Russell,
I was at the WTC on 9/11.
I witnessed the entire chain of events.
I wrote a summary of what I saw for Gravy's WTC7 paper. I'll post it here (its a little long though):
I saw both planes hit. I would commute from NJ. Sometimes I'd take the PATH train from Hoboken, on nice days I'd take the ferry. 9/11 was a beautiful morning, and I took the ferry. I got off the ferry at the World financial center and began walking to my office on 45 Broadway. To do this, you have to walk DIRECTLY toward WTC1 As I was walking I heard a jets roar. I looked up. Now [feel free to delete this if it will make CT’ers take it out of context] I expected it to me some sort of military plane since every now and then military jets do fly down the Hudson river. IT WAS NOT. I saw a huge jetliner fly over me and SLAM IN TO THE TOWER!!! I had a PERFECT vantage point. Even then, I couldn’t actually process what I had seen. I kept thinking it couldn’t have been an American Airlines plane, sure that’s what I saw, but it just couldn’t have been. It had to be something else.
I didn't know what to do. Should I get back on the ferry and go home or should I go to my office? I went to my office. I found a group of co-workers standing behind our building on Greenwich and Rector street looking at the burning building, and we started talking about what happened. Some saw the crash, and some just saw the fire. The ones that didn't see the crash didn't believe me and those of us that did see it that it was a jetliner. They assumed, as I did before I saw the plane, that it was a private or military plane. They couldn't imagine it was a jetliner. Of course, they didn't actually see what I and the others did.
We all thought it had to be an accident. I was talking about how the buildings are designed to survive a hit like this and how it would be OK.
Smoke was pouring out, debris was flying everywhere, we were joking around saying its like Godzilla has attacked. We were all looking up at the towers. From our vantage point we had a perfect view of both towers (google map 45 Broadway and you'll see where I was).
It was then when the second plane flew over us and slammed in to the south tower. The force of the blast knocked a couple of people standing with to the ground.
That’s when we all realized we were under attack.
My coworker looked at me and said "was that another airliner?" I said yeah, I thought it was a US Airways plane, but another coworker said it was a United plane.
For the next few minutes, we were standing there basically saying "Holy ****!" over and over again, trying to decide what to do now. That’s when we heard another jet. Me and one of my coworkers went to hit the deck, but another coworker (who had been in the Israeli Air Force) said NO, that’s an F-16. Sure enough an F-16 flew by.
After that I went with my colleague closer to the towers, we walked up to Church and Liberty Streets. I've seen some awful things in my life, but this was by far the worst. There was debris and rubble everywhere (and the towers were still standing. Stuff was falling out of the sky like rain. And my colleague said look at that, pointing at a lot of shoes lying on the ground, not in a pile or anything, just scattered around. I thought that it must be from one of the shoe stores in the mall, or from Century 21 somehow, until he pointed out that the shoes still have feet in them.
That’s when I had to leave and go back to my office and call my pregnant wife, if for no other reason to tell her I love her.
I went up in to my office and called my wife who worked in Brooklyn. We couldn’t call out of the 5 boroughs, our long distance was down. So after talking to my wife and telling her I was OK, I went back down to the back of the building (where we had the best view.) The flames were intense coming out of the south tower (2wtc) and even being blocks away and much lower, I could feel the heat on my face and it was hot. It was like being in front of a roaring fireplace. I remember thinking “how the hell are they going to repair this?” It was then when I commented to another coworker about all of the debris still falling out (it had been a while now, almost an hour) and he said “Mike, those are people!” I said “No way!” He said, “Look that one has arms and legs!” And then I saw that the debris I was looking at was actually people falling or jumping out of the building.
That’s when I needed to go inside.
