September 11th

Pigman

As the first anniversary is coming up soon, For those of you who are interested in the whole 9/11 aftermath there is a bunch of documentaries on TV this week focusing on the topic.

TODAY
CH4 8pm "Avenging Terror"
BBC2 9pm "9/11 Clear the skies"
CH4 3.20am "Avenging Terror, part 1" (possibly a repeat of 8pm?)
CH4 4.20am "Avenging Terror, part 2"

MONDAY
RTE1 10.30pm "Flight 93"
CH4 6 "How the Twin Towers Collapsed". (I've seen this one and trust me it's a must see!)

TUESDAY
RTE1 22.15pm "Avenging Terror, part 1"
CH4 23.05pm "The Meyssan Conspiracy"

WEDNESDAY
ITV 22.30 "Let's Roll: The Story of Flight 93"
CH4 9pm "In Memorian: New York City"

THURSDAY
RTE1 22.15pm "Avenging Terror, concluding part"

Clintons Cat

i cant beleive its the aniversary of the event already.

I think this is probally the defining moment of the Generation,the baby boomers remember where they were when Kennedy was shot,for us it will be where we were when the Two towers collapsed.

Winters

I was at home on my pc when i heard it first......

I think there may be too much on tv about the yolk. Sure it was bad and all...dont get me wrong but if they constantley keep showing the whole thing again and again people are just gonna get annoyed with it ...

Makaveli

Originally posted by Winters
I think there may be too much on tv about the yolk. Sure it was bad and all...dont get me wrong but if they constantley keep showing the whole thing again and again people are just gonna get annoyed with it ...

Very true. It's almost like the more they show it the less significant it is. Almost as if, oh look not this again.

I remember I had just come in from somewhere, and I was watching MTV and they flashed the news report on the bottom of the screen.
I think I had been playing golf.

Mossy Monk

the programme on Channel 4 tonight was very good

i was sitting at home reading the paper and listening to Staind's Break The Cycle CD (which i had bought 2 hours previously). Sky News was on the television and i looked and saw a plane hitting the WTC. the CD was turned off straight away and the tv turned up. i felt like getting sick watching it

daveirl

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The Gopher

Damn I missed that BBC one.
Anyway,I was in school when we were told about it.Our teacher simply told us a plane had crashed into one of the twin towers(this was about 2:15pm).I asked if the towers had collapsed and he said he only heard about it briefly and didnt know.I assumed it was just one of those small 2 seater planes and thought to myself that it wouldnt be that serious,that it was the media jumping to conclusions over a fairly minor crash(like they did with that crash in Italy a few months afterwards).But even so throughout that afternoon when daydreaming in class(as usual)I did wonder what was happening in NY,and if at that very moment there were people trapped and dying and so forth.
When I got home a neighbour was outside and I mentioned about hearing some crash in NY and asked whether it was serious.She told me it all-I was shocked to say the least.Then when I got in sky news was on at the time and as I entered the living room it had footage of the 2nd plane hitting.I think the words"Holy ****in sh*t"were most probably uttered just after by myself.Couldnt believe it.
And the weird thing i still remember is that on september 10th one of the main news stories was concerns over plane safety because cracks had been found in Concorde windows.
Minor faults with planes suddenly became small in comparison:(

phobos

I think there may be too much on tv about the yolk. Sure it was bad and all...dont get me wrong but if they constantley keep showing the whole thing again and again people are just gonna get annoyed with it ...

I'm not annoyed at what you said, but I think you chose the wrong words. A family friend was killed in that tragedy, and it only feels like yestderday. I remember the day soooo well, and I never will forget. I've fixed it my head, and the emotions bounced from anger to sadness to fear, and back again, for the days to follow.

I was entering a bridging course in mathematics in college, and it was on the first day of my degree year. Everything was normal, and nobody knew anything about it. It was about 2pm in the afternoon, and the first plane had just hit approx 12 mins earlier. After the class myself, and 3 mates went for a game of pitch & put near the college. We didn't get back to the house until 5pm. We had just moved in to that house and the TV still wasn't sorted out. So we were sitting in the living room having a chat. Them my phone rang, and my mom told me that the twin towers had collapsed. Then my dad rang from Dublin, and told me a bit more info. I remember shaking, when my dad told me it was a terrorist attack. So at this point myself and the lads tore the house apart looking for a coathanger to get the TV to pick up the irish channels. A few mins later we were in business, and I couldn't believe what we were seeing. This was the biggest news event of my life, and I just had to stay informed.

