The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were a familiar sight to New Yorkers. For decades, you looked up and they were there. It was a reassuring sight. I visited the towers many times and gazed upon them many more.
On the morning of September 11, I had just finished voting in Brooklyn when I looked up and saw that one of the towers was on fire. Just a few minutes later, a second plane crashed into the other tower. Something was very wrong.
President George W. Bush was at a school event when he was informed. The expression on his face says it all. No one in the government knew how serous the threat was.
The impact of the two jets was devastating, smashing through the steel structure of the towers and igniting fires that eventually brought the buildings down. Warplanes took to the skies. Every non-military flight in U.S. airspace was ordered to land.
Thousands of people were trapped in upper floors of the towers. Many died when then the planes hit and many more perished as the fires raged and when the towers collapsed. Some jumped to their deaths to escape the conflagration and the smoke. In all, 2,606 people died in the towers.
The sky was blue and clear on 9/11. The winds carried a massive plume of smoke out over the city and New York's harbor. "Manhattan looked as though it had taken 10 megatons," the British novelist Martin Amis later wrote.
The towers were so badly damaged structurally that collapse was inevitable. At the time, however, no one expected this. People on the streets about the World Trade Center fled in terror when the buildings went down, one after the other, and filled the streets with rubble and dust.
Fires raged for hours and smoldered for days in the mass of twisted steel and rubble. Lower Manhattan below 14th Street would be closed to traffic not involved in the rescue effort.
The area around the World Trade Center was a scene of utter devastation. Smoke and dust hung in the air. Countless cars, trucks, and emergency vehicles were destroyed.
Tragedy was everywhere. The New York City Fire Department lost its chaplain, Rev. Mychal Judge, who was killed by falling rubble while giving last rites to a victim of the attack.
Very little remained of the Twin Towers' elegant facades, which architect Minoru Yamasaki has designed with narrow window openings and soaring archwork.
Two 110-story soaring towers were reduced to a contorted mass of smoking metal. Welders spent months cutting the steel apart so that it could be carted away.
The New York City Fire Department rushed to the scene and suffered incredible losses of life as it tried to save people from the burning towers. 343 members were killed.
Strong men were reduced to tears.
In the days that followed, rescue workers streamed into New York for neighboring cities and states. Scene of horror as bodies were lifted from the rubble contrasted with signs of defiance as American flags were raised above the carnage.
Loved ones posted photos of missing friends and family members, in the desperate hope that they might turn up alive.
The city pulled together is a way that I had never witnessed before. We lined the streets to cheer on National Guard and rescue workers as they made their way into Manhattan and down to what became known as "Ground Zero."
We also indulged our vengeful attitudes. Soon, the nation would go to war in Afghanistan.
The attacks weren't limited to New York. The Pentagon also took a hit. 125 people were killed.
The scene at the Pentagon was equally horrifying, but the building itself remained standing.
A new tower has arisen at Ground Zero, along with a memorial. This has provided a lot of people with a welcome sense of closure. But it's not enough to make me forget that terrible day, the lives that were lost, and how America was changed.
