My friend Inessa Shuleshko writes about her experience September 11, 2001 Being there was like being in a middle of a disaster movie. I was going to work when I saw them [the towers] burning. About one third of one twin and one fourth of another was completely engulfed in flames. Police were moving everybody away and when the first building collapsed, they started moving us even faster. But nothing was working. No trains, no buses and the regular roads were either full of traffic or completely freed for service cars. All of those were coming in rows. And all of them with sirens. You could barely hear other people when they tried to speak. Some of them were covered in dust and breathing through respirators. Actually, by the time they got us to the bridge, I started thinking that I should take photos of the effort. Everything seemed so unreal. So I ran to a pharmacy and got a one-time camera. Disposible actually. The sound, the smell, the dust... And such a clear weather around it. It was like it did not belong in the same reality. I saw the second twin collapse. I took a photo of it. I still cannot get used to it. The skyline looks so desolate. It does not feel like New York without WTC. We are so used to seeing them every day. I never imagined that they can be just GONE. I was trying to reach people and they me all day. Cell phones were not working, and than regular payphones stopped working too for some time. A lot of antennas of phone companies were on those buildings and I only got home after 2 [PM]. We all walked for about 2 hours under the frying sun, and no shade on that huge bridge, and than another 2 hours in traffic jams in Brooklyn. so from 10 [AM] to 2 I was just hoping to get home, and hoping that everyone I know would be all right. My mother works in Manhattan Hospital for Special Surgery, so of course they did not let her go home. But all non-essencial services were closed and evacuating. It feels so strange now, like New York has become a different city in a way. I feel it has grown up, like a child who had to deal with death. But there is a certain nobility about it. People have been great through it all everybody helped each other. There was no crime, not even rudness. Everybody just quietly came together on this one.