This is a email from my sister-in-laws manager. He received this from his niece who experienced the attack first hand. Terri
Hi everyone,
As most of you know, the offices of The Wall Street Journal are located in the World Financial Center, directly across the street from the World Trade Center. The window at my desk looks kitty-corner toward the WTC, just a few hundred feet away, and I've had many people write and call to find out what happened here. Instead of telling the same story over and over, I'm going to try to tell it once and answer everyone's questions about what happened Tuesday. I know I'm probably missing some people I should have on the list -- right now, I can think of a whole bunch -- Uncle Buddy, Starita, Rob, El, all the people at the DemGaz, Ian, most of mom's sisters and brothers, dad's family, former DNers, people at the LJS, and a whole host of folks I don't have the presence of mind to remember their e-mails and who aren't in my inbox currently -- as I've been exiled to the heart of New Jersey (Princeton, quite lovely, actually) and my personal address book on my e-mail is not working. So please forward this or relay the contents to mutual friends you know would want to hear what happened.
Normally I get to work at about 8:30 to see what news events might be affecting the market that day. On Tuesday, I stepped off the subway at the World Trade Center stop at about 8:20, about a half hour before the first plane hit. I walked through the basement mall of the world trade center, noticing the 50% off sale at Victoria's Secret and walking by my pharmacy and the place I buy sushi sometimes at lunch. Silly things to think about now. I bought a cup of coffee and went up to my desk.
A few minutes later, I was chatting with my coworker (a Minnesotan..), Stacy. All of a sudden we heard a loud rumbling overhead. We looked at each other with heads tilted -- what was that?? Planes often fly over, but this one rumbled the floor and rattled the windows. All of a sudden I heard what sounded like a sonic boom. I ducked to get a better view of the sky, and the WTC tower had exploded in flames. We gasped and the newsroom staff came running over. I grabbed my bookbag, which contained gym clothes, my cell phone and a bottle of water (all of which would come in handy later, though the swimsuit in there, thankfully, would not) to run out the door, and my editor said, "Sit down and write the early market story to include the explosion!!!" (He later regretted this order). I sat. The fire-safety director came on to tell us to stay in the building, that there was no danger. But everyone was feeling panicky.
Most were glued to CNN, which seconds later told us that it had been a plane, not another bomb. Then I began to hear another rumble. I thought the WTC was blowing up. But then I heard another similar boom. I looked out the window again and the second tower was aflame. I thought perhaps the plane had blown up and caught the other tower on fire. At this time, the fire director came on the intercom and told everyone to evacuate. Everyone ran for the stairs.
It was a mad rush to the ground floor, and when I ran outside I found two coworkers. We decided we'd get started reporting, as we didn't know the worst was definitely ahead of us. We were still not thinking clearly enough to realize that it was obviously a terrorist attack and not some sort of freak accident. We didn't know yet that there had been a second plane. I had no idea until more than an hour later when I called my mother that the Pentagon also had been hit.
I ran around to Liberty Street and we promptly lost each other. I looked up at the burning towers, and there were huge chunks of metal flying out of the building.
Then I saw the most horrific, terrifying thing I've ever seen in my life.
People were flinging themselves from the top of the world trade center, which is over 100 stories high. Men still had their briefcases strapped over their shoulders; women's purses trailed behind them. They looked like they were the size of little worry dolls; their bodies were falling out of the sky. I cannot erase the image from my head of one man's twisting body, in a black suit and tie, falling 100 stories and hitting the top of another building on the way down. Some struggled as they fell and others just were limp, some faced the ground and some looked upward. Women and men were beginning to realize what was happening; before it had seemed too surreal and I think everyone assumed everyone could get out of the towers down the stairs. Women were screaming and crying and falling on the ground, and people were running backwards in horror toward the river.
There were also body parts on the ground, some still strapped into airplane seats and identifiable as human, in the parking lot. Hands and feet. Two of my coworkers (but thankfully not me) saw a woman's head that had been decapitated from her body.
The police pushed all the crowds of people toward the water. At this point I had to find my coworkers, I was terrified and sickened at what was happening. I ran down the promenade by the Hudson River, toward the Statue of Liberty, with crowds of people. The paramedics were setting up the injured on the park benches and throwing them on a boat to get them to New Jersey. I saw a man who had had part of his head blown off by falling metal.
I got about three blocks away and found three of my editors. They were far enough away that they hadn't seen the body parts or the people jumping and falling from the top of the towers. I told them what I had seen and they sent me to a nearby editors' apartment (Tim) to call our office in Brussels and give them a firsthand account of what was going on so they could publish it. We went into the apartment and I called my mom, then I called Brussels.
