9/11: Watching the Burning and Crumbling Towers from a Midtown Conference Room during the September 11 attacks: My Story

I can’t read or hear or see a clip about 9/11, the September 11 attacks, without being moved to the point of tears. There’s just something about having lived the events of September 11th that will forever stay with me and forever bring these sobs of pain to my heart and memory when I think of that day.

Even now, I can’t hold back the flow of tears and sobs.  That day, though I was not in the towers, changed the course of my life. 

(My account told here was written on the 10 year anniversary of the September 11 attacks in 2011.)

I awoke to any other day, sunny and clear.  A beautiful fall day in New York City.  I took the subway to work and began my day.

Soon thereafter, my mom called and asked if I had heard about the plane that had flown into the World Trade Center.  Knowing about the incident in 1945 of a small plane accidentally crashing into the Empire State Building, I wondered if it was another freak accident.

I decided to investigate.  Because I worked in the Fox News building, there were TV screens all over the lobby of the building, so I headed down there to see what type of accident this was.

I soon realized that it wasn’t a small plane that had hit the World Trade Center, but a jetliner.

I walked from my Sixth Avenue office building over to Fifth Avenue, where I knew there would be a straight view to downtown.  I got there, but had trouble seeing the site of impact.  I could see dark, ominous, and billowing clouds of black smoke blowing eastward out of the building.

I stood on the corner and stared.  If you’ve ever been to NYC, you know that no one just stands on the street, everyone is constantly in movement.  Some people looked at me strange, and others hurried on by, some even stopped too and looked at the stream of black smoke escaping from the building so far downtown.

I couldn’t see that well, and just looking didn’t really tell me much either, so I decided to return to my building.

As I did, I ran into a friend in the courtyard area.  We watched an outside TV screen and saw the now-famous image of that second plane deliberately, beyond a shadow of any doubt, aiming for the second tower and crashing into it, releasing a ball of fire and smoke.

No one doubted any longer that an accident had happened, but people wondered, “Who would do such a thing?”

For many reasons, my immediate suspicion went to Osama bin Laden.  Not many Americans were familiar with him, but I knew of his history of destruction and hate.

We went back into the building, as we weren’t sure what else to do, knowing that we were under some form of attack.

Our once peaceful building, in which anyone could enter, now had security guards standing at the door checking ID badges to make sure we belonged in the building.

We returned to our work area, found other baffled colleagues, and all decided to hunt down a TV in one of our company’s conference rooms to watch and listen to the events and details of what was going on.

We found a conference room on the 39th floor of our midtown, NYC office tower that had both a TV and a view of the two flaming buildings. We could listen and hear the reports, but we also had a direct line of sight to the two towers.

We watched the rest of the morning’s events unfold from there.

From that 39th floor, we could see the towers holding on, burning, struggling for survival. We knew that there were people inside and that there were fireworkers and other emergency service personnel there to find and help the survivors, but we knew little else.

I didn’t know if any of my friends would have been down there or not.  I began to go through in my head each of my friends and think really hard about where they worked, what office they might have been in, whether they were there or not, and how close they might have been.

I prayed.  I prayed for everyone I could think of as I sat there watching.  I clutched my purse, gaining strength from the Bible that I had thrown in there that morning.

And then it happened.  The south tower imploded, like a bomb had ripped through the basement, tumbling the building into a heap of rubble.  What happened? We didn’t know.

I, and others, screamed, we ran to other windows to get a better view, and to see what had happened.  Where did the tower go? Was any of it still standing? Tears streamed down my face.

Once the dust, literally, settled, the news commentators told us, what we now know, that the building couldn’t take the weight of the top floors as the floors in the middle burned and disintegrated.

Our eyes were now fixed on the remaining tower, the north tower with its pointed antenna needle still standing strong.  How could there only be one tower?  It’s hard to even think about that question, which I asked ten years ago, today.  

I watched that north tower as I kept an eye on the news.  I listened to the reports, but I was scared.  I could see a bright orange strip of several floors near the top that were entirely consumed.  I had never seen fire so bright, even from miles away.

I was afraid that those floors wouldn’t stand up under the fire either.  I was afraid they too would collapse and crumple, leaving some or none of that tower.

Within a short period of time, those fears were realized.  I saw the needle bend and sink downwards as the floors caved, crumpled, and collapsed. I saw the building go down, like the other, in a cloud of ash and soot.

I didn’t know what to think or do.  I was probably in a mild form of shock, as I saw this final destruction.  What had happened? Where had the two towers, World Trade Towers 1 and 2, gone?

What sense was I to make of this? What was I to do? Should I return to work? Who could work after witnessing such things?

Our team decided to go home.  I took the elevator down and walked toward Times Square. I walked to find the excitement and noise and movement of that great intersection of culture dead, all quiet.  There were a few lone taxis, a few lone people straggling along.

I began my walk home. We all walked home that day.  Some covered in soot, others clean. I was clean, but my heart was covered in that soot.

I walked from 48th Street and Sixth Avenue to 72nd Street and Third Avenue, a distance of 1.2 miles. It seemed long though. I passed many.

As I neared my building, I passed a man dressed in his soot, carrying his briefcase, covered from head to toe with the chalky white powder that rested on those who lived to tell the story of their escape.

I cried as I saw him.

The next few days seem like a blur.  I stayed in, I worried, I watched the news, I tried to call family, I huddled in and shut out the world.

The next time I saw my friends, we were all changed.  Gone were the jovial and frivolous days of hard drinking and late partying.  We met, we ate, we talked, we made sure we were okay, we went home early.

For months, no one felt the same.  New York City was in mourning. New York City was like I had never known it before.

My heart and life were forever changed by that day.

Do you have a story to tell from your experiences of the September 11 attacks that day? Please share it here for us to hear. If you were moved or touched by this account, please share it on your social networks.

Other Helpful Resources:

• Why Prayer is Important 
• How to Pray Through the Lord’s Prayer