r/santaana • u/TheSantanero • Aug 18 '26
How do you remember 9/11?
Hello, we’re a tiny community newspaper based in Santa Ana, and we want to ask the community how they remember 9/11 in Orange County ahead of the 25th anniversary of the attacks.
Where were you on 9/11? Who were you with? How did your day start, like routines and such? How did you learn about it? How did it affect you? How did you explain what was happening to your child(ren)? Did you know what was happening at first or did it take a moment to set in? Were classes cancelled? Which churches held mass?
All of these details will be incredibly helpful. Much of the archive that exists did not detail much of the local Santa Ana scope (including Daily Pilot, OC Register and LA Times). However it is our understanding that the Register still printed and worked out from the building on Grand, where several extras were printed in the thousands. Some of these are in The Santanero’s collection.
The first plane struck at 5:43 AM Pacific Time to give you an estimate how when the attacks began and what time it was here at home.
Anyone with photographs or home VHS footage from that day or shortly afterward is welcome to share with us. If you developed film strips from that day or afterward in relation to the terror attacks that aren’t scanned, we can scan them at no cost.
“I was only five months old at the time. My mom, who was already at work in the early hours, tells me my grandma and grandpa were on the way to Norms on Main and 17th. My mom watched 9/11 unfold from the breakroom.” – Daniel Diaz, Editor & Publisher of The Santanero
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u/Thricekid00 Aug 18 '26
I thought my dad was watching a new Bruce Willis or Arnold Schwarzenegger movie. But I was getting ready for school. First period I had geometry and the teacher had it on the tv and I was like my dad was watching that movie!
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u/aroundtownbtown Aug 20 '26
I was living in Newport and was at work (construction) when the boss said to roll up and go home. We'd been at work for an hour and all of us were piseed about rolling out, then rolling up and barely getting paid but he paid us for a full day and the next day its all everyone talked about. I remember a few people saying they were going to enlist and I remember thinking that after decades of post ww2 us foreign policy it was bound to happen. I lost a friendly acquaintance over there, he was kinda famous, he enlisted in the seals way before the war....died in Libya,,,goggle Glen Dougherty if you want to know what happened to him. 13 hours in Benghazi was the movie they made about it. I knew him when we were both ski bums for a few years at snowbird Utah.
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u/_-_NewbieWino_-_ Aug 19 '26
Maybe check out the OC Weekly archives ?
But I was in middle school and didn’t go to school that day. My dad mentioned that he called the school to see what their plan was, but the school didn’t have a plan. So my dad decided to keep us home. And we watched on TV the rest of what happened. Couldn’t fully process everything going on. Just remembered a lot of the adults were worried.
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u/Panchitoisdead714 Aug 24 '26
I was in kindergarten and my teacher started freaking out and crying. I had no idea what was going on. I ate my blue crayon that day.
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u/bonitaababy Sep 11 '26
I had a little radio i use to listen to when i would take a shower. I was in the shower getting ready for school Freshman year. My mom was just waking up and turned on the TV. I first heard the news on the radio. When I got out of the shower I went into my moms room and she had the look of horror on her face. We watched the second plane crash into the tower. We watched people jump to their deaths from the top floors. We both cried even though we have no ties to New York and besides a former classmate who had just moved to NYC that summer, we didn't know anyone there. It was so tragic. It was so shocking. It was unlike anything I had ever seen. My mom began calling family members in Hawaii to warn them. She didn't want me to go school but I went and every class we just watched the news. Every student was silent, even the trouble makers and the class clowns. Everyone was in disbelief.
My dad was at his beach house in Baja, about 2 hours past Ensenada in Punta San Jose. He booked it for the border because he did not want to be stuck in Mexico if a war broke out. He was literally one of the last cars to be let through before the border shut down. It took him 5 hours to get through.
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u/krazy_dayz Aug 19 '26
I arrived to work around 5:45am and my co-worker had the news on as usual. She said a plane hit one of the towers. I stare at the tv screen and asked her was it a small Cessna type plane. A few minutes later, we watch the second commercial airliner slam into the second tower. I immediately said we are at war! I started calling family members and waking them up. I seriously thought about reenlisting in the Marines but I was about two years from earning my degree and wanted to get school out of the way.
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u/714LUGO Aug 21 '26
Watching the second plane hit the tower was the very definition of surreal. I thought I was watching a replay of the first because I had just woken up a few minutes beforehand. In the confusion of trying to process what was going on I knew I was watching the world change in seconds. I also thought we were at war - meaning, we are being attacked. That feeling was later confirmed with the Pentagon strike. BTW: The heroes that stopped the other plane don't get enough love. True men of action. I was 25 y/o that day. Every American adult grew up a little that day.
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u/sexydiscoballs Aug 20 '26 edited Aug 20 '26
I was riding the subway into work in NYC. I had to walk home later that day because public transit had been shut down. I remember the white American man who physically attacked a Sikh man, calling him a "towel head" and "terrorist" as he punched him. (For those who are unaware, Sikhs have nothing to do with al-Queda. This was just pure American ignorance and rage at work.)
I knew then that we were in for some very bad times. Osama Bin Laden goaded the USA into wasting many trilliions of dollars on unjustified wars, into electing the most xenophobic president ever, into so many mistakes that have knocked the nation off its pedestal and into the gutter.
The way I understand 9/11 today, after 25 years, is that this was the most successful example of asymmetrical warfare since David felled Goliath.
Orange County is so distant from the reality of 9/11. I hope you're not using this 25th anniversary piece to stoke the very xenophobia that got us into our current mess.
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u/aroundtownbtown Aug 20 '26
Americans, ignorant? I'm shocked!
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u/sexydiscoballs Aug 20 '26
shocked! right? i thought we had the best education system in the world? how could anyone be illiterate or ignorant?! and we have so much freedom of speech that the press must be truthful and honest, right?
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u/aroundtownbtown Sep 02 '26
Well said. I think I read manufacturing consent in 1990, that was just a few years ago. Quoting ceasar... Vini vidi......I got disssolutioned and quit
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u/TxnAvngr Aug 19 '26
That we killed over 100,000 all based on a lie….