I hadn't been able to get through on a cell phone earlier to tell home I was ok because all the lines were blocked. Later I found out that people trapped in the rubble of the towers were calling their family from cell phones, but rescuers hadn't been able yet to find these people.
A few minutes later, we were in the living room trying to figure out where to go and again we began to hear a frightening rumble. Tim's picture window faces the towers, and we watched the first tower collapse on itself only a few blocks away. Our eyes all were huge and we froze. It was impossible to believe what we were seeing (I'm aware this all sounds like third-rate survivors' account and all, but there's a reason these things are a cliché, I guess).
A huge, billowing wall of ash and smoke was rushing through the street, pushing huge beams of twisted metal, burning paper and other objects in front of it. A horde of people were sprinting ahead of it, dropping packages and running out of their shoes and running barefoot. Later Tim's roommate's twin brother told me that his wife and his seven-week-old baby were in this crowd; two men toppled the baby carriage and dumped the baby on the ground. (Both are ok now). It was chaos. One wsj editor said getting caught in this dust was so thick that it choked and was making people collapse and hyperventilate. We saw it coming to us in some kind of a slow motion.
Once we realized it wasn't stopping before it got to our building, we thought it would blow out the windows and we ran like mad for the inside of the building and tumbled down the stairs to the basement (we were on the fourth floor).
However, all of Battery Park is built on a landfill, and I felt VERY far from safe in the basement as they were warning that the entire area might fall into the river. People came running in from outside, and a girl told me that the whoosh of debris and flames had forced people to jump 20 feet over the barriers into the river to get away from it. She couldn't see and I gave her my eye drops. I met a man, Jeff, who had been staying in the hotel at the world trade center. He was covered in the thick soot and he said he was from texas. he was all alone and hadn't been able to get ahold of his family and knew no one in new york. Since I didn't want to stay in the basement for fear of being crushed (at no time was I more afraid for my own life than when I saw the tower collapse; I thought it would crush every building in the area), we ran upstairs to use the phone while we still could before
they were ruined. He called his family in Texas and started bawling on the phone; he had seen bodies fall all around him upon leaving the world trade center and he had seen women fainting and falling down the stairwell. Everyone was terrified and hysterical.
Eventually we left the basement; once we could see again. The smoke was so thick outside we couldn't see for about half an hour. We sat in Tim's apartment; no one knew what to do, where it would be safe to go.
Then security knocked on the door and told us they were evacuating
Manhattan. We were hustled outside and put on a police boat to New Jersey. They dumped us off on a pier in Jersey City. We walked to a park where they were handing out hunks of bread and government-subsidized cheese. I felt like a refugee, getting dumped off an overcrowded boat and someone looked sadly and said, "Would you like a piece of cheese?" It was truly bizarre. But believe me, I was very happy that I was one of the ones lucky enough to be offered a piece of bright orange cheese. The second tower had collapsed while we were in the basement and the skyline now looked foreign, lacking its towers and with gigantic plumes of smoke overpowering the sun.
We (me, Tim and Lex, another girl from our office) decided to walk to the wire service office a few miles away in Jersey. It also had been evacuated. Tim knew someone who lived in a nearby apartment building, so we went there and watched the news for a few hours and learned the full extent of the damage; we also spent hours on the phone talking to our friends and family who had called. Later work got ahold of us and told us they needed us at the DJ corporate campus in South Brunswick, near Princeton, where I am still working tonight. Some of the people who were not in the collapse still haven't come into work, but it looks like me and the people who were in the disaster will be here for the next few months. I have no idea when I'll get to go home and change clothes and such. I bought a toothbrush at Wal-Mart and they put us up at a nice bed and breakfast in Princeton.
Yesterday nothing really seemed real but today it really began to sink home for us who were there and everyone's had trouble not sobbing when we read the accounts of what happened; both in selfish relief that we were so lucky and in sorrow for those we watched die and those who are still beneath the rubble, terrified and injured. I'll spare you all the typical reflections that disaster-survivors inflict on those close to them, but suffice it to say there's a lot of conflicted emotions bursting in everyone's breast. I know that this account doesn't even come close to fully conveying how horrible it was, but thank you all for thinking of me and checking in on me and saying your prayers for my safety and the safety of my friends here. It's been very difficult but we all feel lucky, and maybe guilty, to have lived through it.
Erin
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