After checking out I was walking from the Warwick to my office on Madison near 46th when the first plane hit. Arrived upstairs and I saw a few associates quickly heading to the break room, one yelled over his shoulder that a plane hit the tower, I thought that's unusual as it was a bright beautiful morning, pilot have a heart attack?
Made my way to the break room and the tv and watched the second plane hit, I said out loud that was no accident this is a terrorist attack.
Frantic calls were going out to friends and families, some of my co-workers had friends working in the Towers and I later heard one did lose a friend there.
Through the morning we huddled around the tv, our break room was on the street side of our building and we could see into other offices across the street at the various offices and lunch rooms, lots of crying and slumped shoulders and shaking heads, even some shaking fists from men in yarmulkes.
My cell phone rang about ten, it was my wife, around my co-workers fear I forgot to call her, she didn't know where our office was.
Staff was released and all the locals left to make their ways home, trains and busses were still running before noon however us "visitors" had nowhere to go as we were out of our hotels, flights were stopped and as of noon the hotels were not letting us back in because they were still expecting new guests.....so I walked and walked.
Across to seventh and headed south to see what was going on downtown. I walked against the tide of commuters that were heading north because all bridges and tunnels south were closed, going to Lincoln Tunnel?? Cannot recall.
In the twenties I turned around and went with the flow back north, about 3 I was around Sixth and 47th where I stopped and stood in front of a light pole, it was the only place to stop without being in someone's way. I wish - yet I am glad, that I did not have a camera. Everyone's face was grim, everyone hunched over trying to call, tears, even the grimy gross New York payphones had folks lined for a chance to call home.
It was around that time the people from near ground zero started to show up in the crowd, some lightly coated. some heavily, their hair and clothes with the yellow and brown debris of the Towers. I remember a cab coming slowly up the middle of the street covered with inches of dust from the buildings on it!
Later that night the city smelled of burnt concrete.... cops stopped a group of us south of Times Square and would not let us go further south. Next day the city was abandoned, I could hear birds in the trees as I went to the office to meet and plan our ways out. Three of us got a break and picked up a rental and we beat it out of the city Thursday morning and I was dropped off in Atlanta. Every bridge and overpass all the way down 95 had flags and slogans hanging from them, it was beautiful among all the carnage America was seeing. In Atlanta I saw my folks and brother and finally got a flight to Dallas and to my wife and son on Saturday.