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As the first tower collapsed, Stan Honda was in lower Manhattan amid people 'who seemed to be walking in a daze.'

September, 11 2001: Marcy Borders covered in dust as she takes refuge in an office building after one of the World Trade Center towers collapsed in New York. AFP PHOTO/FILES/Stan HONDA

September, 11 2001: Edward Fine covering his mouth as he walks through the debris after the collapse of one of the World Trade Center towers in New York. Fine was on the 78th floor of 1 World Trade Center when it was hit by a hijacked plane. AFP PHOTO/Stan HONDA

In the early morning of Sept. 11, 2001, I was alerted by Henny Abrams, an AFP photo stringer, that a plane had crashed into one of the towers of the World Trade Center.

I got on the subway line near my apartment which goes to Lower Manhattan. I got out at the last stop, which is City Hall.

Above ground there were hundreds of people on the street looking at the WTC twin towers, now both towers were in flames.

I had missed the news of the second plane crash so I didn't know what had happened. As I ran towards the buildings, thousands of people were running in the opposite direction, towards me and away from the WTC area.

I stopped to shoot one of the towers and it began to splinter and break apart.

There was a giant roar, like a train, and between the buildings I could see huge clouds of smoke and dust billowing out.

People were running from the cloud, trying to out race it.

This was the collapse of the first tower. 

I was near a building lobby and a police officer was pulling people into the entrance to get them out of the danger. I went in and outside became black for a few minutes.

A woman came in completely covered in gray dust. You could tell she was nicely dressed for work and for a second she stood in the lobby. I took one shot of her before the police officer started to direct people up a set of stairs, thinking it would be safer off the ground level.

As the dust and smoke cleared I went back outside. It looked like it had snowed, everything was covered in dust, including people. It was very quiet. People seemed to be walking in a daze. I photographed rescue workers helping people to a city bus. A police officer bent over onto the trunk of a car to rest, coughing.

I saw a man in a suit walking through the dust and rubble. I took several shots of him before going in another direction. Later, when I looked at the photo, I noticed he was still carrying his briefcase, which was covered in dust like him.

The woman turned out to be Marcy Borders, who had worked for Bank of America in one of the towers. She or a friend had called AFP's Washington office tell them that Marcy was the woman in the photo. Michel Moutot and I went to New Jersey about a week after the attack to interview her.

The man was Ed Fine, an independent financial consultant who had an early appointment in one of the WTC towers. Fortune Magazine used the photo on its cover, he saw the magazine and called their editor to introduce himself. The magazine had been trying, with no luck, to find the man in the photos. I got a call from Fortune asking me to photograph Ed at his New Jersey home for a follow up story.

Aside from the horrible experience of covering the attacks on the WTC, it was amazing to meet the two people in the photos I shot. We rarely meet the subjects in news photos like these and it was nice to know they both survived.

Stan Honda

   'The Dust Lady', Marcy Borders, was 28 at the time. After September, 11 2001, she went into a deep depression and took several years to recover.

   Ed Fine was 58 at the time. He has kept the briefcase and suit he was wearing on that day. “I still wear it for important meetings. It’s like my lucky suit”, he told the Independent on September, 11 2004.