According to Dittmar, mercifully everyone on the 78th floor died instantly in the 2,000 degree fireball.

Descending the first few flights of stairs, Dittmar was reassured by a companion, "Compared to the 1993 Trade Center bombing, this is nothing. Back then there were no lights in the stairwells and little organization."At the 90th floor, everything changed.

We didn't know what had happened until around 1 p.m. I'm sure the principal was trying to postpone telling us for as long as he could, but parents were flooding into the school to pick up their children, so everyone knew something serious was going on. Finally, he gathered us, one grade at a time, in an empty math classroom. He told us the World Trade Center had been bombed. There was no mention of planes.

As a kid, you never feel like you're too young to understand. You think you can grasp things just as well as grown-ups, and you don't like to be patronized

As I waited for a taxi to hail, I witnessed a man break into a small retail store. He sets-off an alarm and the police arrive in a minute, while he was still collecting his loot. Perhaps he was hoping that all 40,000 uniformed NYPD officers were downtown helping rescue people at the burning WTC.

Then I had my second reckoning with death. I'm alive, yeah. But I'm trapped beneath whatever fell on top of me and this place is filled with smoke and dust. This is how I'm gonna die — and this was worse. Because I was going to be cognizant of my death. I was going to be trapped in a hole and it was going to fill with smoke and they were going to find me like one of those guys buried in Pompeii.

How do you describe the sound of a 110-story building coming down directly above you? It sounded like what it was: a deafening tidal wave of building material coming down on my head. It appeared to be falling on the street directly where I was headed.

You're thinking, Gas main. It was so percussive, so close. I opened the bathroom door, looked outside, and saw fire.

I thought it was a bomb,” he said

He was unaware of what happened until his answering machine received an “all call” message from the department. Still not knowing exactly what was going on, Norman remembered turning on the TV and seeing what the rest of the country and the world would be glued to for countless weeks following.

The landscape as a whole was “surreal,” he said. “It looks like you’re on the surface of the moon.”

Only six people in the World Trade Center towers at the time of their collapse survived. Almost 10,000 others were treated for injuries, many severe.

At 10:30 a.m., the other Trade Center tower collapsed.

Less than 15 minutes after the terrorists struck the nerve center of the U.S. military, the horror in New York took a catastrophic turn for the worse when the south tower of the World Trade Center collapsed

slammed into the west side of the Pentagon military headquarters at 9:45 a.m.

World Trade Center and sliced into the south tower near the 60th floor.

On September 11, 2001, at 8:45 a.m. on a clear Tuesday morning, an American Airlines Boeing 767 loaded with 20,000 gallons of jet fuel crashed into the north tower of the World Trade Center in New York City. The impact left a gaping, burning hole near the 80th floor of the 110-story skyscraper, instantly killing hundreds of people and trapping hundreds more in higher floors.

Now imagine that you can't see anything.  The fire has shorted out electricity to the building (or the fire department has shut if off for their own safety), so all of the lights have gone out, and the room is rapidly filling with thick gray smoke, so much smoke that not even sunlight can get in.

So far I have mainly described the physical sensations of firefighting, but there is another far more powerful feeling that comes from firefighting, and that is the overwhelming feeling of satisfaction and accomplishment that comes from saving someone's life.  I can't even begin to describe it, but it's as real, powerful, and memorable as any of the physical sensations I have ever experienced fighting fire

As a firefighter you constantly find yourself rushing into completely unknown situations where you might be injured or killed--you don't know what is on fire, you don't know the layout of the building, you don't know who is in the building, you don't know whether the roof is about to collapse, you don't know if your equipment will fail or you will run out of air at the wrong time--it's a laundry list of unknowns, but you go in anyway because you are so hopped up on adrenaline that you think you can do anything.

I spent three hours in the hospital, being treated for smoke inhalation. My blonde hair was black. So was my skin. It took three showers to wash that fire off of me.

my whole body shut down. I lost my vision and felt as if I were asphyxiating.

I started to feel my skin burn, and I screamed to the 911 operator, "I'm burning. My body is burning." She kept saying fire trucks were on their way. Breathing got harder; so did hanging on to the window. I needed oxygen—I could tell I was about to pass out

4:30am: Up, savor an amazing cup of coffee. I love that! 5am: Fill out my Daily Action Plan, work on a project that I'm immersed in -- whether it's my book, a marketing project or experimenting with [Om Aroma’s] upcoming Carrot Rose serum. 7:30am: Daughter wakes up, breakfast and bath. 8:30am: Off to school we go!

5am: Wake up and work out. A 30-minute run is all I need to get an additional three hours of energy later in the day. 6am: Work from home -- a great time to connect with our European team. 7am: Make breakfast for the girls and get them ready for school. 8:30am: Drop the girls off at school and head into the office. 9am: Grab a cup of tea and stop by and say hello to all of the teams based in our headquarters. 10am-12pm: Attend various meetings with my field development and marketing teams.

Rosie’s Daily Log 6am: Wake up and get ready before the kids get up. 7am: All kids wake up. We have breakfast, get dressed [and start] school prep madness. 8:30am: Drop off kids. 9am: Arrive at work.  

"Falling into a corner and rolling up and dying wasn't an option," Mr. Torrillo said. "I had to lick my wounds, and I had to push on."

Among his injuries were a fractured skull, broken ribs, a crushed spine and major internal bleeding.

"The thing is you've got to do it for you, and you've got to do it for the people who love you," Mr. Torrillo said.

I'mreluctanttogoshirtlessbecausethere'dbenowaytodisplaymycreden-tials.

Thefairspreadsitselfout,andvisuallyso.Themaingateisonarise,andthroughthetwosaggedhalvesofribbonyougetaspecularvan-tageonthewholething-virginandsun-glit-tered,eventhetentslookingfreshlypainted.Itseemsgarishandendlessandaggressivelyspecial

Wewaveatthem;theywaveback;it'sabsurd:we'reonlygoing4mph,

Notafedorainthehouse.

Theairislikewetwoo