About 15 minutes later, we felt the earth shake. No one knew what was happening. At first we thought another plane had hit the stock exchange, or our building, or something else. So we all evacuated our office and went down the stairs to the lobby. When we got to the lobby, it was dark. You see, 45 Broadway’s lobby is almost all glass, probably 5 stories high, with a waterfall fountain in the middle. It was one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. The glass was black. I mean 100% totally dark. The only thing I was thinking was “what the hell” and that’s when people started realizing that one of the towers fell. Then occasionally we’d see a shadow up against the glass, a person stuck in the dust. We’d pull them in and clean them up in the fountain.
After a while I decided to go back upstairs to our office. Power in our building was fine, and there was no damage to our building. The lobby was like a refugee center. So I took my team back upstairs. A little while later the dust settled and we could see outside. It was crazy, it looked like a snowstorm had hit. 6-8 inches of grayish white dust everywhere. It was eerie. No one knew what to do. I decided that I was going to stay put and listen to the news.
A little while later the second building came down, and the dust hit and made all of the windows black again. This time it wasn’t so bad since we knew what was happening.
I don’t really remember much of what we did between the time the second tower came down and when a cop finally came in to our office and said we had to evacuate the building since all of downtown was being shutdown, and cleared out. That was around 2:30 IIRC.
All I knew was that I had to somehow get to my wife in Brooklyn. So we started walking up Broadway when a cop told us it was closed and we had to go east. So we went over to Nassau St. When I hit the area near Cedar St, I could start to see the devastation. There was giant beams and junk everywhere. When I hit Fulton St. (I think) I could finally get over to Broadway to see the damage. There was rubble 20 stories high. It’s a sight I can’t even explain. It was a complete disaster. I was in total shock. That’s when I saw WTC7 on fire. I didn’t even notice it at first. There was hot dust and debris raining down, thick smoke billowing overhead. Building 7 wasn’t even a blip on my radar. But then I noticed it. It was on fire like the towering inferno. I mean flames were everywhere. I thought there were flames coming out on all floors, but I guess that’s because of all of the smoke. I kept looking at the building. It had so much debris up against it, and I mean big huge chucks of debris. Without you actually being there, you just can’t get the enormous scale of the disaster. The twisted steel and chunks of concrete were just so huge that my mind couldn’t comprehend it. And these were piled up against the building and sticking out of it at some levels. I can’t stress enough how enormous these beams and debris were. All of the pictures show the pile, but without actually seeing it, it is truly indescribable. WTC7 had granite of marble façade and there were HUGE cracks going up and down the façade too.
Anyway, I was looking at WTC7 and I noticed that it wasn’t looking like it was straight. It was really weird. The closest corner to me (the SE corner) was kind of out of whack with the SW corner. It was impossible to tell whether that corner (the SW) was leaning over more or even if it was leaning the other way. With all of the smoke and the debris pile, I couldn’t exactly tell what was going on, but I sure could see the building was leaning over in a way it certainly should not be. I asked another guy looking with me and he said “That building is going to come down, we better get out of here.” So we did.
I walked down Fulton to try to get on to the Brooklyn Bridge. Cops told me it was closed, even though there were people walking on it. So I had to then walk uptown to the Manhattan Bridge. There were literally thousands of people walking across the bridge. It looked like refugees. As I was walking over the bridge, we all heard a Jet screaming. This is absolutely the worst part of the whole day for me. Time stopped. No one made a sound. It was the scariest thing I have ever felt. I thought, “It’s another plane, that’s what I’d do if I were a terrorist. Wait until everyone is evacuating and hit the bridges.” I truly thought my life was over. You know how they say your life flashes before your eyes? Well it’s true. I saw every victory and every tragedy I’d ever experienced. And I thought to myself, “well, I’ve had a good life, I only wish I’d have been able to see my child born (my wife was 4.5 months pregnant). Then I saw it was an F-15 and all of a sudden, all was well. I truly felt like I had been given a new life.
That’s about it, I got to my wife’s office, and we rented a car, and drove home to NJ. Then for the next couple of weeks I watched the news and cried a lot.
You are welcome to ask me any questions you may have.
I had a strong feeling you would feel that way.
