New London — Daryl Finizio has never been shy about sharing his opinions on a wide range of subjects, a tendency that sometimes made things difficult for him when he became New London's first strong mayor in nine decades.

But two years after his re-election defeat, Finizio, now an attorney practicing general law, says he has nearly always shied away from one subject: being a survivor of 9/11. That's partly because people often doubt or minimize his story and partly to avoid having to relive the horror of Ground Zero all over again.

So it may come as a surprise that the 40-year-old Finizio just released a memoir, "A September Morning," that recounts his experiences in vivid detail, down to the sock color of people falling from the World Trade Center 16 years ago Monday. The book currently is available only on Kindle, though he is planning a run of perhaps 100 printed copies at Minuteman Press in downtown sometime soon.

"I wanted to be very unfiltered," Finizio said in a recent interview at his newly purchased 19th century home on Mountain Avenue. "I tried to be very, very honest, especially about describing the chaos on the street."

Finizio, 24 at the time and serving as a legislative policy analyst for the New York City Council, said he knew at least 50 people who died that day at the World Trade Center, including many firefighters he had met while working for the city.

He heard about the first plane crash from a friend while working in a Manhattan building near the World Trade Center, deciding impulsively to head closer to the action to see if he could help out at City Hall, thinking the first strike had been an accident involving a small plane.

By the time he reached Ground Zero, a crowd could be heard gasping, and Finizio looked up to see bodies falling like rain from the North Tower. He counted 13 in all.

"The last person was a white male, about my age," he recounts in the book. "He fell looking skyward, his arms and legs kicking as if he were running through air in vain."

Soon after, he heard the second plane strike the south tower, the one that carried 9/11 victims Ruth and Juliana McCourt of New London, though at the time he thought the sound was related to the first tower's blaze. Hearing a loud explosion, and watching debris flying through the air like shrapnel, Finizio fully expected to die, ducking at the last minute behind a postal truck as a woman next to him appeared to freeze.

He feared the woman had been struck, but looked away without being able to tell for sure what had happened, thinking only of survival.

"To this day, I don't know what happened to her," he said, noting that he still has nightmares about not doing more to find her.

Another woman, though, had started clutching Finizio's arm, screaming "God be with us, God be with us."

Finizio would have none of it and broke into a run toward City Hall.

"I was the atheist in the foxhole," he said in the memoir. "It seemed ridiculous that everyone was praying instead of running."

Soon, though, he was on the ground after hearing a series of loud pops as World Trade Center windows started shattering from the impact of the initial explosion.

"Glass bits fell on me like rain and hail," he wrote. "Everything was pure confusion and chaos."

Finizio eventually got to his feet and ran two blocks to Broadway. Walking into the Council Chamber of City Hall near Ground Zero, he heard an usher explain what happened: "Two planes, this isn't an accident. This is war."

Later told to evacuate, Finizo found himself at an intersection where a cop stopped him as a firetruck raced by. He noticed one especially handsome New York Fire Department firefighter at the back of the truck whose picture would later turn up in the newspaper.

"He and every other man on that truck died soon after I saw them," Finizio wrote.

Finizio saw acts of kindness as shopkeepers gave away bottled water. But he also saw looting and heard one enraged man early on screaming anti-Muslim sentiments.

He also recalls seeing a man on roller blades less than 12 hours after the attacks yelling into his cellphone, "What's the big deal? It's just two crummy buildings."

Finizio's brother, who had come to Ground Zero to check on Daryl, reported hearing another New Yorker say, "This is so cool, it's like 'Independence Day,'" referring to the 1996 alien invasion movie.

Finizio eventually made it back to his apartment, where a roommate was huddling with his girlfriend, wondering on the whereabouts of acquaintances who worked at Windows on the World, the restaurant atop the North Tower.

"I knew they were dead but I said nothing," he wrote. "I wondered if they were any of the people I'd seen fall to their death a few hours earlier."

Finizio said his experiences during 9/11 in some ways have energized him, given him more of an impetus to live every day like it might be his last.

"You don't live your life the same way after that point," he said. "You learn that the best time to do something with your life is today."

But 9/11 also gave him something else that is not so easy to live with: PTSD, a constant anxiety welling up to panic that can be set off by any number of factors, including loud noises and even clear, crisp September days like the one a year ago that set off a daylong reliving of the 9/11 nightmare and led him to finally seek some solace by pouring his memories into a book.

Finizio said he struggled with nightmares and PTSD for years. At first, he coped through counseling while also using alcohol and pharmaceuticals, then later, on the advice of a gym acquaintance who survived a hellish experience in Vietnam, turned to marijuana, which he found provided immediate and lasting relief.

At first opportunity, Finizio said he took advantage of Connecticut's medical marijuana law.

"This is my third year on medical marijuana," he said. "My symptoms were eradicated, gone. Before, I would sweat the sheets almost every night."

Finizio said writing the book started as a form of therapy, but he was surprised at how much he remembers, and in such detail.

"I wanted to write it down before I lose it," he said.

Finizio said he generally shies away from 9/11 memorial services, having attended only two, the first while in Westerly in which he was asked to give a speech that he says immediately became politicized, and the second at the McCourt Memorial Garden at the Lyman Allyn Art Museum in 2011 while he was mayor and in which he tried to stay in the background.

Last year, though, during a campaign rally for Bernie Sanders, Finizio took the time to visit Ground Zero for the first time since he left New York City and the wet-burnt-rust smell that permeated Manhattan for months after 9/11. He said the memorial to 9/11 victims was well worth viewing.

"I went for about 10 minutes, and I thought, 'This is beautiful,'" he said. "It was a cathartic thing."

l.howard@theday.com