Maybe it was fate that brought Michael Burton not to his Queens, N.Y., office early on Sept. 11, but to lower Manhattan for a meeting at City Halljust a few blocks from the World Trade Center. Or maybe it was destiny that the scrawny kid from Rockland County, N.Y., whose parents toughened him up with karate lessons in seventh grade, would grow up to manage the largest peacetime mobilization of construction forces in the wake of the most unprecedented act of terror the world had ever seen.
The calm of a sunny late summer morning was shattered that Tuesday by the horrific sight of two jet airplanes crashing into each of the two 110-story WTC towers, 18 minutes apart. In less than two hours, both buildings would collapse in a maelstrom of fire, smoke, choking dust and debris. The hysteria that gripped New York was compounded by rumors of another attack at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C, and of a mysterious plane crash in rural Pennsylvania.