By Jason Fields

Last week, I was allowed into the enormous construction site at the World Trade Center. Before I describe what I saw, bear with me as I explain my own experiences of that day, and the time shortly after.

I’ve spent my life in New York. Born at Mt. Sinai Hospital on the Upper East Side, growing up in the same neighborhood, where many people’s parents worked on Wall Street.

I didn’t experience tragedy on Sept. 11. I don’t want to compare what happened to me to the horrors of what happened to so many others. My experience was strange, not traumatic, and if it’s worth sharing, it’s for that reason.

I was trying to sleep on a red-eye flight back home from Seattle where I’d been visiting one of my oldest friends. I was coming home to a marriage that was breaking and would soon be broken.

It was a little before 9 a.m. when the pilot’s voice came on in the cabin, waking me from a half doze.

“Due to the situation in New York, this flight is being diverted to Buffalo,” he said.

He sounded calm like pilots always do, even as they’re plunging to the ground. But, I flipped on the television screen in the back of the seat in front of me. Jet Blue’s big claim to fame at the time was that everyone got their own connection to satellite TV. The only news channel I could find was CNBC, which does business news. Except that day.

They showed multiple views of the smoking north tower, and were speculating on what happened. They didn’t know anything — nobody did — but there were reports that a plane had struck the building. Clearly a terrible, terrible accident.

Then as I watched — as millions of people in the city and around the world watched — the south tower was struck by a plane.

The situation was now clear enough. New York was under attack.

The plane landed in Buffalo. Not knowing where to go, I got a cab to take me to The Associated Press bureau in town. I was working for the AP then.

There I saw the towers collapse, unable to move, unable to think.