I was working from home as a software developer that day. My sister called me right before 9 AM to tell me a plane had hit the World Trade Center. She had been working there until April of that year and was now across the Hudson at the firms Jersey City offices (this became an issue a little later as records were not up to date and she was listed among the missing for quite some time). I turned on the TV and while I was watching it the second plane hit. I thought it was a video replay of the initial hit but my sister was watching from her office window and screamed that a second plane just hit. I had two wired phone lines (no cell yet) and started fielding and making calls with both of them. Many friends and family remembered my sister worked in the WTC but did not have the newest information. I also had AOL Instant Messenger (remember that?) open and received a flood of contacts from people all over. One family friend who lived out in Fort Collins had no idea how to contact my sister. Then she remembered the firm my sister worked for and that they had a local office. She contacted their local office and a broker there was able to look my sister up (had updated information) and told her she worked in Jersey City. They were able to pass a message to her through their network.
I remember shortly after the second hit, I went outside to put up the flag and I heard the roar of the two fighter jets from Otis AFB overhead. They flew along the north shore of Long Island just about overhead. I was surprised they were not moving faster as there was no sonic boom. I had the TV on for a while using an antenna and, as expected, the signals went off the air (a lot later than I would have thought). Luckily I had just been hooked up for cable Internet a week earlier and they had not yet installed a filter in the line to block video. I hooked the cable up to my TV and was able to continue watching the TV coverage. That is how I saw the first tower come down. I was chatting with a cousin in Minnesota through AOL IM just after the first tower came down and mentioned one of the obscure reports stated (correctly as there were many doubters) that the second tower was most likely going to come down pretty soon due to the more extensive damage. I must have been disconnected only five minutes from her when the tower fell.
I spent most of the day watching coverage and chatting with my sister from time-to-time. She along with thousands of others were trapped in New Jersey as there was no transport to Manhattan - only out of it. Her department evacuated to one of her colleagues apartments in New Jersey and she called periodically from her cell. Return ferry service started up again in the evening and she was able to get back to Manhattan. Somehow she made it to the Brooklyn Bridge and walked to Brooklyn with thousands of others doing the same thing. Eventually found transportation that got her back home to her apartment in Ridgewood, Queens. Later in the afternoon, I went across the street to a neighbor who had a huge satellite dish. He tuned in to the raw video feeds via satellite from ground zero that never made it to air. Bodies, debris, smashed first responder vehicles. Pretty gruesome stuff.
I had planned to go into Queens that day with my mother to the columbarium in Fresh Pond and then jump over to Ridgewood. It would have been my maternal grandmothers 95th birthday that day and we usually brought flowers in for the niche. She passed 2 1/2 years earlier so she was still fresh on our minds. At one point my mother still wanted to go in until I firmly pointed out to her that the city was closed at the border and no one was allowed to drive in from Nassau. And we would be lucky if we would even be able to get back out with all the exiting traffic.
Here at my location on Long Island, we got the smoke two days later. Caused a lot of false fire alarms as people were calling their various fire departments around here reporting smell of smoke in the area.