Baltimore finance executive recalls moments of terror
Michele Berk
Rick Faby, of the Morgan Stanley Dean Witter branch in Baltimore County, was talking on the phone Tuesday morning with top executives in the company's World Trade Center office in New York, when a hijacked plane crashed into one of the two 110-story towers.
Moments later, he received a call from four trainees -- new hires who were sent to New York for three weeks of training. They and 300 other trainees were on the 60th floor of the World Trade Center II building, the second one hit by an aircraft.
The second tower was quickly evacuated and Faby received a call from his trainees when they reached the ground. He also got a call from them once they had gotten further away.
"So we know people got out," Faby said.
But, he also said, the trainees shared stories of people having heart attacks on the steps while trying to escape and other horrible sites.
The incident hits close to home for Faby and others in his Lutherville office. Morgan Stanley Dean Witter is the largest tenant in the World Trade Center, Faby said, and there are many family and friends working in that building.
"We have a lot of other relatives we haven't heard from," Faby said.
However, he said, they do know that people have gotten out safely from the floors 60, 61, 62, 63, 66 and 69.
TUESDAY SEPTEMBER 11 2001
London Times
President George Bush: "There will be a fullscale investigation to hunt down and find those folks who committed this act. Terrorism against our nation will not stand."
Yassir Arafat: "We are completely shocked. It's unbelievable. We completely condemn this very dangerous attack, and I convey my condolences to the American people, to the American president and to the American administration, not only in my name but on behalf of the Palestinian people."
Shimon Peres, Israeli Foreign Minister: "We feel that we have to handle every source of terror, to identify countries that support terror or terrorism and declare them. We have to denouce terrorists.
"Our heart is with the US. Our hearts are with their families. America has paid a very high price, but America remains the only country that can save the world from this."
"We don't have definite information and we are not going to blame anyone"
"With terror nothing can be achieved. Let us come back to the table of negotiations. Everybody who is engaged in terror is endangering humanity. We have to really combine forces. We have to get ourselves organised globally because terror is global."
Tony Blair: "This mass terrorism is the new evil in our world today. It is perpetrated by fanatics who are utterly indifferent to the sanctity of life and we, the democracies of this world, are going to have to come together and fight it together and eradicate this evil completely from our world."
George Robertson, Nato Secretary General: "The US is dealing with a tragedy of unimaginable proportions. This (Nato) is an alliance, an alliance that defends values, an alliance that defends freedom. We met this evening to express solidarity with America."
The Queen: "It is with growing disbelief and total shock that I am learning of the terrorist outrages in New York and Washington today."
William Hague, Conservative Party Leader: "It is an act of war against civilisation and it will feel in the United States and to people across the world very similar to a declaration of a war as Pearl Harbor was."
World Trade Center eye witness: "Everybody was screaming, everybody was running, the cops were trying to maintain calm. People were stampeding, they started screaming that there was another plane coming. The second building just exploded, all the debris was flying towards us."
Bertie Ahern, the Irish Premier: "This is a terrible day. This is a terrible and horrendous atrocity, which every right-thinking person in the world will condemn."
Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary: "What we have all witnessed on our television screens from America are acts of evil and horror beyond the imagination of any of us."
Mary McAleese, the Irish President: "It's not just a crime against the American people, it's not just a crime against the American civilisation. It's a crime against the very foundations of all our humanity."