12th anniversary of the September 11th attacks

Rest in peace to all the victims. Where were you on this horrible day?

It's unbelievable that it's been 12 years. Anyway this is what i posted last year.

I was only 8 at the time while walking home from swimming i saw my friends dad who told me the WTC had been hit (i didn't even know what it was at the time) and the rest is history

RIP

Between now and 2015 3 new WTC buildings will open.

http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2013/09/10...t_to_follow.php

Oh jesus I feel old. You were 8?!

Events like these, that become a divider in history (either it's pre 9/11 or post 9/11) essentially define the lives of the generation before and after the event. Born or raised into perpetual war, we start to reminisce about the good ol' days of pre 9/11, pre Afghanistan, pre Iraq. We picture a Pleasentville way of life, a simpler time, carefree and gleeful. Well as someone considerable older, daily life for your average Joe was much of the same. We should remember not only those who have passed in that tragic event, but let this be a reminder of the world we live in, in the West. We can be questioned, attacked, confronted and yet our way of life continues. 9/11 proved the resilience of the free. I take comfort in knowing that my children may not know the pre 9/11 world, but that the reality they live in is still one of comfort and security.
And isn't that new tower a beautiful thing?

Only seems like last week we where seeing those awful images.. May we never forget..

I agree the tower and memorial look very nice and a great remeberence for the victims. I visited the memorial this last July, it was so sad seeing all the names.

The memorial is magnificent.

Was watching the tapes of the real time events this morning. Still seems like it happened yesterday.

Overall I do not think the U.S leadership has handled it well. Bush was a disaster whose inattention was a partial cause of 9/11, and then his abandonment at Tora Bora and the Iraq war were both horrible decisions. Obama was reight to get out of Iraq, but his surge in Afghanistan was stupid, and he is all over the map on Syria. Both Bush and Obama have usurped a great deal of our right to privacy since then. I personally don't care who is reading my e mails because I don't really have anything to hide, however in principle the extent of surveillance these days is troubling.

I was in downtown Manhattan that day. I worked 6 blocks southwest of the WTC. Its a long story, but here are a few photos of that day. The first one was taken from Trinity Place where I first saw what had happened. I decided to get closer and the second picture was taken a few weeks later from the spot I was standing when WTC 2 came down. I was in a direct line with the building. At the end of the street you can see the skeletal structure of the building. When I saw and realized that the building was coming down, I turned and ran (along with hundreds of other onlookers). I ducked into a loading dock (pic 3). The cloud was black. That picture was taken 3 weeks after. ON the dash board of that car was an ID of a fireman or policeman, I don't remember which. I don't know his fate. In short, I survived with only some eye irritation. I walked 6 miles to a cousins apartment on 51st and 2 nd Ave. Later that day the subways began running. I got home to Suffern, NY at 9pm.

I was just pulling into my parking space at work when I heard the breaking report that the Trade Center was hit by a plane. I stayed in the car to listen long enough to hear that a second plane struck the other tower.

As I arrived and told those in the office what had happened, a friend rolled out a tv and we all watched what was taking place. I called my parents, who were home, but not watching tv, and we both tried to reach my brother, an investment banker who worked near the trade center, but cell service was impossible. We learned later he was still on summer schedule and was casually walking to work when he was stunned by the sight of people crying in the street. He soon learned the news.

I went home early that day, and I remember eating quite a bit of chocolate cake (My wife's birthday was the previous day and I always baked a big chocolate cake for her). Many parents picked up their young kids from school early that day. My wife suggested we do the same, so I got them a half hour before dismissal. They were too young then to comprehend what was happeniong.

[quote=MontagueEvents like these, that become a divider in history (either it's pre 9/11 or post 9/11) essentially define the lives of the generation before and after the event. [/quote]

The big stories before 9/11 were whether Gary Condit played a role in the disappearance of Chandra Levy, the various shark attacks in Florida and elsewhere, the untimely death of rising recording and film star Aaliyah and a sluggish economy.

In October, 2011, we were dealing with security concerns, anthrax was being mailed around the country and unemployment became a big problem when we experienced the greatest jobs loss in 21 years.

I've posted this a few times before, but what the hell.

I was on my way from the Bronx to a funeral home on Flatbush Avenue in Marine Park, Brooklyn. A lot of people may not realize this, but the bridges and tunnels weren't closed until after the second tower was hit.

