I was in Newark that morning. I had just driven up from Philadelphia the previous evening to visit with my local leadership staff. When the news first broke one of my Managers climbed up the water tower across from our warehouse and could see the smoke across the river. Couldn't see much else.

I was scheduled to return my rental car at Newark and fly back to Boston that afternoon. I remember Enterprise calling me asking when I was returning the rental. I told the young lady they would see it at Logan Airport in Boston that evening. Driving back was surreal - you could see the terror and dismay on the faces of so many drivers on the highway.

My brother last a good high school friend in the 2nd Tower who worked for Morgan Stanley. (who ironically had an older brother in the other Tower that got out)

I will never forget the people jumping out of windows to avoid being burned to death. Such a horrible situation. I was 28.

Service members and first responders thank you for all you have done and are doing!

quote:

Originally posted by AKSuperDually:

quote:

Originally posted by VMI 1991:


Messages coming into Radio with headers I told myself I would never see.



I will never forget.

I was an E4 at the time, and a world away. I also remember carrying all our war gear and prepping planes for all kinds of purposes. Orders and plans changed frequently during those hours, and to be honest, there was some panicking happening. A lot of very serious people were very determined to do some ass-whooping. Once clear orders were received...some of that did start happening.

We had just completed an ammo offload, so no missiles, torpedoes or anything. We ended up staying in San Diego, but the were a few days when we were having serious discussions about what we could do getting underway without weapons...

I was preparing for work that morning with the TV on. Then the news came on and I think it was first being passed as an accident that a plane went into one of the twin towers. Then I saw the second plane hit. And I remember some time before how someone did a car bomb under the twin towers.

I remembered the saying that America has never had a foreign attack in its homeland. Well, that was no more.

At work, we had tvs on every floor in like the open lobby area. Every tv was on the news.

Our sales which was $20 million a month stopped where it was at $5 million. Senior management thought we should zero out the projection for the rest of the year. (Idiots, I thought.) It rebounded back the next month.

I remember George Bush on the ground.

I remember after that I could no longer take any knives on airplanes. A few months before, they separated me from my Leatherman but it came with me on the flight and they returned it to me after landing. Previous to that, they just had me open the Leatherman and they let me keep it on my belt.

9/11 certainly has changed life in the US and it's surprising that 20 years later, we're still in Afghanistan and, even though, we're supposedly out of there by now, I think we'll still be involved for quite a while in the future.

I had just re-joined the military via the Pennsylvania Army National Guard that April and was going to school full-time. I remember hearing something on the radio on my way to a class about a plane hitting the World Trade Center, and like most people thought it was a small Cessna type plane and thought nothing more of it. By the time I got to school, I realized something big had happened because most classes had already been dismissed and people were just milling around talking and checking out the TVs around campus.

I jumped back in my car and went home and started packing and getting my uniforms ready and within an hour my unit had called and told us all to standby for further instructions. We happened to have drill that weekend and I’ll never forget being in a convoy going down the Pennsylvania Turnpike headed to Fort Dix, New Jersey, all the traffic parting like the Red Sea for Moses letting us on through and people were waving and clapping. It was very surreal.

We ended up basically staying on standby, and never was deployed for any of this. I was in an Air Defense Artillery Stinger missile unit and there was a lot of scuttlebutt talk about units being asked to try and shoot down that plane that hit the Pentagon because they were certain it was going for the White House or Capitol.

I always remember that day.

I was driving to work in San Francisco, and I was going over the Golden Gate Bridge. The radio announcer said that planes has just hit the World Trade Center. I was completely astounded at this. Of course, the radio announcer did not have much other information.

I got to the office in downtown San Francisco and people all had that weird look of shock on their face. I just started working because I had a lot of work to do as usual.

Then, about 10:30, I looked out and saw that the streets were empty of people. Downtown San Francisco usually has crowds of people on the sidewalk. Then a manager came to my desk and said, "you should go home". There were reports that planes were headed to San Francisco to hit the Trans America building.

I got in my car to go home, and now there was a traffic backup of cars trying to go over the Golden Gate Bridge. It took about 2 hours to get home instead of the normal 30 minutes.

I got home and just watched the news.

Two days later, my company asked me to go to New York as part of a special team to help our customers. I flew from San Francisco to Newark on a plane with only about 5 people. I got to Newark, and it was like a military base in the airport. Police, national guard, state troopers and some had serious automatic weapons.

I wound up going near the WTC towers site to help a customer. There was all this white ash everywhere and a weird small. They had the actual site fenced off, so you could not get close.

My thought then is the same as now. There had to be big time retribution.

