More individual stories...
'It's still surreal' - survivors tell their
stories of escaping
Associated Press
Sept. 11, 2001 13:58:00
NEW YORK - Richard Cruz was getting off the elevator on the 92nd floor
of the World Trade Center when the plane hit the tower across from him
today.
"There was mass hysteria, people were screaming," said Cruz, 32. "I
heard a lady's voice saying "Go back! Go back! There's been an
explosion!' I smelled smoke and I saw a lot of paper flying like confetti."
Cruz rushed to the stairwell along with other panicked co-workers from
Aon Risk Services, an insurance brokerage company, where he started
work a month ago.
At the 63rd floor, he decided to try to look out a window of one of the
offices.
"One side of Building 1 was engulfed in flames. People were yelling 'Oh
my god! They're jumping, they're jumping out the window.' I looked down
and I saw a lot of debris, and I saw blood spots. I saw the horror. That's
when it hit me and I thought to myself 'I have to get out of here.' "
As Cruz rejoined the heavy stream of people on the stairs, the second
plane hit. This time, it was his tower.
"The whole building moved and it was swaying back and forth. I heard a
muffled boom and I thought everything was just going to collapse.
People were rushing and merging together and going crazy," he said.
When he finally got to the ground floor, dust and smoke had darkened
the air. Amid the debris that littered the ground, Cruz said he saw a
burnt torso.
As he turned away, he caught the eye of a co-worker. They exchanged
shaky smiles and she said, "We're very lucky, aren't we?"
Cruz could only nod in agreement.
Later, he said: "It's still surreal in my head. The reality of it hasn't hit me.
Even though the World Trade Center has fallen and all these people are
possibly dead. I'm just so lucky, I'm just so lucky."
---
Lolita Jackson, a Morgan Stanley Investment Management employee,
said she and 15 other people were in a business meeting on the 70th
floor when the first plane crashed.
"We couldn't see the plane coming toward us but we saw fire, smoke
and papers - office papers, so obviously there was a hole in the
building," said the 34-year-old Jackson. "When we saw that, we saw fire
actually shooting out of the building, we knew it was time to leave."
She and her co-workers walked down to the 59th floor and were then
told to take elevators to a lobby on the 44th floor. That's where they were
when the second plane hit the opposite side of the building.
"The building swayed probably about two feet," Jackson said. "I thought
at that point it was going to topple over. That was the moment I was
probably the most scared."
Jackson, who said she also went through the 1993 World Trade Center
bombing by terrorists, started going down the stairs with the aid of
rescue workers.
"Had the second plane hit first, we probably all would have been dead,"
she said.
Jackson added that she never thought such a thing would happen again.
"I always would tell my friends that my disaster chit has already been
used up," she said.
---
Carrie Kennedy, an economist for the Commodity Futures Trading
Commission, made her way down safely from the 37th floor of Building 1
shortly after it was hit.
"I was just sitting at my desk going through my e-mail, when the
building started to shake. The noise actually followed the movement,"
said Kennedy, who turns 29 on Saturday.
Kennedy and several co-workers made their way down emergency
staircases to the darkened concourse that connects the towers at
ground level.
"It was dark, about an inch of water on the floor and sprinklers were
going off. People were covered with thick soot," she said.
Once outside, she turned to see a body fall from the tower she had just
escaped. |
