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Nothing could have prepared New York - or indeed the world - for the morning of September 11, 2001 , when terrorists took over four hijacked planes, crashing two of them into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, a third plane into the Pentagon in Washington, DC, and a fourth in a field south of Pittsburgh, PA. New York was hit hardest: within hours, each tower had collapsed, and the fallout and debris resulted in the destruction of a number of nearby buildings. Around 3000 people were killed in the attack, while smoking rubble piled several stories high. The signature skyline was no more.
Beyond the staggering number of lives lost, the billions in assets wiped out, the wreckage of subway lines and so on, there were other holes to deal with: entire firefighting crews, and quite a few at or near the top of the ranks in the fire and police departments died in the collapse. New Yorkers - and many from around the world - rallied to the rescue effort under the compassionate yet firm leadership of Giuliani. Suddenly, few wanted to see him go, though he was precluded by law for running for a third term in the elections (whose primaries, ironically, had been scheduled for September 11th).
The man who did eventually take control, new Republican mayor Michael Bloomberg (an ex-Democrat to boot), has a yeoman's task ahead. Rebuilding the city will take a long while; restoring shaken faith and economic fortune will take more than just time - and it's not as if the city's other problems have gone away, just taken a back seat and been put in slightly different perspective. Still, if any city is resilient enough to weather the damage and bounce back, clearly it's New York.
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