Quite a few stories from vets and military personnel from that day that I don’t recall reading here before. Thank you.

I was working on the White River National Forest in W Colorado out of Rifle. On 9/11 I had a training session to attend up in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, which is roughly 2 1/2 hours NE of Rifle. We lived 20 miles from Rifle, so I was up and driving well before sunup that day. I got into my FS truck and turned north towards Meeker.

I turned on the radio and was listening to a music station. It was just getting light out when a report came over the radio that a plane hit the North Tower. I clearly remember speculation that it was a light plane that crashed into the WTC. I’m pretty sure I was still listening to the music station when the second plane hit 17 minutes later (7:03 MDT).

I switched over to NPR and for the next hour-and-a-half to 2 hours listened as our world changed forever. I still recall the feeling of isolation driving along, by myself, early the morning. There was little or or traffic most of the way from Meeker to Craig, then east to Steamboat.

I also recall the feeling when the training session began and not a word was said about the events back East. I shifted around uncomfortably in my seat, not hearing a word, until I could take it no longer. I stood up. Expressed my disbelief that nothing had been said. Asked for a moment of silence.

It's a day I'll never forget. I ran an errand to Home Depot from work and had Howard Stern on the radio when the first plane hit and nobody knew what really happened yet. By the time I came out of the store the second plane had hit. I went to Best Buy and bought a TV to put in the office at work and spent most of the day glued to the TV in disbelief and fear. Too many people have forgotten but a lot of us were changed forever on that day.

On September 11, 2001, I was at my desk at the government consultant where I worked in Tysons Corner, VA. I was in the final stages of publishing a major policy document for the Office of the Secretary of Defense. I even had a client appointment in the Pentagon on Wednesday September 12, 2001, which was delayed a week while DC was shuttered (for the most part).

Back then, CNN was actually a news outlet and was my home page on my laptop.

I noted it was not loading. I tried a couple of other pages to no avail. I walked out of my office to ask my boss if he was having similar problems, and ran into someone who said a plane hit the World Trade Center (WTC). That alone could account for no internet coverage. When I told my boss, he and another senior guy who was with him suggested going to the auditorium where there was a huge screen on which news or pirated satellite feeds would be displayed. We were there when United 175 hit the south tower.

I turned to the other two and said something like “I think we can rule out accident.” We stood their silently, watching, when my boss said something like “Those buildings are going to fall.” At that juncture, I went to my office, packed my gear, and readied to leave. My officemate, unaware of the developments, asked where I was going. I told him I was getting out while the getting out was good. He started packing right away.

I then went to the office of the Principal I worked for to recommend sending everyone home right then and there, and that in any event, I was leaving. He too asked “Why?” I explained that the fed.gov was going to lockdown all of DC, and possibly beyond, and we needed our colleagues to make it out ahead of the massive traffic jam soon to envelope all of the DC metro area. He gave permission to anyone who wanted to leave to leave. That was when we learned of American 77 hitting the Pentagon.

I grabbed my gear and was out the door, stopping in the auditorium on my way out. When I first saw the images of the Pentagon, I thought it hit about 100 feet further to the left, something that would have killed the majority of people I knew in the building. So, I decided to go be with the wife of a friend I thought dead. I got through to my spouse, an amazing bit of luck, who was at home with the kid (we had just returned from a trip to Colorado and Wyoming) and told her my plan. She agreed they were safe, and I should do what I thought needed doing.

I headed there, to find my friend’s wife just shy of meltdown, because she too thought he was dead. As more video came out of the Pentagon, I realized the plane hit the newly renovated wedge, which was still unoccupied. I stayed with her until she got about a 10 second call from her husband saying he and his colleagues were all safe. I stayed a while longer, but now that she was safe, had heard from her husband, and was no longer freaked out, I left and headed home.

I was fortunate, in many ways.

First, I was not at the Pentagon. I spent a lot of time there is preceding four years. Had I not just returned from two weeks vacation, I might have been there.

Second, I realized what was happening before most had processed the idea of planes hitting skyscrapers. I have been a student of terrorism and asymmetrical warfare ever since I saw Dawson’s Field, and then the 1972 Olympics attack. I authored a paper in high school on the idea of hijackers attacking DC using a commandeered airliner. That paper got my parents called in to talk with the school administrators who apparently were worried that a 10th grader could come with such an idea. In 1986, while in college, I wrote a paper on terrorist attacks against chemical manufacturing facilities. This was on the heels of Bhopal, so the theory was proven, even if the specific case (at that time) ruled out terrorism. Turns out, there were more than a few instances of terrorists attacking chemical plants. So, realizing what was happening was easier for me, as I had at least thought about the prospects.

