OT: September 11, 2001... Where were you?

[T206Collector]

As I, too, mentioned in another thread, I was on a subway under the towers as the second plane hit. Back then I lived in Brooklyn and commuted to Manhattan every morning. I had heard a "rumor" that a plane had hit one of the buildings as a boarded the 2 train at Grand Army Plaza, heading for midtown via Wall Street area. I figured it was a small prop plane, if anything.

As we got to the downtown stations, Fulton Street, etc., the train didn't stop but just kept going through. Over the speaker we heard there was a "police investigation" so we were going to Brooklyn Bridge-City Hall. When we got there, instead of people getting off as usual, the subway got mobbed by people boarding. They were in tears and visibly shaken. That was how I learned that a second plane had hit.

I got out at Grand Central. As I walked up the stairs to Lexington, across the street from the Chrysler Building, they were evacuating the building, and everyone was looking up expecting a plane to hit it, too. I got home that night by walking over the Manhattan Bridge, under a thick cloud of black smoke and military helicopters whirring above me - and F-15 fighters a bit higher in the sky. There were dozens of people handing out water and graham crackers to anyone who crossed the bridge. My apartment, which once had a view of the Twin Towers in the distance, smelled like burning plastic for quite awhile, as the smoke floated over Brooklyn for what seems like it must've been at least a few weeks.