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Posted by bob pilatzke gchs class 1969 We continued up the street towards broadway amidst screaming sirens .At first we could not see the towers due to buildings blocking our view . At broadway we crossed over and were stopped at around broadway and park row. We could clearly see the two towers , tower one had a band of 5-7 floors fully engulfed in flames and black smoke above them tower two from our view did not have as much damage ( the worst damage was on the reverse side) We counted the floors from the top to guess how our floors were in wtc 2 We could hear bits and pieces coming through people's cell phones about planes/hijackings We tried to make a call at the payphones there but they were eitehr very busy or not working. In all we had around 230 employees that worked on either 86 or 87th floor of wtc2 and unfortunately we lost 40 of our fellow employees. In less then three weeks we were able to secure new space for our office and I was able to visit the new office a couple of weeks ago. My heart goes out to the people for all the tragedy taht they have been through
on October 30, 2001, 6:22 am
my job takes me to all of our offices in the department of taxation and finance ( we have 13 offices ) On sept 10 i was in our brooklyn office and stayed overnight in midtown manhattan. On the morning of Sept 11 myself and 2 co-workers left our hotel and took the subway to get to the world trade center. Our plan was to be at wtc2 on the 86th floor at
9:15. We arrived at the end of the E train to enter the concourse at about 8:55 we got off the train walked through the turnstiles and there were guards at the glass doors to enter the concourse. We had no idea what was going on, we were milling around and we were moving towards the staircase to go up to street level. As we were at the bottom a HORRIFIC sound /blast happened i will never forget the look on the faces of the people at the top of the staircase. They just gasped and said GET DOWN GET DOWN.
we proceeded to re-enter the subway and go as far as we could underground until we reached the far end of the chambers street station. We went to street level and there was debris,damaged cars,mutilated street signs and sobbing people. We didn't stop and walked briskly across the street towards broadway to our left as we crossed the street we saw a very large piece of plane just laying there.
We were being told to move further uptown and please get off cell phones so communications could be kept open for emergency personnel. We caught the subway and were able to get back to penn station. When we got there we were able to use a pay phone and call home and call our office in albany. Shortly after that we watched in horror on a tv monitor the second of the two towers collapse and saw a replay of the first tower. Soon we received notice that penn station was being evacuated and we were out on the street. We went back to our hotel we stayed monday night and asked if we could have our rooms back. They were very gracious . We were able to catch a train out the next morning at 7:15 and returned to albany.
I think this board is a great idea and look forward to hearing from other fellow dutchman
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