Third, I was fortunate not to have been caught in the traffic jam. I know people who were not home until the early hours of Wednesday, traffic was so badly screwed up. Leaving as quick as I did, and from Tyson’s, put me in place to beat any traffic jam. Because I left right away, I was able to help my friend’s wife weather the immediate storm, and still get home to my family before dark.

Fourth, I am fortunate that the list of people I knew who were killed at the Pentagon only lists four names, three colleagues who were briefing Lt. Gen. Timothy Maude when the plane basically flew through the window in the General’s E-Ring office, and one Army civilian, who I worked with when I was embedded in the Army’s Assistant Chief of Staff for Installation Management (ACSIM). If that plane hit about 100 feet further to the left, I would have lost at least half the people I knew in the Pentagon, maybe more, as that is where the ACSIM offices were located.

Finally, in this post I want to mention one of the day’s greatest heroes, Cyril Richard Rescorla, Colonel, United States Army, retired. Colonel Rescorla and a colleague wrote to the Port Authority that the WTC towers were a prime target. He was ignored.

Never being one to take being ignored, after Dean Witter merged with Morgan Stanley in 1997, the company eventually occupied 22 floors in the South Tower and several floors in a building nearby. Colonel Rescorla concluded that employees of Morgan Stanley, which was the largest tenant in the World Trade Center, could not rely on first responders in an emergency and needed to empower themselves. Through surprise fire drills, in which he trained employees to meet in the hallway between stairwells and go down the stairs two by two to the 44th floor. Colonel Rescorla's strict approach to these drills put him into conflict with some high-powered executives, who resented the interruption to their daily activities, but he nonetheless insisted that these rehearsals were necessary to train the employees in the event of an emergency. He timed employees with a stopwatch when they moved too slowly and lectured them on fire emergency basics.

Colonel Rescorla heard the explosion when American Airlines Flight 11 struck the North Tower and saw the tower burning from his office window on the 44th floor of the South Tower (Tower 2). When the Port Authority came over the internal P.A. system urging people to stay at their desks, Colonel Rescorla ignored the announcement, grabbed his bullhorn, walkie-talkie, and cell phone, and began systematically ordering Morgan Stanley employees to evacuate, including the 1,000 employees in WTC 5. He directed people down a stairwell from the 44th floor, continuing to calm employees after the building lurched violently following the crash of United Airlines Flight 175 38 floors above into Tower 2 at 9:03 a.m. Morgan Stanley executive Bill McMahon stated that even a group of 250 people visiting the offices for a stockbroker training class knew what to do because they had been shown the nearest stairway.

Colonel Rescorla had boosted morale among his men in Vietnam by singing Cornish songs from his youth, and now he did the same in the stairwell. Between songs, Rescorla called his wife, telling her, "Stop crying. I have to get these people out safely. If something should happen to me, I want you to know I have never been happier. You made my life."
After successfully evacuating most of Morgan Stanley's 2,700 employees, Colonel Rescorla, his job duties done then reverted to the incredible leader he was, and he went back into the building.

When he was told he too had to evacuate the World Trade Center, Colonel Rescorla replied, "As soon as I make sure everyone else is out." He was last seen on the 10th floor, heading upward, shortly before the South Tower collapsed at 9:59 A.M. His remains were never found.

The reason I mention Colonel Rescorla is to urge the SIGforum membership to develop an emergency plan for your family. That plan needs to layout who is responsible for doing what in case of emergency (ICE). It needs to address communications (e.g., text, do not call), stay/go rules, alternate rendezvous points if you are all away from the homestead, etc. Make it. Make the family practice it. One day, it might be necessary. And on that day, thank Colonel Rescorla.

I rode BART from Berkeley to SF that morning and it's the only time in three decades of commuting that people were actively talking to the stranger next to them. I got to school and tried calling the east coast to check on friends. No dice, the system was overloaded and I gave up.

First class that morning was contracts. The prof had taught in NYC for decades. He gave us the option of having lecture or not. We opted to let him leave early knowing that we all had other things on our minds.

SF started closing down around us. Fed, state, and city buildings were closed. There was talk of BART shutting down. We waited and waited and waited for school to be called off. School was in the target zone of government buildings yet was quickly the only place still open.

Criminal law was up in the afternoon and I wasn't looking forward to any kind of academic discussion on the days attacks. I wanted blood, a lot of it, and ASAP. With the threat of BART closing looming and no desire to sit around waiting I called it a day and came home. School called it a day too. I tried not to get glued to the TV.

