On Fifth Avenue
I live on 14th and Union Square, and around a quarter of nine heard a low roar of a plane, much louder than I've ever heard in Manhattan.

September 11, 2001 10:40 a.m.

live on 14th and Union Square, and around a quarter of nine heard a low roar of a plane, much louder than I've ever heard in Manhattan.

I idly thought, "That's the sound people talk about when they report seeing plane crashes."

A couple of minutes later a friend told me to turn on the TV and I saw one of the most searing images of the decade.

About a half block from my apartment is Fifth Avenue, which affords a clear view of the twin towers of the World Trade Center.

It's odd how disasters excite people, thrill them somehow — clerks who work in the grocery store below my apartment building were dashing toward Fifth Avenue, smiling.

At every corner of Fifth Avenue, people were standing and staring, about half of them on cell phones, reporting on the sight to friends.

The twin towers always look a little other worldly, a little surreal as if they are painted onto the sky, and ofcourse the effect was magnified in an unbelievable way (and now it's a sight that simply doesn't exist anymore).

When I left my apartment, just one tower had been hit, rather high up. By the time I was on the street the second tower was burning as well, lower down.

Sirens kept droning by, as emergency vehicle after emergency vehicle headed down Fifth, the drivers sometimes shouting over their speakers for the traffic to get out of the way.

The street was clogged, because cars, including a bunch of cabs, were pulled off along the side of the street, their drivers standing next to their cars, with the doors open, sometimes withtheir radios turned up high.

One moron had pulled his pick-up truck over and sat up near the cab so a friend could snap an instamatic picture of him with the worst terrorist attack ever on the American homeland burning in the background.

As the news kept coming over the radio of two deliberate attacks on both towers, you could just see the reaction on peoples' faces, gaping mouths, hands over mouths, hand clasped to the sides of their heads.

And feel the sick feeling you knew was in the pit of everyone's stomach.