My brother was visiting me in New York. The previous Friday we had gone on the Ellis Island boat trip. On our we back went to the viewing deck at the top of WTC 2. When we came down we stopped and enjoyed the sun on the plaza.
On September 11, I awoke sometime after 8.00am. It being a studio apartment, I tiptoed across my still sleeping brother. After showering and dressing I grabbed a coffee from the local deli.
Back at my apartment, my brother was still sleeping. I fired up the PC, checked my e-mail and headed to Freerepublic. In the sidebar was the headline *** PLANE CRASH - WORLD TRADE CENTER ***.
After reading that I spent a few minutes trying to find details. No websites that I went to had details up. I turned on the TV, and there was WTC 1 with smoke billowing out of the top floors. My brother woke up and asked what was happening. I filled him in on what little I knew and we continued to watch, trying to figure out exactly what had happened.
About two minutes later a plane appeared to the left of WTC 2 and veered right ......
It may seem strange, but there are two things that gave me a smile during that time. The first was a sports commentator who was to update us on cancellations and began "Perhaps when the history of this is being written sports will be seen as secondary ....." [he realizes how dumb this sounds] "... or maybe tertiary [making it sound even dumber]". The other was footage of someone running from the dust cloud of the falling WTC 2, as he ran you could hear him say "hoooooly shii[expletive clearly heard]". During grim times you sometimes have to dig around for smiles.
I was just about to leave my office in Midtown for a 10am meeting on the 70th floor in WTC 2 when my mother called and told me the WTC 1 had been hit by a plane. I told the people in my office what had happened and no one could believe it.
I got on CNN's site just before it crashed and saw the image. My sister, who worked and still works in WTC 3, called and said from her office she saw the first plane go in. Not knowing what was going on, she though a smaller jet (Lear-like) had gone in and was told that security was going to find out what happened. She hung up with me to call our mother.
She called me back a few minutes later and told me she hadn't heard a thing about evacuation and that the smoke was so thick that she could bearly see outside. I was on the phone with her when the second plane hit - she thought that the first plane had exploded. I heard her office get rocked from the second plane and told her to get out of there - she agreed. She hung up with me and I called my mother to tell her she was leaving.
We tried to get in contact with our collegues in WTC 2 but could not. The whole floor milled into conference rooms to see the horror. I stayed by the phone to wait from my sister. I was still there when WTC 2 fell. My heart dropped. No one had heard from anyone. My mother was a mess and there was nothing I could do. Thankfully my wife works close to home so she left work to be with her.
Then WTC 1 fell and my office went nuts. Everyone started to disperse without knowing where they were really going. I think they were just so scared that they wanted to be anywhere but where they were.
At around 11am my mother called and said my sister called from 23rd St. and was heading up to Penn Station so I started over there. I went with a friend from work since we lived in the same area and figured we would get home together.
I got to Penn Station and it was a mess. People were everwhere and to look down 7th Ave and see the black smoke was sickening. I told my friend if he wanted to leave he could because I wasn't leaving without my sister but he stayed to help me. We started walking down 7th and there were people all over the street and I thought, "I'll never find her in this." People from downtown covered in dust and soot were everywhere. A lot of crying and screaming but for some reason it sounded quiet, an eerie quiet.
I was in the middle of 7th now - so many people were there that we walked in the third car lane from the sidewalk. As I approached the MSG marquee the crowd split for just a second and from the street I thought I saw my sister on the sidewalk. I called to her but the crowd closed up. I yelled once more and I heard her yell back. I told her to stay put. After a few seconds I found her and for a second I forgot about what had happened.
We walked over the 59th street bridge into Queens and hitched a ride home from my friend's father-in-law. Walking over the bridge and looking downtown at all the smoke was surreal. I got home at 6pm.
All but one of my collegues made it out of WTC 2 that day. And their stories don't end like mine.