story10683.xml

story10683.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2004-07-07

(I was working for Deutsche Bank on the fifth floor of 4 World Trade Center on the morning of 9/11/2001)

On Tuesday morning, I arrived at my desk on the 7th floor of 4WTC at approximately 8:40am. I glanced at a building notice which had been placed on my chair announcing a scheduled World Trade Center powerdown for the coming weekend and opened my briefcase to unpack my laptop. Within 5 to 10 minutes, I heard a rumble and felt a tremor. The lights flashed once. I looked up and said to no one in particular, "Oh-oh. That can't be good." But really didn't give it much thought. Within 15 seconds, I heard yells and the sounds of running footsteps coming from across the floor. Because of the way the floor was shaped, I couldn't see who was making the noise As they arrived over to my side, several were shouting "Get out of the building! Get out of the building!" At that point, I looked at the left-most corner of the windows and could see papers and other debris cascading down from the floors above and to the street. At that point, I jumped up and moved for the glass doors and the elevators. Someone then
yelled for us to take the stairs and we all headed down, with several of us calling for everyone to be calm and move quickly.

When we reached the bottom, the lady security officer shouted for us to run and get away from the building. I walked up the steps and exited the glass doors at the corner of Liberty and Church streets into an atmosphere of
falling paper and confusion. Turning around to look up, I could barely see the tower through all the smoke and thought that it had probably been a terrorist bomb. Fearing falling debris heavier than paper, I decided to
walk south on Church Street and tried to use my Nextel to contact other colleagues. But the communication circuits were already being overloaded - the same for cellular service. I then walked over to a coffee stand to get
a cup in order to get change for a pay phone, and overheard someone say that a helicopter had hit the building. I thought, "Oh! It was an accident!" and decided to walk to 15 Broad Street (JP Morgan's original headquarters) to see a friend of mine and use his phone. Other people had
since remarked on the street that it was in fact an airplane, and not a helicopter and so I thought that there might be even more danger of falling debris and that it would be in my best interests to keep away from the
stricken tower. It astounded me that there was a steady stream of people walking in the opposite direction towards the Trade Center! I guess not everyone shared my apprehension. As I walked up a small street towards
Broadway, I heard a loud rumble and felt the ground shake. The sounds of screams and the sights of groups of people running full-tilt southwards on Broadway convinced me to drop my cup of coffee and join them. I turned around but really couldn't see any reason for their fright, as the local buildings blocked my view of the towers. I then heard someone yell that another plane had struck the Trade Center and I realized that this was no accident, but an attack! It was now about 20 minutes after the first strike.

I decided to continue to 15 Broad, reasoning that the Trade Center seemed to be the target and there should be little risk to the more traditional financial area where the Stock Exchange and Morgan stood. At least it seemed logical at the time! People were moving quickly in mostly southerly
directions and several company security personnel were standing on the streets, but there seemed to be no further word on what was happening. I entered the 15 Broad main entrance and had my friend paged on the 12th floor, whereupon he cleared me to come up. He had a windowed view of the Trade Center and told me that there was a gaping hole in the side of one of the towers. I went to an empty cubicle and made phone calls to my mother to assure her that I was all right and checked my voice mail for other
messages. While returning the calls, I started to notice that it was getting harder to connect to outside numbers and had to continually redial. Curiously enough, around that time a colleague was able to reach me by Nextel radio for about 30 seconds - then it was again unavailable.
Approximately 20 minutes after I had arrived on the floor, the Morgan building shook and we heard loud rumbling. My friend announced from his window that the tower had just collapsed! At that point the building public address announced that everyone should take the stairs to the lobby
as they were preparing for evacuation. I accompanied my friend and his team down the stairs when we were told to stop at the second floor. We were shuttled between the lobby, mezzanine and the second floor where we were given access to chairs and telephones and provided with water, soft drinks, coffee and snacks. While in the lobby, I noticed that the glass doors had become opaque! Where once you could see clearly across the street, the doors were now completely white as if someone had painted the
glass! We passed a man who had just come in from outside - he was completely covered in white soot! If someone poured a dry bag of concrete over you, that would approximate the sight. Because of these conditions,
the building security locked the doors and advised us to stay indoors, even though the air was becoming noticeably stale. I began to worry that the conditions might become worse as the air filters would become clogged by the particles outside the building, but fortunately the conditions never became any worse than the air having a stale quality. But who knew?

Several people were crying and others exhibited strange behavior probably due to shock. One fellow came over to our group to ask us if we knew where the Equities training program was, and then continued on to ask others.
There was a wall-enclosed television available and we learned about the Pentagon attack and other unaccounted for planes still at large. Surgical masks were handed out to everyone and at about 1pm they announced that they would allow us to leave and directed us to walk east to Water Street and then north. My friend and I exited at the Wall Street exit and stepped onto a scene from a Science Fiction disaster movie. The ground was covered with an inch of soot - it was like walking on a beach! The atmosphere was
heavy with particles and there were abandoned street stands, the fruit covered with soot. We made our way to Water Street and then walked north as per the advice. Only after we passed the South Street Seaport did we see a major improvement in air quality and less soot on the ground. We
walked to Greenwich Village and entered the West 4th Street subway station where we waited for an A train to take us uptown. Getting off at 34th Street, my friend and I wished each other luck as he continued on to the Long Island Railroad, and I to another platform to await a Queens bound E train.

I finally reached Forest Hills around 2:30, safe and sound. I may have a few more grey hairs, but I didn't suffer the injury and loss that many of my fellow New Yorkers did. I only lost my personal possessions which I didn't think to grab as I left the building. Should I have hesitated and gathered up as much of my belongings as I could? Maybe. But in a situation like that it's probably best to just exit as quickly as possible. I lost my
briefcase, personal laptop, sunglasses and other items as well as three months of hard work on my office computer. Major inconveniences to be sure, but certainly far better than than what could have been lost. When I first left the building, I never dreamed of the coming destruction. I thought that there would be an "all-clear" by tomorrow and I would return to claim my belongings and my daily routine. The World Trade Center has been part of my daily work routine for twenty years - working there directly for the past 9 months, meeting people for lunch or after work, or just passing through on the PATH or subway. There are a lot of my memories based there, and it's gone! It's going to be hard getting used to that.