The other lads in the house, quickly got bored, and jeered President McEllese as she addressed the nation on RTE1, saying that she was milking it. I personally thought her speach was excellent, and very down to earth. It was like she threw all the formal shíte out the window, and being just Mary for a minute told of how she told her own kids about what had happened, and how upset she was. It wasn't all "..and we are deeply sorry, our extended condolences, yada yada yada.." which you usually hear from people in those roles. She did us proud, IMO.

The next day I found out that a friend was missing in New York, and that his family feared the worst. When I heard this, I lost it. I just couldn't bottle up the emotions of it all, and felt like returning to Galway to be with my family. Now that sounds like someone who is weak, but under the circumstances, I'm sure I'd be excused. But because there was examns being carried out that week in mathematics, I had to stay put.

Anyway, people may get bored with watching the same news coverage. But don't tell me you get annoyed just because someone has the decency to do a documentary, on one of the (if not THE most) important event of our generation. I intend on watching some of them, but I know that I will be filled with similar emotions again, but I feel I have to.

;-phobos-)

GoneShootin

I was at my then "to be" landladys place when i was getting digs sorted in cork for college year.

sky news it was. then when we got home rte was running the story. no words could describe it 4 me...

Stephen

I first heard about it when I was boarding a bus home from college (we start early in carlow...) at 5pm. The driver told me and I didn't believe it until he turned on the radio and I heard it for myself.

I wasn't able to catch any of tonight's documentaries as I was at work

sceptre

Nice post phobos

bombidol

I was in the middle of my FAS class when one one the lazy bastards down the back who was listening to the radio shouted it out, everyone of us was on the sky news site in seconds, we were all in shock Crazy Day ill never forget

Dustaz

I was off work at the time and in bed asleep at about 2pm.

I got a call from a mate to tell me about the first plane, so i got up and turned on sky news just in time to see the second plane:(
I woke up my flatmate and i dont think the pair of us left the couch for 2 days.

After watching it for about 30 mins, it struck me that the hotel that my mother stays in with Aer Lingus Cabin crew was in the WTC plaza and i wasnt sure if they still stayed there. I rang her out of interest to see what she made of it, only to discover that she was in New York. After a brief period of ****ting my pants, i rang Aer Lingus crew control and they verified that Aer Lingus had moved hotels a few months earlier. I Knew that crews got up early to go shopping downtown so i was still worried, and i couldnt obviously get a line through to New York. She rang about 3 hours later when the phone lines came up, thank god she was ok - they had all decided to go out for breakfast locally (uptown, instead of near the WTC) except one woman who was walking down broadway, saw one of the planes hit and turned back round. The two crews that were in New York ended up being stuck there for a full week (at which stage i think i was STILL in front of the TV, too afraid to move in case anything happened.)

I agree with the comparisions to JFK, this was without a doubt the biggest media event we are likely to witness (god, at least i hope so).

Shinji

I was in work when it happened - we dragged out one of the TV's from the little games-playing cubbyhole thing and took turns holding up the aerial to try and get a decent signal. I guess in some ways it is our generation's JFK... But to be honest, I think I'll remember the sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when I heard about the Omagh bomb for a lot longer than I'll remember whatever emotions I may have felt about the attacks on the WTC and Pentagon.

Yeah, I'm sorry for people who lost their lives, and it's an amazing human tragedy, but I've been more disgusted by the reactions and follow-up in the media, by the US and by national governments everywhere than I was shocked by the event itself.

Something which affected my views on the whole incident was a conversation a few weeks afterwards with an old man standing outside one of the big stores in a retail park near my house, collecting for veterans of WW2. He was basically shaking his head about the way Europeans (well, British people, but it applies across the board) were running around like headless chickens in the wake of September 11, fuelled into utter panic in some cases by the American media which seemingly dominates the opinion-forming process of so many people. He contrasted it with the reactions to the Blitz in London - an event which directly affected people, which killed a lot more people and caused a lot more damage than 11/9, but which was met with a very stoic reaction - not only in London, but in every affected city and nation across Europe.

