Deputy governor Tim Gurney was in a meeting with the Governor and members of the US Coast Guard at Government House when a solemn-faced secretary passed him a note saying an aircraft had hit the World Trade Center. Excusing himself on the pretext of checking something, he rushed to see CNN on TV, by which time the second aircraft had hit.

"With the first aircraft I thought there had been some sort of accident, but when the second one hit it was very clear that this was no accident," Mr. Gurney says. "I watched in absolute horror and shock, and with a sense of disbelief."

Of course, with the news, the meeting ended immediately, and concern swiftly moved to addressing the implications of what the disaster could mean for Bermuda, particularly since US airports had closed.

"There was a lot of work to be done in setting up contingency arrangements," Mr. Gurney says. "We met with the EMO very soon after, and it was clear pretty quickly that a number of aircraft were going to be rerouted to Bermuda. Not knowing who would be on those aircraft meant that possibly more trouble could be on the way."

Looking back, the deputy governor says:"The Island did an amazing job handling all those people. By 10.30 a.m. we knew there was going to be a significant number of people arriving here, and by 6 p.m. everybody had been cleared from the airport. It was quite a performance."

In addition, that evening Mr. and Mrs. Gurney carried through with hosting a dinner at their home for US travel writers.

"The atmosphere was very strange," Mr. Gurney remembers. "Most people spent the evening either watching TV or sending e-mails to friends. It was a very busy day, and one I would not like to experience again."

***

US Consul General Denis Coleman, Jr. was at home in Southampton, Long Island and on the telephone to a friend in New York City whose office was within sight of the World Trade Center.

"He told me an explosion had occurred and he thought a plane had flown into it, and ironically I said, `That's good because I thought it might be a terrorist incident'. We spent the rest of the day riveted to the TV, and talking to friends who were unable to get information on their children.

"Unfortunately, at the end of the day there was nothing to say. We had friends and children of friends who died there.

"At one point I was talking to one of my children who was on the roof a New York building watching the second plane hit. It was a horrible circumstance, but you just have to gird your loins and commit yourself to working on ensuring that things like that don't happen again. That is the only thing I can take away from it."

***

Mayor of Hamilton Lawson Mapp was at his desk in City Hall when his godson rang to tell him an aircraft had flown into World Trade Center. In disbelief, Mr. Mapp said: "Go on, you're kidding - you're watching a movie."

Seconds later, the young man said, `Hold on, there's another one going in', and the Mayor replied, "It can't be."

Rushing to assistant Corporation of Hamilton Secretary Kelly Miller's office, he stared in disbelief at the television screen.

"My heart and stomach fell right down to my feet. I had the most awful feeling," Mr. Mapp says. "As we watched, the Twin Towers began to disintegrate, and I said, `Oh my God'. It was difficult to believe what I was watching."

The Mayor stayed just a little longer before rushing back to his sign painting business, where he told employee Harold Smith they were shutting up shop.

"I just couldn't work any more, so I took him home with me, where we watched the television for the rest of the day."

This past weekend the Corporation of Hamilton delivered to New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg the book of condolence it had placed in City Hall lobby in the aftermath of the tragedy.

***

Attorney-General Dame Lois Browne Evans was among those in a Cabinet meeting when they learned the World Trade Center was on fire, and they immediately adjourned to watch events unfold on television.

"I could not believe it," Dame Lois says. "New York was one of my favourite places to visit, and I love its skyline. It is a beautiful sight just before evening. In fact, I was given a painting of the skyline, so I was quite moved and shocked. For those of us who went to school in England in the 1940s and saw the bombed buildings it brought back memories. However, the aftermath of such cruelty does not mean that everybody can now go hog wild and start bringing out hatred in all manner of people."

***

Business writer Roger Crombie still cannot believe the appalling cruelty of which some human beings are capable, nor yet how his life might have changed had he not altered his travel plans.

"I usually fly to London via New York, spending a couple of days there on the way out or back. I had planned to fly to London on September 11, which would have put me at JFK at 8.45 in the morning, but for reasons that are now lost in the mists of time I flew direct to London on September 10 on British Airways, arriving at 7 a.m. on the 11th. When I arrived at my dad's house in North London I knew nothing of the events in the US. Instead, I told him I was going to bed to catch up on my sleep, to which he replied,

`No, you're not, come and watch what is happening on TV'.

"I didn't sleep for 48 hours. It was incomprehensible. I have always thought that all human beings react in a certain way to certain stimuli, and that day I couldn't fathom how other human beings could act in such an inhuman way. Later on, I came to view the events of September 11 as the latest in a 6000-year series of inhuman, barbarous acts. Whilst there is no comfort in that, at least I have been able to give it a context. The history of man is the history of war, it seems to me, and this was an act of war. The difficulty is in defining the enemy."

***

Photographer and dub singer/recording artist Ras Mykkal was about to turn his radio down so he could listen to a tape when he heard that the World Trade Center had been hit.

"The first thing that came to mind was that it was a small plane, but when I turned on the TV I saw the tower smoking with a big hole in it. Then they started showing clips of the second plane when it hit. I thought, `What is going on?' Then they split the screen and showed the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. When we had gone to Washington for Bermuda at the Smithsonian, I had seen the Pentagon for the first time, and I thought, `Oh damn, they've hit the Pentagon too'. That was the first time I realised something strange was going on - big commercial planes hitting all these landmarks. My parents were visiting from Tennessee and we were glued to the TV in disbelief. One of us said (looking at the Twin Towers), `It is going to be really hard putting that fire out way up there', and about ten minutes later the whole building fell down. The innocent lives that were lost just horrified me. The sad thing is that America refuses to realise the type of enemies she has. It is always the innocent who pay the price of the guilty.

