Do you remember?

I’ve read a few blogs where people are remembering where they were when they first heard the news of 9/11.

Being in Australia, half way around the world from where it all took place, meant that those horrific events happened at night our time.

I was just heading off to bed and switched on my bedside radio. Very early reports were starting to filter through.

I jumped back out of bed and told Pauline that something serious had happened in the US. We switched on the TV and a short while later they started reporting what was going on.

There were only limited shots initially that were played over and over until they got more cameras into the area.

We stayed up most of the night watching things unfold.

What about you? How did you first hear of what happened five years ago?

Posted by Rodney Olsen

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About the author

Rodney Olsen

Rodney is a husband, father, cyclist, blogger and podcaster from Perth Western Australia.

He has worked in radio at Perth's media ministry Sonshine for over 25 years and has previously worked at ministries such as Compassion Australia and Bible Society.

The views he expresses here are his own.

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7 Comments

  • We had no TV at work, only internet. The german news agencies gave away no information, CNN offered only one page, giving the smallest info. At first we couldn´t say if this was a terrible joke or the truth. Colleagues had relatives in New York, so it all came very near to me, too. It´s hard to understand that this happened. Yesterday evening a documentary was on TV, where some survivors told their story. Horrible where those brave people went through.
    I was at work when it happened.
    My boyfriend works in a place where amongst other things TVs are sold. He put on the news and told me poeple were not recognising what was going on – they obviously thought a movie was being played.

  • Heard it in the car on the way home from tennis, listening to the BBC on Newsradio. Initial reports sounded like a plane had accidentally flown into the towers. We watched it on TV for a few hours after that and got the full story. (Complete with wildly exaggerated figures on fatalities.)

  • I was in the US. I had driven to Virginia to Florida and was visiting my nephew. I drove him to work that morning and he had called his wife to turn on the TV while I was driving back to the house. We watched, mesmerised for several hours and then I had to get out of the house. Took a walk and everything was peaceful and quiet because almost all action was curtailed…surreal.

    On the return trip to Virginia (about 14 hours or so) it was also wierd… …so many people had been stranded by the closing of the airports but the roads weren’t highly travelled….too much fear in the air. Looking up and seeing NO airliners in the air was odd too. I wonder if everything will ever be “normal” again…

  • I remember I was sick at the time and I got up about 10pm in the night to go and get some cough medicine. I went out to the family room and my stepdad and sister were watching the TV and my stepdad said, “A plane’s just flown in to the World Trade Centre!” I was stunned, so I sat down and watched it, saw the second plane go in and couldn’t believe it. Having been to the top of the WTC a few years before, I found it unbelievable that it was happening.

    I am too young to relate to those who remember what they were doing when JFK was shot, but I think that will remain one of those kind of moments that people remember.

  • i was staying with a friend in washington state. she had gotten up early to drive to seattle airport to pick up some corporate people and bring them back to the retreat centre she was working at. i had heard some commotion in the house before she left but went back to sleep then woke up at 10:30am and called a friend in philly who was i was supposed to meet up with the next day when he flew back out west. he just told me to turn on a tv or radio (i was in the middle of nowhere and we had no tv or radio). he tried to explain what was happening and that he wouldn’t be flying out west for a week or so now. that nite me and my friend drove around the town trying to find someone that had a tv we could watch to find out what was going on.
    it seemed so surreal and even though we saw the footage over and over it was hard to imagine it really had happened and it wasn’t just some movie special effects.

  • My girlfriends and I used to rent a house in Subiaco, on this night we were down at the Subiaco Hotel having a few wines. Then we got a phone call from a girlfriend in Sydney asking us if we’d heard that a plane had just crashed into one of the Twin Towers – again, we all thought it was an accident. Pretty much as we were talking the whole (busy) pub went quiet and we all went into the one room with a TV and watched in disbelief. None of us knew what to do or think. It was strange as after about half an hour people came streaming out from a show at the Regal Theatre across the road. They came into the pub loud and happy and immediately knew something was wrong. Again, there was just quietness and us all watching the TV. I remember thinking how strange it was that there were people sitting in a theatre having a great time, blissfully oblivious, while at the same time so much terror was happening.

  • I was sitting in my taxi cab in NZ having breakfast, when I heard it on the news. I wen thome straight away & was glued to the telly for the rest of the day. We were due to fly out to Perth for a 3 week holiday that week.

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