The morning of Sept. 11, 2001, began with the ordinary rhythm of a Tuesday.
I was preparing to head out for my shift as a police reporter at The Post when the television flashed the first terrifying report: a plane had struck the World Trade Center.
By the time I made it into Manhattan, the Twin Towers were already gone.
The nearer I moved toward Ground Zero, the harder it became to see. A heavy, unnatural haze swallowed the streets.
People trudged through nearly six inches of ash, the remains of countless tons of concrete crushed into powder when the buildings came down.
When I reached Church Street, the scene looked almost unreal — like something from a disaster film in which worlds had collided and everything familiar had been erased.
But there was no filmmaker calling “cut.” There was no escape from it. This was New York City on 9/11, and it was horrifyingly real.
To my right, rows of ambulances sat with their rear doors open, waiting for survivors and wounded victims who, heartbreakingly, never arrived.
Nearby coffee carts stood abandoned, their bagels and doughnuts coated in gray ash. I remember thinking that only the day before I had been inside Century 21; now its windows were shattered and the store was badly damaged.
The streets were hidden beneath a blanket of dust, mangled steel and chunks of concrete. In places, the debris rose more than 50 feet into the air.
Smoke hovered over the wreckage, forming a thick cloud that stretched across the ruined landscape for as far as my limited vision could reach.
The sharp, bitter smell turned my stomach. By then, I was coated in dust from head to toe.
As I walked around, I stepped over body parts and saw a wheel from one of the planes.
I had covered hundreds of crime scenes all over the city, reported on serial killers and talked to murderers in jail. I remembered when 87 bodies were laid out in a gas station on Southern Boulevard in The Bronx after the Happy Land fire.
I remembered 8 years earlier, I stood on these same streets while covering the 1993 World Trade Center bombing — but even that was nothing like what I was now witnessing.
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Cops and firemen were futilely trying to move thousands of pounds of debris by hand to find their brothers and sisters. Some were crying because they knew the chances of recovery were minimal.
A couple hours earlier, it was a quiet morning and now the world had changed forever.
As news of the plane strikes unfolded, I had called a friend I grew up with, who worked in the NYPD intelligence division, and he said, “They think it might be a terrorist attack.” It was the first time I heard that phrase — which I’ve heard thousands of times since.
Just then, my editor called, yelling hysterically that the city was under attack.
When I told her police were looking at a possible terrorist attack she asked, “Are you sure?” I told her the cops are treating this as a terrorist attack and everybody is being called in.
“Call me as soon as you get more,” she said.
I kept making phone calls — then the South Tower fell as millions watched on live TV.
The city was in emergency mode, closing off highways and access into Manhattan except for emergency responders.
I was able to get a ride with Brooklyn North Police Benevolent Association trustee John Giangrasso and we drove to Ground Zero.
The mayor, police and fire brass and the feds were trying to figure out who was responsible and how they could rescue the thousands of missing people who were under the tons of rubble from the collapsed Twin Towers.
Rumors were flying that hundreds of cops and firemen were dead, along with thousands of civilians.
During the afternoon, I got a call from police officer Kathy Vigiano asking if I heard anything about her husband, Det. Joseph Vigiano. They were friends I’d met in the 75 precinct, back when I covered the area’s record number of murders in 1993.
I told her that I hadn’t heard anything about him and she headed to Manhattan to look for him as she couldn’t get any answers.
I paused and had a funny feeling in my stomach. What if the rumors were true about the dead police officers and firemen?
I knew Joe well, and I knew if he got to the towers, he would’ve run to the roof and made sure everybody got out — unless the unthinkable happened and he was in the building when it fell.
I now started to think about the dozens of cops and firemen who worked in downtown Manhattan that I knew personally from my years as a reporter.
As I was calling in notes to the newsroom, I kept thinking back to Joe — and the other cops and firemen that probably were buried a few feet from where I stood.
Eventually, we went over to police headquarters where some of the families who couldn’t get a hold of their loved ones had gathered.
I saw Kathy, and then later that night, I saw a list of 23 names of cops that were missing.
We soon learned Joe was among the heroes who had been killed in the line of duty.
In the days after, I kept going back to police HQ and speaking with the families of the missing cops.
Now, I was sadly making new friends. I was meeting wives and husbands, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters all waiting for a miracle – that never came.
I saw the constant pain as the days blurred into each other.
I would go over to Ground Zero, but instead of twisted steel, I now saw the faces of people I knew and of those who I had just learned about through their grieving families.
Over the next 25 years, I covered hundreds of murders and other crimes, talked to numerous victims’ families, including police officers who were killed in the line of duty — but nothing ever compared to those weeks and months.
I still remember the ambulances, the coffee trucks and a vibrant city that went silent.
Every once in a while, a story will come up about 9/11 and my editors will ask me to reach back out to the families, the friends that I made 25 years ago, for comment. In the back of my mind, I wish I had met them under different circumstances.
Somehow, they managed to slowly move on. The hurt remains but they have been able to make lives for their children.
A lot of them have become grandmothers. Some of the children, now grown, have themselves become cops or firefighters, as well as teachers and lawyers.
I also learned that the heroism of 9/11 did not end when the fires were extinguished and the buildings were rebuilt.
Heroism continued in the homes of those heroes.
The families picked up the pieces and moved forward, keeping the memories of those who died alive and celebrating milestones without their loved ones.
I will never forget the destruction I saw that day. I will never forget those that died that day and the weeks and years since.
But today I also remember the heroes that were left behind — the ones who found the strength and courage to carry on.