"I don't think there is a country in the world that hasn't been affected.

"I would like to see the United Nations live up to what it is truly supposed to represent: nations working together for world peace, to end poverty and hunger, and promote education. Everything should be brought before the UN and negotiated. War should be the last resort.

"The fact that America does what she feels like regardless of what the UN or anybody else has to say reduces the UN to its puppet. In the 1940s Emperor Haile Selassie made nine predictions, and said the world would not know peace until the UN plays its rightful role amongst world affairs."

***

Mrs. Cornelia Young, a Bermudian who lives in Texas, was staying at her Somerset cottage with "no clue" of the unfolding disaster until a friend telephoned and told her to turn on the TV.

"I just stood there and said, `Oh my God'. For the rest of the day I was just glued to the television, moaning and groaning. I had lived in New York and knew the building very well, and I felt so close to it. The Windows on the World restaurant was the most wonderful place to have dinner. My son Chris had worked in one of the Twin Towers before he moved to California, and I was very grateful for that change. He said just sat in front of the TV and cried because he knew the building so well."

A close friend of Mrs. Young's, who worked in a building across the street from the Twin Towers, recently stayed with her.

"Her boss said, `Stay at your desks. Don't go anywhere, everything will be fine' but she just said to herself, `I'm getting to hell out of here', put on her sneakers, and walked all the way from downtown Manhattan to Grand Central Station, which is a great distance, all the while looking back at what was going on behind her. By sheer luck she was able to catch a train home just before everything shut down."

***

Mrs. Ann Smith Gordon, president and CEO of PALS, had a radio in her office but it wasn't on, so she was oblivious to the breaking news until a friend called to tell her.

"Then I put the radio on and it was just the most horrific news," she said.

"Such a terrible, terrible thing to happen. It certainly shook up the world, and I don't think it will ever be the same because to me it is very difficult for this side of the world to comprehend the amount of hatred there is in the world. It is scary and very sad."

Like everyone else, when Mrs. Smith Gordon finally returned home at the end of the day she put on her television "to watch the full horror unfold countless times".

Having recently heard on a BBC broadcast that children who see the images replayed on television think it is happening again, Mrs. Smith Gordon says: "That is very upsetting, especially when you think of the families who have lost husbands, fathers and caregivers. I have said all along that I don't believe that bin Laden could have known what an incredibly destructive job those terrorists did."

***

Mrs. Barbara Hooper, manager of Oceans Gift Shop at the Bermuda Underwater Exploration Institute, had heard the news of the first aircraft flying into the World Trade Center and was on the telephone her daughter when then-Director Ralph Richardson arrived with a television set.

"All the staff gathered around and we actually saw the second aircraft hit the Twin Towers," Mrs. Hooper says.

"The one thing everyone said instantly was, `This is terrorism'. As soon as we saw it we all knew. Thereafter, we had the television on all day. The visitors were just mouth-agape. It was such a solemn thing. We had people standing there crying. You couldn't work any more. There was nothing that took the place of what was happening on the screen: the people running, the people with cameras, the dust, the fire, the devastation...it was horrifying. I think we kept the TV on in the shop for the whole week so that visitors could keep current on what was happening. It was like the death of Princess Diana - who could forget that? And then a couple of years later this horror. In terms of impact for the young people, I think these are the two main things they will remember."

Artist Belinda Tartaglia, who works at a local law firm, had been working on plans for a visiting group and was at the Fairmont Hamilton Princess hotel attending a final meeting when she learned that an aircraft had hit "some tower" in New York.

"All I could think was that it was a little plane with maybe two people in it, but we were told it was a regular airliner, so the meeting was stopped because two of the people due to attend were coming from New York and three were coming from London."

When she returned to her office, a big screen had been set up and everyone was watching the unfolding drama.

"I was finished for the whole day, it was unbelievable," Mrs. Tartaglia says. "You could see the bodies falling, and I couldn't take any more. I just had to get out of there. All the things I was going to do in my lunchhour suddenly seemed so insignificant. It dawned on me that nothing except your life and your health was important. Without those you don't have board meetings, lunches, fancy cruises. It put everything in perspective for the rest of your life."

***

Bermuda Regiment Bandmaster Barrett Dill's memories of how he first heard the news are etched in his memory forever. Sitting in his office at Warwick Camp, he was on the phone to a friend at investment bankers Goldman Sachs in New York City when the man suddenly said there was "an almighty bang" outside his window and he would have to call back.

Imagining that there had been an accident, the Bandmaster rushed to the Officers' Mess to tune in to CNN, by which time the second tower had been struck.

"I then realised that this was a planned attack, and I tried to contact my friend but all the phone lines were down. It took four days before I found out he was okay. It shook me to the core. To sit there and watch the towers collapsing was an emotional low. Nothing can justify that happening. Even though we hear all these wonderful stories about people being heroes, I feel that justice has not yet been served. It still gives me a horrible shudder to know that all the people who were responsible have not yet been made to pay a penance for what they did."

As a military man, however, Major Dill concedes that "from an operational standpoint the mission was brilliantly constructed".

***

Masterworks Foundation director Tom Butterfield was similarly affected. Without radio or TV in his office, he knew nothing of the tragedy as he arrived at Partner Re for a meeting, only to be told that it was cancelled in view of the unfolding events. Instead, he was invited to join the others watching television.

"Naturally, as an insurance office, everything had come to a standstill and everyone was glued to the TV as events unfolded. You could not believe that people could plot such a monstrous thing in their minds to undo the human race. I remember at the end of the Gulf War somebody said to me, `Now there is going to be a New World Order', but if anything there is a new world disorder. I was reminded how far we have come today from feeling comfortable."