Surreal feeling in the whole city

Blackburn said he worked until 12:30 p.m. ET, when he received word of his next assignment, traveling 18 hours by van to New York City, where he would be stationed for the next month and a half.

While up there, he said, “there was such a solemn, disbelief, surreal feeling in the whole city,” compounded by the smell of burning bodies and hair in the air: “It was like a twilight zone,” he added.

The 34-year CNN veteran wasn’t fond of his time in the city, saying there was a sad, expressionless feeling, with people coming to his camera with pictures of loved ones.

However, he considers himself lucky, from a journalistic point of view. His footage will forever remain a window into how newsrooms operated before today’s new tech, all the while covering “one of the craziest things” in his life.