September 11 anniversary: Recollections of that terrible day

I was in my office on the 85th floor of One World Trade Center when I heard an extremely bizarre sound and then a very loud thud. It felt as if the building were punched on the north side and it lurched toward the south. I got jolted and had to keep my balance.

The secretaries were frantic. Someone opened a nearby door to see what was happening in the hallway. There was some white-ish smoke starting to develop. I called 911 [emergency number], but it was busy. I tried to call home, but it went busy before I completed dialing.

I got my jacket, wallet, keys and cellphone. I took a final look, noticed my laptop that I take everywhere I go and which stores virtually my entire business, and thought, “I’ll be back in a few days; I can do without it till then.”

I walked out through the file room, climbing over files that had fallen to the floor, and headed to the stairwell. People had started descending the stairwells. The people I saw and heard ahead of me and behind remained calm, patient and courteous; it was truly heartwarming. Progress down 85 flights was extremely slow. No one on the stairs had any inkling of what was to follow. 

I heard from someone from the 91st floor that a plane had hit the building. My assumption was that it was an out-of-control plane being used by a traffic reporter. However, while still on the steps, we learned from a man with a cellphone that a plane had also hit the other tower, so all of a sudden we knew it had to be terrorism. When we heard it was an American Airlines plane, I became more nervous, realizing it was a real jet that could cause some serious damage. Yikes.

We continued the long walk down. From time to time, the injured were carried down (they were bloody) and the people stepped aside to let them pass. The stairwell was not wide; perhaps two people could walk down at a time. The tone on the stairwell was not what you would expect (of course, none of us knew what to expect). I described to someone from my floor the scene from the movie Almost Famous, where the plane is going down and the passengers shout out their deepest secrets (“I always loved your wife!”; “I’m gay!”) only to have to live with those revelations when the plane righted its course. The feeling was “Well, at least nothing that bad is going to happen to us… right?”

Walking down was excruciatingly slow, due to the number of people ahead of us and the number of people moving onto the stairwell at every floor. Again, people remained calm throughout, and no one tried to maneuver ahead of the others. The lights remained on and smoke was never a serious problem. At each floor, I felt the door to see if it was hot (it never was). A few times I opened the door; when I saw smoke I quickly closed the door and tried to move a little faster. 

Many times, for minutes on end, we stayed in the same place, getting nervous but never freaking out. Some people suffered panic attacks. They were put on the floor and someone tried to get them oxygen.

Somewhere around the 40th floor, we saw firemen going up, looking like they were doing the hardest thing they had ever done in their lives. They had already climbed 40 flights of stairs with a full load of equipment, and they had a long way to go. They were sweating and panting, yet marching on with the fear of death in their eyes. They were going up to save lives, put out a fire, do their jobs. These poor men, I am sure, all perished when the building collapsed. God rest their souls. They are true heroes.

By the time we got to the 20th floor, water cascading down the steps slowed us down, but we were always able to march on.

At times I felt like a passenger on the sinking Titanic. During the times when we had to wait on the steps, or move at an exceedingly slow pace, you knew you had to get out, but there was no way to avoid the impending disaster except to keep moving and hope for the best. Everyone seemed to understand that rushing and pushing would only make matters worse.

Finally, we got to the bottom of the stairwell. Dozens of people at the bottom were guiding people and telling them where to go. I can only imagine what happened to all of them. We walked through the underground “mall” – the retail area of the WTC. The lights in the corridor were dark, though store lights were on. It seemed like nighttime and the building was closed. The sprinklers, however, were going full blast so it was pouring with the force of a summer rainstorm. It struck me as odd; all the store windows looked just fine, but I was getting soaked.

We were guided up and out of the building onto the WTC Plaza, a huge open space where people have lunch and see concerts in the summer. Finally, daylight. I thought this was the end of the ordeal. When I saw it, I was shocked: the plaza was filled with so much debris (and this was before the buildings collapsed) that I became confused. How could this possibly be the plaza? What could have happened to change the entire look of the landscape? It was horrifying, and only then did I start to realize the extent of the calamity.

THE DOZENS of safety personnel (uniformed and not) formed a human path for us to walk through. I was impressed that a system to help people was set up quickly and put into action. They told us to keep moving quickly and “Don’t look up.” That struck me as odd, even biblical. My first thought was that we should not look because what we would see was too horrifying. Well, I couldn’t help myself and after a few steps I looked up. 

It never occurred to me that debris was falling and that I was leading with my face. What I saw was the eastern side of the tower with the top part of the building in flames. It didn’t look good, but again, no one had any idea of what was to follow. I kept walking as directed.

I lost track of time during all of this, but have since determined that it took about 50 minutes to get out of the building. We left our office on the 85th floor at about 8:50 a.m. (the first plane hit the North Tower at 8:46 a.m), and were in the stairwell when the other building was attacked (at 9:03 a.m.). I was about two blocks away from the WTC, somewhere near Broadway and Vesey Street, when I heard this unbelievably loud noise in the sky. I looked up and saw a helicopter and wondered how that helicopter could make such a loud noise. My body was facing west (in the direction of the WTC), and when I brought my gaze down from the sky to the street, I saw the worst thing I had ever seen in my life.

The roar from the crowd told me to “RUN! RUN!” It was the scene we have all seen on TV dozens of times – that horrible cloud of smoke racing up the street, headed right in my direction. What the hell? The scene was straight out of a bad Japanese movie, as everyone on the streets of New York turned and started to flee. I was sure that anyone stuck in that cloud would suffocate. 

I ran and I ran, looking over my shoulder as the cloud of smoke got closer. I thought I was going to have to run all the way to the East River and jump in. I kept on running and did not stop until either I could not run anymore or I figured the cloud had dissipated enough so that it would not choke me to death. The air was smoky as I continued walking to the east, particles were in the air and in your eyes, but livable. 

It was a terrifying scene, but I was still walking.