Reading eyewitness recalls World Trade Centre attacks 25 years on

Karen Rowland assumed, like so many others, that the first plane was an accident when she saw it on TV.

Accidents like it had happened in New York City before. It must have been like when a plane crashed into the Empire State Building in 1945.

Leaving her flat, still alarmed by what she saw, she met a neighbour, a doctor who worked at a nearby hospital, St Vincent’s. She told him he would have a “rough day”.

Moments later, having left their building, she saw the second plane hit the World Trade Center. She realised what was happening around them was no accident.

“There was screaming and hugging of total strangers and a lot of silence,” she said.

“In a moment like that you don’t really grasp what’s going on. Later I came to find out that I knew people on that plane. They were buyers of mine.”

Then a fashion designer in New York, she now lives in Reading and is a former borough councillor.