I work (or rather worked) on the 40th of One World Trade Centre, the more northern of the two and the one that was hit first in Tuesday's attacks.
At about 8:50 a.m. I was about to get a cup of coffee and some breakfast before a nine o'clock meeting. I heard, as did everyone near me, a loud crash and felt the building shake. It sounded and felt like a large explosion, rather than an earthquake or a clap of thunder. I stepped out into an aisle to look outside and saw debris falling past the windows on the south side of the building. I assumed a bomb had gone off on one of the 60 or so floors above me, and headed for the centre of the building where the elevators and stairwells were located.
The glass doors to the core of the building and the elevator banks allowed me to see that the area was already full of white dust or smoke, presumably from the elevator shafts, so I headed for the stairs along with a growing number of other people.
We then began a slow and surprisingly calm procession spiralling down towards safety, we hoped. There was a little smoke from time to time, and a smell of oil (aviation fuel?), but nothing too bad. A couple of women were hysterical but mostly everyone was quite cool. At around the 23rd floor we stopped moving for a while and things began to get a bit more tense. Some people left the stairwell to cross the floor to the other one, but there was a lot of dust and/or smoke on that floor and most of us waited a little longer until we started moving again.
One man tried to wedge open a door to let some air into the stairwell, but he was quickly reminded that it was a fire door so he closed it again. At some point the word came down from someone above us that the building had been hit by a plane. I was in touch with one of my colleagues in another building on my wireless e-mail device and was able to let him know that we were evacuating safely.
After the 10th floor, firefighters began coming up past us carrying hoses and oxygen tanks and sweating under heavy coats and helmets. I would have to assume that the poor guys are dead now.
For the last three or four floors water was pouring down the walls and stairs, and finally a policeman was waving everyone through the door into the mezzanine at the plaza level.
The scene through the windows onto the plaza was shocking. Bits of glass and metal covered the ground and were still raining down. Larger chunks of debris were burning everywhere and many of the huge plate-glass windows were cracked or shattered.
Down on Vesey Street a fire was raging at the entrance to one of the footbridges.
A policeman and a security guard were at an exit getting people out to safety between the showers of glass. I felt a little detached from the scenes I was watching - like many others interviewed later I felt as if I was involved in a life-like disaster movie. We ran across to the pedestrian overpass to the World Financial Centre and got our first shocking glimpse of the damaged towers with smoke spewing out of the top. Police and security staff were yelling at everyone to keep moving out of the area, and I made my way to our main offices at the World Financial Centre. There I was able to leave a message on our answering machine at home to let my wife know that I had got out unscathed.
People on the trading floor were still reeling, and images of the twin towers and the crashes were being replayed on the TV screens while everyone stood and watched. Someone told me that the second tower had been hit too, and I saw the pictures of that second explosion and finally began to understand what had happened.
The decision had already been taken to evacuate and I was offered a lift home by a friend who had parked in Jersey City. We left, with everyone else, via the north entrance at Vesey Street, then worked our way around past lines of ambulances and emergency vehicles to the ferry dock. On the way we saw several people receiving medical attention, but none looked too serious.
The ferry service was crowded but they were running extra boats and we soon got on. Surprisingly they were still collecting tickets, but mine were in my briefcase back in my office. I pushed my way on while someone was complaining to officials.
As we left we looked back at the two smoking towers and the crowd of people around the marina behind the Financial Centre. Another colleague offered me his phone to try to call home but by then nothing was getting through.
After a walk of one or two miles, during which a passing driver added to the confusion by announcing that the Pentagon had been attacked, we got to his car and put the radio on. The announcer seemed to be saying that one of the towers had collapsed, and looking across the river we could see clouds of grey dust blowing south through the buildings below the Trade Centre. As the space slowly cleared we could see the big gap in the skyline and another layer of unreality was piled onto the rest. On top of that, a military fighter-jet flew around lower Manhattan. My mind was really having trouble accepting it all, and we gratefully started out for the Turnpike and home.
Heading west towards Newark Airport more news filtered in about the remaining tower collapsing. Looking back into the sun it was hard to see through the dust and smoke clouds, but again the space began to clear a little and indeed there were no longer any WTC towers on the skyline. As the situation continued to deteriorate I began to appreciate how lucky I had been to have got out so quickly and easily.
By this time we had convinced ourselves that there had to have been bombs planted in or under the towers to bring them down. It did not seem possible for impacts on the upper floors to bring down the entire structure, but, of course, watching the video on TV later it obviously was. We tried phoning our wives every few minutes from the car but there was still no way to get through.
Arriving home some time around 11.15 a.m. I found my wife distraught, watching the news reports. She had been in the shower when I called and the first she knew of anything was the baby complaining that Sesame Street wasn't on. She saw the newsflash and the pictures before she heard my message and naturally feared the worst. She had been fielding phone calls ever since, so the next step was to start returning calls to let everyone know I was okay.
Eventually I was able to compare notes with others who had been there. My boss had been the last to evacuate our floor and it had taken him an hour to get down the stairs. He saw far worse sights than I had and he then had to run from the dust when the first tower collapsed a few minutes after he got out. One of my best friends had been due to attend an 8.00 a.m. breakfast meeting at Windows on the World, a restaurant at the top of my building, but had got stuck in traffic and didn't go. He would certainly have died. Everyone else I work with was eventually accounted for
As I write, it's still only hours since it all started, although it seems like days. The sound and the feeling of the initial impact is still vivid to me, as is the sight of all the glass, paper and metal fragments fluttering past the windows in bright sunshine against a beautiful, clear, blue sky. I can replay those moments over and over in my mind and every time, my pulse jumps a little. The rest of the morning is now muddled with the many images from TV, but all of them belong to a world separate from the peaceful, sunny, suburban, family world that I'm in now.
It's still very strange to think that my office no longer exists. My phone, computer, documents, briefcase, coffee cup, nameplate, pens and pencils, chair, kids' pictures - all buried in a pile of rubble and dust. And nowhere to go tomorrow morning. After watching all the coverage and reading the reports, I realise that I am very, very lucky. I know there are families all around us here who cannot say the same.