story11738.xml

story11738.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2005-08-18

It was a beautiful, crystal clear Indian summer day. The sky was a blue as I?d ever seen it. The clouds were crisp with a brilliant sun peeking through. From my perch on the 14th floor at our Fairview Park office tower the view was amazing and I could see forever.

My colleague came into the office and over to a group of us and said a plane has crashed in the WTC. At first I didn?t understand and she said it wasn?t a joke a plane has crashed into the WTC. I thought it must be a small commuter plane as I recalled hearing that this happened many years ago at the Empire State Building. I?m a native New Yorker born and bred in Brooklyn. I thought a little plane hitting the WTC wouldn?t cause too much damage.

I knew the trading area in our office would have the television on and sure enough when I walked over several of my colleagues were watching the today show. As Katie Couric was talking about the unfolding incident at the WTC, we were all surprised to watch another plane slam into the tower. At that point I realized that it was no small commuter plane accident but a terrorist plot meant to destroy and kill innocent people. At this point it hadn?t hit me yet what had happened.

As I stood there with my fellow colleagues I could not believe what I was seeing. I didn?t realize the magnitude of the disaster that was going on in lower Manhattan that day. As I walked back to my cubicle everyone around me had this look of shock. Everyone was going online to CNN, MSNBC etc. to get as much information as possible.

I couldn?t imagine things would get much worse that day but as I would soon find out things did get much, much worse.
The next thing I heard is that the Pentagon has been hit. I thought to myself this can?t be possibly be happening. I ran over to the window and sure enough I could see a plume of smoke rising from the Pentagon building. I ran back to the television and now CNN was on and we all watched with horror as the twin towers and now the Pentagon burned. Rumors began to run rampant as I heard that the State department had been bombed and the White House too. People were beginning to think that this was the start of some huge terrorist campaign and wanted to go home. The rumors were everywhere and I wondered when the other shoe would drop. There was just so much anxiety and everyone knew that Washington DC was a major terrorist target.

Everyone began to pack up and gather his or her belongings. At that point I?d heard that one of the WTC buildings had collapsed, I didn?t think it was possible for the building to simply collapse into dust. I prayed that people were able to escape to safety before the building collapsed.

My husband called and said he was going to pick up our son at school and that I should get home as soon as I can. As I prepared to leave some of our department managers met to discuss what the company should do in light of this tragedy.

I don?t even remember how I made it home. I listed to news radio all the way home and could not believe what I was hearing. Once I got home I immediately sat on the couch and started watching the news. As I flipped through the channels I was haunted by what I saw on the Spanish channel Univision. They filmed people jumping from the WTC. I saw people so desperate to get away from the smoke and flames that the chose to jump rather than become human barbeque inside of the building. The next channel I flipped to showed the tower collapsing floor by floor. At that point I just lost it, I began to sob out loud. My city, the state of my birth was going through the tragedy of the century. At this point I just sat in front of the television for hours like many other Americans and watched with a measure of sadness, unbelief and finally anger.