- The Views and the Memories
- The Last Day
The Last View
Leaving 68
The Stairwell
The Sky Lobby
Back to the Stairwell
Out of the Stairwell
Out of the Trade Center
To Midtown
Going Home
- Some Questions and Answers
The Last View
I arrive at work early today; not everyone is here yet. As usual, I get some strong, aromatic coffee from the cafeteria. I proceed up to my cubicle and then savor the coffee while reviewing my work. There is a loud noise coming from outside; it's like a whistling sound that keeps getting louder as the pitch gets lower. The sound is quite familiar. Living in Queens between two airports, I hear this often at home; it’s the sound of an airplane coming in to land. But I’m not at home now, I am at work. It is 8:45 a.m. on Tuesday, September 11th, 2001. I’m on the 68th floor of Two World Trade Center – the South Tower.
The familiar noise ends abruptly with a loud, reverberating “BOOM!” I get up and go to the windows and I look out and down, but I don’t see the crash. Fred, Sylvia and Jim come to the windows too, and they look out and down. There are papers floating in the air. Curious about the source of the papers, I look up and to the left and then I see it. Almost speechless, I point to the crash site high in the North Tower. All I can say is “Look!” I hear a gasp, followed by a stunned silence, then subdued conversation. There is a large, jagged hole in the North Tower and there is fire and smoke! What a horrible accident! It’s still early; I hope no one was there yet – on the floors where the plane hit.
Suddenly, the fire rages!
In a fleeting moment, the rage in the fire seems even more horrifying than the fire itself!
I am convinced that the area affected by it is huge,
and that we are too close to it!
Words spill out of my mouth: “We should evacuate”. Fred asks, “Why?”
I remember getting this same disturbing feeling of doom two other times in my life, but I don’t talk about that. Instead, I try to think of a reasonable explanation for this over-powering urge to leave. I recount how the 1993 bombing caused a dangerous smoke condition in our stairwells even though the explosion was in a different building. If the ventilation system is shared between the buildings, we might be in danger here also.
Now Cathy, one of the managers, comes to the windows and she asks what happened. We inform her of the plane crash and direct her attention to the North Tower. When she sees the crash site, she gasps loudly and then, without hesitation, she tells us to get out of the building. So Fred and I begin our fire-drill routine.
Continue: Leaving 68