When I was pulling out of my garage, I'd heard on AM radio that a plane hit the Trade Center, so I figured that it was a single engine puddle jumper or something like that. When I got to the EZ Pass lane at the Whitestone Bridge, I saw all the smoke coming from the first tower. That's when I knew it wasn't a prop plane. Too much damage. I was about halfway across the bridge when I looked to my right and saw, with my own eyes, the second plane hit tower two and explode into a fireball. It was the most surrealistic and frightening thing I've ever seen in my life.

At that point, having figured out that we were under attack, I still had to deal with the idea of being adjacent to LaGuardia and halfway to Kennedy airport. I was a wreck thinking that a plane would explode right on top of me. I finally made it to Brooklyn and stayed there until the bridges re-opened (around 5 or 6 o'cock that night).

And FYI, the sky this morning here in New York is very similar to how it was twelve years ago. Bright blue and beautiful, but it's a little hotter today.

That gave me Goosebumps Pizzaboy.

How do you think I felt?

And we live right on the water in Throggs Neck, by the Marina del Ray. From the roof of my house we were able to clearly see the towers smolder for weeks. Weeks!

I'm pretty liberal on a few things, but not this. Fuck the America and Jew hating extremists in the Middle East. I wouldn't lose a minute's sleep if nuked that entire region of the world .

I don't remember reading your account of what happened on that day, Pizzaboy. So thanks for sharing your experience. And thanks for the pictures and background Mary Cas.

I remember being at work and getting a call from my mom that both towers were hit by airplanes. I remember her asking why a pilot would do that and I replied that it had to be terrorism. No sane person would fly a plane into a building.

A bunch of us at work milled about for awhile, obviously not being able to concentrate on doing anything productive. So we walked over to another building on campus that had a TV. We were there 5 minutes and saw the South Tower fall on live TV. Everybody in the room just stopped and we all gasped.

Around 11:00 the Cleveland mayor ordered an evacuation of downtown. Our tallest building, Key Tower, was about one-half the size of the Twin Towers. So it was certainly a viable target. At that point, not all aircraft had been accounted for. My wife & I drove in together that day. When we were driving home, which is normally a 20 minute commute, we heard a radio report that there was a bomb on plane at the Cleveland airport tarmac. This airport was five minutes from where we lived, so traffic was diverted as a precaution. It took us about 2 hours to get home.

If you're not old enough to remember 9/11, this is what I always will remember. ANYTHING was possible on 9/11. Once that first plane hit the North Tower at 8:46 a.m., the world changed The unthinkable had not only occurred, but the fabric of our society was forever altered.

I don't really follow politics are you half jewish ?

OMG! I can't even imagine what watching that happen must of been like. Something i'm sure that is just seared into your brain for the rest of your life. I was watching it on tv and i freaked out so i can just imagine how you must of felt at the time.

I couldn't get hold of any of my family that still lives in the different 5 boroughs and several of them work in Manhattan. It wasn't until a couple days later that i finally knew everyone was ok.

A friend of mine lives right across the river in Fort Lee and was watching from his apt balcony which was on the top floor of the building. He told me he was just stunned.....was hoping it was a bad dream or something.

I was at the site three weeks after September 11, and I will never forget coming out of the subway near the courthouse, and about a mile from ground zero and being hit by the smell of the smolering that was still going on...the burning of flesh....I have never "smelt death" like that before or since. At the site there were wals of posters of the faces of the missing, relatives still asking cops for information about loved ones, people dazed, people crying and as I got to the site the intensity of the ongoing fire, the smell, the burning in my eyes, and the rubble and remains of the shell of one of the towers.

I was 10 years old, my parents were from NY, me and my brother both actually played hooky that day and pretended we were sick just so we could play on our new game boys, my mom said whatever its monday but we couldnt play with our friends on the weekends. My dad didnt go into work that day either since he had irregular work hours. I was out in the living room playing on my gameboy when my dad came bursting out of his room and turned on good morning America. About 5 minutes later the second plane hit on live t.v. I had 3 aunts, 2 uncles, and 2 cousins that lived up their. 1 uncle and 2 cousins firefighter volunteers in L.I. I remember the phone call that day talking to my aunt in oyster bay saying she could see the smoke from across the L.I. sound. I grew up in Florida so I didnt understand the signifigance of the towers. My cousins and uncle were on their way to the city when the towers fell, they themselves lost more than a dozen friends. It definitley changed my outlook on the world since I became interested in the world affairs after that. Despite being ten years old and being to young to understand the gravity of the situation as I do now I know how it feels to of heard my parents talk about it and my relatives seeing it firsthand. I remember what I ate for dinner that night, hamburgers, french fries, and a baked potatoe.

