story9409.xml
Title
story9409.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2003-08-07
911DA Story: Story
I awoke that morning at sometime after 8am to get ready for work. I switched on the radio in the bathroom to listen to NPR and the presenter made the announcement that Alan Greenspan had been taken to a secure location and that the financial markets had been suspended. I was bewildered, but I could tell from the tone in his voice that something serious had happened, although I had no inkling what.
I headed back into my bedroom to switch on the TV, as getting information from the radio seemed to take too long. The first image I saw was a plane hitting the WTC as they were looping the same videotape footage over and over again. I just stood there in shock trying to take in all the information from the past few hours, compressed into seconds - it was overwhelming. They said that the Pentagon had been also been hit and that another airplane was unaccounted for.
I flipped through the other channels only to see that the majority of them were covering the same story. Due to the time zone difference between East and West coast, the events had already taken place but there was still a lot of confusion. I decided to call my girlfriend to see if she had heard the news, which was pretty na?ve when I look back. At that time, the whole world was witnessing the carnage except maybe people still asleep in Hawai'i.
My next instinct was to call my family back in England to tell them that I was okay. I was silly in a way since I was nowhere near the attacks on the East coast, but at the same time I found it comforting to speak to them. Unlike me they had watched the events unfold as they happened, and in a way I was grateful that I didn't have to go through the anxiety of what was going to happen next.
I finished getting ready and headed into work, as I wanted to be around people. As I arrived downtown I saw the Transamerica building sealed off by police fearing a terrorist attack there. When I arrived at my office it was nearly empty and a manager there told me that in lieu of events everyone was allowed to go home. I decided then to go to my girlfriends apartment, where we sat watching CNN for the rest of the day trying to make sense of it all.
I headed back into my bedroom to switch on the TV, as getting information from the radio seemed to take too long. The first image I saw was a plane hitting the WTC as they were looping the same videotape footage over and over again. I just stood there in shock trying to take in all the information from the past few hours, compressed into seconds - it was overwhelming. They said that the Pentagon had been also been hit and that another airplane was unaccounted for.
I flipped through the other channels only to see that the majority of them were covering the same story. Due to the time zone difference between East and West coast, the events had already taken place but there was still a lot of confusion. I decided to call my girlfriend to see if she had heard the news, which was pretty na?ve when I look back. At that time, the whole world was witnessing the carnage except maybe people still asleep in Hawai'i.
My next instinct was to call my family back in England to tell them that I was okay. I was silly in a way since I was nowhere near the attacks on the East coast, but at the same time I found it comforting to speak to them. Unlike me they had watched the events unfold as they happened, and in a way I was grateful that I didn't have to go through the anxiety of what was going to happen next.
I finished getting ready and headed into work, as I wanted to be around people. As I arrived downtown I saw the Transamerica building sealed off by police fearing a terrorist attack there. When I arrived at my office it was nearly empty and a manager there told me that in lieu of events everyone was allowed to go home. I decided then to go to my girlfriends apartment, where we sat watching CNN for the rest of the day trying to make sense of it all.
Collection
Citation
“story9409.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed December 17, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/13500.