9/11

[Ed Rooney]

On the morning of 9/11 I was up early with the radio on.

 

It must have been a Tuesday because I was getting ready to go to work and help close the week's edition of People magazine. Two weeks earlier, I had put a grab-it-and-go kit together: 2 Nikons and 4 primes. We were still shooting film in 2001. After hearing that a second jet crashed into the second tower, we knew this was not an accident. I did a mental walk through picturing the possibility of walking down to the WTC before the police closed off the area. I thought: maybe I can just make it.

 

I called the office at People, but it was still too early, and no one picked up. I decided to go to work, and got the very last R Train going north. On Broadway, before getting into the Subway, I looked south at the towers. It was a beautiful clear day, and watching the smoke pour out of the north tower, I wondered "how are they going to get up to that floor and put that fire out?" They couldn't of course. But 343 NYC firefighters along with 60 cops and 9 paramedics died trying. It was a selfless act of incredible bravery.

[Bill Kuta]

I was sitting in my government office a block from the White House. We had heard about the first plane strike and had the news up on our PC's. When the second plane hit, we knew with everyone else what was happening. Amidst a stream of rumors about explosions in other parts of DC, we saw staff evacuating the Executive Office Building across the street. We decided it was time for us to leave, too. We only learned later that a plane had struck the Pentagon, and that another was on its way to some prime target in town.

 

My car pool and a couple of extra passengers drove home through Rock Creek Park listening to the radio.  When I got home, our daughter and our first grandchild came over, then her husband who got out early in Bethesda and we sat outside, not knowing how a one-year-old would react to the scenes on the tv.

 

One thing we remember is the silence of the normally busy skies, except for the occasional fighter going over. 

[Michael Ventura]

I had just dropped off my 4 yr old son at his grandparents' house, just a few miles from downtown DC, when they told me that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center buildings. As I watched the news with them, we watched the second plane hit the buildings. As I was heading back home, I listened to the radio and heard about the Pentagon getting hit and then I felt my hair stand on end while thinking, wholly crap, what the hell is going on? As I rounded the Beltway, the highway that rings Washington DC, I read an overhead sign that read, "Major incident in Washington, stay out of the city". I started to feel sick and wondered if I shouldn't have left my son at his grandparents' house. Tried calling my wife on her cell, she was attending a conference next door to the Capitol building, and all lines were busy. Did not hear from her until late that night. Our daughter was at her elementary school and I got a message that school was letting out early and to come and get your child. It was a crazy and sad day, to say the least, but my family is safe and well and many cannot say the same. I will never forget that day.

[NYCat]

I had been alternately watching on TV and on the corner of Sixth Ave. before I set forth for a cat-sitting job. I forgot that my usual route would take me by St. Vincent's hospital -- one of the two where survivors would have been brought. The street was blocked and a man was calling out for blood donors. People were lined up down the block waiting to give. Shamefully, St.Vincent's has  since been demolished and luxury housing built in it's place. When I got to my client's apartment there was a Chinese workman there. He obviously didn't know what happened and I tried to act it out for him. I think he more or less understood but couldn't believe it so when he saw that I had used the phone he called someone and then he acted it out for me. We were all together on that day. I went to Gilda's Club for my cancer support group and, of course, no activities were happening as we watched the news on TV. A woman was going to have to walk to Brooklyn and another woman offered to give her a bed for the night. Everyone was trying to help. A shocking day.

 

Paulette

[Sultanpepa]

The events of 9/11 touched the world and most folk can tell you where they were and what they were doing at that moment. Here in Scotland as I polished my car my neighbour came out to break the news. I went inside and watched as events unfolded and the second tower was hit and they then came down. Being a firefighter myself at the time I imagined the scenes that those brave emergency workers were having to deal with, the incalculable numbers that were in the process of living their last moments and the sheer panic of those trying to contact friends and family. RIP the 343 who paid the ultimate price whilst serving the city of NY and the near 3000 civilians who went to work and never went home.

[John Mitchell]

I was at home in Vancouver. For some reason, I turned on the TV, which is something I don't generally do in the morning. When I saw the burning towers, I thought it was a bad Hollywood movie. It took awhile for me to accept the fact that NYC had actually been attacked. It was a very surreal day. We can only hope that an unimaginable tragedy like 9/11 never happens again.

[fotoDogue]

I was asleep when the first plane hit. My daughter was on her way to work, on VanDam Street, and saw it from Sixth Ave. She immediately ran home and told me there was "a hole in the World Trade Center."  
At the time it wasn't unusual for small planes to fly between the towers. Early reports were that perhaps one of those planes had accidentally hit the tower. Once you saw the damage you knew that wasn't the case.
 
Back in '93 I photographed the bombing so my first instinct was to go, but my daughter began to cry and begged me to stay home. So I grabbed a camera and ran downstairs. There was very little traffic and crowds were gathering in the street Some people cranked up their car radios so everyone could hear the news. Others just cried or prayed. One person said a low flying plane had passed by directly overhead.

 

The ground, and my apartment building began to shake when the second plane hit. When the ground began to shake again I ran up to the roof.
 


 
I think the most shocking moment for me was as I was shooting on the roof.  A gap in the huge cloud of smoke and dust began to clear, not far from the top, and I realized there was empty sky where Tower Two once stood.
 
Not long after that the ground began to shake, again, and the second tower collapsed.

 

 

[Ed Rooney]

And you'll remember the month or so afterwards, Paulette, where so many friends and relative were putting pictures of people up asking "have you seen this person?" hoping that they were not at work in the towers that morning. 

 

By the time I was ready to go home from 50th street to Little Italy that night, the Subways and buses had stopped running, so I walked. I drifted East near the hospital ERs, wondering how crowded they would be. The staff were just standing waiting for survivors that never came -- there were none. 

[vpics]

Back then I worked at Canary Wharf and overheard a colleague talking on the phone about a plane having just hit the WTC. A few minutes later another colleague mentioned that's two planes now. We ended up watching the events in the conference room. Many American colleagues. We were very much upset. And then, in the evening, World Trade Center 7, aka the Solomon Brothers Building, collapsed. I was working for them back then (Citigroup). 

[fotoDogue]

Such an incredibly sad time in this city.

[Bill Brooks]

I was photographing in a provincial park on Georgian Bay Ontario about 100 miles from my home in Toronto. My wife reached me on my cell phone, told me what was going on, and asked me to cut my trip short and come home. I listened to the news reports on the car radio, as I drove home.

 

That day is burned into my memory, just like the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas.

 

Terrible events that changed the entire world.

[AlessandraRC]

I was going to celebrate my birthday