Another person repeated the story: A tower had fallen. I still did not believe that story.
I tried to return calls to friends and relatives, but the lines were down. It was sinking in: Something really was happening. Am I safe in our office building?
My friend here at work made arrangements for some of us to stay at the Waldorf. Everything was closing: bridges, subways, tunnels, highways, trains. Manhattan is being locked down.
I started to believe now that a World Trade Center tower was down.
And I could see the smoke outside our office window. Not too far from us, very heavy, dark gray smoke, an ugly color I will not forget.
People were scrambling to leave. Was the building safe? People were concerned about their kids. I tried to log onto FR, and briefly looked at the sidebar threads... FR was slow, but the headlines in the sidebar threads were serious.
Stay safe!
Soon I learned it was a 737 or similar airliner. Terrorists... here in NYC.
That explained why the building had falled down.
Now, everyone at work was making final arrangements to leave. I left our suite on the 33rd floor to bring a message to our coworkers on 26. I had the make sure everyone knew, that if they were stuck in the city, we had suites at a hotel a few blocks away.
Everyone on 26 was shell-shocked. Gathered around someone's PC, watching live feed via Bloomberg on the Internet, and listening to the radio. This is where I first comfirmed that truly, a building had fallen down. Rumors were already flying about the second.
Tears welled up in my eyes. I looked at the faces of my coworkers, who come from many backgrounds, beliefs and political persuasions. We were sharing stories, listening for scraps of news.
The Pentagon is on fire. The State Department has supposedly been car-bombed. And now we had the horrible news:
The second tower of the World Trade Center has fallen. More dark smoke from downtown, clearly visible above the skyline here in midtown.
We are most certainly at war, I thought. What is happening?