And here's my rememberance:
Tuesday, September 11, 2001, like today, was primary election day here in New York. I left home earlier than usual to vote, and then got onto the train to get to work on 25th Street in the city. After the first stop, I saw smoke coming from the first tower. Nobody on the train knew what had happened until someone got a cell phone call to say that a plane had crashed into the tower. When we got to the last stop above ground, both towers were on fire, and the sky was filled with bright, fluttering things. They turned out to be thousands of sheets of stationary coming all the way into Brooklyn from the towers. 30 minutes later, we got onto the Manhattan Bridge, and we could really see what was going on. The tops of both towers were on fire, and we could see debris and people falling from them. Nobody on the train said a word after that, and we went back underground until the train made its last stop at Union Square (14th Street). I got back to street level in time to look downtown and see the first tower collapse into a huge cloud. I Spent the next hour stumbling around with the rest of the zombies, unable to talk about what I had seen, and breathing in what smelled like a mixture of burning plastic, concrete dust and barbecue.