I Watched the Towers Fall. Here’s What You Missed

Last updated on: September 10, 2026 at 2:30 am by Barbara O'Brien

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I Watched the Towers Fall. Here’s What You Missed 2026-09-10T02:30:46-05:00 Barbara O'Brien

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What You May Not Know About September 11

It’s a struggle to describe the enormity of the September 11 attacks with words, or even with video. The enormity didn’t come across on television, either. In the weeks and months that followed the attacks a thousand conspiracy theories bloomed, especially about what happened to the World Trade Center. And what struck me, over and over, is that those who came up with the theories obviously weren’t there that day and probably had never even seen the twin towers with their own eyes. They had no grasp of the size and scale and massiveness of what they were talking about.

I was there, however. I watched the event that caused the deaths of 2,753 people with my own eyes. It was indescribable. Yet here I am, 25 years later, attempting to describe it. The impressions of the day many people have fall far short of what happened. Let me also respectfully acknowledge the terrorist attack on the Pentagon and the hijacked United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, that day. However, this essay will focus on New York City, because that’s where I was.

September 11: The Enormity

The twin towers each covered one square acre in width and rose more than a quarter of a mile — or 417 meters — into the sky. Each tower had 110 stories, held up by 100,000 tons of steel, that provided 4 million square feet of office space. And when they came down, they came down with such force that much of the material of the building — drywall, furniture, people — was pulverized into vast rolling clouds of dust.

Oh, and did you know the work of identifying remains is still ongoing? No remains have been identified for about 1,100 people who were known to have been in the towers but never came home. That’s roughly 40 percent of the New York victims. The New York City medical examiner’s office maintains a lab that continues to extract DNA, mostly from bone fragments, in hopes of identifying a few more of the deceased. A victim was identified as recently as August 2026, using new technology not available in 2001.

But the World Trade Center was more than the two towers. The World Trade Center was a seven-building complex on a sixteen-acre campus. The other five buildings were destroyed by flying debris, some of which was in flames. What came to be called Ground Zero was the entire 16 acres of the campus. Chunks of building and airplane parts slammed into structures all around, even beyond the World Trade Center campus. Debris from the South Tower entirely destroyed St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church on Liberty Street. Next to St. Nicholas was the 39-story Deutsche Bank building that remained standing but was too damaged to be saved. It had to be condemned and demolished later. And everything, everyone, everywhere, was covered with thick gray dust for many blocks beyond the World Trade Center.

September 11: The Human Toll

One of the sad aspects of that day was that most people either escaped with little injury, or they didn’t. As soon as the terrorist attacks were in the news, several Manhattan hospitals sent medical teams and ambulances to care for the assumed many severe injuries. But the medical teams had little to do. Those who survived walked away from the devastation and found their way home. I saw them drifting up Eighth Avenue looking like dusty gray ghosts with blank faces, some still carrying briefcases full of documents that no longer mattered. North of the Financial District the city was still there, with open shops and restaurants and street vendors. Yet everything had changed. It was as if the fabric of reality itself had been ripped apart.

Soon the posters began to appear. As I remember, within three or four days they were everywhere, on walls and scaffolding and lampposts. They all contained a photo of a missing person and asked — Have you seen him? Have you seen her? The photos were heartbreaking. These were adults in their prime, usually smiling. Someone wanted them to come home, desperately. And we all knew they would not. These were people who had enjoyed a very ordinary morning. They sipped their usual cup of coffee. They saw their kids off to school and walked their dogs, and then they took the same commute to the office that they took every morning. And a short time later some were facing the choice of death by being engulfed in flames or death by throwing themselves out a window 100 stories or more above the ground. And many disappeared into dust.

The posters became shrines. People left cards and flowers near the posters. Some areas here and there became mega shrines. I remember in particular a large area in the subway system near Times Square that filled up with offerings and tokens of grief — along with flowers and cards there were candles, sometimes lit, and religious symbols and icons. This happened spontaneously; there were no official shrine designations. This is the most basic function of religious symbolism and ritual, to make what is invisible — grief, in this case — into something visible and tangible that can be shared. Grief that is shared is grief that can be more easily borne.

