What 9/11 was like for veteran Post police reporter: Nothing could prepare me

Sept.11, 2001, started out like any other Tuesday morning. I was getting ready for my job as a police reporter for The Post, when I saw on TV that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.By the time I got to Manhattan, the buildings had already fallen. As I got closer to the devastation, the visibility was less and less — and a dense fog hung in the air.People were walking in 6-inches of ash — the result of tons of pulverized concrete from the collapsed buildings. When I got to Church Street, it looked like a scene from a movie where planets collided and nothing was left. The only problem was there was no director yelling “cut!” This was real.On my right, dozens of ambulances were lined up with their doors open, waiting for the injured who never came.Coffee carts were sitting empty with donuts and bagels covered in ash.

I thought, just yesterday I was in Century 21, now its windows were broken and it was badly damaged.Streets were buried beneath dust, twisted steel and concrete.Some piles were over 50-feet high.Smoke hung over the ruins creating a cloud that covered as far as I could see – which wasn’t far. The acrid smell was nauseating.

I was covered in dust from head-to-toe.As I walked around, I stepped over body parts and saw a wheel from one of the planes.I had covered hundreds of crime scenes all over the city, reported on serial killers and talked to murderers in jail.I remembered when 87 bodies were laid out in a gas station on Southern Boulevard in The Bronx after the Happy Land fire.I remembered 8 years earlier, I stood on these same streets while covering the 1993 World Trade Center bombing — but even that was nothing like what I was now witnessing.Cops and firemen were futilely trying to move thousands of pounds of debris by hand to find their brothers and sisters.

Some were crying because they knew the chances of recovery were minimal.A couple hours earlier, it was a quiet morning and now the world had changed forever.As news of the...