I tried to remember where and when I had last seen the person. I guess the events of the day had taken their toll on me.Īt some point during the trip I received a phone call from a relative of an employee who had not yet been heard from. He later told me that I was speaking very quickly and not making much sense. I also spoke with the president of the company, who was down in Florida at the time. I eventually got through to my family via phone to let them know I was safe. I eventually walked over the Williamsburg Bridge, caught a bus in Brooklyn heading for Queens and then flagged down a gypsy cab in Queens to take me to my home in Port Washington, Long Island. Words with my co-workers, which I cannot recall were exchanged, and I decided to set off on my own to try to get home and reach my family to let them know I was O.K. Thoughts flooded through my mind like, how many people just lost their life? Do I still have a job? Even a mental inventory of the things that were in my office that no longer existed. Word eventually filtered through the crowd that WTC2, where my office resided, had just fallen. We had gotten maybe five blocks away when we heard a large rumble and saw a massive dust cloud to the south of us, from the direction we came. A woman who worked for me at the time was about six months pregnant, so we went slowly in order to stay with her and help her down. We slowly made our way down the 77 flights of stairs. Still, I could not put one and one together and make the connection that a jetliner had just crashed into the building only a few feet above my head and split open, spilling the contents of its fuel tanks into the building core. Having worked as a baggage handler at JFK airport for a summer (ironically for United Airlines of all companies), I knew what jet fuel smelled like. I mentioned previously I was definitely in some form of shock at that time and not thinking rationally. Once we got into the 77th floor stairwell, I recall jet fuel pouring down the stairs. She knew I was still in the building at the time, and she knew what floor I worked on, so at that point, she had no idea whether I was still alive. While we’d spoken earlier and she knew I was O.K., that was before the second plane hit WTC2. The WTC towers were clearly visible from the trading floor of her firm. Unbeknownst to me at the time, my wife had arrived at work at the Midtown financial firm where she worked, right around the time my building was hit.
Windows on top of the world wtc windows#
This felt oddly disconcerting since none of the windows were designed to open in the WTC. Much of the ceiling had come down, and I could feel the breeze from blown out windows on the other side of the floor.
It was actually designed to sway to a certain degree as the towers have to withstand high winds on a regular basis, but this was far beyond anything I’d ever felt before.Įventually the building stabilized. The impact caused the building to sway heavily. I remember thinking that the building was coming down and it was the end. A few seconds after hanging up the phone at 9:03 a.m., I felt a violent jolt, and then a falling sensation. I returned to my office and decided to call my mother.
Windows on top of the world wtc tv#
Information looked pretty sketchy, but I decided to return to 77 to inform my remaining co-workers that I had TV coverage on upstairs if they wanted to come up. We had a large conference room there with a projector and cable TV, so I wanted to get the news on to see what was happening.
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Based on what I was seeing, I figured it might be days or weeks before we could return to our offices, so there were many things I needed to attend to so that operations could be moved to an off-site location.Īt some point, I left my office and took the escalator in our space up to the 78th floor. I was head of technology for a financial information firm at the time. This was partially because I believed that it was an accident and I was in no immediate danger. Many of my co-workers began to leave the building immediately after the plane hit. I told her I’d call her again when I could. I assured her that I was O.K., and my building was not impacted. I quickly apprised her of the situation, and told her that within a few minutes there would probably be pandemonium as people learned what had happened. She was just walking out of Penn Station on her way to work. I called my wife to let her know what was happening. You see it with your eyes, but you are somehow mentally detached from it at the same time. Your mind cannot really comprehend what is happening-almost an overload state. It’s hard to express what I felt at that point, because I can only describe it as shock.
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