posted on September 12, 2001 08:50:00 AM new
The following is a brief account of my morning. I had an amazingly lucky day.
I got to work at about 8:40, 8:45, no-one else had arrived in the office
yet. I checked my voice mail and email, and left for the restroom. While I was in the restroom, a hear and feel a faint rumbling, like someone on the floor above is doing construction...but it goes on for a few seconds too many...then I hear creaking and more rumbling, the partitions start to sway,
and sway more and creak and then they begin to pull away from the suspended ceiling.
One split second later I peek into the hallway there's not a soul in sight, and I take another split second to notice debris at the other end of the hall. One moment later, I reach for the door to the egress stair, at which time I see hundreds of people evacuating from the upper floors, I had lots of thoughts running through my mind, but a few people were mumbling about an airplane accident, and that settled my
stomach for a short time because it sounded like an accident, nothing dubious.
Because my office was on the 22nd floor, and we knew the crash had occurred much higher than that, and we saw the fire dept. crew, etc., it didn't seem an appropriate time to panic. It was still early, and we didn't
know about the 2nd hit yet...so we were all walking calmly down the stairs...only a few older women were hyperventilating a bit and some lightly crying from fear, etc...and their co-workers were trying to calm them down all the while. Things still seemed relatively routine in terms of the professional way in which the security team and fdny were handling the evacuation.
We only made it down to the 17th floor because the stairwell got very crowded, and they asked us all to enter the 17th floor
office suite. we did, but that seemed to cause a little more frustration and fear amongst some of the people. everyone was trying to use the phones in the office suite, but because the employees had left earlier, no-one knew the code to dial out. finally after about 15 min. someone yelled "dial 8 first!" and every phone was a buzz.
I called XXXX and told him I was OK and
trying to get out, and to call my parents and let them know the situation...maybe 5 minutes later, they asked us to re-enter the stairwell and continue to go down...but on the way down, they stopped us again, and
had us go back to 17 at which point I called XXXX again. I told him that I was still inside and that they wouldn't let us go just yet. He sounded anxious and told me to get out as fast as possible...what no-one had told us was that the other bldg. had just been hit. XXXX had seen it live on the news and told me about it...he sounded extremely anxious (if you know XXXX, you know this is highly unusual!) I dropped the phone because once again, they were leading us down the stairs...we all started to walk, but had to
wait to all fit inside the doorway because now, people really sensed an increasingly dangerous situation, and began acting like it, pushing a little here and a squeezing a little to get through the door first.
Someone from the end of the line began passing around paper towels to put over our mouths to keep the smoke out, we just kept passing them to the people ahead who had already entered the stairs. I took some too because even though the
smoke/dust was not too thick yet, I didn't know what lay ahead...we had to stay on the right side of the stairs because firefighters with heavy equipment and protective suits were coming up the stairs on our left in a constant stream...one right after another...maybe twenty guys...all with red faces and breathing heavily...they had already walked up 17 flights of stairs...and seen who knows what...then maybe 5-10 minutes later, we made it to the 13th floor...and someone starts yelling "burn victim"! coming down...and they walk this woman down the stairs with some minor burns on her arms...I tried not to look because i knew it would make me panic a little bit to start seeing that sort of thing...but I accidentally caught a glimpse of her arm which looked like the top layer of skin was just peeling away in sheets like a terrible sunburn.
We continued to descend, 7th floor, 6th floor, 5th floor, and there was water everywhere, puddles on the stairs,pouring from the ceiling...and then finally, the lobby. it took about 30-40 minutes because of the density of people. The lobby was the first real sight of the destruction. It looked like an attack only at that point...all of the glass in the revolving doors was knocked out, fdny were directing people, yelling directions over cb radios, yelling "move!" "let's go!" "stay
calm!" "turn your cell phones off!" and we did...we were walked through the secure areas, then up an escalator, and out...there were people everywhere, and all Icould think was what are they doing?! why don't they get away? They were all so close to the towers. I walked briskly, then ran to the closest subway, bust through the gate without paying the fare (purse was left in the office with metrocard, money, etc), and took the first train home. People were lined up at the pay phones because everyone was trying to reach their family and cell phone line vailability had already been reduced. I just kept walking until Iwas in our apartment. We watched my building go down minutes later on the news...
Thank you for all the calls of concern
This was sent to me and a host of others who were very concerned...it is good news and I wanted to share some of what these people on the lower floors were going through.
[ edited by zilvy on Sep 12, 2001 09:04 AM ]
posted on September 12, 2001 10:28:41 AM new
You are welcome Becky, that was what I was hoping to do as soon as I received it I wanted to share some little bit of good news.
posted on September 12, 2001 11:00:51 AM new
Zilvy. Thank you for telling us your (and countless others') story. It helps to know that people made it out. We will be praying for you and everyone who was in that building as well as all the rescue teams. Margie
