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.

“When I saw people looking up, pointing, and saw a high-rise on fire, the upper floors of a high-rise on fire, I thought, this can’t be happening again,” said Karen Arthur, 42, who lives in Brooklyn and was among the crowd of rescuers, city officials and onlookers.

“And it’s literally across the street from this big hole that used to be the trade center,” she added. “I prayed that it was a normal sort of fire, I really did.”

For several hours, the scene around the building at 130 Liberty Street was chaotic, teeming with fire trucks, ambulances and police vehicles. Outside the building, a firefighter was carried into an ambulance by about a dozen of his colleagues.

As the ambulance sped away, one firefighter called out, “Give him air! Give him air!”

Elsewhere, a police officer and a firefighter got into a shouting match and had to be separated.

Officers told guests at the nearby Marriott hotel that they would not be allowed inside until an all-clear signal was given.

Residents of Lower Manhattan, many of whom were forced to relocate for months after the 2001 attacks, found themselves barred from their homes yet again.

“It was like another 9/11,” said Ed Metropolis, 57, who lives in a red-brick building near the back of the former Deutsche Bank building and was prevented from going home yesterday by a police barricade. In 2001, he said, “I couldn’t go home to get my clothes for a week. All my credit cards, my checkbook, my cash, anything.”

Jillian Jaques, who lives in the same building as Mr. Metropolis at 109 Washington Street, stood with him at Washington and Rector Streets. Tourists snapped photos as Ms. Jaques and Mr. Metropolis wondered where they would stay the night.

“With this going on,” Ms. Jaques added, “we can’t stick around.” She said she was heading to the Jersey Shore.

The abandoned building, shrouded in a grim black fabric netting, has been more than an eyesore to its neighbors. It represented the slow pace of the rebuilding of ground zero and posed a continuing health concern as it was being dismantled because of the asbestos and other contaminants inside.

The fire yesterday seemed to only worsen the building’s stigma.

“I used to work in that building, and I’ll tell you, that building is bad luck,” said Sanjay Deepti, 32, who lives in Battery Park City. “It should have been torn down long ago. It’s jinxed.”

Michael K. Williams, 28, a publicist who rents a one-bedroom apartment at 90 West Street, a building overlooking ground zero about one block away from the Deutsche Bank tower, said he was not in the least surprised by the fire.

“That whole building is such as disaster,” he said. “It’s riddled with problems.”

Mr. Williams said that now he is even more concerned about breathing in asbestos emanating from the building. “You could smell it,” he said. “I don’t want to breathe that stuff.”

By 6 p.m., Mr. Metropolis was let back inside his building to get some belongings, and he decided not to come back out.

He said he headed to the roof, joining his neighbors to watch the abandoned skyscraper burn. He heard a loud boom, and he said he felt his throat get very dry. He thought there was some residue of asbestos in the air.

“The smell and the taste went from campfire to dramatically chemical,” he said. “My throat was dry and irritated.”

Mr. Metropolis, a customer service manager at American Stock Transfer and Trust Company, grew up in the building on Washington Street. After Sept. 11, he moved back in four months later.

“We went through hell,” he said.

By 7:30 p.m., Fire Department trucks, communications units and ladder trucks gathered at West Street and Liberty Street, only a few blocks from where there was a similar command center on Sept. 11.

“We came to see the trade center site and pay our respects,” said Bryan Cooper, 24, a tourist from England. “Now we understand people have died again.”

He added: “Thank God it’s not terrorism, but it’s a tragedy that it’s happened at all.”