The USA doesn't see attacks on its soil, ever, so when one happens - even though the rest of us have seen it coming for years - they go mental. Why on earth do the rest of us have to mimic them? We know better than this; we /are/ better than this. CNN says panic, so we fall over ourselves; "if CNN told you to jump off a bridge, would you do that too?"

seamus

I reckon me and my gf were prolly the last people on earth to hear about it. I was on holiday in Italy, and rang home about 9pm that night, only to talk to my mother in tears, because *someone* (you know who you are) had swore blind that my brother was on one of the 4 flights. By that time, she knew that he actually wasn't, but was still pretty emotional and scared the sh1t out of me. So we went back to the hotel and spent the rest of the night and the next morning trying to decipher what the CNN text was saying behind the Italian newreaders, and trying to lipread American Government statements because the Italians were dubbing over it. Quite frustrating. Then we got a copy of The Times and most of it was cleared well up. Felt very good to step back onto tarmac in Dublin 4 days later....:(

Mistakill

I remember i heard it off my maths teacher.

I thought he was joking us at first but then he spent a whole class explaining how the first plane hit then the second

mike65

I had a short day at work and was about 5 mins from home
listening to Liveline on RTE when Niall O'Dowd of the New York Irish Voice paper came on the line and recounted the first plane hitting a tower and how he saw the second himself.

I was busy tring to imagine how that might look, needless to say when I got home (Sky News was already on) I did'nt have to wait long to see it for real, one of the few moments in my life when I actually felt my blood run cold.

Mike.

po0k

I was on the PC, a mate texted me to look at teh news.
I saw the pics just after the first plane hit.
Saw the second going in live.

Tbh my first reaction was along the lines of "about time - might knock them off their high horses".

However harsh/prickantic that may seem, tis the truth.

smoke.me.a.kipper

was on boards.ie in college. dabounca was on irc and heard about it over that. he told me and i checked the sky news site. the main headline there said 'Second Plane Hits WTC'. there wasnt even a story. just the headline. so i went home and watched it by flicking through all the channels. watched the coverage for about a week/

El_Presidente

Well, as everyone else is saying where they were...

I was in South Carolina living in a house in Myrtle Beach when it happened. A friend came in to my room and calmly said the twin towers have both just been destroyed. I don't know why but I assumed he was taking the piss and rolled over and went back to sleep.

Half an hour later it sort of sunk in and I ran out into the sitting room to find my 15 or so housemates from around the world huddled around our little TV in total shock.

2 of my friends had just flown into New York on their way down to Carolina the day before and we spent the next couple of hours going crazy making sure they were OK. They arrived on a bus from New York a few hours later totaly obvilious to the situation and were shocked when we told them.

The thing I remember most was the reaction of blind anger I saw in a lot of the locals. They had no idea who to blame or why it had happened as many of them simply didn't care about international events. They just wanted to lash out at the world.

Things settled down after a few days and people started living normally again. It was a strange time to be in the States.

the celtic tiger

as a memorial this year, all new york school children are making a paper plane each, and at the time the first plane hit, the paper planes will be released over ground zero. unbelievable.

Venom

as a memorial this year, all new york school children are making a paper plane each, and at the time the first plane hit, the paper planes will be released over ground zero. unbelievable.

Thats just soooo god dammed tacky it could only happen in America

The sooner all this 9/11 crap is finished the better.

bucks73

I was in Orlando on holidays at the time. We had planned to go to Sea World that day and I turned on the TV when I woke up at 8.45 just after the first plane hit and then saw the second go in a few minutes later.

All the amusement parks and malls in Orlando closed that before lunch and everyone just stayed in the hotels glued to the TVs. As el_presidente said a lot of the locals were eager for payback. And bigtime.

Thanx 4 The Fish

I was in work, heard about it and went in to the pub next door to watch.

I heard later from my mum that a friend of ours was over and his wife works in WTC building 7, in Deutsche bank. He tried to call her as soon as he heard, but the telecommunications tower atop whichever of the buildings (I am not sure which) collapsed and the mobile telecoms for the area was gone. it wasn't until the next morning here that Patsianne could get to a phone and let Toni know she was ok. I spoke to her quite recently about it and she described some of the most horrific things that stuck in her memory. She is still in counselling and is doing well now, thank God. Anyway the programs do act as a kind of rememberance but like the troubles in the north, we become desensitized to it after a while. I think it is just human nature...

