I wasn't working at the time, so I was at home. I was on the phone with a friend about some volunteer work at the GMHC, and then my mom called me. She was frantic, because my dad was leaving Boston that morning on a United flight to San Francisco, and the news had been mentioning a United flight from Boston. I ran to turn on a TV and saw that World Trade Center was on fire. I stayed on the phone with my mom until she got a call from my dad - his flight had thankfully been grounded at Logan. Then my dad called, and I asked him to try to come to NY as soon as possible. Calls started to come, as did the emails, with friends and family asking if everyone was okay.

When I went outside to go to the grocery store, many other people had the same idea - they were all stocking up. And then we started to see people walking up from their offices, since the subways weren't working.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/plasmonyc/8373166/

I was on 25th St and 2nd Ave when the first plan hit. You could see the smoke 25th and 2nd but not the actual towers. I thought it was just a "normal" building fire downtown. When I got my coffee, I was told a jet hit one of the towers. By the time I got to my desk, the 2nd tower was hit.

From my building, you had a clear view of the Twin Towers and I just stared at them wondering if friends and Family were ok. I didn't stay to see them fall.

I was down at work at WFC1 and watched the whole thing out of our office windows. We were evacuated after the second plane hit and a few of us walked south and then walked back to the site to meet co-workers. I was about two blocks from the south tower when it collapsed and we ran into a building down on the Promenade on the Hudson. We ended up getting evacuated from Battery Park in a tug boat that took us to Jersey City.

As someone else mentioned, it was such a beautiful day that day and I remember taking the escalator up from Liberty St. to the south pedestrian walkway and looking up West St., at the Trade Center, at everyone walking and running on the street, and took it all in. I just thought it was such a beautiful morning to be a New Yorker -- and then it all went to hell.

Gothamist, I think this was pointed out before that you should stop showing pictures of the WTT on fire. It's distasteful and no better than those vendors hawking t-shirts and books with the flaming towers.

five years ago i was a sophomore in high school in maryland. being near washington d.c., many of my classmates' parents worked for the government. it was surreal to sit in a packed classroom watching live news footage on a crappy old TV while we were supposed to be having spanish class. news filtered in that the pentagon had been hit, and kids were lining up to use the phone to call their parents. we saw the towers collapse on a television screen hundreds of miles from lower manhattan. i now go to college in the city.

Wow,
I'm French and was an exange studient upstate New York, closed to Newburg, up on the Hudson river. I just arrived 3 weeks ago. As a senior in HS, I sat down with my mate in which was about to be the most unforgettable chemisrty class I ever had. Mr Reese's voice - school principal- very quickly after the first plane crashed, could be heard through the classroom speakers, anouncing us the terible news. I wasn't sure I understood correctly at first. Although my friends faces - most of whom were children of comuters - helped me to notice that the situation was terrible.

Class was dismissed for the day. My host brother and I came back home, watched TV for an hour or so, and Mum finally said, "All right kids, time's over, TV will not help to get all those people back." Life goes on, lets enjoy the fact we are all together tonight."

People, that was a rhetorical question.

Even if it wasn't, let's pretend it was.

I for some reason had taken the local R from Brooklyn in - when normally I would've taken the express N and was running late as usual. When we got to Cortland St a little after 9, they opened the doors to let people on, but yelled at us not to get off the train. We could hear sirens, but like myself everyone was more concerned with getting to work on time. When I finally got out at 23rd, people were gawking down 5th avenue and a bike messenger told me what had happened, but I didn't believe him. Of course when I got to work and started getting the information it still didn't sink in.

Finally I walked up towards my mothers office at 50th & 6th where many of her colleagues who were at the WTC office had also been walking towards(had it been a week later or painting had been complete she would've been there and more than likely died). Got up there, than there was a n evacuation - we left and started walking downtown to walk back to Brooklyn. But we stopped in Times Square and we got to the train station and this was the scariest thing - there was one cop and about 100 people screaming to let them go downstairs, fighting, yelling - they all wanted to try and get on any train out of the city. My mother who is a crazy lady pushed through the mob and we got on a train to Brooklyn. We were really lucky as I don't think there were many trains after that.

I tried to remember more details this morning as I was coming over the bridge, but I couldn't.

I remember that the morning was exactly the same as this morning. Same temperature, same sunshiny morning, no clouds. The mornings could be twins.

I had just started my first week of college up in Bronxville, ny. My roommate woke me up at approximately 9:30 am (I had no classes that day) with the words "they flew a plane into the world trade center."

I had to think hard to remember where the world trade center was located.

We heard jets and helicopters flying overhead all day.

