I was in the airport in Vancouver Canada, waiting for my plane home. It was so early there so I had just gotten a huge latte and saw a group of people around some TV monitors there in the airport. I assumed it was a disaster movie at first, but then realized the horrible truth. I grew up in New York and it was a very surreal moment for me standing there weeping among a group of complete strangers as I watched the towers fall and wondering if any of my friends were in them. I remember so vividly watching the flight information screens all switch to CANCELLED for every. single. flight. Then they locked down the airport and you couldn't get in OR out -- you had to be escorted out by security. It was such a bizarre situation. I got one of the very last rental cars in the place and remember flinching every time a plane flew in overhead as I drove out of the airport.
I was lucky though, that my in-laws live in Vancouver and I was able to stay with them because they diverted hundreds of flights that were coming in to the west coast of the US to Vancouver instead. The planes were parked wing-to-wing at the airport completely packed with people. People were going door-to-door trying to find places for people to stay because all the hotels were full. I remember someone knocking on the door of my in-laws tiny apartment and my father-in-law having to tell them that, sorry, they had already taken in one refugee. It remained so surreal, though, because business went on as usual in Canada and my in-laws went off to work while I sat glued to CNN and going through all that horrible "the world as we know it has changed" thing that I think most Americans felt at the time.
I didn't manage to get home for 6 days -- I had to wait until they finally opened the border days later, then drove across the border at 1:00 in the morning (to avoid the hours long waits that formed during the day), and caught a flight home from Seattle. That was the eeriest flight I have ever been on. You could have heard a pin drop on that plane.
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