Esquire.com: My Escape From the 81st Floor of the World Trade Center

[LiberalElite]

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/interviews/a2038/esq0102-jan-wtc-rev/

-snip-
Originally published in the January 2002 issue

Up to that day, I'd had a Brady Bunch, cookie-cutter, beautiful life. I now know what it's like to have a 110-story building that's been hit by a 767 come down on my head. For better or for worse, it's part of my life. There are things I never thought I'd know that I now know.

It was as mundane a morning as you can imagine. Tuesdays are usually the days I go out to see clients and make sales calls. I get to my office at a quarter to eight, eat a bran muffin, drink a cup of coffee, and get my head straight for the day.

I was actually in a good mood. A couple of us were yukking it up in the men's room. We'd just started sharing the eighty-first floor of 1 World Trade Center with Bank of America, and they'd put up a sign telling everyone to keep the bathroom clean. "Look at this," one of us said. "They move in and now they're giving us shit." It was about quarter to nine.

All of a sudden, there was the shift of an earthquake. People ask, "Did you hear a boom?" No. The way I can best describe it is that every joint in the building jolted. You ever been in a big old house when a gust of wind comes through and you hear all the posts creak? Picture that creaking being not a matter of inches but of feet. We all got knocked off balance. One guy burst out of a stall buttoning up his pants, saying, "What the fuck?" The flex caused the marble walls in the bathroom to crack.
-snip-

[Big Blue Marble]

1. Emotionally devastating to read all these years later.

The well-written immediacy of this account is profoundly moving. It returns us to an awareness of
the immense suffering of that day.

Thank you for sharing this.

[LiberalElite]

2. Yes. More little details than from other media. I was reading it with my hand up to my face-

I hesitated to post it because it may be getting to be old news - but Esquire saw fit to print it again and it's originally from I think 2002 or 2003.

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. Love your sig. line, bud.