I remember being in my Sophomore year of High School on Long Island. The principal came on the loudspeaker, giving a vague message that a plane had hit one of the towers, and said nothing else. I had a free hour in the morning, and because of the beautiful weather outside, my friends and I decided to go outside. At the time, none of us knew of the severity, since our administration thought it better not to tell anyone.

It was the last time I could go outside for any extended amount of time for a week. Even from 20 miles away, the smell of the air was strong enough that I can never forget it.

I woke up early, voted in the Primary and got to work before 8am for a videoconference. Sitting in the conference room we were in a news void until I went to the bathroom around 9:45 and saw a strange scene of people gathered around a couple of TV sets set out near the window with people crying.

I got all the news at once. Both towers and the Pentagon were hit and many other planes unaccounted for. I then turned around and faced the grim task of informing about 50 people in two cities of the horrible news. I said "Excuse me, but there has been an attack on NYC. Two separate planes hit the Twin Towers and another hit the Pentagon" and then it sort of dawned on me how bad this really was and said softly to myself "how the *#%! did they get the Pentagon?" and then I said "I'm going to check on my family" and the meeting quickly disbanded as people quickly activated their cell phones and looked at their blackberries...

I walked home to Astoria and then drove out to the Brooklyn Heights overlook area with a few friends to see for ourselves.

For some reason, I woke up about an hour early that morning. Literally jumped out of bed. I decided to head into work early, and therefore turned off the radio and TV right about the time when the first plane hit. I had no idea what was happening.

The strangest thing about that morning was that I remember locking the door of my brownstone, turning around to face the sunlight and thinking, "Wow, the days don't get any more beautiful than this." I got on the F train out in Windsor Terrace and headed into the city.

As we were going over the bridge from 4th Avenue to Smith-9th, I looked out at the skyline, as I did every morning. For some reason, one of the towers of the WTC was smoking. And then I saw the second plane hit the south tower. I turned to the woman next to me. "A plane just crashed", I said. Everyone got up to look out the window at what was happening. Some people got off the train at the next stop. I kept going into work.. I didn't think it was that serious.

I worked at the time at an office building on 36th St. on a high floor. We had a perfect view of downtown from the south side of the building. I watched both towers fall that day. I later intended to walk back to Brooklyn somehow, but it ended up that the trains were running later that day.

Everyone was stunned. People walked around in a daze for weeks afterwards. Many cops and firefighters lived in my neighborhood, and I remember the owner of the pet store around the corner from me lost a cousin.

This is the most tasteless thing Gothamist has ever done. Thank you for making me sick to my stomach.

I was in HK and turned on CNBC at 8:50 to watch the stock market when they're covering the hit on the North tower. Then I heard that the 8:AM United flight to SF was involved. My husband was supposed to be on that flight back to Hong KOng but he had changed it to transit via LA, which would have left at 9AM...Thank goodness he called and told me that he was already on the runway and the flight is cancelled. 10 minutes after his call the telephone networks were jammed and few calls went through. It was a nightmare.

I was at work at 11 Madison Ave.

The story of my day.

I was in Tokyo at the time and had been out on the town with an American friend. We got home, he went to his hotel. I turned on the TV and saw that they were showing some random "disaster movie" dubbed in Japanese. Changed channel a bunch of times - same image on all. Heart sank as I realized what was going on. Called my friend, he called his partner in US, we all watched together in silence.

27 comments, and 100+ "I". Would you all like a mirror to hold also?

I came out of the subway at Broadway and Wall seconds after the first plane hit. I watched in shock as the second plane hit WTC2 and I frantically tried to reach all of my co-workers who commuted by PATH to the WTC station. I watched as the desperate jumped, and to this day anytime I hear someone say "on my god" it takes me back to that day. When WTC2 collapsed I ran, it became as dark as midnight, and the the soot and debris in the air felt like needles in my throat. It was three hours before I could find my way out and I walked home, covered in dust, debris and soot, still in shock.

Damn kid, (#36- black nostradufus)-- whatever it is.. it can't be that bad. Don't say sh*t like that. 9/11 changed everyone's life-- but be happy you still have yours. Whatever it is.. you can work through it.

Dude, Dora, and others:

How incredibly self-centered and immature to castigate Gothamist for showing an undeniably familiar image and suggest it is "tasteless" to ask people where they were that day. The fact remains that it happened, and why would anyone be better off denying that it did?

We will all come across images and personal accounts of that day for the rest of our lives, so rather than blame others for opening old wounds, please try to find it within yourselves to deal with it.

In the early morning of 9/11/01 I was working as a publicist at a conference in New Jersey sponsored by a large real estate firm presenting US Brokerage practices to a small group of political officials of the People's Republic of China. Just before 9:00 AM I got a call from the home office saying that I shouldn't expect any press at the event because a plane had hit one of the towers. The conference was in full swing and there was no reason to make an announcement. However moments later, after the second plane hit I got another message from my office that the country was under terrorist attack. I then interrupted the conference and informed the CEO's who quickly left the building leaving me with the Chinese officials and one translator. Our cell phones were not working but the Chinese could call Bejing and updated us with news they were receiving in China.