Another story....I had a friend in NY who worked for G.E. Capital at the time. They had an uptown office and other offices in the World Trade Center. On Sept 11, my friend with to the uptown office early. Her boss, who was angry about something that had gone on in the WTC into her office and told her he thought she was supposed to be downtown fixing the problem. He had given her a memo on this which she never saw. He told her to get down there right away, so they place a call, to the the WTC office but could not get through. Moments later someone came in to tell them a plane had hit one of the towers (the one where the G.E. Offices were) and the rest we know. Had my friend seen the momo....

One of my relatives was working on Wall Street at the time. He knew a bunch of the guys from Cantor Fitzgerald who died that day in the tower. It really shook him up bad.

Follow up to my pictures. I had only been working downtown for 3 weeks. My commute took me into the WTC Path Station. I exited the WTC Station through WTC 2 at 7am that morning. There were fruit and vegetable vendors on the sidewalk at WTC 2. I was going to stop on the way home that day and buy some tomatoes. I often wonder what happened to those vendors.

The aftermath of the tragedy left lasting memories too. If you passed a fire house they had pictures of their fallen brothers on display. Bus stops had pictures of missing people with notes, "have you seen....". As DT recalled about the smoke and smell. Being down wind of the WTC, I smelled it everyday for about 6 weeks. Many people walking the streets in downtown wore dust masks covering their nose and mouth. I did. It was a different downtown Manhattan after 9/11.

9 days after: Smoke rising from the WTC site. Photos taken from the NY Waterway Ferry, which replaced my commute through the Path Tubes.



Smoke blowing across East River, Brooklyn Bridge in the background.


Smoke rising from the WTC site.

God Bless all the people and their families and friends that lost their lives on that tragic day. A shout out to the EMS workers, Police, Fire and Paramedics that worked tirelessly to restore some kind of order. We buried my grandfather on September 10th and I woke up to my Mom screaming that the towers were hit...I was 24 years old and not a day goes by that I don't think about it.

No. I'm Italian-American Catholic. Second generation. But I've lived in New York City, where the Jews are our friends and neighbors, for more than fifty years. And if they're targets, then we're all targets by extension. The way I see it there's really no other way to look at it. And in the post 9/11 world, I believe that we have to stand by the Jews both here and in Israel. But that's just my personal opinion .

Pizzaboy i still picture you as Larry David. That was your avatar when i first started posting here.

Well, women with unusually large vaginas who label all men as having small penises really get my blood pressure up.

LOL!

Great show, i really hope they come back for another season.

I live in Southern California and was listening to the radio when it happened. Actually I turned on the radio just after the first plane hit. I thought it was a terrible accident until they announced the second plane, then we knew it was a deliberate attack, and based on the 1994 World Trade Center bombing, no doubt the work of Muslim extremists.

About a year later I had my chance to visit the WTC site. It was fenced up and there were pictures and letters posted to it, along with some flowers. I gave my respects. Was amazed how everything else was back to normal in lower Manhattan.

PB is right about standing by the Jews, but I'd add Christians too. In Nigeria, Egypt, Iran and many other places in the Islamic world Christians are persecuted, killed, and churches are bombed. Ironically Israeli Muslims have more freedom in Israel than in most (if not all) Muslim countries.

No doubt, Faithful. No doubt .

I was at a meeting when someone came in and told us the news. I drove back to my office. You could see the World Trade Center from our conference room. The sight was terrifying. It looked as if someone had nuked Manhattan.

My brother lost a good friend who was a lieutenant with the FDNY. My mother's friend lost her grandson, who worked for Cantor Fitzgerald.

We should never forget.

I was in my 7th grade health class when the teachers start talking about it then turn on the news , we watch in silence as the second plane hit the tower. Can't forget that moment, too surreal.

Yes.. watching that second plane hit was just so surreal. They were talking on the tv coverage about the first plane and then the second one hit. It reminded me of when the Space Shuttle blew up as i was watching it on tv and even though i saw it blow up i still couldn't believe it. Just unreal when that kind of stuff happens. And then when the tower collapsed i thought how could it get worse and then the other one fell. Just a nightmare.

i was at college watching the second plane crash into the tower on live tv

at the time I thought it was a hell of a coincidence

Living in VA. It was my first day on the job with my neighbors business. When I found out I called my hub who just got home from the night shift on the Naval Weapons Station at Yorktown, VA. He got a call saying he had to go back due to the base was going on lock down for a few days. He was a security guard at the time.

