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Check this out from WKPP member Peter Wallace who was in the WTC. -----Original Message----- From: Pete Wallace [mailto:hwallac1@ta*.rr*.co*] Sent: Friday, September 14, 2001 12:45 PM To: Trey@Ne*. Com Subject: WTC G, here's what happened... if you want to put this on wkpp or Gue fine w/ me. This really sucks, and that is the only way to describe it. Ive got to write this as it is too damn important not to and although this will likely stay in my memory forever, I do not want to take the chance of forgetting any of it. Iwas lucky, I escaped. 5000 others were not as fortunate Nothing can really describe the feeling, the shock or the terror of what took place in New York. It is interesting that terrorism is a word we all use but its true meaning was never really know until its been fully experienced. The terror, the grief, the carnage. I was at the National Association for Business Economics 43rd Annual Meeting ironically titled NABE in a New York Minute little did any one of us know just how much a few of those New York minutes would change the lives of so many people. The meeting was being held September 9th through 11th at the New York Marriott World Trade Center Hotel. It was the last day of the meeting about 8:00 in the morning. I went down to breakfast, but thought I could miss the presentation by Robert Scott. President and CEO of Morgan Stanley and that my time would be better served packing up, checking the markets and emails, looking at the situation with swap number 6 to see why it values slightly differently than we expected and then checking out and checking my bags before the start of second session. This would keep me from trying to rush to check out before the noon deadline. The rooms at the Marriott, the old Vista Hotel, are small but well laid out. The room was laid out so as you enter the bath immediately to the right, the closet is on the opposing wall, then on the right is the bed with the suitcase rack and the television opposite of it. There was then a couch to the outside of the bed along the right wall with a coffee table in front of it and then a desk on the left wall. The widow is large and immediately to the right of the couch and directly opposite the door. The widow looked out over West Street towards the World Financial Center where I worked when employed by Lehman Bothers. The room number was 530 and was located on the fifth floor and at nearly the very end of the North Hallway, a really long walk from the central elevators but close to the exit door and stairs. This was fine since I have preferred rooms on the lower floors of hotels near the stairways in the case of fire. Around 8:35 or 8:40 I was sitting on the couch and had just sent out an email. My bags were packed and most of my stuff was ready for check out. As I was sitting on the couch finishing up with the lap top when I heard a loud, deep bang. It sounded as if a construction crane had dropped an I-beam or some other heavy piece of equipment. This would not have been unusual as there always seems to be construction in the area and renovations were indeed going on at the Marriott Financial just lower on West St. (What Im trying to describe seems like it lasted eternity but really only took place in a matter of seconds or at most minutes.) Immediately, there was a second explosion. The lights flickered and the building shook very violently. It was immediately apparent that this was not costruction but a bomb. Smoke started to cover the window and debris rained, glass, metal, concrete and larger flaming pieces. The flaming objects seemed to fall much faster than the general debris. I jumped up and looked out the window to see the flaming objects in West Street five floors were bodies. I thought my God! Jesus!!!! bodies falling from wherever, maybe as high as 100+ floors if they had come from one of the Trade Centers or maybe 19 or so if they came from the Hotel. At least two were in West Street directly in front of my room. The debris and more bodies continued to rain. A man in the street pulled his jacket off and attempted to beat out the flames on the bodies with his jacket as the glass and metal kept falling, yet he persisted in his efforts. The futility was painful. The bodies had to be dead yet he continued heroically beating the flames with his jacket as the debris poured down upon him. I suspect he must have died. He had to have died, I cant imagine he could have survived the deluge of glass, steel and concrete. To my dying day, I will never forget that scene; that man gallantly but futilly beating atthe flames, trying to extinguish the flames on the burning mangled corpses. Who was he? I guess Ill never