CHARLOTTE, N.C. — As people around the country and world remember those we lost in the September 11 attacks, one Charlotte woman is looking back on how she survived that day.

Kathleen Britton was living and working just blocks away from the World Trade Center when she heard the planes hit the Twin Towers.

She can still recount that day in vivid detail.

“As I came out from underneath the building and I looked up, the whole west side of the tower was on fire. I thought, I just looked at it, and it was fire,” Britton says. “I heard people saying things like, ‘who’s doing this’ and ‘the world coming to an end.’ Then I heard the second jet coming. Now I didn’t identify it as a jet, I just heard the sound and thought, ‘oh no, that’s a really bad sound, I don’t like that sound.’ And the plane just slammed into Two World Trade Center over our heads. I was probably about 150 yards west at that point.”

Britton says one memory still sticks with her 19 years later.

“To stand there and talk to people like we’re talking right now, we were outside, it was a sunny day. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, except for smoke from the fire. And watch people dying was really difficult to do when you couldn’t do anything to help them,” she says.

Britton says she always takes 9/11 off from work so she can go to church and talk with friends who also survived the attacks.