nmah5410.xml

nmah5410.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2003-01-16

On Sept 10th I had turned 36. My wife was just entering her 9th month of pregnency with our second child. Everything was going as planned and then came Sept 11th. I work about 100 yards from the twin towers in the World Financial center and it sits between the two towers on West St. That morning was a clear and beautiful day as I started my treck to work from Jersey City, which is directly across the water from downtown NY. I jumped on the train to the WTC at 6:30am and little did I know it would be my last time in the World Trade Center. As I was having my coffee I heard this huge explosion and I went to the window to see what had happened. I was on the 17th floor in the world financial center and the view from the window of the WTC is unbelieveable. When I went to the window i was not prepared for what I was about to see. I think it took me all of ten seconds to get to the window after the explosion to see what was happening. No fire engines had arrived yet and the fire was really raging. The television behind me was saying a small plane had hit the north tower but they were not seeing what I was seeing. All of a sudden I started to see faces in the windows that the people had broken. These people were trying to get some clean air to breath until they could be rescued. Then to my horror I watched as a body came tumbling out of the sky. It was a young man and his body was singed from head to toe. At that moment is when fear set in. I was stunned. I could'nt move for a couple of seconds. I coild not believe what I was seeing. Then after that it was just body after body falling out of the sky. An announcement came over in our building for us not to leave the building just yet because of falling debris. I picked up the nearest phone to call my wife to tell her that i was okay and that it was not effecting our building just yet. She pleaded with me to get out of the building and to get out of there. I told her we were not allowed to leave yet because of the debris falling. She became histerical and thats when I started to worry about our unborne baby. I told her i would call her back before I left but I never got the chance. I went back to the window to see what was going on when we heard this loud rour. Little did I know it was another plane coming in to the south tower. I watched the plane coming in and it looked it was going to turn right intn our building. I hit the floor and the explosion of second plane rocked our building. I could feel the ripple of the explosion right through my stomach. It was powerful. Now the announcement came over to evacuate the building. I was the fire warden for the floor I was on , so I went cube to cube making sure everyone was out. Now we had to walk down 17 flights not knowing what we would see when we got to the street. Our building exited on to the west side highway and I knew I was going to see carnage. What I saw blew my mind. There were bodies strewn all over the west side highway as well as body parts. People were laying on sidewalks critcally injured. I ran to the back of the building towards the Hudson river to our staging point for my co-workers. I told them I was going home to call about our work status. I got on the ferry to Jersey City and we had about a dozen injured people on the boat. As we got half way across the river the building started coming down. Thank God I left when I did. The area where I was standing was completly covered in a big cloud. This was history that we had just witnessed. I still to this day cannot get thed images from that day out of my head.

Yes.

The innocent victems that were murdered that morning.

yes.