Paul Ricci, a television executive who sheltered in a Tribeca apartment with a woman he did not know during the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, reconnected with her in August 2023 after nearly 22 years.
Ricci said the conversation provided a measure of closure to a day that has remained vivid in his memory but fragmented in detail. The two recalled the chaos of the morning — the sound of the first explosion, the radio announcement that a plane had struck the World Trade Center, the shock of the second impact and then the collapse of both towers — and the decision to stay inside the 10th-floor apartment rather than try to flee through the streets below.
Ricci had been staying overnight at his then-girlfriend’s apartment on Reade Street, less than a mile north of the north tower of the World Trade Center. He said he was wakened at 8:46 a.m. by a loud boom and, at first, assumed thunder. A few minutes later a radio DJ announced that a plane had hit the World Trade Center. Ricci pulled open the blinds and saw a gaping, smoke-filled hole in the face of the north tower.
Initially, he and others treated the incident as an accident. Ricci recalled wondering how firefighters would extinguish the blaze and regretting not having a camera. He said the full scope of the attack became clear only after a second, muffled explosion while he was in the shower, followed by television footage replaying the second impact. He heard the words "we're under attack" and said panic followed.
Also in the apartment that morning was Libba Alberson Inlow, a recent University of Alabama graduate who had been visiting a friend as she prepared to move to New York. Ricci said he had met her briefly the night before and buried her name in his memory; Inlow has said she remembers waking to Ricci’s urgent warning that the city had been attacked. In a recent conversation conducted over Zoom, the two compared memories of the hours they spent together.
Inlow, who had planned to move to New York for a job at Ralph Lauren, later said she had felt a premonition that New York might not be the right choice. Ricci said she was "impressively calm" during the first hour of the crisis, which he credits with helping keep him steady. Inlow said Ricci’s presence kept her from becoming overwhelmed.
The two watched the second tower tilt and collapse on television and from the apartment window. Ricci described a camera feed that appeared to show molten material or sparks on the tower’s edge, and the pair said they heard and felt the south tower’s collapse. They debated leaving the apartment to seek trains uptown but concluded they were safer sheltering in place. When the north tower fell, smoke and dust moved toward them with such force that Ricci described it as "the strongest blizzard you’ve ever seen." They moved to a room at the back of the apartment, crouched behind the bed and waited until the dust settled and the sky cleared.
When they were able to move, Ricci and Inlow covered their mouths with towels and walked uptown through streets blanketed with ash and debris. They parted ways in midtown; Inlow met a friend and Ricci and his then-girlfriend joined a packed train leaving the city among other shell-shocked New Yorkers.
Ricci said he told the story for years, then stopped. He added that he often felt his experience paled beside those who had lost loved ones or risked their lives on Sept. 11. Still, the memory of the woman who shared that morning with him persisted. For two decades he did not seek her out and did not even know her name.
Ricci reconnected with his former girlfriend, Beth, and through her located the roommate who was hosting Inlow. Beth provided a contact, and after several attempts Ricci and Inlow connected by video call on Aug. 23, 2023. The conversation confirmed key details of their shared experience and allowed both to fill gaps in memory and acknowledge the role each played for the other during the crisis.
"Without you, I don’t think I would have made it," Inlow told Ricci in the recent call, according to Ricci’s account. The two agreed they would not become close friends but said the reconnection mattered. Ricci said speaking with Inlow "felt like finally closing a book that had remained open on a nightstand in my mind for two decades." Inlow said she was grateful he reached out.
Ricci, who now leads unscripted entertainment at BuzzFeed Studios, said he does not plan to press the encounter into a deeper friendship but expects they may check in on Sept. 11 in future years. He said the reconnection eased some of the agitation he had carried about that morning and allowed him to acknowledge publicly the help he received from a stranger while the city was under attack.
The piece was first published in September 2023 as part of a HuffPost Personal "Best Of" series and recounts events from a day that remains a defining moment for many who lived through it. Ricci’s account is consistent with broader timelines and footage from the morning of Sept. 11, including the sequence of impacts, the collapse of both towers and the grounding of flights nationwide. The recollection also echoes widespread accounts of New Yorkers grappling with immediate decisions to flee or shelter as dust and debris blanketed lower Manhattan.
For Ricci and Inlow, the conversation in August 2023 provided a private reckoning: a shared testimony of fear, restraint and mutual support amid one of the most traumatic days in recent American history. Both said they would carry that memory forward but that the encounter no longer occupied the unresolved space it had for years.