9/11 20th anniversary

why did the never rebuilt a second tower ?

Up in there in June 2000, over in Boston for a cousins wedding at the time. Lost all the photos from those tourist type cameras was gutted about it. Brother got some merch at the time though.

The video of the second plane hitting is just surreal. Ofc it would be new York City and America where a terrorist attack would play out as it did on that day. It was more Hollywood than Hollywood. The extent this day is built into people's consciousness is fascinating to me. I think this attack exposed American foreign policy to a lot of us and in their darkest hour, somehow the tide turned and America began to be viewed less favourably but you can see from (even slightly) older people who grew up when American propaganda was at its height just how affected they were by this day.

Meanwhile there were wars in Europe just a few years previously and this is way less ingrained in the collective memory

My dad had a shop on John Street and we kids would work there in the summer. In the 1960's, my brother and I would walk over to the WTC construction site. Being a wee lad, he'd have to lift me on his shoulders to look through the diamond-shaped holes in the wooden barricades to view the work, the enormous holes they dug, the workers looking like yellow-capped ants. Quite the site when it opened. I ran many errands over the years for Dad delivering packages to the Towers. Always an adventure, the stockbrokers did tip well though. I didn't like the fact that the complex took over the block between Warren and Murray street - there was an aquarium store there 1 block long called "Aquarium Stock Company" which I loved to visit as a kid. Now, long gone.

Whenever out of town friends visited, we'd go up to the top and take the tour, and maybe stop at Windows on the World for a drink. Frankly, the Empire State was a more popular visit, much more interesting building.

In 2001, my fiancee was flying out to move in with me, on September 12th. She'd been shipping things to my house in NJ and I would stop by the local post office to pick them up. I remember around 9:30 on the 11th, I went over for a delivery and the postmistress, who'd I known for a long time, was crying! Told me planes had flown into the WTC. I drove home and turned on the TV and watched it for awhile. I called my OH (now wife since 2002) and woke her up. We cried on the phone to each other.

A close friend worked for the Port Authority in the WTC. A mutual friend was in touch with his eventual wife, and couldn't raise him for the first few hours. Fortunately, he'd escaped and helped carry his overweight admin down. He'd been through the first bombing of the WTC (1973 I think?) and knew the drill. The admin apparently eventually lost all the weight. My friend walked uptown, found an open bar and spent the day there. Got a free night in a midtown hotel.

My brother's law office was on Vecsey street adjoining the towers. I called his wife, but again it took several hours to locate him. He, fortunately was in Court that morning in Queens - his wife knew his schedule was court and go to his office, but wasn't sure of the order. Court started early that day fortunately.

A former coworker was on flight 93. Another former coworker later told me he was due to fly that day on the same flight, but had overslept.

That afternoon, I took a walk. There was a small state park near where i lived in NJ that had a rock outcropping from which you could view the towers with the naked eye. With decent binoculars you could see the Statue of Liberty. The place was full of crying people, a big impromptu memorial was set up. You could see the pillars of smoke where the towers were. These lasted for days.

By the 13th, flights had resumed enough that I could meet my wife at Baltimore airport. We drove up to NJ. The next day or two, I forget, we went into NYC to look. You could get there by Ferry. What we both remember to this day, was the smell.

If you visit the memorial (I highly recommend it), in the basement is a truck from Ladder Company 3. My wife's cousin was the captain. He and his entire squad were lost as they ran back into the towers to rescue people prior to the collapse. They have his helmet on display. FWIW, his family traces itself back to Leitrim. He had Irish grandparents, not sure if he ever went through the trouble to become a citizen.

It’s hard to believe it’s been 20 years since that terrible day. The images never seem to lose their horror. It still seems completely surreal.

I was in Third Year maths class when the planes hit the WTC and I remember a commotion in the hall outside the classroom and a student from another class running in the door saying something about a plane crash in America. We didn’t really understand exactly what was happening at that point.

It was only when I got home and my mother had Sky News on showing thick black smoke billowing up from lower Manhattan that I realised something terrible had happened.

But even that it took me ages to get my head around the fact that this was a deliberate act.

Seeing the images of the two planes hitting the towers for the first time is something that will never leave me. I still get a chill up my spine thinking about it.

It’s beyond me why people insist on seeing conspiracy in everything that happened that day. What happened was horrendous enough without making things up.

I was 18. Coming back from lunch with my dad in his car when we heard there was a fire at the WTC. He said he wanted to see what was happening so we drove to his house nearby and sat watching it all day, saw the second plane hit. We were both just in shock. My mam was working in an office and I kept calling her to give her updates, which she relayed to her colleagues (this was before you could watch TV from your office computer).

My dad was due to go to NYC with his friends the following week but that was cancelled, they had planned a trip up the WTC too.

I visited the site in 2008 when I lived in NYC for a time and went down there on the anniversary. It made it a lot more real seeing first responders in their dress uniforms and relatives with pictures and t-shirts of their loved ones. Just a very sad occasion.

That Jules and Gideon documentary really captured so much and it was all by accident, they were meant to be filming a documentary about rookie firefighters in NYC and ended up being in the centre of it all, including the collapse of the towers. I think they got the only footage of the first plane hitting the North tower.

Found these a couple of months ago while clearing out the attic

Boards.ie 20 years ago, it was very quite back then

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/30985/omg-turn-on-the-news/p1

I was ten! I clearly know now that nobody survived

A relative of mine died on the Sunday after watching the All Ireland Hurling final which Tipperary won. I was 8 and in 3rd class at the time. I was in school for most of that week but knew I might get a day off.

My sister came home for the funeral and I remember it being on the news that afternoon and it being terrible. I mainly just wanted to watch videos and that's what we did in the end.

We just had RTE and had no news channels then.

When I was in school it wasn't really mentioned.