It was a beautiful Tuesday morning in September, blue skies, sunny and a comfortable temperature. While getting ready to leave the house for the office, the telephone rings. My cousin on the other end states, “Thank God you’re still home, turn the television on”! Not knowing what I was about to witness my office building, One World Trade Center, had a gaping hole with black smoke billowing out from the side. I could not believe what I was seeing and thought to myself, well, I guess I am not going to work today. I said, “Thank you for calling, now I have to call my husband to tell him, since he works in the City”. While my husband was walking to work in lower midtown he heard a different type of noise coming from the sky. All the tall buildings blocked any view of the airplane, but to him it sounded as if it were in distress – an unusual, unforgettable sound. I called my husband and told him an airplane hit the WTC. He went to his boss and staff gathered in a conference room to put the breaking news on. To everyone’s surprise, the WTC was damaged and black smoke was spewing from the building. My husband told his boss that I worked in that office building and needed to leave work to go home. He got one of the last trains out of Penn Station that day.
I was thinking of all the people that worked in the WTC complex and the impact it would have on thousands. Many thoughts were racing through my head about the buildings and the coworkers I worked with every day and if they were safe. I also thought of all the items I had at my desk, pictures, shoes and various personal objects. It didn’t really matter what was at my desk, what mattered was that I was not in the building at the time of destruction. It’s hard to believe that I was in the office the day before, never knowing or thinking that the buildings would be demolished the following morning. I was fortunate that the incident didn’t happen one week earlier since I was working the early shift to cover my coworker who was on vacation. My working hours at the time were from 10:00 to 6:00, they saved my life!
This brought back memories of when the WTC was terrorized on February 26, 1993. I transferred to the WTC in January working on the 65th floor. It was a snowy Friday at lunchtime. The building jolted, staff was looking around trying to figure out what happened, with that the Director of Aviation and came out of his office and told us to take your belongings and go home. I found my way to the staircase with my coworkers; it was filled with smoke, dark, hot and crowded. It was a slow go with many people filing into the staircases from all the floors above and below us. We decided to stop on a floor to catch our breath and rest a moment. We all looked at each other and noticed soot on our faces, so we pressed on. One and a half hours later we found our way to the ground level, than we made our way outside. It was such a relief to get out of the buildings alive! A day I will never forget, as well as September 11th, 2001.
Maureen Gallo
