Heavy exterior glass panels and wall sections fell away, making dead drops, straight down like stones. The air handling system, sheet metal ducts and plenums were sucked out and fell slower, seesawing to the ground.

The fire within the interior spaces caused updrafts, downdrafts and backdrafts that moved the billowing smoke in satanic harmonies. Flames heightened and stretched into the Tower’s higher floors. Standing on Liberty Plaza, I was under the World Trade Center (WTC) buildings when tens of thousands of pages of paperwork exploded from the voids in the shell. Carried on thermals created by the red-hot glowing structure, the Tower, acting as a gigantic chimney, roiled papers through the lower floors and ejected them, venturi-like, 1,000 feet above the ground. Each page was succinctly visible as a single sheet, not forced downward by gravity but instead flying out and upward, rising to a point where the hot ejection mixed with crisp morning air. The sun-glistening sheets floated parallel to the horizon, cooled and then rolled, individually, perfectly, in slow motion, beyond sight. The papers flickered brilliantly like mirrored reflectors playing off sprays of sunlight against the brilliant blue sky. Back and forth, for an instant into and then out of the smoke, to its edge and again into the day’s brightness like illuminated wedding confetti catching a gentle breeze playing in and out of a darkened cathedral foyer.

As a speed-reader absorbs a chapter a second, I surveyed surrounding buildings, roadways, and intersections. The cause of the instantaneous and enormous destruction was inconceivable. I relived the past few minutes hoping for a clue: an explosion, a bomb, maybe a missile; crackle of gunfire; the World Trade Center aflame and smoking; missilized debris perforating the skin of 200 Liberty and the adjoining Airwalk. Unbelievable. The power of the moment paralyzed me. Dumbfounded, my feet stuck to the pavement. Terror reigned supreme, yet the scene was fiendishly inebriating. My gaze fixed on the Tower, then slowly, lower, to survey the ground nearby. The pavement was peppered with flying glass and building materials.

To my rear, commuters, worker bees, rounded the corner from West Street, the protected side of World Financial. Earbudded, Starbucks in hand, they were oblivious to the real-time fantastic calamity above them. Narrowly missing certain death by a few minutes, unaware, they walked into the path of destruction. One by one they saw the carnage, took charge of their senses, and wisely retreated.

As I looked west down Liberty, hundreds of shoes littered the ground, sneakers, and a singed bedroom slipper … loafers, dress black loafers, one shoe, another with a foot still in it. Shards of glass were everywhere. On the sidewalk, not 40 feet away, rested the crumbled-paper shape of Flight 11’s shiny metal engine.

中国最大钣金展-锻压展-2016第十七届广州国际钣金、锻压工业展览会-巨浪展览- The 17th China（Guangzhou） Int’l Sheetmetal machinery, Forging, Stamping and Setting Equipment Exhibition