Among the Living

Along with the shared grief there also was shared trauma. On September 13 the city above 14th Street was open again and we were all called back to our jobs. And for many of us this meant taking commuter trains, buses, and subways, or driving over bridges or through tunnels under the Hudson River to get to work. And we were mindful that these were all easy terrorist targets. But our old, ordinary life called us, and most of us faced our fears and went back to what we were working on before the towers fell.

But I remember vividly taking a downtown subway train toward my job and seeing a man sitting nearby trembling and muttering. He was wearing a good quality suit and a big gold watch. He had a big leather briefcase. He could have been a Wall Street guy, but Wall Street was closed that day. Wherever he was going, he clearly was terrified, barely hanging on to his nerves. Yet that day he had dressed himself in his work attire and gotten on the subway. People stood around him like protective angels, hanging on to poles and straps, quietly swaying and respecting his fear.

On September 13 construction workers had turned the Times Square area into a sea of American flags. Flags would sprout everywhere in the next few days. And in Union Square Park that day someone had brought large rolls of brown paper and many markers, and people were writing messages for posterity on them. Most of the messages I read were calls for compassion and healing, not revenge. “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind” appeared several times. I never heard whatever happened to those rolls of paper. I wasn’t in the towers, but by all accounts the people who were able to evacuate did so without panic or stampeding. They made their way down countless flights of stairs in an orderly manner while taking the time to help those with disabilities. From what I saw, the people of New York City responded to the horrific event with sensitivity and courage.

September 11 Beyond New York

And then there was the rest of the country. People seem to remember the days after September 11 as a time of unity. But the rest of the country had a different experience from New York’s. And much of the response west of the Hudson was sometimes baffling. I remember the first time I saw one of those cheesy T-shirts with a weeping bald eagle in the foreground and the burning towers in the background. I was shocked and disgusted. How could someone make a cartoon out of September 11? Note that the T-shirts never became popular in New York. And don’t get me started about the Truthers.

It wasn’t long before the experience of the day was co-opted by politicians and others for their own agendas, and wars were waged in the name of September 11 against people who had nothing to do with it. In the end, it was not America’s finest hour. But I will say no more about that now.

Is There a Why?

I will leave the question of why does God let these things happen to others. I am a Buddhist. Some might wonder how the Buddhist doctrine of karma fits here. Karma is a Sanskrit word that means “volitional action,” and the Buddha described karma as a natural law of moral cause and effect. Your intentional actions, expressed in thoughts, words, and deeds, create seeds of karma that shape the life you are living as well as rebirths. However, it’s incorrect to think of karma as a system of rewards and punishments, especially since many things happen that have nothing to do with karma. And sometimes bad things happen even to very good people. What’s important is not to judge.

Two words from Buddhist scripture that often are translated as “good” and “evil” actually mean something closer to “skillful” and “unskillful.” How can we relate to September 11 skillfully? We might start by remembering it accurately. For the record I watched events unfold from the 40th floor of an office building on West 17th Street, about two miles north of the World Trade Center. We had a panoramic view of lower Manhattan and could see the towers straight on, not looking up at them as in most of the videos. And there was a lot I could see that doesn’t appear in the videos, especially the fires engulfing the floors struck by the planes. For both towers the collapses began when the sites of impact no longer had the structural integrity to support the several floors above. For those who want a detailed explanation of how the towers fell, I endorse the comprehensive report from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). It matches what I saw.

I’m seeing unskillfulness everywhere, however. Bigotry and hate are unskillful. I’m seeing a lot of anti-Islamic bigotry from people who assume all Muslims are somehow personally responsible for the September 11 attacks and want to “celebrate” it. Please see my previous post, “Barring Mamdani From 9/11 Lets the Enemy Win.” It provides some background on the radical sect that perpetrated the terrorist attacks and which is not representative of all Islam. And I argue that bigotry and ignorance, not Islam, are the real sources of terrorism. Note also that more Muslims were employed in the world Trade Center who didn’t come home that day than Muslims who hijacked the planes.

Please remember the day, but with loving kindness and compassion. For all our sakes.