story1273.xml
Title
story1273.xml
Source
born-digital
Media Type
story
Date Entered
2002-08-19
911DA Story: Story
(We witnessed the entire event from our home in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia where I live and work.)
We are US Citizens who live in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, where I run a computer business. We are about 14 hours ahead of Eastern Time, so we were just settling in for the evening of September 11. I was shutting down my computers and heading for bed. My wife, Dana, had just turned the TV on to see what was on the news before going to sleep. She called me into the living room. There on CNN was the image of one of the Towers burning, and the reporter explaining that a plane had hit the tower. At that point, the supposition was that some idiot had either accidentally flown his plane off course, or that it was some dramatic suicide. They had no idea of how big the plane was.
After watching this for several minutes, we saw flame erupt from behind the wreck site. The announcer assumed that this was an explosion of fuel from the plane that we were watching burn. A few minutes later they received the report that another plane had in deed hit the second tower. I remember thinking right away that it was a terrorist attack, and wondering how long it would take for them to say it. It took the presenter a couple of minutes to get up the nerve, but he finally said that we were probably witnessing a terrorist attack.
My family and I watched as the towers collapsed and as reports of the hit on the Pentagon and the downing of the plane in Pennsylvania came in.
After my wife and daughter went off to bed a couple of hours later, my son and I stayed up all night watching reports come in and following what was happening "back home".
Watching it from so far away made it seem kind of surreal and story like. I guess we were kind of insulated by the distance. I don't think the full impact of what we were seeing hit us like it did to people closer to the scene.
The next morning I went out to the Mongolian countryside to visit some nomad friends. They had already heard about it and were full of shock, questions and condolences.
They had a hard time even imagining a building that big. And the loss of life was staggering to them. It was amazing to me that the event had even touched the lives of a family of Mongol herdsmen who lived out in the mountains in a round white tent, tending their livestock all day.
We are US Citizens who live in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, where I run a computer business. We are about 14 hours ahead of Eastern Time, so we were just settling in for the evening of September 11. I was shutting down my computers and heading for bed. My wife, Dana, had just turned the TV on to see what was on the news before going to sleep. She called me into the living room. There on CNN was the image of one of the Towers burning, and the reporter explaining that a plane had hit the tower. At that point, the supposition was that some idiot had either accidentally flown his plane off course, or that it was some dramatic suicide. They had no idea of how big the plane was.
After watching this for several minutes, we saw flame erupt from behind the wreck site. The announcer assumed that this was an explosion of fuel from the plane that we were watching burn. A few minutes later they received the report that another plane had in deed hit the second tower. I remember thinking right away that it was a terrorist attack, and wondering how long it would take for them to say it. It took the presenter a couple of minutes to get up the nerve, but he finally said that we were probably witnessing a terrorist attack.
My family and I watched as the towers collapsed and as reports of the hit on the Pentagon and the downing of the plane in Pennsylvania came in.
After my wife and daughter went off to bed a couple of hours later, my son and I stayed up all night watching reports come in and following what was happening "back home".
Watching it from so far away made it seem kind of surreal and story like. I guess we were kind of insulated by the distance. I don't think the full impact of what we were seeing hit us like it did to people closer to the scene.
The next morning I went out to the Mongolian countryside to visit some nomad friends. They had already heard about it and were full of shock, questions and condolences.
They had a hard time even imagining a building that big. And the loss of life was staggering to them. It was amazing to me that the event had even touched the lives of a family of Mongol herdsmen who lived out in the mountains in a round white tent, tending their livestock all day.
Collection
Citation
“story1273.xml,” September 11 Digital Archive, accessed January 25, 2025, https://911digitalarchive.org/items/show/5606.