Yikes! Being trapped in the subway must have sucked something fierce! A friend of mine was on the 2 train and had made it (from Brooklyn) up to Park Place when they actually *announced* that there were terrorist attacks above ground and they were heading back to Clark Street, in Brooklyn.
It's kinda strange, but I had no reaction to this as it was happening. Someone on the train said that a plane crashed into the Twin Towers. After we went through 14th, they announced it and added that the train would be taken out of service at Brooklyn Bridge. We were stuck about a half hour, and I did entertain thoughts of leaving the train and hitting the tunnels. Because of my ignorance of the Towers collapse, tardiness was my concern. Upon evacuation, some of us tried to go to work, but cops would turn us away on every street. Little did I know my coworkers were trapped in the data center till the dust settled. The A/C units used to protect the servers also protected them.
Walking uptown, the people huddled in front of every TV and listening to every radio told me something big was happening, but I just wanted to get to my aunt's house. The knowledge would come eventually, no need to know right now. Got to my aunt's, watched it happen thirty times over for an hour before I really realized they were down. That's when the enormity of it all sank in. A foreign attack on our homeland, martial law in NYC, a sickening massacre, cheating death by a half hour- and then came the sadness and the anger.