This terrorist attack is really hitting close to home. Here are three stories from people we know!
(I edited out the first two storys and include the third story because it is relevant to this thread.-Tom)
It's late and as you can see, I've been through a lot. Please excuse the spelling.... This is the ----NOTE version: I am okay. I was in a meting on the 39th floor of the WTC1 at 8:30 on 9/11/01. The explosion hit and we ALL thought it was an earthquake.
Once it was established it was NOT an earthquake but some kind of explosion from above, we started to climb the stairs down... There was one man on the 30th floor in a wheel chair. An obese woman who couldn't walk and because of the smoke in the stairwell she had to stop and hold up traffic ... it was utterly chaotic, but immeasurably under control. No one panicked. NEVER did it get wild.... People took their time and worked together to help and assist one another... But obviously many perished... There were 1000 decisions I made, and many were counter to what should have been done.
The only reason I'm alive is because the lord told me and showed me how to get out. Seriously!!! I was going to stop on floor 20 and sit-it-out until the "smoke cleared" and get out later.... I decided not to and to stay in the flow and go to the bottom of the staircase, despite the smoke and burning eyes...
There was a man in a wheel chair who was stuck in the stairwell. He could neither go up, down or get back in to the area he came from. There was an enormously fat woman who could not breath and was stuck on the 25th floor wheezing out of control. I'm sure neither ever made it out of the building...
It was pretty bad..... I watched as one man and ten seconds later a woman jumped to their deaths from the 95th floor. I said out loud; "this is NOT entertainment!!!! I am not going to watch people jump to their deaths...."(My italics-Tom)
And walked away and headed to 34th street with a friend. I then found the trains were open to Conn. and took a train to ---in Greenwich.
I stayed the night, rented a car today, Wednesday and drove to see -----in Natick (his house) and home to Beverly to see --. I am very very lucky to be alive.
Many were not so lucky. I was only a step away at any one moment... Horrible. But I am alive.
Love to all - I'm just too exhausted to write any more. Love ---.
I'm glad this guy got out okay, but geez, I wish he, or somebody, might have tried to do something to help these people, instead of just dismissing them later on as objects "in the way." Someday it may be one of his kids who's "enormously obese" or in a wheelchair.