The American Airlines jet crashed into one of the most traumatised neighbourhoods in the New York area, forcing its firefighters, police officers and residents to try once more to comprehend an awful tragedy.
The beautiful Rockaway Peninsula, a community where almost 90 per cent of the residents are Irish and Irish American, had already suffered the largest loss of life of any neighbourhood following the September 11th attacks.
The St Francis de Sales parish church, close to the crash site, has so far held memorial services for some 40 of its parishioners, mainly firefighters, police officers and workers in the Wall Street area, with that number expected to rise. Some estimates suggest as many as 80 children there have lost a parent.
Those children were at least spared the awful sight of yesterday's carnage as their school, just a couple of blocks away from where the main section of the jetliner came down, was closed for the Veterans' Day holiday. Their high school and elementary school have now become triage centres to treat casualities.
"I can't believe this. It's like it's happening all over again. That the firefighters and police to have to go through this all over again," Sister Mary Beata, an Irish-American nun in the Breezy Point area of Rockaway, told The Irish Times.
Sister Beata is an organist and has sung at many of the memorial services in the area. She, like so many in the clannish community, knew many of those who were killed or are still missing in the World Trade Centre attacks.
Bell Harbour, where many houses were destroyed by the air crash, is one of the most exclusive addresses in Rockaway. Again it is predominantly Irish and Irish American, with a small number of Jewish and Italian families.
Mr Adrian Flannelly, of the Irish Radio Network, described Rockaway as one of the few "really Irish neighbourhoods" in New York. The peninsula used to be known as "Irishtown".
"It used to have more bars than grocery shops. It had a Mayo House, a Leitrim House. There are very strong links with the west of Ireland."
In recent years it has also become home to many people working on Wall Street, with the ease of the 15-mile commute. Many of the Cantor Fitzgerald employees who died in the World Trade Centre attacks lived here.
New York's mayor, Mr Rudy Guiliani, told a news conference that between six and eight people were missing from the neighbourhood after yesterday's crash.
Mr Giuliani urged people to remain calm. "We're just being tested one more time and we're going pass this test, too," he said in Rockaway.
"The first thing that went through my mind is, 'Oh, my God.' I just passed the church in which I've been to, I think, 10 funerals here. Rockaway was particularly hard hit.
"The disproportionate number of the people we lost, not just the police and firefighters, but even the workers at the World Trade Centre, were from Rockaway and Staten Island."