know, but I do know I will never forget him. I hope to God he survived, but I dont know how he could have. It was time to go. This was not the place to be. Stuff pelted the window and more violent shakes; I had the thought that to stay risked being in the building when it collapsed. I grabbed the computer and my bag, left everything else and headed for the stairs. Why did I take the bags? I really dont know. I should have left them. They probably slowed me down. One room to the stairs at the North end of the floor. These were the rooms closest to One World Trade. I just knew the elevators would not be working and besides, Id hate to be trapped on one. The stairs were going to be my way out. The noise was building on the fifth floor of maybe 18 or 19. it seems I can hear stuff hitting the upper floors or the roof, SHIT! Could the upper floors be gone? Could we be next? Its getting really smoky and the smell of fuel oil ( I now know it was kerosene, jet fuel)is prevalent. Its burning my throat. Funny, I think of Life Insurance and if this will be covered as business, which is not a good sign. I reach the stairwell door and feel it to see if it is hot, its not and the smoke is coming from somewhere else other than the stairwell. Good! I think, it is a way out. It hasnt dawned on me that it was the north tower, WTC 1 that was hit. The stairs seemed to go on forever, seem like four flights of stairs for each floor of hotel. There is one other guy in the stairway who asks: what the fuck was that? A bomb? I say I think so, but I dont know, so lets just get out of here. We race the stairs to the bottom. The exit door seems stuck, it will open only an inch or so, so he and I slam our shoulders to it and get it open about a foot, just enough to see it opens onto the narrow walkway between the north tower and the hotel plaza. There is debris all over and it is still coming down. I realize the reason for the door not fully opening is debris and oh God, bodies. They are chared and smoldering. Oh God, I think Im losing my mind! This just cant be real. I think and say to the other guy Fuck , we got to get out of here, we cant go this way. He says quick the second floor lobby, well get out the front!. Again, this is all happening in nano-seconds! We race up the stairs. Weve got to get to the second floor and back into the hotel. We will surely die if we go the other way on to the plaza, By this time the stairway is filling with people. Lots now and I notice many are asians, many people are crying. We tell them they cant get out that way and we have to go through the hotel at the second floor. We make it to the second floor, go through the door into the hallway to the upper lobby where the Garden and American Harvest restaurants are located. Hotel workers are ushering us across the floor and down the south stairway. The smoke is really getting worse now. Looking out the window, the scene on West St. is really getting nasty, debris, glass, more debris than street in places. This is now just pure terror. The crowd is starting to backup into the lower lobby. The hotel staff are trying to get us out through the Tall Ships bar. I see what the hold up is, even on Liberty Street we have to run through falling debris. The NYPD is there, encouraging us to run quickly across West Street at Liberty to safety on the opposite side of West Street at the World Financial Centers.. I start to run. I think SHIT! there is glass coming down Fuck I going to get hit I do, but fortunately it is like safety glass, small pieces but no large shards.. Then, suddenly maybe less than 100 feet away lands another body. Oh God, the sound undescribale the worst bones compressing snapping into flesh a popping sound. I keep running across West Street, my computer bag opens and my lap top is gone. Im not stopping, I have to get across the street. I make it to underneath the pedestrian walk way at WFC. I think it was XXXX, the economist from XXXX has snatched up my computer on the way across the Street and he is now ahead of me. He hands it to me and asks: do you know whats happening? I say I dont know, I dont know. We turn for the first time and look east back toward the Trade Centers. Oh my God, the top 40 floors or so of The north tower , One World Trade are engulfed in flames and smoke. Then it hits Oh no! they are jumping !!! more and more people trying to escape the flames, falling seemingly forever to their deaths from the 90th to 110th floor (I can't think of which floors exactly)which houses Cantor- Fitzgerald. Oh shit, I think I know people there XXXXXXX, xxxxxxx and others Im losing friends and associates, this is too much, Madness! Madness! what possess people to do these things? Ive got