WTC Workers Told to "Go Back to Work" After First Explosion But Many Fled

Grand Rapids Press ^ | 9/12/01

[11th Earl of Mar]

Attack hits home for some in West Michigan

Wednesday, September 12, 2001

By Ed White
The Grand Rapids Press

---

Sue Yang stared at the television all day, hoping for a glimpse of a survivor who looked like her 22-year-old son.

"Can I see my son get up?" she said. "How come I can't find him?"

Finally, about nine hours after two planes crashed into New York's World Trade Center, Yang found her son: Benjamin Yang got through on a phone and said he had escaped the twin towers.

"We're exhausted but, oh, so happy," said his father, Matt Yang of Plainfield Township. "My daughter answered the phone and screamed."

For most of West Michigan, the catastrophe Tuesday unfolded on TV screens, in the newspaper, on radio or the Internet. But the story hit even closer to home with many West Michigan families, like the Yangs, with ties to the tragedies in Washington and New York.

Benjamin Yang worked on the 79th floor of the Trade Center's south tower. After a plane crashed into the north tower, he rushed down the stairs.

"When he got down to the 44th floor, someone came on an intercom and said, 'Everybody go back to work.' He decided that wasn't a good idea," Matt Yang said.

As his son reached the 30th floor, the south tower was hit by a plane.

"He ran as fast as the wind. He was six blocks away when the building collapsed," Matt Yang, 53, said. "I didn't quite get all the details. I was just happy to hear his voice."

The Yangs moved to Michigan from New Jersey two years ago when Matt accepted a teaching job at Ferris State University. Benjamin stayed in New Jersey to finish his college degree and recently began work as a financial analyst in New York.

Matt Yang first got word of the attack tragedy while driving north to the Big Rapids campus. He was scheduled to teach an afternoon class but instead returned home.

"It was impossible to get a phone call through to New York," he said.

In Washington, a plane hijacked by terrorists crashed into the Pentagon. Coopersville City Manager Thomas O'Malley said that, one day earlier, his son-in-law was standing in the place where the plane hit.

Air Force Lt. Col. Mike Hale is a contracts officer at the Pentagon. He took Tuesday off, so was not at work when the attack occurred.

"I'm thankful," O'Malley said.

Nicholas Stover of East Grand Rapids was picking up luggage at LaGuardia Airport about 8:45 a.m. when his wife called and told him about the Trade Center attack. Meijer's director of corporate image and branding was in New York for a convention.

While riding in a cab to his hotel, Stover barely made it across the George Washington Bridge before it was closed. He saw smoke while listening to the crackle of live news reports over the cab's radio.

"I'm a little shaky right now, just thankful that I'm alive," he said Tuesday morning. "I was supposed to be down there at the base of the Trade Center doing some competitive shopping."

Stover, 47, later tried to donate blood, but a hospital wasn't prepared to handle the large number of people who dropped in. Trying to get close to the scene, he was stopped at 25th Street, about a 10-minute walk from the disaster site.

"There's a lot of display of grief," Stover said Tuesday night. "There are people who are sitting on the sides of the streets just sobbing."

Grand Rapids Police Chief Harry Dolan, a native New Yorker, has a cousin who is a New York firefighter. Henry Ryan was working at the scene of the attack and was OK, but at least 200 firefighters may have died.

"I felt relieved," Dolan said after hearing the news about his cousin. "But I thought of all the people who lost their lives. ... It stops your heart."

Jeff "Brett" Grill, a Rockford High School graduate, emerged from a subway station about five minutes after the second plane struck the Trade Center. He later saw tears, anguish, people jumping from windows -- "just total chaos."

Grill, 22, just began graduate studies at The New York Academy of Art.

His parents had dropped him off at school on Labor Day weekend.

"We were in the World Trade Center. ... We took the subway from a stop underneath. So it seems strange now that this happened so close to the time we were there," his mother, Vivian Grill, said.

Press reporters Mary Radigan and Carmela Thomas contributed to this story.

[11th Earl of Mar]

I wonder how many people died because of this announcement.

[Vermonter]

This story is similar to the one my nephew relayed to me. He was in the second building attacked and because he had been at the WTC for the previous bombing, he immediately began evacuating from the 54th floor after the first building was struck. He says he and a co-worker were told to go to a cafeteria on the 43rd floor, but they continued going down.

He heard and felt the impact of the second plane as he was descending.

Had he stayed in his office, he would likely have died instantly, had he stopped where he was told to, he may never have made it out.

He and his co-worker survived, and I'm glad he'll never have to make the choice of going back to work in that terrorist target!

[denydenydeny]

worked on the 79th floor

This guy would likely have been killed immediately by the plane crash if he'd gone back to that floor.

[Moose4]

In all fairness to the building people that made the announcement for people to go back to work, that seems fairly standard high-rise procedure doesn't it? I used to work in a smaller building (only 12 stories, but for around here, that's "high-rise") and if the alarms ever went off, the "talking alarms" told us to stay put and not evacuate the building.

These people just saw their sister tower get hit by an airplane, a one-in-a-billion happening (assuming Ahmed the Kamikaze isn't behind the controls, with his passport to Paradise already stamped). Can you really blame them for telling the folks in the other tower to stay put, and not starting another stampede to go with the one from the first tower?

(that having been said, I'd probably have said "screw you" and headed for the stairs anyway)

[Lester Moore]

Can you really blame them for telling the folks in the other tower to stay put, and not starting another stampede to go with the one from the first tower?

Since everyone had to know that the WTC was a terrorist target since 1993, why was anyone with any sense 'back to work' there?

That's nearly as stupid as the people that keep moving to live on top of the faults in CA. They know in the SF area that they are over due for another big one. They keep having those little tremors and saying to themselves, "Oh good! It was just another little shake and not the big one." but they know in their hearts it's coming sooner or later.

Which is nearly as stupid as people that keep rebuilding their homes in the flood plains of rivers. "Damn! Flooded out again! Maybe the goobermint will give me another low interest loan so I can rebuild again."

Terrorism is different & I'll do what I can to help, but for the others how much should I be willing to help defer the effects of cranial rectal inversion?