It was Primary Day in New York. The contest was the race for Mayor of NYC to replace Rudy Giuliani, who was just completing his second term. The night before I figured I’d vote on my way to work today.
I left my apartment at 8:10 AM. Since I started work at 8:30 AM, I was running late. So I hurried out and completely forgot to vote!
I took my usual short 4 block bus ride to the Downtown Express Subway. From there it’s a six-minute ride to “Fulton St. – World Trade Center”. Then I walked one short block to the WTC outdoor plaza. On the way, I checked the large digital clock high up on the face of the nearby Century 21 Department Store. The time on the clock read 8:36 AM.
I had retired from the Port Authority about four years earlier. I was working for a small consulting company, PACO, Inc. Our office was on the 18th Floor of WTC Tower 2.
Crossing Fulton St. and then walking diagonally across the plaza took only two minutes to reach the double revolving doors of Tower 2.
When I entered, I took the escalator down one level to get to the express elevator. I went through a turnstile using my green building photo ID, placing it on the automatic scanner, which unlocks the turnstile and then I proceed through.
This level of security, electronic ID cards and scanners, were put into place after the attack in 1993, when a Rider truck, laden with bombs, drove into one of the WTC underground garages and set off an explosion.
I then go to the elevator bank that operates from the 17th to the 21st Floor and take it to the 18th Floor.
PACO staff were in two separate rooms. My office was in Room 1828, along with 3 other engineers. Our supervisor, Bob, and other staff members were in Room 1834.
When I entered, I said hello to one of my colleagues, Dave, and asked if I could discuss a business item with him. We proceeded into my office, sat down and started talking. Suddenly we heard a loud booming sound. Dave said, “That sounds like an explosion,” and we looked out the window, from which we could only see in the southeast direction, toward the Financial District.
Tower 1 (the North Tower) was in the opposite direction, and thus not visible to us.
Much later, we, of course, learned that the explosion was caused by a Boeing 767 crashing into Tower 1 at 8:48 AM. This is twelve minutes after I had been standing on Fulton St., waiting for the light to change! What would have happened if I had voted in the Primary and missed a train or bus? Could I have been walking across the plaza when the plane hit?
The first thing I noticed was seeing hundreds of letter size papers flying through the air among sudden gusts of wind. Looking down at the streets, Dave said, “Everyone is running away from the Trade Center.”
With that we went out into the corridor. Bob was already walking down the corridor toward us. As soon as we met, we made the on-the-spot decision to leave.
I had a small carry bag in my office, which I take to and from home every day. I decided not even to take 10 or 20 seconds to go back and get it. “I could always get it tomorrow,” I thought.
The only item of real value in the bag was a pair of prescription sunglasses that I recently purchased. The other item was a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
The next split-second decision I had to make was whether to take the stairs or the elevator. Since Bob earlier told us that whatever happened occurred in Tower 1, I knew our elevators were working. Plus, the elevator would be much faster. I decided on the stairs, however, because 18 floors are easily manageable and, if for some reason they turn the power off while I am on the elevator, it would be disastrous.
So, I enter the stairway which was already crowded, but people were moving fast. After traveling about seven floors, a lady ahead of me developed a cramp in her leg and started limping. I slowed down a little to give her some room and asked if she was all right.
At that instant, a man directly behind me, in white shirt and tie, told me to get moving. I looked at him. He appeared both annoyed and nervous. I became angry and told him, “The lady is hurt. You can’t go faster anyway, because of all the people in front of us.”
The lady then said that she could manage on her own. Since the stairs were wide enough for two across, the lady was able to move to the right and continue to slowly limp down without help.
The pushy man then got almost on top of me and tried to pass around me. I would not let him, using my best football blocking technique.
I estimate that I reached the bottom in about five minutes. The stairway ended inside the building on the Plaza Level. Here one could see out onto the outdoor plaza through the floor-to-ceiling glass windows. What I saw was unbelievable. The sky over the plaza was raining office paper and other small objects. The ground was covered with paper, dust and other debris.
I looked toward Tower 1 and saw nothing unusual. From my location I could only see the bottom half of the Tower. I then walked right up to one of the high windows, so I could see more of the tower. Still, I had to bend down and look straight up to see the very top. From my location I could only see the east and south faces of Tower 1.
The plane had crashed into the north face. From my viewpoint, there was no visible damage to the Tower.
Black and gray smoke was pouring out of its roof, filling the sky above the Tower. After looking more closely, I realized that the smoke was actually pouring out of all the vents that surround the tower, making it look like it was coming through the Tower’s roof. I saw no flames. I assumed that a bomb went off inside the building on an upper floor. However, I could not figure out how someone could manage to get a bomb into the building with all the security.
At that moment, what appeared to be a heavy piece of steel, the shape of a giant basketball, crashed onto the plaza about three feet outside the window from where I had been viewing.