my cell phone. Ive got to call home. If Joanne and the kids see this Shit! There is no phone response, not even a click. Everyone is having the same problem. xxxxx and I cant look, I worked on those same floors from which those people are jumping and dying.I can remember the acrophobia sitting on the edge of the widow sills and the amazement of watching fireworks from above during the (was it?) bicentennial of the Brooklyn Bridge. Even though we can t look you still know. As another after another after another plunges, the crowd screams and cries. It just cant be avoided, you can look away, you can shut your eyes, but you still know; the vision is there you know exactly what is happening and the outcome is never different. How ironic, the speaker is the President and CEO of Morgan Stanley, the largest tenant in the Trade Centers. Im so glad Joanne didnt come to this. The crowd groans, more have jumped. We are now dumbfounded. None of us can speak. I want to puke. There is the sound of jet engines, we look up, its a commercial jet. The whine of the engines intensifies...getting louder and louder. Oh God! the pilot is throttling up!, giving it the gas, headed for the other tower number 2 the south tower. Oh sweet Jesus! Impact! The plane neatly disappears into 2 WTC, and then a fireball on both sides of the tower, Oh, those poor people! They never had a chance, Its an instant replay, fire, smoke, debris bodies. I realize we are now all the way back to the Hudson, we cant go back any more. We are all in shock, more people jump leaping to their death individually almost waiting their turn. I pray please God make it stop, but to no avail. XXXXX suggest we get as far away from here as we can. I agree, We decide to move north behind the WFC towers to stay as far away from the Trade Centers as possible. This seems still risky as the WFC complex is a likely target as well, but this seems the only and most logical action. xxx's daughter, xxxx, works at xxxxxx Advertising at xxxx Varick St, just north of the entrance to the Holland Tunnel, so the plan is to walk there. XXXXX and several others are going to find someones husband in the crowd and the do the same thing. XXX and I head north, along the back of the WFC, behind the Merrill and Lehman Offices, with the amount of people on the plaza these work forces have also been released. I keep trying the cell phone with the same results. The cell must be jammed. Its getting frustrating, I dont want Joanne and the kids to see this without knowing Im ok. Ive got to get a hold of them somehow. Perhaps theres a pay phone somewhere. We walk north, Im pulling the baggage and what is left of the computer. All of a sudden Im reminded of Stephen Kings The Stand where the escape from NY was through the Holland Tunnel on foot. I hope we do not have to follow the rest of the script. We keep walking, up to the Catholic High School west of West St., then east to Greenwich and north. All of New York is in the streets or on the roof tops, nobody is inside. Every pay phone has an orderly line of 20 to thirty people. XXXXX and I surprise ourselves. We think and discuss how will we adjust our forecasts. Do we think data will be delayed? What effect will this have on Consumer Credit? Spending? When do we think we can get back to the hotel to pick up our stuff and xxx's car in the underground lot? This must be psycologically defensive as absolutely none of what we are discussing now matters a wit and we both know it. We walk and walk and walk. It seems like a hell of a long ways. At Canal Street my phone worked! I get the office, both Jay and Mary Lynn. This is great. I ask Mary Lynn to call Joanne Kerri and Hardy. Jay hoops on to tell me the Pentagon has been hit, that One World trade has collapsed and that other planes are targeting other sites. Jays advice, dont go near any tall buildings. Stay away from tall buildings hes right again At that point there is the whine of Jet engines I look up to see a flight of F15s or F16s fly low over Canal Street on full afterburners. I realize when I started talking to Jay I was standing up, Now Im crouched in the gutter next to a huge parked truck. Manhattan is now a war zone. I walked from there to Penn Station and caught a train to Washington, Richmond, and finally Tampa two days later. It is an experience I will re-live time and time again in my night mares. --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: quest-unsubscribe@gu*.co* For additional commands, e-mail: quest-help@gu*.co* -- Send mail for the `techdiver' mailing list to `techdiver@aquanaut.com'. Send subscribe/unsubscribe requests to `techdiver-request@aquanaut.com'.
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