story1002.xml

story1002.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-08-12

I arrived at work at 8:30 am on September 11th. My office is on the 20th floor-Bdwy-Times Square. My sister phoned me at approximately 8:50am to tell me that a plane crashed into the WTC. She was extremely upset..she had just watched the live feed on Channel 4 from WTC showing the plane as it crashed into Tower 1. She insisted I leave my office immediately! At first, I couldn't believe this was happening...my co-workers and I tried to get an image on our computers, but our computers had gone down. Everyone started receiving phone calls from family & friends...telling us what was happening and to evacuate our buiding. My sister called again - screaming and begging me to leave -- another plane has just hit Tower 2 -- we were under attack! My coworkers and I did leave then and ran outside to look downtown - it was surreal - a mushroom cloud of black smoke covered the downtown sky. Hundreds of people were walking uptown -- everyone was walking uptown. I was concerned for my family, my friends, but we could not call them...phone service had gone out. We walked up to 63rd Street to get to my sisters apartment..all bridges & tunnels were closed. It was so strange..the streets were so quiet..everyone looked resolved...calm...probably in shock. We saw a crowd in front of someone's apartment window in the 50's -- a television had been placed there..we finally saw the horror...the building had just fallen down!!! I felt the way I did when I heard JFK had been shot...complete shock,horror. The beautiful blue sky was filled with smoke and ashes. We looked downtown from Madison Avenue and we saw what looked like Hiroshima. I realized then that people I knew that worked in the WTC may not have made it out. Three of them did not.