INDEPTH: SEPTEMBER 11
Personal Accounts: Living The Disaster
CBC News Online | Updated February 3, 2004
Catastrophe. Disaster. Calamity. The unimaginable size and scope of what has happened in New York City almost defies description. But the small stories which add up to the enormous tragedy can be told. For New Yorkers, who must live through it minute-by-minute, there is nowhere to turn, nowhere to go – not even anywhere to look – that will not remind them of the death, destruction, and devastation visited on their city. These are some of their stories, in their own words.
Workers
Unknown worker 1: "We formed a gauntlet, two lines of people facing each other and when a stretcher came up we just passed it along from person to person down the line. You have to look to find the body parts, But once you do find them it's pretty obvious what you're looking at."
[CBC News' Evan Solomon asks: "Do you expect to find survivors?"]
Unknown worker 2: "No. In all honesty, no. If you saw it... where that girl came out of today, she was 40-50 feet [15 m] up in a pile of rubble. The fact she came out of it alive was actually amazing. As much death and destruction as there has been, finding that one live person is just great."
Unknown worker 1+2: "Found with her were two firefighters... and the way that they were found it seemed like on the way down they were trying to protect her, trying to cover her. Their bodies were on top of her. They were hugging her. Both firefighters were D.O.A. The assumption is, that when the building started going they tried to protect her. It cost them their own lives and she survived."
Families
Lori Preziose: "He was on the 105th floor. I didn't get to speak to him.
I know someone spoke to him. He saw the plane hit the building and he called him and told him 'a plane hit the building, get out... just get out', and [my husband] said I'm outta here and he hung up. And that's all I know."
Tara Strobert:" I called everywhere, every single hospital – 38 of them – and there's no sign.
I called the Red Cross, his brother went to the morgue with his dental record, and this is our wedding picture. We haven't even been married a year."
Stephanie Lang-Fisher:"I got into work and I saw on the big screen television,I saw the holes in the building. I got to my desk and my phone was ringing. It was my husband, he was on his cellphone saying, 'I love you, I love you. I just want you to know I don't know what's going to happen.' I said, 'Where are you?' … He said, 'I'm on the 106th floor and there's smoke in the stairwells and we don't know where to go.'
At that point the second blast went off in tower two and he said, 'Oh my God, what is that?' I said, 'Andrew, the other tower exploded.' I think I was saying, 'I'm here, I'm with you, what's going on and what are they telling you to do?' At that point we lost each other."
Barbara Sohan:"She made three calls on her beeper.She was stuck on the 95th floor, the fire was coming up and she couldn't get out.
The next call on the beeper had said they were trying to get out and the last time we heard, which as about ten to ten, she said to tell Mom and Dad 'I love you very much.'"
Jennifer Ferrugio: "This is my father. He's wearing a gold cross around his neck with a big letter 'D' on it. His nickname is 'the kid'. He has my mom and my brother David and my sister Gina waiting at home for him.
Please God... we don't know anything. We didn't talk to him in the morning, we saw him last night, the night before he went to work. And that was it. God, please bring me my dad."
John Ashton: "It's been unbelievable, unbearable. You can't believe this is happening."
John's son Thomas, age 21, worked on the 95th floor of one of the World Trade Center towers. Tuesday was his second day on the job.
Diane Sereda: "This is my husband Anthony with his two children. I did talk to him at 9:15 Tuesday from the Tower. He told me they were actually told to go up. He works on 105 but he called me from the 106th floor and he was asking me what was really going on because they didn't really know.
There was a lot of smoke, they were having a hard time breathing. I told him to get out of the building as fast as he could, just to get out and come home to his family. Then the line went dead and I couldn't call him back."
Melissa Hughes:"Hi it's me... I just phoned to let you know I love you and I'm stuck in this building in New York. A plane hit the building or a bomb went off. They don't know but there's lots of smoke, and I just wanted you to know that I love you. Bye Bye."
Melissa Hughes left this message on an answering machine on Tuesday morning. She is missing.
Student Witnesses
Dylan Tatz: "After a little while, a few chemistry teachers came in. They didn't know exactly what was happening. They just told us to go to class. And then we just pointed out the window to show them what was happening. I think that's one of the most amazing parts was this sudden transformation … Then once they saw what we were seeing, both of them just immediately burst into hysterical tears. I think that was almost as frightening, seeing teachers who are such authority figures just being transformed into little kids crying hysterically so fast."
^TOP
|
|
 |
 MENU |
|
|
| EXTERNAL LINKS: |
|
|
| MORE: |
|
|
|
