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I really did not think the buildings were going to fall. I thought "OK this is really bad but the firemen will get up there and put the fire out" because the building had taken the hit and were still standing. I thought if they were going to fall, they would have fallen at the time the planes hit them. I did not even think about the fire bringing them down.
From inside, I thought the building might go over sideways. When you worked there, and it was windy, the building made a back-and-forth creaking/groaning noise, sort of like the sound effects of ships in old movies, because of the sway factor built into the steel to deal with the high winds in Manhattan. In the stairs, you could tell by the sound that something was terribly wrong with the steel--it was sort of screeching and clanging, but only one way--there was no "back and forth" sound. It felt as though your feet weren't landing on the stairs right--you could tell the building was leaning. There was water flowing down the stairs from broken pipes that fed the fire hoses, and it became so slippery I had to take off my sandals.
Thanks for your testimony. Although I was on a business trip, my office was in NYC (on 6th) and I had been in WTC several times for work (at the Port Authority offices). Although I didn't know anyone who was killed, I often think about the ordinary people I had contact with, the receptionists or the secretaries, and what happened to them.
My company lost 4 people on the planes that were hijacked. One of them had just started with us and was excited to be on her first business trip. Another person I knew, in Boston, should have been on one of them but postponed her trip for family reasons.
It was early AM here in Colorado, 630, maybe 7. My radio had just come on, and news was just starting to come out. I remember the newscaster saying something like, "we have a report of a plane hitting the WTC in New York, but we don't have any details yet". I went for a walk with a friend, and when we got back 1/2 hour later, I was shocked. Then I heard about the plane in Pennsylvania, and I got concerned b/c my brother lives there. We couldn't get hold of him for a while; but in the meantime, it turned out the plane was ~100 mi. from Pittsburgh, where he was.
I was at the hospital where I work (still). My co-worker's wife was calling us with updates since all internet news sites were being bombarded. We went to a cafe across the street from the hospital to watch the news on the TV's they had there and saw the buildings collapse. There was a big panic in the city (Chicago), that they might be a target too since not all scheduled flights had been accounted for yet. What I found strange was that during the entire day, patients kept showing up for their scheduled outpatient appointments as if nothing was going on. All I wanted to do was watch the news.
My dad was in FL on business at the time and scrambled to get a rental car since all flights had been canceled. The skies were eerily silent in the days following.
Thanks for your testimony. Although I was on a business trip, my office was in NYC (on 6th) and I had been in WTC several times for work (at the Port Authority offices). Although I didn't know anyone who was killed, I often think about the ordinary people I had contact with, the receptionists or the secretaries, and what happened to them.
My company lost 4 people on the planes that were hijacked. One of them had just started with us and was excited to be on her first business trip. Another person I knew, in Boston, should have been on one of them but postponed her trip for family reasons.
I think about the people on the planes and what they must have gone through in their last hour. They had no chance of escape.
Oddly, I was a nervous flyer before 9/11 and now I enjoy flying and am not afraid any more. It's sort of as if I used up my lifetime supply of fear in that one morning. I no longer fear death. My take is that something weird happens on a primal level in your brain when you are in the vicinity of mass death--like I felt a door open and some souls went through, but I did not. Some day I too will go through that door, and when I do, it will be because it is my time to go.
I was at work, listening to the country music station, when the somewhat nervous, disembodied voice of the deejay, a guy who had been at this station for decades and had a computer like rhythm in his voice when he spoke that I had always found annoying had suddenly lost it, as he blurted out "there seems to have been a serious accident in New York City......" and more music, and then back to the radio what he next stated "We are now going to ABC News" and I heard the voice of Peter Jennings, and ABC was broadcast, without interruption, on the radio, which I never ventured far from until I got home and saw the awful news on television.
Here are firsthand accounts of people affected by 9/11
It was my second year in college. I was still living with my parents, and a phone call woke me up, with my mom on the other line exclaiming frantically "Turn on the news!", so I did, and the first thing I saw was one of the towers covered in smoke and a line below "America under attack."
I remember that day we all desperately tried to get a hold of my uncle and see how he was doing, because he almost took a job in one of the offices in WTC just two weeks prior to the attacks, but got a better offer in Connecticut which pretty much saved his life. But some of his close friends died that day.
I was in Texas in my home office getting my morning started. The TV was behind me with volume low. It wasn't until a friend on yahoo instant message alerted me, did I turn around to the horror.
The rest of the day was a series of phone calls, fliping from one chanel to an other and when I did go out the streets seemed surreal and hazy. I didn't get any work done and even my husband came home from work early.
I was at work, listening to the country music station, when the somewhat nervous, disembodied voice of the deejay, a guy who had been at this station for decades and had a computer like rhythm in his voice when he spoke that I had always found annoying had suddenly lost it, as he blurted out "there seems to have been a serious accident in New York City......" and more music, and then back to the radio what he next stated "We are now going to ABC News" and I heard the voice of Peter Jennings, and ABC was broadcast, without interruption, on the radio, which I never ventured far from until I got home and saw the awful news on television.
Here are firsthand accounts of people affected by 9/11
Here are some other stories--there's also a book by the same name. The stories are from survivors, emergency workers, people who worked on the pile afterwards, and family members.
Tower Stories: An Oral History of 9/11 | Definitive First Person Accounts of September 11th and its Aftermath (http://www.towerstories.org/stories.php - broken link)
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