People looked up, as they did that day in September, in awe and in horror. They clustered in groups, holding cellphones to their ears and cameras to their eyes as a plume of smoke hovered over Lower Manhattan once again.

Yet it was more than the sight that reminded some of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks nearly six years ago. It was the sounds and the smell: breaking glass clanking its way down a burning skyscraper, a helicopter’s whir somewhere above, an acrid, noxious scent filling the streets.

The fire that tore through several floors of the vacated Deutsche Bank building opposite ground zero yesterday afternoon struck 24 days from the sixth anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center.

The past and the present seemed to briefly collide on the blocks surrounding ground zero, as residents and tourists, reminded of the panic of that September morning, worried anew on an August afternoon.