Mossy Monk

Originally posted by Pigman
WEDNESDAY
CH4 9pm "In Memorian: New York City"

anyone else watching this. it is a very moving programme

The Cigarette Smoking Man

If I've told this story once, I've told it a thousand times..

I was in work when I heard that plane no 1 had hit, couldn't get to any of the news sites on the web. After the first tower came down I went down to a friends house to watch it on tv, came back after ten minutes cause I heard the MD was looking for the IS Dept (we were all gone) - then I got an almightly bollocking for leaving the building. I explained to him that my sister worked in the WTC Mall (ground floor) and then walked out the front door and went home. Luckily, she had decided to take a weeks holidays before coming home and wasn't in NY when it happened. One of her friends didn't go on holidays and was in NJ when it happened, she was on the bus at the entrance to the Lincoln tunnel when the driver saw the first tower on fire and decided to head back. (She was on her way to get the subway to the WTC).

One other guy I worked with was in NY on holidays and had been up on the viewing deck the day before!

Just out of interest how many people here have been in the WTC? Have you gone back to NY since?

I've been up it a few times and it's a bit of a disturbing scene when you go back. There's this Church around the corner where all of the relatives have put items that belonged to the people that were in the WTC - it's mostly flags and pictures, but one person has left a canoe that belonged to one of the people that died there. It's also very strange the difference between mid-town and downtown Manhatten. If you walk around Times Square you'd never know anything had changed. Then when you head south things get earily quiet. When you pass by Trinity Church it all hits you - total silence.

the celtic tiger

i wasn't in new york before it happened, but i went on holidays this year. all the foreigners stand around ground zero taking photos of it. a bit sickening if you ask me.

bucks73

I have been in NY a few times but never actually went up the WTC. Was watching the prog on Channel 4 last night. Best and most moving documentary seen on 9-11.

Next time in NY I will definitely go down and pay my respects. I would not take photos or film as thats just bad taste.

daveg

Tbh my first reaction was along the lines of "about time - might knock them off their high horses".

However harsh/prickantic that may seem, tis the truth.

What a thing to say/think. Over 3,000 innnocent people died that day. I heard over the last few days 1,000 were Irish or of Irish decent.

I was at home when the planes hit. Saw the second one hit live. Worst thing I've ever seen. I think this was much bigger than JFK.

The wierdest thing was seeing the photo's of me and my GF on top of WTC1 2 years earlier... looking out at the view... It hasnt healped my fear of heights...

the celtic tiger

sure if you were standing on the ground under the tower and fell on, you, you'd be dead as well. enough of this 'scared of heights' bull!

daveg

sure if you were standing on the ground under the tower and fell on, you, you'd be dead as well. enough of this 'scared of heights' bull!

I never thought of it that way.... my god my fear of heights seems to be cured

daveirl

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po0k

Originally posted by daveg




What a thing to say/think. Over 3,000 innnocent people died that day. I heard over the last few days 1,000 were Irish or of Irish decent.

I was at home when the planes hit. Saw the second one hit live. Worst thing I've ever seen. I think this was much bigger than JFK.

The wierdest thing was seeing the photo's of me and my GF on top of WTC1 2 years earlier... looking out at the view... It hasnt healped my fear of heights...

That's the truth. Judge me on it if you wnat, but that' exactly how how I felt at first.
You don't know me, or my beliefs.

America has been a bit of a bully from time to time.
you push people around long enough, people will push back.
I'm not saying who's right or wrong as that is not for this thread.
I've been totally sickened by the "faux sympathy" and "outpouring of goodwill" bullshít that I saw in the weeks afterwards.
Same thing with Princess Diana and the two girls who were kidnapped.
Funny thing was, CNN and american media in general never once mentioned the conditions in which the "suspects" were being held in the Carribean.
Iraq etc. has "propaganda", US, UK etc. have "press briefings".
Just depends on your perspective.

The one group of people out of that whom I have alot of respect for are the firefighters.
Like many emergency service workers (and nurses) they are not in the most high paying or glorious jobs, yet if they weren't there modern society as we know it would quickly descend into some pretty nightmarish scenarios.
The same fire fighters who ran into the blazes last year were out on the streets looking for better pay this week.
I wonder if they'll get it, or will the media focus on some kids throwing rubbish onto the street.....

daveirl

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