That was enough for me. Until then I assumed the problem was not major. “We might all be going back to work in a little while,” I had thought. But now, my sensitivity was especially heightened after what happened in 1993: police and firefighters would soon be here. The streets and subways would be shut down. And the mass of people in both towers would be evacuated. It will be complete chaos.
“I’m out of here,” I thought. I quickly walked to the escalator that would take me down to the Concourse Level, which includes the underground shopping corridors. (I knew it would be crazy to venture out onto the open plaza.) I would then walk through the underground concourse to the last stop of the E Train, the subway that would take me uptown.
I was just about to put my foot onto the first step of the down escalator, when I looked over, near where I had just been standing. I spotted Mary, PACO’s Personnel Director. “Would she know what to do?” Mary was late middle age and not that agile. She also lives in Stuyvesant Town.
“Mary,” I called, as I started to approach her. I told her to come with me. When we reached the Concourse Level, it was a long way to the subway entrance, about the equivalent of four city blocks. The concourse was filled with people, as it is on any typical business day. They were coming in and out of stores and walking to work. No one had yet known what happened.
I did not run or walk too fast. Did not want to leave Mary behind. I just walked a little faster than her, trying to ‘pace’ her so she wouldn’t slow down. As we got two thirds of the way through the corridor, I noticed two things concurrently. The corridor just ahead looked a little smoky. Secondly, there was a man about 30 feet in front of me, walking away from us, his face contorted in incredible pain, and his arm appeared to be bleeding. Someone was helping him along.
I could not understand how these things could be. Since the incident happened near the top of the tower a short time ago, how could this man have gotten all the way down to the concourse this quickly? Also, how did the smoke get down here?
Then we got to the subway turnstiles. I already had my Metro Card out. I also saw that the train was waiting for us. I knew we had better make this train. I practically ran to get into the last car. Then I turned around. Mary was still fiddling with her Metro Card by the turnstile, which was about 50 feet from the subway. So, I stood in the subway door opening to block the door from closing if the train decided to leave. Mary finally made it, however.
Many months later, Mary would tell me that she was in kind of a daze at the time she was milling around the plaza level of the Tower, not knowing what to do. She even considered going outside.
She had also said that I saved her life. I am not sure about that, but I am glad I saw her.
Then we waited for the train to leave. There were only two other people in this car. One lady was in shock. She wore a shirt showing she is an employee of Mrs. Fields Cookies. The store is close to the subway. She told us she had seen the man with the bleeding arm walk right by her. The other person, a middle-aged black lady, told us she heard that a plane hit the building.
It was the last E Train that went uptown that day.
It was a short ride to the 14th Street Subway Station at Eighth Avenue. When we exited the train, the usual route would be to transfer to the L Train to take us crosstown to First Avenue. I told Mary, however, that I do not want to stay underground. I must get outside.
As soon as we got out in the open, I tried to call home. Over and over, I kept getting a message that all circuits are tied up. Completely frustrating! I was able to listen to a voice mail message I received from my daughter Melissa, asking if I was all right. When I tried to return the message, “All circuits tied up.”
Up until that moment, I had assumed that my wife and daughter would not yet have known about the attack. My wife Barbara was home alone, and she never watches TV in the daytime. Melissa was a teacher in a grammar school far away in uptown Manhattan, on the east side, nowhere near the WTC. I still assumed that Barbara did not know about it. If I could not reach Melissa on the way home, I would call her as soon as I got home.
I told Mary I was taking the bus crosstown, which would take us to the East Side and Stuyvesant Town, where we both lived. She jumped on also. At Sixth Avenue, looking south, I could see the towers from the bus. I got off the bus. Mary followed. I could not understand what I saw. There were holes in both towers, with smoke billowing out of them. Did a piece of the North Tower crash into the South Tower?
The second plane crashed into the South Tower at 9:03AM. This is 15 minutes after Dave and I heard the first explosion. Where was I when this plane hit? I had to have been on the subway traveling uptown.
We spoke with some of the people who were on the sidewalk looking downtown. “An American Airlines jet with 100 people aboard crashed into the North Tower,” a lady with a radio said. A man in the crowd told us that a plane also hit the South Tower. He saw it! Those two pieces of news were devastating.
Then I started to walk east down 14th Street, calling home, over and over. As we crossed Fifth and Fourth Avenues, we could also see the Towers burning. On Third Avenue the Towers were no longer in view. I then said goodbye to Mary, as she went to shop in a nearby Duane Reade.
When I finally reached our apartment, it was about 10:05 AM. When I entered, Barbara was at the door, and she was very shaken up. She said, “I just saw your building collapse, and you come walking in the door!”
Tower 2 collapsed at 10:00 AM, 5 minutes before I walked in the door!
She knew about the attack because Melissa had called her after the school informed its staff.
Using our home phone, I finally got through to Melissa.
It was so terrible what Barbara and Melissa went through, not knowing where I was and whether I was all right.
Half an hour later, I am looking at the TV screen showing the remaining tower standing and engulfed in smoke. At that moment I see Tower 1 also collapse! The time was now 10:29AM.
