pjinca

I was a little late going to work, it was my girlfriend's daughter's first day of kindergarten. So I got to work, picked up some coffee and a bagel in the lower level, from a very nice guy from Ghana I talked to every morning and went up to my 12th floor office in 2 World Trade Center. It was about 8:15 when I got to my desk, I started talking to a co-worker about a big project I had been working on for over a year (redesigning the NYC Board of Education's network). Eventually I sat down and started to log into my computer.
That's when the building moved, it wasn't uncommon to feel the building sway slightly in heavy winds, but this was different. We all got up and looked around, not sure what to do. That's when we started seeing the flaming debris fall gently passed the windows that separated our building from the hotel across the plaza. We knew we had to move. Another coworker and I started ushering people towards the door to the hallway so we could get to the stairs when our Director came out of his office and told everyone to "calmly" evacuate the building - no one knew what had happened, but we could tell whatever it was, it was bad.
We got everyone to the stairs and headed down. We crossed the lower level of the plaza passing all the shops and exited next to the Barnes & Nobles, where the Port Authority cops were directing us to leave. Once outside most scattered, I crossed the street next to the Millenium Hilton and saw our receptionist walking towards me in a daze (clearly in shock), she didn't answer when I spoke to her, she just kept walking towards the building. So I grabbed her and made her look at me, all she said was "why are they doing that?" not knowing what she was talking about I turned and looked and we watched several people jump out of the upper floors of 1 World Trade, still everyone on the street assumed it was a small plane that had crashed into the building. On such a beautiful day we assumed something MUST have happened to the pilot for it to crash directly into the building.
That's when the 2nd plane hit, which we couldn't see (the Hotel blocked our view of our office). I figured it was secondaries from the first crash, the veterans here know what secondaries are. So to prevent our receptionist from getting hit by any debris I pulled her into the receiving bay of the hotel. We watched as chunks of plane and building flew up the street striking a police officer standing next to his Cushman scooter.
After the chunks stopped flying I started to head towards the downed police officer, but my receptionist started heading back towards the building as soon as I let go of her. By the time I grabbed her and got her heading in the right direction (away from the towers) the cop had a small crowd tending to him. I pointed the receptionist down the street and told her we needed to call and let our families know we're okay. As we walked there were huge lines at every pay phone we passed, cell phones weren't working, luckily we weren't that far from a large Verizon building next to the Brooklyn Bridge, we ducked in there and I was finally able to call my Mom and tell her I was fine.
We started walking north since the receptionist lived in Queens I was hoping the subways were running farther north. We had gathered a couple of other people who worked in the building, one lady was from Merryl Lynch - luckily she was a little late getting in, the 2nd plane hit 1 floor above her office. As we walked the receptionist kept looking back, suddenly - in Chinatown, she said "it's gone, the building is gone". I didn't believe her. I turned and all I saw was smoke, I told her "no, it's not gone, you just can't see it behind the smoke". Then the smoke cleared and I saw only one tower standing. That was pretty shocking.
I turned and continued to guide her north, both towards a subway for her to get home and my car - which was parked on 50th st on the West Side (monthly parking near the WTC was ridiculously expensive, it was MUCH cheaper to park on the West Side and ride the subway down). I knew there had been an attack, but I didn't know any details until I got to my girlfriend's aunt's house. I managed to get to my car, but it was pointless, they weren't letting anyone in or out of Manhattan at that point.

Later that day my boss emailed me and asked I could help out, the Mayor's Office of Emergency management had been destroyed (obviously) and they needed to set up a new one immediately. I agreed and hopped in my car and drove down to the pier where they were planning to setup temporarily. After some discussion with the guys from NYC-DOITT and some other vendors we had a plan. So 2 days after 9/11 I was in a manhole on the West Side highway splicing fiber to get the new OEM connected. I stuck around in the OEM and acted as one of the liaisons between Verizon and the Mayor's office. I gave the Mayor his daily briefing on how the work was progressing restoring phone service to lower Manhattan. On the 4th day I got to see the damage first hand, I went on a tour of the World Trade Center area with the Mayor and his team. I remember staring straight up at over 3 stories of rubble, amazing.

flyingpuck

Wow, what a story....a combination of luck and logic saved the day!