That's one thing they wouldn't do here. Because so many people from this area worked in the towers or nearby, they wouldn't even talk about it to the kids. There were lots of kids whose parents didn't come home that night.

I picked up my daughter at school that day and she asked me if something bad had happened at my work. At the time, I worked in a 21 story office building. I told her that I was fine, and she said that mine was the tallest building she knew and that she heard two of the teachers saying that something bad had happened in a tall building.

The Giants play the Broncos this weekend. That was the same Monday Night Football match up that took place the night before 9/11. Brian Griese led the Broncos to a 31-20 win in a game that ended past midnight on the east coast and might be remembered as the game where Ed McCaffrey broke his leg.

A couple other trivia bits: The Number 1 song in the country on 9/11 was "I'm Real" by Jennifer Lopez and the top movie was The Musketeer.

pizzaboy- Thanks for your interesting commentaries and Marycas thanks for the great photos. I hope everyone took a few minutes of silence yesterday in honor of our lost brothers and sisters. I still get sick seeing video of people jumping from the towers.

SB - your description of your daughter's fears perfectly epitomize a child's perception of their world. Every building seems enormous to a child. I remember a few years ago I walked in the door and my 5 year old son came up to hug me as soon as I walked in the door. He started crying. When I asked him what was wrong, he said "I heard that there was a car accident from the radio. I thought you were hurt."

I was at home, listening to news on a-m radio, when the planes hit. Turned on TV immediately. By the time the Pentagon was hit, I was really getting scared. I lived in Summit NJ at the time, and was able to go up a hill, where I saw the smoke rising. Just horrible, then and now.

Thinking about 9/11 brought back a flood of memories. I worked in downtown Manhattan from 1958 through 1969. The area occupied by the WTC was one of the oldest in NYC. There were even some apartments on Greenwich Street near Albany Street, and you could see kids playing stickball in the street on Saturday. Volk's, the best German restaurant in the city, was on Liberty and Greenwich. Cortlandt Street was home to Heinz & Bolet (discount department store); "Radio Row" (Arrow Electronics and others), and Kaufman's Army/Navy Store, where you could buy just about anything that was gov't surplus, including decommissioned 20mm and .50 ammo.

David Rockefeller pulled off a real power play. His Chase Manhattan Bank's HQ building was downtown. The area wasn't doing well financially, and he wanted more businesses to bolster his bank. He arranged for the Port Authority to steamroller the locals to get the WTC built; it helped that his brother was Governor at the time.

I watched the buildings going up, including the famous "climbing cranes" that racheted themselves up the buildings' exterior frames. The deep excavation exposed the concrete tubes that carried PATH trains to and from lower Manhattan and Jersey City--when a train moved through the tube, you could see it vibrating in the pit that was to be the buildings' underground levels.

If I recall correctly, the WTC put so much commercial realty into Manhattan that commerical rents were depressed for years. I think it took more than a decade for the Twin Towers to be fully or mostly rented.

Goombah, first and foremost, glad to see you around. You've been missed.

I just remember hugging my daughter when she said that, because all I could think of was all the children whose parents were not going to come home that night.

TB, I remember you said something once about the crowded commuter lots, all the people who never came home to claim their cars. Heartbreaking.

I think that if you want to capture what it was like in NY in those days, the best film to see is "The Guys" with Sigourney Weaver and Anthony LaPaglia. It's a thoughtful and slow-paced film that captures the sense of shock and then despair that filled those days immediately afterwards, and then the overwhelming need to pitch in and help somehow.

Yes, there were some cars that stood in the lots like gravestones because their owners perished.

For me, there were two heartbreakers:

First, I went to the local hospital in the afternoon to give blood. Corridors were crowded with people who had the same idea. They told me they couldn't take my blood that day, but took my phone number. Called the next day to say they didn't need blood. Reason (unsaid): few survivors.

Also, our local rescue squad set up at the Summit train station because NJ Transit was able to operate out of Penn Station that night. They only treated four people. Same hearbreaking reason.

I remember that it seemed like the church bells and bagpipes never ended. We live very close to a town with lots of NYPD and FDNY. The losses were devastating.