"There were bodies everywhere," said Mr Palmer Doyle, a firefighter who lives a few blocks from the site of yesterday's Rockaway plane crash.
Mr Doyle works out of Engine Co. 224 in Brooklyn, but yesterday was an off-day that quickly became a workday. Just a little more than two months ago, many in this neighbourhood of firefighters and cops also went to work unexpectedly, trying to rescue thousands from the burning World Trade Centre. Many never returned.
So yesterday morning, as Belle Harbour residents were still grieving, still attending funerals and still aching, they woke up to "unbelievable" horror in their own backyards.
"There were bodies everywhere, and some of them were people I knew," said Mr Doyle. "It was just a terrible sight. Eight houses on one street were totally destroyed. I saw the house where the engine fell, and it was gone.
"Thank God for the fact that a lot of firefighters and police live in this neighbourhood," he said. He was alerted by what he called an "ungodly scream" from a nearby neighbour who was out sweeping leaves off her stoop.
"She said she saw a plane falling," said Mr Doyle.
A few blocks away, retired Metro North policeman, Mr Frank Dowd, was on his way to St Francis de Sales church, where many firefighters have been memorialised since the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Centre.
"I was taking a woman from my neighbourhood to the church for a 9 a.m. Mass. But as soon as the news of the plane crash came, Mgr. Martin Geraghty evacuated the church and ran over to open a morgue at the school."
Mr Dowd, who was a bodyguard for Cardinal John O'Connor at St Patrick's Day parades, said the smoke at the disaster was "unbelievable. It was black from the jet fuel," he said.
Three days earlier, Gail Allen had had been at a memorial service for her son, Richie, a fireman killed at the World Trade Centre.
She watched the plane drop out of the sky onto the houses of her neighbours on 130th Street, razing at least four of them to the ground. Flames shot into the air and the quiet beachside neighbourhood of Belle Harbour filled with black sooty smoke.
"It's a neighbourhood that has been hit hard. To be hit again is hard to believe," Mrs Allen said. "I can't believe I have more to get through."