Anzafin

Wow. Thanks for sharing the story, John.

info@trinityautosport

thanks for sharing bro. we'll never forget.

dbae1978

John thank God you guys made it out safely. I remember you telling me this story before, but never this detailed. never forget, brutha

tonymac

Wow... You were a lot closer than me. I had a delivery that day to William H. Mcgee on the 42th floor of tower 2. Thankfully, I decided to make the delivery after I finished up everything in long island. On my way there, I heard howard stern talking about the tower on fire... The rest is history. It really saddens me to think that the people I so frequently visited are gone and that room that I brought boxes and files too is no more.

m630

Crazy story, glad you made it. ..looks like we were right across the street from each other for that moment in time.

My story was surreal as well, I work a block north of the Towers, with 7 World Trade standing between myself and the former WTC. The day was quite memorable as it was such a bright, beautiful, clear blue September Tuesday in the city. It was also memorable because it started off annoyingly, but in a most serendipitous way.

I was on my way to the LIRR (local railway system from long island to manhattan), planning on taking an early train into the city as I had told my team on monday I was going to bring in Krispy Kreme?s for breakfast. Those in the area may recall that KrispyKreme had opened a store at the foot of the twin towers not long before 9/11. So, my plan was to take an early train, go to the WTC and pick up donuts and be in the office before everyone started getting their day going. First indication that the day was not going to be as planned, was as I drove to the train station, there was some unscheduled construction taking place on my normal route. Traffic was very heavy for the early pre7AM timeframe. As it worked out, I get stuck in the traffic, and watch at the final traffic light before getting to the tran station as the train comes and then leaves without me. So now Im heading into the city with a chip on my shoulder as I still have to get to the towers and get the donuts and get to work on time! Aggravated and frustrated, I make my way into Penn station, then run for a subway downtown.

Second crazy point to reflect upon- its 2001, I?ve been working here since ?97, so 4+ years, and basically take the same trains, stand at the same point on the platform, see the same faces even in a city of millions and millions?.well, again as I was running late in my mind that is, I run and get into a different subway car than normal, which happens to place me next to the conductors car.... At this point its just past 8:45AM, and we are pulling into my subway station, Chambers Street, World Trade Center. As we pull in, there is noise over the radio from the conductors car, and I can hear them saying something about an explosion being reported at the Twin Towers. Looking around the car to see if anyone else had heard exactly what was said, many look bewildered as I was, so the doors are just about to open and I quickly run out and up the stairs to the street level, as those who knew the city, you could not miss the towers once you were on the street downtown, so up from the subway and I can immediately see what appears to be a ?small? hole in the North Tower, very high up in the building, and there is smoke rising. Being about 2 blocks from my office, I run to the building to see what had happened?

While outside my building, looking up at the towers, it did not look that bad. I mean really, it looked like a small prop plane had hit the tower by some freak accident. I was standing outside my office and speaking with some co-workers, and of course we all felt the same way, I can even recall almost laughing (gasp) when we spoke about the ?idiot? that must have messed up and hit the Tower on such a clear blue day. I had posed a ?bet? to my friend, as to how long it would take for them to fix it, - I had waged 6 months mind you ? ignorance on the ultimate scale. But, it really, really didn?t look bad from the ground, and not actually seeing it get hit, for a brief moment in time, we lived in the bliss of true ignorance of the magnitude of what had taken place ? what WAS taking place, and so as any New Yorker would do, we went back to work...

