I worked in a building abutting the towers and that morning my young daughter missed her van which would take her to school in the Lower East Side of New York.
So I took her by subway train and heard the deafening explosion of the second plane smacking into the building as we got out of the station.
When the towers fell, it seemed like a string of firecrackers going off; starting from the top, one floor popping and then the one below it, on and on.
When the towers collapsed, they were shooting beams like missiles in all direction and many hit World Trade Center 7, a fifty story building which stored many thousands of gallons of fuel throughout the building. The building burned all day and fell toward evening. When this building fell, it created a massive fire ball which entered my office across the street. The heat of the fire melted my computer to the floor and fused my desk drawers together.
It took a long time before my mind could think of other things and not replay this episode over and over. If this was my experience, I can’t imagine what it was like seeing the Bais Hamikdash destroyed.
One thought; I remember how everyone treated each other with the utmost respect and kindness for months afterwards. It’s unfortunate that things eventually went back to the way they were before.