Catherwood LibraryILR School

What started for many as an ordinary day at the office quickly turned into a spectacle of horror and disbelief yesterday. The first sign of the events to come was when workers in office buildings near the World Trade Center heard the sound of a low-flying airplane rush by, followed by a loud explosion as it collided with one of the WTC towers. After rushing to windows and seeing a huge cloud of smoke and the rear half of a plane protruding from One WTC, workers in the nearby World Financial Center attempted to return to work, shaken by what they had just witnessed. Within twenty minutes it happened again---that is when people dropped what they were doing and started to run. Outside on the streets where people stared in shock at what has been described as the apocalypse, debris began to rain down crushing people as they fled for their lives. A pall of ash and office paper descended on the city, while those who had escaped the towers watched in horror as people, some of them in flames, jumped from the upper floors to escape the inferno inside. As companies that had offices in the WTC grind to a halt and attempt to track down employees, workers who escaped the collapsing buildings---and those who were lucky enough not to have been at work---fear for the lives of their colleagues and wonder what to do now. After witnessing such terrible scenes, many who have jobs in Manhattan are afraid to return to work. Some survivors of yesterday's attacks have been uneasy about working at the WTC since it was bombed eight years ago. Yesterday's events will likely haunt workers in Manhattan and other major financial centers for years to come.