The terrorist action of September 11, 2001, claimed an estimated 2,800 lives. After over eight months of herculean effort by the emergency services and volunteers, many working day and night, the site clearance ended officially on May 30, 2002, with 1796 people still unaccounted for

I had spent an hour of the evening of September 10 chatting to an old New York drinking buddy, who was on a special assignment at the New York Post. He had only arrived in New York that day. A few months previously we had stood together on the Observation Deck of the South Tower (WTC2), taking in the views while deciding how long we could last before our first beer in Soho's Cub Room. As we talked over some of our New York tales, I monopolised most of the conversation using the bluest shade of language available to let him know just what I thought of his 'all-expenses paid' visit to south Manhattan

On September 11, I had to work through the morning on a football column, which I was writing from home in London. With the job completed by early afternoon, UK time, I flicked on the TV to grab a        10-minute break. One World Trade Center, the north tower, was smoking, apparently having been hit by a small plane. As I watched, mildly concerned, a passenger plane screamed into shot and ploughed into WTC2

I did not move from my living room for 12 hours. Flicking cable channels between the BBC and CNN news broadcasts was interrupted only by telephone calls from colleagues, trying to make sense of what was happening so many miles away, and keen to find out if there was any news of our pal

Attempting to phone NYC was useless. Communications networks, some of which were routed through WTC1, were down, phone lines disabled. It was three hours after the first plane hit that I received an email from John to say he had watched everything from street level, cemented with horror to the sidewalk outside the Soho Grand, before joining the crowd running north up Broadway to safety. The email's subject heading contained one simple word: 'Fuck' 

I took the photographs below a few months before and after that day