story545.xml

story545.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-05-07

I work for the US Army at Ft Hamilton in Brooklyn. I was driving to GSA on the Guanus expressway when the second plane hit the south tower right before my eyes. At that point it didnt take a rocket scientist to realize that it was an attack on this great country.
I got into the emergency lane of traffic and headed for the battery tunnel thinking maybe i could help.
Behind me was Rescue # 5 from the 160 firehouse on Staten Island witch is two blocks from where i was born and raised. When i came out of the battery tunnel ,i parked my pickup truck on the corner of West street. I grabbed my camera ,which i carry with me all the time,, and started shooting pictures.. My better judgement told me not to go down to the towers. I guess i knew from past safety and fire training that jet fuel burns at 2000 degrees plus and can melt steel .. When i saw Rescue 5 make that right turn for the towers, i felt scared for them..
Im standing there in the street talking to a detective from the NYPD saying oh my god, the people are jumping, two and three at a time and there is nothing we can do about it.
The flames were shooting from the towers ,they were a purplish red color like a furness. I told the detective that unless im very wrong, the towers are gonna fall. It wasnt thirty seconds later that the south tower started to fall, people just stood there in shock watching it come down. It sounded like ten pile drivers all working at the same time as each floor crashed onto the floor beneath it.
As the giant cloud of hot ash was comming at us you can hear people screaming from down the street. I stood there in shock clicking my camera but never looking into the viewfinder. My pickup truck was parked in the street with the keys still in it. I thought i would make my get away in it. Thats what i thought. This guy jumps in it and takes off heading for the Staten Island ferry.
Now what do i do,i run into this loading dock in one of the apartment buildings on West street, a police officer with the name tag Taylor joins me. Together we try to kick down the door on the platform of the loading dock,a third men joins in but the door wouldnt budge.
Now the dust is overwelming us so we wrapped our shirts around are heads, we made our way about fifty feet down West street where we found two big glass doors that were the entrance to an apartment building. I put my boot through the glass door which was locked and started running into the lobby. We ( officer Taylor and myself) ran about twenty feet down the hallway and then stopped, like we were thinking with the same mind, we looked at each other and said, we have to go back , the people are out there.
We started throwing people into the doorway. All you can hear in the street was Oh my god ,Oh my god. There was one lady sitting on the curb with a plastic bag over her head, she was ready to pass out. I took the bag off and carried her into the building. We got about 30 or so people into that building and out of harms way.
About ten minutes later i said my goodbyes and headed south , maybe i would find my truck down by the ferry.

There is alot more to this story. I spent 12 hour there that day.. If you are interested in hearing it let me know. gjohnny77@aol.com I also have about 50 unseen photos