I arrived in lower Manhattan on Water Street around 8:40 a.m., approximately 7 blocks east of World Trade Center. I had packages to mail so I walked 4 blocks west on Whitehall Street to the post office on Broadway. I was in the building for approximately 15 minutes. When I came out it was around 9 a.m. I walked a block and a half east on Whitehall towards the Bowling Green subway station when I noticed huge groups of people standing around gaping at the sky to the west. I looked up and from my vantage-point I could only see golden brown smoke in the sky. A building on fire? Terrible, of course, but this is New York City and it happens.

I continued along Whitehall to Bridge Street and turned back again, and saw that One World Trade Center’s top floors were ablaze. I continued along Whitehall to Pearl Street where I stopped at the newsstand to get my morning "coffee" (a diet Coke). The newsstand owner had set up a radio blaring onto the sidewalk and the news was reporting that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Shocking, of course. But with the enormity of those buildings, it was surely bound to happen sometime!

The newsstand owner handed me my change and as he did we heard a loud buzzing noise. I looked straight up and saw a huge commercial jetliner traveling at an unbelievable rate of speed. I followed the flight line and watched in horror as it exploded into Two World Trade Center. Everyone around me was screaming and dropping to the ground. I also dropped to the ground in confusion:

Oh my God! A plane hit the World Trade Center! Wait – No! I heard that BEFORE I saw it!! How? What? Oh my God!

As I lay on the ground I wondered how many more planes would rain down. Where would I be safe? I was mere yards from my building on State Street so I scrambled to my feet and ran, gasping for breath and alternately crying and praying as I entered the building and took the elevator to the 16th floor. My department supervisor was outside the elevator doors. He pushed me back in and came in with me, wrapping me in his arms and I cried and got his shirt all wet and mucky. For 15 floors the door opened regularly and white-faced grim investment bankers and secretaries and delivery boys got in and stared at each other in disbelief.

I felt somehow that my experience in Oklahoma City was somehow getting confused with my life in New York. Like a crossover disaster dream.

We stood on the sidewalk for what seemed like days. Traffic was snarled, emergency vehicles careened screaming down the streets demanding cars to back up, get out of the road. Cell phones were useless. Pay phone lines were from Pearl to Bridge streets.

After a while some men in my office wanted to go up and check on things. I knew I needed to go, to call my family in Oklahoma and Mississippi. I was terrified to go up, but I went and called my mother and my grandmother and a business associate in Oklahoma. I answered a few calls, too, informing terrified people that their family members (my coworkers) were safe and had left the building.

As I was on the phone, we all watched on the office TV as the first tower collapsed. From our 16th floor vantage-point we could see Battery Park disappearing under a cloud of debris. We ran for the elevators and headed straight to the lobby. As we arrived, people were pouring in from outside, looking like horror films. They were covered in soot and debris. Police officers who had been running down the street were collapsing on the lobby floor, covered in soot, coughing up blood. People poured bottled water over them.

Some of my coworkers who had been outside burst in, covered from head to toe. The other girls in my office wing ran to me crying and we all embraced. Outside debris rained down like snow. It was surreal and we all agreed it was the most frightening thing ever. The building was being evacuated and we were told to go to the basement. Three other people I was with agreed that we didn’t want to be buried alive, so we began walking north up Pearl Street.

We walked several blocks through drifting soot, papers flying. Street vendors carts were abandoned on every corner. It was like nuclear winter: streets deserted, everything gray and silent. Very few people walked the streets, and still ambulances, fire trucks, police cars screamed with lights flashing. Every so often knots of police officers in riot gear would go by. It was terrifying.

We stopped in an open bar and watched the news on CNN, getting unabashedly drunk. The man sitting on the stool next to me was on the 50th floor of Two World Trade Center. He said he had been leaving the building after the plane hit One WTC. He and several others were on the 32nd floor stairwell when the floor suddenly dropped out from underneath them. They tumbled down the stairs and ran outside and ran and ran and ran some more until they couldn’t run anymore. His face was cut and he had bruises on his arms.

Eventually the smoke cleared and we made it back to Queens. The highways were deserted and in Queens it was like a dream – the sky was sunny, people were mowing their lawns. It was like normal life. In the distance we can still see the smoke from lower Manhattan. A skyline forever changed.