Street corner near my office. Hard to tell but all the side streets have been blocked off and police checkpoints were setup to prevent people from traveling where they don't need to be.
8th Avenue. This is the view downtown along 8th Ave. Clear skies. This is the view I had coming in to work with no knowledge of the event already taking place.
7th Avenue. There's usually a LOT of traffic here. It's empty except for the emergency vehicles racing up and down Manhattan.
Crowd in front of Penn Station. Since all transit was shutdown there were crowds of people stranded at the train stations.
First sight of smoke. It was a beautifully clear day today. Then this.
5th Avenue and 23rd Street. I used to work right around the corner from here. This is looking downtown and you used to be able to see the twin, 110 story towers of the World Trade Center from here.
Union Square. Now you can see the smoke actually billowing up from the devastation. That smoke is more than 40 blocks away.
Broadway. Just a few blocks more and I had to cut East across the city. Canal Street was the north perimeter, still dozens of blocks away from the financial district.
Dump trucks. About a dozen trucks had just passed before I snapped this. Must have been on their way downtown.
Bus covered in ash evacuating people out of the downtown area.
Chinatown. This is about as close as I got to ground zero. I was part of a huge stream of people making their way to the Brooklyn Bridge to get over into Brooklyn.
Ambulance on the bridge.
Cars covered in dust and ash and debris from the collapse of the two towers.
Two cops directing traffic amid all the debris. I saw lots of people walking uptown that were wearing the dust masks.
These are the last 2 pics I took after crossing the Brooklyn Bridge. 1 2
Here's what I was looking for. 2 pictures, one taking during all this and one taken a year or so ago from a different spot on the Brooklyn Bridge. In the first image there's a building on the left edge of the picture. That same building is just left of center in the second image. That will give you some reference of where the two towers should be. Click here
UPDATED: 9-17-01
The East half of Downtown is open to foot traffic now. I went down there to see if I could get to my mailbox and took these pictures while I was there. Couldn't get my mail by the way. The Postnet I use is just on the other side of the barricades.
This is all that's left of the World Trade Center. I'm standing about 3 blocks from the ruins.
There used to be a Krispy Kreme in that empty husk at the end of the street.
Beyond that barricade is 2 weeks worth of mail, mostly bills. Oh well. The police are at every corner down here.
Cleaning ash off the awnings.
I think this image pretty much tells the story of how the clouds of debris raced down the streets.
A little spot next to a church.
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