As night fell people started lighting candles in the medians and parklets around Berkeley. My gf and I drove by a few and re-lit anything that had blown out. A small gesture for those lost.

We were just wrapping up the daily stand-up in the KyANG’s Wing Conference Room. Commander’s clerk came in and said a plane had just struck the WTC Tower. Concerned, but not overly so as many recalled when a bomber had hit the Empire State Building during WW2.

By the time I got back to my office and turned on the TV, the second Tower had been impacted. This ain’t no accident!!!!

I called my wife at Fort Knox Recruiting Command and told her about the attack; someone just did a ‘Tom Clancy’ on the WTC (reference to his book “Debt of Honor” when the Capitol Building was attacked by a jet airliner). Her command was not yet aware of incident.

Battle Staff convened and went into immediate lockdown, with additional security measures around Base and at Main Gate instituted. Numerous personnel started to call in and informing of status and that they were prepping for activation.

That next weekend was “drill” and we tried to inform personnel about what we knew and had heard as to what was happening. That weekend, we sent 2 C-130s out on tasked airlift missions.

In April 2003, members of KYANG Security Forces Squadron were on the first airplane into Baghdad Airport as part of perimeter security.

Cutting grass at a factory in TN when some truck drivers told my coworker a plane hit the Empire State Building. We watched tv for a bit at a Kmart that was the next stop. We worked all day and really didn’t realize how big that was until we got home.

quote:

Originally posted by Sig2340:
Finally, in this post I want to mention one of the day’s greatest heroes, Cyril Richard Rescorla, Colonel, United States Army, retired. Colonel Rescorla and a colleague wrote to the Port Authority that the WTC towers were a prime target. He was ignored.

Forgotten much too soon, wasn’t he. Some may not know that a great book called Heart of a Soldier (James B Stewart), was written about Rick Rescorla. Definitely worth the effort to find and read. He was an amazing man, even beyond the story of his actions leading up to, and on 9/11.

I was in Korea at the time, on duty. We heard a plane hit the towers and remarked what shithead was piloting that plane? The second plane confirmed it. We went back to the B's once we were off shift and had our last drinks for a while. I didnt know that was the start of an adventure both great and horrible.

I was working from home that day and my wife called me to tell me a plane had crashed into one of the towers as I had no clue. Not much was known at that moment so I went and turned on the TV. I immediately knew this was an attack and put in a VCR tape to start recording the news broadcast as I knew this would be something major. I will never forget watching the second plane hit while watching it live. I was so angry and could not stop watching what was taking place.

It was great that our nation became one supporting our country for a while after that, but sadly then it dissolved. Never forget!

I was a guest instructor at the FBI Advanced Sniper school. I was down there with a KY Trooper. We had been assigned to map out the land nav course in a mountainous region on a north GA national guard base.

When we got back to the Tahoe, I got a phone call advising that a plane had flew into the WTC. I chuckled “that would hardly be the business of the state of KY”. We went back down to main side. A TV had been moved into classroom and we arrived just as the second plane crashed into the other tower.

The class came to a stop as we all stood there in horror.

The funny thing about the whole thing (if there was one), we left to hit a drive thru as we hadn’t eaten in 12 hours. Coming on base, we were always greeted by an elderly security gentleman. We would roll down the window of my blacked out Tahoe, hold up our creds, and he’d wave us through.

We pulled back in and there were several Humvees, and a couple of Deuce and a half’s. One particular Humvee had a .50 on top that rotated neatly and pointed directly at us. An Army Captain came to the window and we held up our creds. The captain asked “Are you gentlemen armed?” Now, we had probably 3 sniper rifles, a couple of full auto M4s, a couple of MP5SDs, and a few handguns. Trying to lighten the moment, I asked “what do you need?”. He didn’t find it at all funny. And intimately after being detained, we had to call the agent in charge to send an agent to escort us back to main side.

I read Heart of a Soldier about Colonel Cyril Richard "Rick" Rescorla as well. Highest recommendation. A great book about a great man.

September 11 happens to be my birthday. In 2001 my wife suggested that I take Monday 9/10 and Tuesday 9/11 as vacation days to celebrate, so I did. Obviously, there was no celebrating on 9/11. We had the cake on 9/11 and a few people we had previously invited came over, but it was a very somber affair. I spent most of the day glued to the television.

Living in NJ I knew many people who worked in NY at the Federal Building and a few who worked at the Trade Center. One friend from church I knew was working for Morgan Stanley at the WTC that day. I prayed that he would be okay. Six Morgan Stanley employees died. My friend survived. He says he owes his life to Rick Rescorla, who he knew. Rescorla was born in the UK and served in the British Army before moving to the U.S. and joining the U.S Army.

