Given the afternoon off so it wasnt that bad a day really

[Zippy]

At the office in London. The office was surrounded by government buildings and a friend who worked for a major airline called me and told me to get out, as a few aircraft were unaccounted for.
We watched events unfold on t'interweb and I remember many people were in tears.

[Loco]

In Macdonald's tucking into a Quarter Pounder when the news came on the restaurant's TV.

Everyone just stopped what they were doing to watch, including the restaurant staff.

[Doggy Styles]

I was in Pinewood, discussing Openview with a bloke who had strawberry blond hair.

[supergal]

I was at home arguing to my crazy boyfriend that it weren't government conspired.

[NickFitz]

At home, about to go into town for some shopping when it came on the telly just in time for the second plane to hit.

I went online and found a traffic camera a few blocks from the WTC - I think it was the one at Broadway and Pine. It wasn't refreshing very often because of (I later discovered) bandwidth issues caused by the attack. It was stuck for a couple of minutes showing the street with some firefighters and what appeared to be lots of paper scattered all over the place, then refreshed just after the south tower fell. For the next half hour it was just grey from the dust cloud, then as that thinned I could see the street again. Everything was covered in a thick layer of dust and small debris, and there wasn't a soul to be seen. I still wonder what happened to the firefighters that had been there just before the collapse.

Shortly after that they mentioned something on the TV about the problems caused by the damage to the NYC comms infrastructure, so I stopped watching it before the north tower came down.

[alreadypacked]

I was in Dusseldorf airport waiting to fly out. A lot of very worried people cancelling their flights.

At the time I could not wait to leave, so I got my flight.

[Glazza]

Working in a development office in a Retail bank. I remember trying to do some work on the PC when I overheard a conversation across the office. I thought it was a light plane that had hit a skyscraper, something like that had happened a couple of years previously. Gradually people stopped working, the company internet links collapsed with everyone trying to get news. I phoned home to get the wife to give me a commentary. When she phoned back later to say the first tower had collapsed, and then later still to say the second tower had collapsed it finally dawned on us what a disaster this was. Went to the theatre that evening to watch a comedy but it turned out to be a play about alzheimer's disease so overall a pretty depressing day.

[MarillionFan]

Working in a development office in a Retail bank. I remember trying to do some work on the PC when I overheard a conversation across the office. I thought it was a light plane that had hit a skyscraper, something like that had happened a couple of years previously. Gradually people stopped working, the company internet links collapsed with everyone trying to get news. I phoned home to get the wife to give me a commentary. When she phoned back later to say the first tower had collapsed, and then later still to say the second tower had collapsed it finally dawned on us what a disaster this was. Went to the theatre that evening to watch a comedy but it turned out to be a play about alzheimer's disease so overall a pretty depressing day.

Shouldn't laugh, but thats a great last line.