Where exactly were you 14 years ago when you learned of the events of 9-11 ?

[BooScout]

188. I came out of a meeting in Atlanta...

I had just come out of a meeting at work in Atlanta when someone said a small plane had just hit the WTC. I didn't think too much about it at the time and went outside with some friends to smoke a quick cig on a beautiful early fall day.

We came back from smoking and I went to the company cafeteria to grab a cup of coffee and when I came into the lobby of the building, someone had turned the tv on an elevated stand on which they rarely did.....There was a pretty big crowd in the lobby watching as people,came through heading to get coffee. I stopped and watched and the 2nd plan hit. Any doubts any of us had then were gone, someone was intentionally using planes to attack us.

I probably watched tv for about 15 more minutes with several hundred people and then went back to my desk...but all I did there was try and get updates online at various news sites which kept being unavailable because of so much traffic on them.

Then I just gave up getting anything online and we gave up trying to work and went back to the lobby to watch the tv. Then the reports of the Pentagon being on fire started coming in. Then reports it too had been a plane.

Then the first tower fell and people were crying or just standing there stunned. They had been reporting there could be tens of thousands of people in the buildings and no one knew how many had been able to get out. There were all sorts of other reports of bombs and attacks coming in at the same time that we just couldn't keep up with it all.

Then the other tower fell....and my company came over the PA system told us all to go home. There were about 1200 people working at my company then. Traffic home was a nightmare, so I took a back way that brought me straight through downtown Atlanta. I worked just north of town so as I headed down the main hwy I-75 into town, there was no traffic heading my way....they were all heading north (most of the city sent employees home that morning).

When I got to the point on I-75 where the city came into view, it occurred to me why no one was heading south. Everyone was avoiding the city and the skyscrapers. Thankfully Atlanta wasn't a target that day, but I was pretty damned scared driving through the city to get home.

I went straight to some friends house and we watched the tv together for several hours. When I went home that afternoon I just couldn't watch anymore and took my dog Scout for a walk. I lived in a neighborhood close enough to Atlanta's busiest highway I-285 that you could always hear it the side of the neighborhood closest to it....and I didn't hear it at all that afternoon...everyone had gone home...there was no traffic and no noise. We were also in the flight path for Hartsfield and there was no planes in the sky....they had landed them all by then. I remember how eerily quiet it was....on a beautiful fall day.....and then two fighter jets went streaking overhead and I took Scout home and cried.