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Where were you on 9/11?

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Everyone remembers where they were when they heard that two planes had crashed into the World Trade Centre in New York City, on the 11th of September 2001.

Me? I got up to get ready for school when my Dad told me that a plane had crashed into the two tallest buildings in New York. Confused, I asked ‘Was it an accident?’, to which he said he wasn’t sure.

To my 13-year-old self at the time it seemed unfathomable that someone would do that on purpose. My next question was ‘Have people died?’, and Dad nodded, with an aloof expression on his face.

At that stage Mum appeared, who said she’d watched the whole thing unfold on TV late the night before. The program she’d been watching was suddenly interrupted with footage of a plane smashing into a tower. At first she thought it was an action film with incredibly realistic graphics, until she realised it was streaming live from NYC.

It was really happening.

That was ten years ago this weekend, but I can still remember the fear etched into my school mates’ faces that day as we used the word ‘terrorist’ for the first time and wondered if the same thing would happen in Australia, and even if it was the start of World War Three.

This year, the man who ordered the planes to fly into the towers, as well as two other US domestic flights to be hijacked and consequently crashed, Osama Bin Laden, was finally killed after an almost decade-long man-hunt. But it’s only cold comfort for the families of the 2,996 people that died that day, who we’ll be thinking of on the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks on Sunday.

Tell us: Do you remember where you were when you found out about 9/11?