THE TUESDAY MORNING of 11 September 2001, was shaping up to be a relatively slow news day, following an even slower news month.

The New York Mayoral primaries were scheduled to take place. Mike Bloomberg’s victory was a given and, aside from his press conference and celebration that evening, there wasn’t much to do, other than hit up a few polling stations.

I received a call from the Sunday Tribune at the same time as the first report on NPR about a plane crashing into one of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Centre. I grabbed a notebook, a fistful of pens and my flip phone and ran out onto the street.

Within seconds, I was in a taxi, speeding down the FDR Highway.

There was almost no traffic. The driver and I listened as New York’s local station, 1010 WINS, reported flames were shooting out of the North Tower. To our west, a cloud of black-grey smoke rose into the brilliant blue sky. We speculated it was likely an accident involving one of the biplanes that swarmed Lower Manhattan.

We had just come off the FDR at Exit 2, about a mile east of the Twin Towers when the news broke that a second plane had hit the South Tower. The driver was blessing himself and muttering ‘Jesus Christ’ over and over as the panicked voice of the announcer filled the cab.

He dropped me near City Hall. The sky had darkened but much of Manhattan’s financial district is a claustrophobic warren of narrow streets and skyscrapers that block the sky.

The towers weren’t visible from where I stood but the air had filled with a rising cacophony of shouts and sirens. I looked down Broadway to see hundreds of first responders – ambulances, firetrucks and police cars – flooding the streets.

As I walked south towards St Paul’s Chapel, crowds of dazed, terrified-looking workers were surging in the opposite direction.

Police were simultaneously redirecting traffic and exhorting them to keep moving amid a rising sense of chaos. At the corner of Fulton and Broadway, the towers suddenly came into view in a heart-stopping assault on the senses. Only the bottom halves were visible.

The rest was engulfed by flames and dense black smoke.

Even as police pushed them northwards, dazed locals huddled at coffee stands, listening to radio relays of events. Other stopped outside cafes or stores where televisions were tuned to CNN, watching in disbelief as the horror that was unfolding a few blocks west semaphored around the world.

Then suddenly, without warning, at 10.29 the South Tower came crashing down; 110 floors of metal, concrete and glass imploded in around ten seconds in a great whooshing,........

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