9/11-The Lost Tapes

[pastafreak]

Is anyone watching this? Absolutely chilling.........the voices of military,air traffic control, the flight attendants...and the hijackers.
It's giving me goosebumps....

[pastafreak]

It certainly puts into perspective why the US became so diligent in protecting their borders in the wake of 9/11.

[naomi24]

I wonder how many have ever thought about what was going on behind the scenes on that terrible day?

[237SJ]

I certainly did!

[pastafreak]

Until now-the emphasis has always been on what we know of the victims themselves...and those who were involved in the immediate aftermath at the Towers.

[237SJ]

As it happens, I was due to fly home from Miami that day. I had just got back to my hotel, feeling pleased with myself because i`d found a cheap breakfast at Denny`s. Then I turned the TV on..
The aeroplanes were going down thick and fast and the reporter said that they thought there might be more aircraft up there. I remember going to the window to see just how high up I was. Our aircraft got as far as Bermuda when they closed the airspace. It was a week before we got home. In the morning (on the flight) someone put a window blind up and I`ve never been so glad to look out and see the green fields of England in my life.

[naomi24]

I suppose we all did to an extent - but I don't think anyone could have imagined the reality of that utter incomprehension and confusion.

[DTCwordfan]

So did I, I was stranded over here for 5 days. I nearly lost 3 staff in the Windows on the World as they were due there for a conference, and 3 customers and their staff in both Towers. My staff were acting in true Co tradition, i.e.they were late; my customers - well it was the 1st day back at school and many had delayed their work start time....and one customer switched a meeting offsite on the Friday before.

[chrissa1]

It must have been incomprehensible to them. I remember watching the 2nd plane going into the tower live on tv. My husband and I had come home for lunch. It was horrific and mindboggling.

[237SJ]

And that`s the real reason Concorde doesn`t fly anymore. They lost so many of their customers in the Twin Towers, there were not enough passengers after that.

[pastafreak]

My sister-in-law was due to meet someone for lunch at the WTC that day...she cancelled for some reason...

[naomi24]

237SJ, where did you get that from?

[237SJ]

I went down to the Twin Towers two weeks after it happened. It was still smoking. The strangest thing was that all the goods in the shops nearby were coated in grey dust. Stacks of jeans, shoes in shoe shops etc, they all looked like they were made of concrete.

[islasmum]

I've just watched it on Catchup, feeling very sad - I remember that day clearly as my mother, boyfriend and I sat there watching the second plane crash in complete disbelief. But the bit that really got me just now was the mother leaving the answerphone message on the son's mobile. It did seem a hell of a muddle though, especially the fighter jets going backwards and forwards.

[ELVIS68]

Very moving, sitting here watching it you think to yourself why didn't they do this and that etc, but then at the time they was caught totally off guard and thankfully nothing like it has or will ever happen again

[bravejordy]

I remember sitting here at my computer on the day it happened. It was the middle of the afternoon here in the UK. Suddenly my yahoo instant messenger alerted me my friend, Tami, in Nebraska, wanted to chat, which I found very unusual, we normally did our chatting during the wee hours. Anyway, I could tell by the panic in her voice she was clearly very distressed and she started saying something about the World Trade Center had collapsed but she wasn't making a lot of sense. At first I thought she was talking about some kind of financial thing, like the Wall Street Crash or something similar. Then she mentioned the planes and told me to switch on the News. I ran downstairs to watch CNN and I could not believe what I was seeing! Ironically, the day before, I'd been watching the movie, Home Alone 2 - Lost in New York where Kevin McCallister (MaCaulay Culkin) is on the roof of the Twin Towers, taking pictures. I spent the next two weeks glued to the TV, in a state of total shock, watching nothing but the News. How on Earth could anyone do that to all those innocent people on the planes and in the Twin Towers? It was like watching some surreal movie except this one didn't have a happy ending. I must have cried an ocean of tears as I watched those people in New York post pictures on boards in a desperate attempt to find their loved ones. All filled with a glimmer of hope that maybe they'd somehow survived. Watching the documentary and listening to the hijackers' voices on the planes made my blood run cold.

I remember the old saying used to be "Where were you when JFK was shot?" but now it's "Where were you when the 9/11 terrorist attacks took place?" I don't think any of us will ever forget that fateful day. :(

[excelsior-1]

i was working a late shift - i recorded it. i'll get round to watching it over the weekend

[B00]

I worked, at the time, for a holiday company, who's main business was holidays to Disney World.

The amount of people who phoned us, in the aftermath, to ask if there were now cheap flights to the US because of it was sickening.

[pips1]

No Boo, nnoooo!!!! that is dreadful!

[andy-hughes]

I remember hearing a psychologist talking on the radio not long after this tragedy, and he said that the constant re-playing of the crash images on TV was not only not at all helpful to anyone watching, but was subtly psychologically damaging - and that is a view i have held from then until now - i avoid any programme like this which re-hashes recent history. It adds absolutly nothing to my sense of horror and grief, but merely rakes over the images once again, to no good purpose at all.

Cruising on the QM2, my wife and i dined with a couple who live two streets away from the Towers, and had gone to vote in a school poling station across the road at the time the planes hit.

The gentleman of couple trained navy seals in his career, so was obviously no-one's softy, but as he recounted what he had seen, silent tears leaked out of his eyes. When he excused himself to go and compose himself again, his wife confiemed that he was so traumatised, that after a few weeks, he was forced to walk with a cane to support a limp. The doctors advised that there was nothing physically wrong with him, the limp was a psychosomatic reaction to the trauma, and was therefore untreatable.

That's as close to the impact of this tragedy as I ever want to be, and watching this type of documentary is something I would avoid like the plague.

[Lisa_Louise]

After I watched that last night..... it made me think, How many more aircrafts did they hijack, and how much more destruction would have happened if they had not stopped planes coming and going .........................