From Huntington News:
Rescorla became director of security for Morgan Stanley headquartered in the World Trade Center in 1997. Feeling the WTC was too vulnerable a target for terrorists, Rick recommended Morgan Stanley leave the structure and find new office spaces. But they were locked into a lease. So, Rescorla then made certain all employees of Morgan Stanley train and practice in emergency evacuations from the WTC building, drilling them every three months.

On September 11, 2001 Rick Rescorla was supposed to be on vacation ... Instead, he was filling in so one of his deputies could go on vacation.

When all the Morgan Stanley employees were safely out, Rick went back inside to help more people escape the inevitable doom he had feared and predicted years before ...

On the warm, bright, sunny morning of September 11, 2001 Rick Rescorla was not ... the last man out of the World Trade Center ... He died trying to save others.

Rick Rescorla's birth certificate may have said England but he was an American hero through and through, and in every cell of his body, and every fiber of his heart and soul.

Link to more about Rick Rescorla:
http://www.huntingtonnews.net/141821

I was at work, thinking briefly about having been on the new job for exactly one year.

My neighbor in the cube farm, Bill (RIP, Bill G!), spun his chair around toward me and said dryly, "Some dumbass just crashed a plane into the World Trade Center." We both thought it was just a small airplane and an errant pilot, or perhaps a medical emergency gone really badly.

Internet service at work was slow ordinarily, and horrible that day, so we couldn't get any "right now" news on screen.

And then came the news that a second crash had taken place.

We had a TV in the conference room and scrambled to push it near a window to try getting even a hint of some over-the-air reception. Reception was spotty.

We all stared at the broadcast, horrified, silent, and unsure what exactly to do.

I left the room and went to the lab to visit my closest work friend. "What can we do, man?" Very calmly he said, "go find a Red Cross center and donate blood."

Back home that afternoon, I stared at the empty sky. Everything in and around the neighborhood was quiet -- nearly silent -- even the cows on the farm beside. Phone service was crummy. Contacts in the DC area checked in, letting us know they were safe and well.

For days we were in a bit of a trance, unsure what was going to happen next.

I found a flag in the front closet, left there by the previous owners of the house. I gently placed it in the holder on the front porch. I have flown the United States flag on my porch every day since, and will continue to do so.

I was working for a medium sized engineering firm in suburban Detroit on 9/11. Work had started early that day and we were about two hours into the workday when the first plane hit. Word spread quickly thru the "bullpen" and about a dozen of us congregated around one of the designers that had brought up a live newsfeed on a very large monitor. We all witnessed the impact of the second tower. As others have stated, that's when we knew the world had changed in that moment.

I left the office soon after and made my way to a friend's house a couple of miles away. Traffic was absolutely out of control. It seemed as if everyone with a car was on the road and trying to get to somewhere else. Once at the friend's location, we watched the news reports for the next several hours. My wife had gotten thru to me on my cellphone so we knew neither of us was in any peril. Eventually, I made the 40 mile trek home. Traffic was still crazy.

It took a couple of days for some sense of normalcy to return. What impressed me most was how people responded in those days that followed the attacks. Flags and displays of patriotism were everywhere. Firefighters were at every major intersection collecting funds for the victims. It seemed like every motorist slowed to throw something in the boot. People seemed to be a lot more courteous and respectful to each other. Sadly, within a couple of weeks those displays and behaviors started to fade away. I really wish there was a way to rekindle those feelings in people today.

Myself along with 7 other Chicago Fire Dept members were in a van driving up to Wisconsin for a few days of golf and relaxation on that terrible day. Driving northbound on the interstate and just past Milwaukee we noticed there wasn't any traffic in the southbound lanes. Then numerous State and local law enforcement vehicles were seen speeding into the Milwaukee area, going southbound. Very soon after, one of the firefighters in the van received a call from his wife and she told him about the initial plane crash and then the second plane crash. She was on the phone with him again when the first tower fell. When he relayed all of the information to the other firefighters in the van, I said, "All of those firefighters are in there." I think we all knew they were all in serious trouble at that time to say the least. There was a dead silence among us for quite some time after the towers collapsed. Many of those firefighters in the van donated their time and went to ground zero to help.

Im not certain of the manpower requirements in New York Fire Dept. In Chicago we typically had 5 men on an Engine Co and 5 men on a Truck Co. NYFD may have more members on any give apparatus.

If you do the math of 5 firefighters on each apparatus and 343 firefighters were initially killed that would mean 68+ fully manned apparatus were forever lost/destroyed along with those members lives.