A child’s memories of Sept. 11: Panic, debris ‘monsters’ and fleeing to safety

descriptions off, selected

captions settings, opens captions settings dialog

Subtitles (en), selected

This is a modal window.

Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window.

End of dialog window.

Trending on The Hill - September 10, 2026

Trending on The Hill - September 10, 2026

Twenty-five years have passed since the windows of my family’s apartment burst in and upended the life I knew in Battery Park City.

My twin brother, Jacob, and I were just shy of 4 years old — we had already sent out invitations to our birthday party at Chelsea Piers — and were watching “Franklin” on TV in the living room when we heard a loud boom.

On the other side of the apartment, my mom was jolted awake by what she said felt like an earthquake. She ran to her window, which faced the World Trade Center’s south tower — the second to be hit but the first to fall — and saw a “raging fire.” 

“It was like ‘The Towering Inferno,’” my mom told me recently, when I asked her about her recollections of that day. “It’s not like you saw fire inside. You saw the flame coming out.”

Our housekeeper was panicking, holding my 2-year-old sister, Rachel, in her diaper. My mom called the fire department and was told to stay put. She called my dad, who was at work in midtown already, and he said to listen to the fire department. My mom hopped in the shower and came out to find her three kids on the treadmill in her bedroom, peering out the window to count the emergency vehicles filing in below. Both towers had been hit, but neither had yet fallen. 

My memories from that day — some of the earliest I have — are spotty. 

I remember counting 14 firetrucks below; I remember looking up in that moment to see an avalanche of debris heading toward us as the south tower began to fall; and I remember my mom telling us to follow her to the........

© The Hill