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September 11, 2001 WTC NEWS & LINKS

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my day
Posted by: Michele from Sayreville Monday April 29, 2002 @ 01:15 PDT
i work in manhattan, so the day started out with me getting up and meeting my dad and my sister to travel in to work that morning. i just happened to be running late that morning and so was my sister. my father dropped us off at the path train at about 8:40 or so and then as we arrived at the last stop before the wtc stop at about 8:55 when the conductor's walkie talkie went off and a man on the other end said "get them off the train, downtown manhattan is closed, evacuate the train immediately". well, needless to say we all were a little concerned and my sister asked a woman on the train if he really said that downtown manhattan was closed and the lady replied no, that just the path service was cancelled. so we headed up out of the path station to take the ferry over to work and when we got outside everyone was just looking up and we asked a woman what is going on and she said look, the wtc is on fire and we looked up and there it was burning. at the angle we were standing at we saw the backside of the buildings so we could only see what looked like one floor was burning. as we were staring at the towers from across the hudson river, we saw the other building blow up, that's what we thought anyway, because we didn't actually see the plane going into the building because it was coming from the opposite side of our view. after that, i told my sister let's get the $#%& out of here so we tried to find a pay phone or a cab (i left my cell phone in my car) and it took us about 20 minutes to find a pay phone. people were all over the streets trying to find a way home, they were crying and there were people sitting on the sidewalks just sobbing, it was chaos in new jersey, i couldn't even imagine what it was like in new york. after we found the pay phone we called our father and he came and picked us up and we all went home. i cried when i got home, i hugged my mother as soon as i walked in the door and just cried then i hugged my niece and i was so happy that we didn't make it in and that i was running late that morning. i would have been there at the exact time the first plane hit if i would have taken my usual route to work which is the nj transit train and i consider myself lucky that i decided to travel in with my father and sister because i wanted to see them before they left on vacation for the week. it's so crazy how things work out. i am now back downtown working right across the street from ground zero and i think about what happened every day. i will never forget...