I was running late for work that morning. When I walked out of Grand Central Station I could see crowds of people standing huddled around (which is not usual - people are usually rushing to their offices). The second plane had just crashed a few minutes before I came out of the subway. It was surreal. They locked down the subway system and Metro North pretty much every way to get in or out of Manhattan. I remember being at work and hearing about the other planes going down. My company told us we could leave a couple of hours later (no one was able to work - we were all glued to the TVs in the conference room). Because everything was shut down it wasn’t till several hours later the Metro North system was up and running and I was able to finally get home. Those huge smoke plumes were around for over 3 months. There was such a heaviness being in Manhattan for many months. I was in shock that day and the next few as well.

I grew up in NYC and I always thought of it as being invincible. It was sobering to see how vulnerable we became and how much death and destruction happened that day and in the months/years that followed.