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: Economics of Contempt

9/11

By Anonymous

Having experienced the terrorist attacks on 9/11 up close, this day always bring back haunting memories.

My wife and I were both working at a firm that was about 5 blocks away from 2 World Trade Center. Our whole firm went outside after the first plane hit the WTC to see what was going on. We all thought it was an accident, and were trying to determine how big the plane had been. We saw the second plane hit; it was the loudest noise I've heard in my life. My wife kept a case of bottled waters in her office, so we went back inside to get them to hand out to people who were coming down the street covered in soot. After we handed out all the waters, we started moving down Fulton Street toward the Brooklyn Bridge, looking back intermittently to see if the towers were still on fire. I'll never forget the sight of people jumping out of windows on the floors above where the planes hit. Truly the most heartbreaking thing I've ever seen.

When the first tower collapsed and I saw the tidal wave of dust and debris rushing toward us, I initially thought we were going to die. We turned to run, but a man who had been trying to pull his Ford Explorer out of a parking garage immediately motioned for us to get in. We jumped in the car with two other people as the dust cloud rushed by; I remember the car getting very hot. The five of us sat there in absolute silence for a couple minutes. Once it got to the point where we could see more than 10 feet in front of us again, we all got out and started running. We eventually got to the Brooklyn Bridge, where we waded across in the sea of people fleeing Manhattan. It's hard to describe the fear that gripped the city in the days and weeks that followed.

It was the most harrowing experience of my life, and ultimately the reason we left Manhattan.

Full post as published by Economics of Contempt on September 11, 2008 (boomark / email).