While most MSU students watched the horror of Tuesday’s attacks on the United States unfold on TV sets, an MSU student in Washington, D.C., and a graduate in New York witnessed the chaos firsthand.

Adam Crysler started his day like any other.

Crysler, a communication senior, is an intern at the Department of Commerce and had just started work at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in downtown Washington.

But it wasn’t long before he knew something was terribly wrong.

“Someone announced that the World Trade Center towers had been hit,” he said. “Then we heard that someone had hit the Pentagon.”

While he and his co-workers were evacuated from the Reagan building, a bomb went off in front of the State Department, just one block away.

“I was walking out behind the Commerce Department and this shockwave just hit me,” he said.

The streets were chaotic, he said.

“Right now everyone’s in shock. I’ve never seen so many cell phones out in my life,” he said Tuesday afternoon. “People were walking up to you asking to use your cell phone.”

Crysler got in touch with his parents and let them know he was all right, and then headed over to the Pentagon to see the damage.

“I was there for an hour,” he said. “You can see blackened charrings I’d say about 200 yards in length.”

Crysler said the streets were full of employees, emergency workers and members of Congress being taken to safety.

But things have calmed down near where he lives, six blocks from the U.S. Capitol.

“The streets are empty,” he said Tuesday afternoon. “Everyone is home just glued to the TV set right now.”

But despite the empty streets, Washington will be far from quiet this week.

Up the coast, 2001 MSU graduate and former State News staff member Becky Amos’ morning train ride from her Hoboken, N.J., home into New York was fairly standard - until she arrived at her destination.

When she got off the train shortly after 9 a.m., the second of the twin towers hadn’t been struck yet.

Amos had a clear view of the World Trade Center from her train station.

“There were people standing in the streets looking up,” she said. “There was this huge hole in the building. People were just stunned.”

She arrived at her office where co-workers had gathered around the TV as the second tower was hit by a plane, forcing the evacuation of lower Manhattan.

Amos and her co-workers left the building.

“From where we were standing we couldn’t see anything,” she said.

Until the first tower collapsed.

“Then we saw all these people running to the corner,” Amos said. “It was like a war.”

However, there were a few rays of hope on the day of darkness, Amos said.

“When people were waiting in line to give blood, the local pizza place was bringing out pizza and just giving it to people,” she said.

“People had signs on their doors saying ‘If you need a place to stay you can stay here.’”

Since no one was being permitted to leave the island immediately following the attacks, Amos went to a friend’s apartment in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, where police were passing out dust masks.

She remained there for an hour until she could find a ferry back to New Jersey.

Amos said she considers herself lucky.

After all, she visited the World Trade Center on Monday - one day before the building crumbled.

“I’m doing OK,” she said. “It’s really kind of surreal.”