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I had started to find a way around the towers, heading to work and was a few blocks south when someone
screamed plane. I looked up with the camera in time to see it hit, but the camera reacted too slow, all the camera recorded was a burst of flame and a wall of fragments showering down. About the 3rd
picture I figured the fragments were heading toward me and ducked under cover, I made it, but my camera's lens took a hit that smashed the front of the lens in. I yanked the lens out and shoot some
more.
Funny how you take time to notice small things at a time like this. As I went round the south side of the complex and over the West Side High Way. A picture of the clock
over the tunnel entrance locked the time for all to see. A pair of trees that I walked under framed the towers with a surreal quality that made me stop to capture the image. My cell phone rang (I had
given up trying to call anyone) It was my cousin, I asked her to call my mom and tell her I was OK.
Arriving at the rivers edge, at the building where I work, everyone was outside and we were told to head home. I check to see if were keeping and critical staff on hand,
add it was decided that everyone should get out of the area and regroup by phone. Darwin Pruss who I work with also had a camera out (The clouds of dust and people covered with ash are his photos) and I
told he wee needed to swap a few pictures when this was over. I shot a few more pictures and hopped on a ferry to Hoboken.
About halfway across the river, we saw a great cloud of gray rise up and spread across lower Manhattan when it started to clear, my camera saw rays of daylight streaming
threw the smoke where one of the towers once stood. In Hoboken, the green grass along the rivers edge offered my camera another surreal opportunity.
NJ Transit was nice enough to offer a special early train home that day, they waited for the last ferry boat full of people to arrive, and because many people had fled
without wallets or tickets, they waved the fair. As the train left Hoboken and headed out threw the rail yard, the other tower collapsed, I managed to get a picture of it over the top of the old cement
company buildings before my homeward train disappeared into the tunnel ..
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