The Minister of Land Reform then insisted on seeing the news on a TV. So after a few minutes of scrambling around a quickly evacuating building, I found the company gym, and it was there, on the monitors above the stationary bikes where ten Chinese business men in black suits and myself, a shocked and horrified native New Yorker all watched the buildings fall.

After passing my charges over to a hotel manager in Jersey and assuring them of their safety, I headed back to Brooklyn via Westchester and down over the Whitestone bridge to the fine white ash that covered Carroll Gardens and that colored the rest of our lives.

I was in Washington Heights in Brooklyn staying with some friends. I had just moved out of my apt. on Avenue C two weeks before. I worked evenings so I was sleeping until my friend woke me up to watch the TV. We climbed to the rooftop and watched what we could, but only saw the very top of the buildings and the plumes of smoke. We saw the first tower dissapear from our sight. We were confused about what had happened, so we climbed back in to watch the TV where we saw the second tower fall. Unbelievable. And then I cried for days.

The strangest part of it all was the quiet that spread all around. Everyone was silent on the trains yet we were all thinking of the same things and scared. The sights of smoke and lights at ground zero and jet fighters flying overhead for the coming days and months and the smell that you knew was death was so overwhelming and sad.

The hardest part was watching the media re-run it over and over and seeing the planes go into the buildings. I still hate to see that to this day.

#43 - How is criticizing the usage of the burning WTT self-centered and immature? I just hate posters like you who's always jumping to wrong conclusions about people over one post.

I didn't deny that such images nor the the whole tragedy exist, I thought it was inappropriate and Gothamist could've used any other images from that day. It was purely used for sensation and shock and nothing else. This is like showing a picture of dog poo and asking readers how does it feel to have stepped in it.

I was at a NYU class at the Tisch building (NYU's Stern School) on West 4th St. I had been in an 8:00 class that was held underground, so I hadn't heard any explosions from inside my class.
I remember leaving class at around 9:15 and running into my classmate on the street and she told me that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. No one on the street really knew at that point what had happened about whether it was an accident or not. She pointed to the World Trade Center and I could see a tower on fire. I think it was Tower 1. For some reason, I only remember seeing one tower - I'm not sure if that's all I could see from where I was standing or if my memory has just tricked me. No one on the street really knew what to do. People were crowded on West 4th St. looking south. Car doors were open and people were also gathered around listening to the radio. I didn't know what to do or how serious it was, so I went to my next class. We discussed what had happened but at that point, the towers had not fallen and we did not realize how serious it was.

After that class, I headed to my next one at about 10:30. Our professor told us that if we wanted to leave, we were allowed to. I tried to stay but after two minutes I had to leave. I couldn’t concentrate, was worried, and shocked by what had happened.

I remember standing at Astor Place and seeing the exodus of people streaming north. The streets were packed with people heading out of lower Manhattan.

I remember seeing cars driving north that were covered in dust and had broken windows.

I left with a classmate and we went to several hospitals to try to give blood, but after being turned away and waiting in a long line at one, I went home.

The next day, I left my East Village neighborhood to try to find the Times (no such luck at any newsstand) and I had to show ID to the national guard to get back in.

I was working on 3rd Ave. and 39th. We had no internet access and couldn't make calls out. My co-worker and I ran down to the HSBC attached to our building and watched the towers burn on their lobby TV with a huge group of people. When the announcer said the Pentagon had been hit, we knew it was time to go. We ran back up and got our stuff and took off. I headed down 3rd Ave. Lines had formed at payphones. I made a right on 22nd, and when I got to 5th Ave., that's when I could see the huge grey toxic cloud and the one tower standing, the one with the antenna. I stopped cold and stared. Everyone around me was stopped and staring. Then it fell. Then man next to me threw his coffee to the ground and said "goddammit!" and took off. People were crying. I'll never forget seeing that antenna protruding from the ash cloud, falling.

I was walking to work and seen people gathered around a electronics store window, which had a tv displayed. I looked and seen the first tower and thought "this must be a movie", but it was a news feed. And i found it unbelievable, and thought it was possibly an accident. Until the second plane hit and was shown on tv, then I knew it was deliberate. As I walked to work all my coworkers were outside and said to go home. As I walked back home I could see the towers from afar (I lived in Chelsea) and witnessed the towers fall. It was the most emptiest, helpless feeling ever. It was like a slow motion reel, watching people waiting in line to use a payphone because all the cell phones had no reception, watching people crying, complete strangers consoling each other. People walking with clueless expressions.