story2043.xml

story2043.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-09-10

My commute into Manhattan from western New Jersey started out very slow that morning. The sun glare was very bad that day and we were about 45 minutes late by the time we came out of the Holland tunnel. I remember looking at my watch as we sat at the red light by the First Precinct near the tunnel, it was about 8:45 am. I never heard any sound from the first plane, but I noticed some people started running down the street. I didn?t give it much thought.

I got off the bus at the first stop at Franklin and Varick streets (about 8 blocks from the WTC). As I looked south down towards the Trade Center, I could see thousands of pieces of paper floating in the sky. I couldn?t see the towers from the side of the street I was standing on and didn?t know what to make of all the paper in the sky. I crossed to the other side of the street to try to get a better view. That?s when I could see the large black hole in the north side of tower 1. I couldn?t believe what my eyes were seeing. As I started to walk down towards the towers I came across a cop who was standing on the corner. He started frantically telling me how he just watched the plane crash into the tower. Like everyone else I assumed he meant a small airplane. He told me it was a big commercial airliner and that it was no accident. He said that plane was aiming for the tower and didn?t attempt to try and turn away, it has to be a terrorist attack.

I work for property management for a financial firm on Greenwich Street and we also managed space at 7 World Trade Center for the same company. I worked at 7 WTC during the ?93 bombing and knew that this was much worse. The first call I tried to make was to our engineering crew at 7 WTC to make sure they were safe. I tried repeatedly to get through, but all the circuits were busy. I decided to make my way down to the building to see if they were okay. I kept trying to call the engineers and also my wife to let her know I was safe, but still could not get through. People on the streets seemed like they were in shock just staring at the tower. Some women were already crying.

I stopped at the corner two blocks north of the Trade Center on West Broadway. While I was looking up at the towers, all of a sudden this huge fireball erupted from tower #2 followed by a loud double explosion. From the side I was looking from I never saw the plane coming. The explosion looked like something from a movie. The whole top of the tower disappeared behind the fireball. I could see large pieces of debris flying from the tower towards my direction. People on the street just started screaming and running for cover. I ducked around the corner for a minute until I seen that nothing was crashing down around us. When I looked back up both towers were now in flames. Within a matter of minutes I saw 6 people jump from the upper floors. That?s when people started to really panic men and women were crying, people were running, others were just walking in a daze. I just could not believe my eyes, it seemed like a bad dream. I stayed at that corner for 10-15 minutes more talking with people on the street trying to figure out what was happening. Some were saying that a bomb went off in tower 2. I still didn?t know that a second plane had hit but I knew there was no way a bomb that big could have been brought up to those floors.

I don?t remember making a conscience decision not to go to 7 WTC, but I just turned around and went to my building on Greenwich Street. When I got there they had already evacuated the building. Our crew stayed at the building to help with the activation of the disaster recovery plan. We were standing out in front of our building when the towers fell. Just when I thought things couldn?t get any worse, they did. A short time later our crew from 7 WTC came walking down the street. They looked like they been through hell. I was very happy to see that those guys made it out safely. We all hugged when we seen each other. They had quite a story on how they made it out of 7 WTC (do a search on ?catalano? to read their story). Shortly after that I finally got through to my wife. She told me about the attacks on the Pentagon and the crash in Pennsylvania. I couldn?t believe all this was really happening.

That afternoon we set up a triage in the building plaza and a temporary morgue in the loading dock. Only about 50 people were treated over the next few hours. Thankfully no bodies were brought to our loading dock. At 5:25PM I was standing in front of our building when 7WTC collapsed. I heard someone scream that another plane had crashed. People started running into our building for cover. Later in the evening we were told to pack up the triage area because there were no more survivors.

As horrible as the events were that I witnessed, it does not even come close to what the people at the Trade Center went through. We can never forget the Heroes who died that day.