I probably heard the first one hit, but didn’t notice because there was watermain work going on below at that time, and backhoes were dragging steel plates around in the street.
A friend called and asked if we were ok, I asked why wouldn’t we, and she said there was something going on at the WTC.
Then my wife can in the door screaming about the WTC being hit, the flames, the people. She was on her bike on the sidewalk next to tower one when it got hit. It took were maybe fifteen minutes to get back home past the rubble and God knows what all else was on the street near tower one.
On the TV nobody quite knew what was going on yet, except that a plane had hit tower 1 – maybe an accident.
We turned on the TV and not all that later we saw, and heard, the second one hit.
In that moment all doubt about this being an accident evaporated.
It was a sound I’ll never forget. It was like the woof a gas stove makes when it’s lit, only it lasted about fifteen seconds and reverberated among the skyscapers between us and the towers about a half mile away.