Not, OP, but as someone else who returned to work thereafter, I'll add the things I remembered the most:
Aside from the general "terror," this was thousands of personal tragedies. Everyone either knew someone who died or had a friend/co-worker that died. I have strong memories of the sounds of sobs coming from my neighbor's apartment (her boyfriend died). Or moments like when I ran into an old classmate and asked if he still kept in touch with other old classmates, only to be told one of them died on 9/11. Or having friends who were there at ground zero suffering PTSD from seeing bodies land and splatter near them. Basically, the individual details that showed up randomly some days.
Parachutes. My company strongly considered getting parachutes for each employee to store under their desks. Meetings where we seriously discussed the possibility of having to base-jump / sky-dive from our office building were weird.
Fire drills. The boring drills we all know became very serious, usually headed up by someone from FDNY who knew an unfathomable amount of people who died.
ANTHRAX!!!! People often forget this, but the anthrax letters started being mailed just days after 9/11, many of which were mailed to NYC, and/or handled in USPS mail sorting facilities that handled mail for millions. Some of these facilities had to be shut down for long periods of time to be decontaminated. My work would regularly inform me if our mail came from a sorting facility with a known exposure. This was actually quite scary for me.
This latter thing, the anthrax, was thought by some at the time to also be the work of fundamentalist Islamic terrorists. This added to a sense that 9/11 wasn't just one attack, but stage 1 in what was still an ongoing attack. Sure, you survived that day, but maybe opening the wrong letter would kill you tomorrow. The barriers being erected around buildings throughout the city added to this sense of an on-going siege.
Nylund180 karma
Not, OP, but as someone else who returned to work thereafter, I'll add the things I remembered the most:
Aside from the general "terror," this was thousands of personal tragedies. Everyone either knew someone who died or had a friend/co-worker that died. I have strong memories of the sounds of sobs coming from my neighbor's apartment (her boyfriend died). Or moments like when I ran into an old classmate and asked if he still kept in touch with other old classmates, only to be told one of them died on 9/11. Or having friends who were there at ground zero suffering PTSD from seeing bodies land and splatter near them. Basically, the individual details that showed up randomly some days.
Parachutes. My company strongly considered getting parachutes for each employee to store under their desks. Meetings where we seriously discussed the possibility of having to base-jump / sky-dive from our office building were weird.
Fire drills. The boring drills we all know became very serious, usually headed up by someone from FDNY who knew an unfathomable amount of people who died.
ANTHRAX!!!! People often forget this, but the anthrax letters started being mailed just days after 9/11, many of which were mailed to NYC, and/or handled in USPS mail sorting facilities that handled mail for millions. Some of these facilities had to be shut down for long periods of time to be decontaminated. My work would regularly inform me if our mail came from a sorting facility with a known exposure. This was actually quite scary for me.
This latter thing, the anthrax, was thought by some at the time to also be the work of fundamentalist Islamic terrorists. This added to a sense that 9/11 wasn't just one attack, but stage 1 in what was still an ongoing attack. Sure, you survived that day, but maybe opening the wrong letter would kill you tomorrow. The barriers being erected around buildings throughout the city added to this sense of an on-going siege.
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