Making my way up the elevators as it just turns 9:00AM on the clock, I get logged into my pc, and was about to shoot an email off to my brother in midtown to tell him what had happened and then?
The world as we knew it ended?The building shook, the power snapped off and then quickly on to the backup generators as the fireball from the second plane hit 7 WTC and then the debris rained down upon the street and my building (as I had noted earlier, my building was in the shadow of 7 WTC, located directly next to it)and then you can hear people screaming from the street as chaos ensued. With no where to go, many standbyers raced into our building for safety from the destruction on the street. At this point, we knew very well that we are in the center of something terrible, and something that we can never forget.
After a short period of time, we secured our floor, and vaulted all of the critical financial details and got everyone out of the office, not knowing what we may find outside.
Those who were there may very well never forget the screams, the sights, the horror of watching as helpless and hopeless one after the other began jumping out of the Towers. At first, one could not accept such a sight, because what had first appeared to be debris falling from the Towers in fact turned out to be humans falling from the sky. With a loud and treacherous bang towards the ground, countless lives and hopes and dreams were shattered. Those looking on from the street in front of World Financial Center across the West Side screamed out in a horrific chorus that I?ll never forget, pleading, begging those trapped not to jump out. We know now that it would not have mattered, those in the tower already knew their fate, a fate we could not accept at that moment.
After finally gathering the mindset to have to leave the area, slowly we walked towards midtown, I was only a few blocks away in SoHo when the disaster truly became apparent, the sight we had never believed would be witnessed took place, the South Tower fell right before my eyes. Still to this point, in the back of my mind, and in those I was traveling with was, there was no way the Towers would fall, no matter what, they wouldn?t, they couldn?t fall.

This disaster was then again repeated where all hope was lost if that?s the right words. They were both gone, in an instant.
After hours of walking, Id finally get up to the 59th Street bridge, then walk across with the untold zombies that accompanied my from all parts of the city, we slowly walked and watched as the fire continued to burn, and burn, and burn it would for days if not weeks. All was lost.

And so if things had worked as I had thought they would that day, and there had not been the unexpected traffic that caused me to miss my early train, it would have placed me at the foot of the Twin Towers lining up to buy Krispy Kreme?s at just about 8:45AM, while the first plane hit at 8:46AM, and major damage was inflicted to the public retail area as a result, maybe I would have been fine, maybe not, but I was very lucky on a very unlucky day.

3 employees from my Company perished that day, including one who was a trained EMT that ran to see how he could help. A local media outlet snapped a last picture of him administering assistance to someone in need.

I pray for everyone that was affected, and lost someone that day, or as tragically, since then for only trying to help.

As our infrastructure was in shambles, I had to begin working early the next day at a remote disaster recovery site to begin saving our company and the US financial system, so for the next 3 days I worked nearly non-stop. But on Saturday, the 15th, myself along with several of my closest friends made it downtown to help in whatever small way we could. I was eventually able to get into the ?frozen zone? that was downtown, and had my camcorder with me, I was able to get some unbelievable video of a scene from hell on earth, no one would believe how it was unless you witnessed it yourself, all I?ll say is that we should all hope and pray we never have anything like this happened to anyone, anywhere in the world.

Never forget the unforgettable.

pjinca

m630 - what a small world, I used to get donuts at that Krispy Kreme whenever we had early meetings. Also, I started working there in May of '97 - crazy isn't it? You get into a nice routine and one day it all changes drastically.

Also (pt 2) - guess where they put us after 9/11? Yep, right there in Penn Station. It kinda creeped us out, because when you looked out of our office windows and looked at the top of Madison Square Garden you realize they conveniently painted the roof red and white making it a nearly perfect target. We were soooooo glad when they moved us again into 1095 AofA.

It's funny, the receptionist told everyone who would listen I saved her life, but in reality - she probably saved mine. Again, as a Pararescue I was a trained medic in the military and I would have stayed to render assistance if she hadn't been in such a horrible state. So my concern for getting her away from the Towers probably saved me as well.

m630

it really is a small world! And I would have not liked Penn either, some of our staff did go to One Penn Plaza for a time as well, I never liked that idea! I was stuck up in pleasantville, ny for 3 months living in a hotel, and finally returning to the city after Thanksgiving, but sitll unable to return to our office building we had rented the former JPM builing across from the NYSE, yet another target I was in! It took until July of 2002 for us to fully return to my office, they had to replace over 1,600 windows and clean up the mess inside and out.

glad we both made it to tell the story

saragreen

thank you for your story. god bless us all the time.