Today, television, radio and social media are filled with remembrances of Sept. 11, 2001. It’s the 25th anniversary of the terrorist attacks that struck the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and brought down a fourth plane near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. Our reality as Americans was forever changed when the first plane crashed into the North Tower at 8:46 a.m. Eastern Time.

On that day, I was on vacation in New Jersey — my home state — thousands of miles away from Sacramento and the KFBK station where I was editor. I immediately went to work reporting live from a triage center set up on the waterfront in Hoboken that assisted nearly 500,000 people who had to be evacuated from Manhattan Island by boat because all roads, tunnels, subways and bridges were closed.  

This is my remembered timeline of events:

10:15 a.m.: I’m standing on a rooftop not believing what I’m seeing. I grew up in New Jersey and watched the Twin Towers being built to dominate the New York skyline. One has collapsed to the ground in a cloud of ash. The other won’t be long behind.

10:45 a.m.: Sirens everywhere, along with emergency vehicles. I count at least 50. A makeshift trauma center is being set up at the Hoboken waterfront. Evacuation boats will soon arrive.

11 a.m.: I’m trying to call in reports to KFBK, my news radio station. Can’t get through. All lines are jammed. My daughters can’t reach me and are panicked. Finally, I get through and start reporting for what will be three 16-hour days.

Afternoon: Waves upon waves of people are brought to the waterfront. There is no escape off Manhattan Island except by boat. They come by the thousands. I watch those who survived the towers stumble off boats, covered in ash, and get medically checked out. They never stop coming. I see doctors and fire captains bury their faces in their hands, overwhelmed. One young woman dressed in a once stylish navy-blue suit and high heels staggers by me as if she’s drunk. She’s not; she is shellshocked. I think we all are.

Evening: Darkness only compounds the unimaginable, horrific and sorrowful day. As I look out on the once brilliant Manhattan skyline, there’s a huge, empty gap. I saw the towers being built, and I saw them come down. It’s incomprehensible. 

Comstock’s Senior Account Executive Lisa Bonk was even closer to the Towers on the day of the attack:

I was on the 12th floor at Vogue and when the second plane hit, people were frazzled. Their first thought was that it was a prop plane (that hit the first tower), but when the second plane hit, we were confused how another one could have the same problem. Everyone rushed out. Times Square was filled with frantic confusion. I fortunately was able to hail a cab, so I got back to my apartment in one piece. I watched the buildings fall from my TV screen. A friend suggested we go out to a bar and be with people. The streets were completely empty, but the restaurants and bars were packed. Many couldn’t get home with the George Washington Bridge, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, etc., all closed. People bonded together.

Digital Editor Jennifer Fergesen was 7 years old and had just started second grade in New Jersey:

I grew up in the northeast part of the state, part of the city’s dense sprawl, close enough that through the window of my kindergarten classroom you could see the Twin Towers and the rest of the Manhattan skyline scrolling along the horizon like the Emerald City of Oz. You couldn’t see that from my elementary school, though, so I’m sure we all felt confused when someone from the office came in and asked, pale and tense, if any of us had parents working at the World Trade Center. “My dad works next to it,” I volunteered; his office building was about two blocks away, and he’d taken my mom and me inside a few times to go to the observatory and the “Windows on the World” restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors. The woman from the office looked at me with an expression I didn’t know how to read. Someone called my mom at the school one town over where she taught, but she was already on her way. She could see the towers from her classroom, too. By the time she arrived half of my classmates had already been picked up.

At home, my grandmother, who had lived through the Japanese occupation of the Philippines, was crying about being at war. I was a very opinionated and patriotic 7-year-old and argued that there was no way anyone could wage war on America. Still, I hid under a table, conflating things I’d heard about bombing raids and tornadoes, until my dad finally got home. It was a cloudless day, but his suit was as wet as if he’d been walking through a rainstorm. He later explained that he’d been hosed down by a firetruck after landing in Hoboken alongside the half a million other people evacuated from lower Manhattan by boat that morning. Over the following weeks he developed respiratory issues that never really went away, not even 25 years later. His doctors couldn’t find any reason for it, but he always suspected the dust he breathed that day had something to do with it, and recently released documents suggest that his instinct may be right. 

In the following days, Sacramento played a part in the rescue. The Sacramento Metropolitan Fire District sent their urban search and rescue team, which had been created to help in the aftermath of earthquakes. Highly skilled firefighters were trained to search through rubble for victims. US&R Task Force 7 had previously been deployed at the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995, which killed 168 people, and after 9/11, they were dispatched to Ground Zero.

Also sent was retired Chaplain Mindi Russell and her team at the Sacramento Law Enforcement Chaplaincy, which comforts victims after tragedies. 

There are so many dreadful and sad images of 9/11. But if you want to see an inspiring story of how Americans came together that day to rescue others, watch this 12-minute documentary narrated by Tom Hanks. It’s a tribute to America’s resilience on that awful day.