[DanaC]

I was sitting at my computer in the middle of an icq conversation with an American guildmate. In the middle of the conversation he stopped replying for a few minutes then a badly typed message appeared, clearly typed in a hurry "Oh shit, shit, a planes just crashed into the wtc" I haven't included the typos as I can't recall exactly what they were.

That was the first I heard about it. At that point everyone still thought it had crashed. My friend, though not living in NY at the time was by birth a New Yorker and had friends and family working in the trade centre. It was a long morning for him. I kept my ICQ up open and and every so often he'd post me an update. I think it helped him to ground himself in something normal, the kind of thing he usually did when working from home.