I was going to post something else this morning but now I have a change of plans.
Please read this and remember those who experience 9/11 and those who did not make it.
Thanks Barbara. Your Nephew is amazing.....
Subj:
My Experience
Date:
12/06/2001 4:33:18 PM Central Standard Time
From: bforneyiii@email.msn.com (billy@forney.com) To: carolyn@forney.com (Carolyn Forney) A World Trade Center Story: Tuesday, September 11, 20018:00 am: I arrive at the World Trade Center complex. Stop off at the bankin the tunnels below Two World Trade Center to make a deposit at the ATM.8:15 am: arrive at the 85th floor of One WTC, where my company, SMWTrading, has its offices. I begin preparing reports for another day oftrading at the NYMEX, located in a separate building 5 minutes away from theoffice.8:43am: I am sitting at the table in the center of the office, my backfacing the outside windows. Suddenly, a horrific explosion. An immediatechange in the air pressure. A ghostly column of air shoots like a canoninto the office. The front door slams shut. Papers are whipped into theair. I’m thrown off my chair and to the ground. My boss jumps out of hisoffice a second prior to the explosion. He had watched, in horrificdisbelief, the entire event as the plane narrowly missed the empire statebuilding and set a direct course for our building. The explosion sends thetower shaking furiously, lurching back and forth with sickening vengeancefor maybe five or ten seconds. I think we may die. The building may toppleover, or crumble. Finally it stops. The building is still standing.Everybody stares at each other, no idea of what happened or what to say.Speculations about an explosion, a bomb. No, it was a plane, our boss says.A commercial jet.[Losing track of time]: I immediately walk to the door. Someone screamsnot to open the door; the hallway is on fire. Curious, Rob “Opie” Leder andI touch the door and the handle. It’s cool. I open the door, slowly,cautiously, to see what’s out there. It’s pitch black out there, except forthe office light, still on, shining off of the billowing smoke in the hall.The smell is horrible. This is no ordinary smoke. It smells of metal, jetfuel, of rancid concrete, of things unspeakable. I close the door. Peopleare still numb, shocked, confused. Opie was the first to say it; he wasgetting the hell outta there. I’m with you man. I open the door again.The smoke is thinner. I see an orange glow outside the door, a firesmoldering around the corner. I hear guys in another office yelling forhelp or something, too scared to open their door. Nobody knows where thestairs are, not even them.Back into the office, to grab some stuff. The black SMW jacket I wear tothe trading floor. It’s full of pick cards, order tickets, my empty waterbottle, Ice gum, a calculator, a pen, a halls cough drop, and tradinganalyzers. I put on my jacket. I decide to fill up my water bottle. Opiewaits for me, ready to bolt. Almost everybody wants to leave now.Marvin Pickrum. Where is he? When did he leave? Where did he go? Is hein the bathroom? The bathroom! Someone check the bathroom. I walk intothe hallway, inhaling the noxious stench, and I walk down the hall. To theleft, another hallway, three small fires burning, debris everywhere, lightsout. In front of me, another office, another man peering out, moreterrified people. To the right, another hallway, the bathroom, and thestairwell. I open the bathroom door, everything in pristine condition.Like nothing happened. I call out for Marvin, no answer. He’s not in thebathroom. We head down the stairs.We move fast. Not a lot of people in the stairs yet. At 81, Opie stops tohelp some guy break out some fire extinguishers. We each grab anextinguisher. We get to 72. People are coming back up the stairs. What’sthe problem? The door several platforms down is pinned shut. People comeback upstairs from below. We walk out into the hall to find anotherstairwell. This floor had damage. Wires and debris everywhere. A wallblown down into the hallway. Some fires smoldering in the rubble. I covermy face and try not to look. Afraid of another explosion. We find anotherstairwell at the other end of the hall.In the next stairwell, there are more people. The descent gets slower. Wetry to use Opie’s cell phone. It was impossible to get a connection; anoccasional faint ring, then everything goes dead. The display read “serviceunavailable at this time.” What, try again later?At about 65, still trying to use the cell phone. Service still down. Westop on a large platform. I notice a woman rocking back and forth directlybehind me. She was barefoot, holding her shoes. She asks me for a swig ofwater, and uses it to wet her shirt and cover her mouth against thesickening stench. She anxiously, nervously tells me that she has twochildren, and she has to get downstairs. We start moving again. She picksher way down quickly, passing people where she can. She makes goodprogress. She’s polite. She’s frantic.At 60, cell phones still not working. I toss the investor’s business dailyI’ve been carrying with me. Not exactly important stuff at the moment. Ithink to myself that I’m trashing the building, and I feel bad.At 50, cell phone service still out. A man with blood covering half of hisface and a bandage on his head walking down the stairs. Others pass withhim, obviously in pain. People move to the right and let them pass.Everybody is calm, orderly, supportive. Nobody takes advantage of the paththey clear. Such calm, such unselfishness in the face of tragedy. Quietadrenalin. Rumors of a second plane. People are making jokes to ease thestrain.We carry the fire extinguishers all the way down to the 49th floor. I’msweating like crazy, shirt untucked, unbuttoned, I’m wearing my jacket,still carrying the fire extinguisher.At 45, cell phones still not working. I see a firefighter heading up thestairs. A reassuring presence, giving words of encouragement. At 35, morefirefighters, serious equipment in their hands, on their backs. At 30, thedoor to that floor is open, firefighters have set up base camp, they’vedropped their stuff, tended to some injured people. They’ve secured all thefloors below them. They’re working their way up, trying to save the peopleabove us. At 25, a man with a cane struggles down the stairs, another manis helping him down. After we pass these men, things start moving. Maybehe was the bottleneck. We stop less frequently now.At 20, a woman, Juliette, is struggling to get down, tired and out ofbreath. We offer water and help, she accepts. We wait a few seconds forher to rest. Opie takes her purse, which is heavy, and her jacket. Opiewalks in front of her, I walk behind. We tell people to pass us on ourleft.Floor 15, then 10, and then 5. At 2, some light. Outside light. Close tohome free. We finally exit the stairwell, into the lobby, street level,facing east, and facing a courtyard I don’t really recognize. It must be inthe middle of the World Trade Center complex. In the courtyard I recognizecolors. Green from a small tree, gray from buildings. Blue sky, somewhere.Black, too. Black stuff on the green, and black stuff on the ground, smallpuffs of smoke. It must be debris from wreckage. What looks like a person’s leg. I can’t focus, my mind is wandering. I don’t want to look.Firefighters lead us to the escalators. They don’t work, there’s debris onthem that we climb over. We go down slowly. A few people complain we’rewalking too slowly. But we keep going at a snail’s pace. Some people needhelp. What if it were you, I think to myself.We get down to the lower level, to the glass doors separating One WorldTrade Center from the shops underground. The glass is all blasted out.Firefighters are showing us the way out, through the doors. An eeriesituation underground. The sprinklers are on. People are worried abouttheir clothes. Shops are empty, deserted. Some lights above are still on.Some aren’t. Water collecting in puddles on the ground. Ceiling tiles hereand there. A usually noisy, active underground is virtually silent.Firefighters are calling out to us to keep moving.We pass a sandwich shop, Banana Republic, Gap, entrance to Two World TradeCenter. The firefighters lead us northeast, around a corner. We stop.Juliette wants to rest. The firefighters urge us forward. Juliette wants aswig of water. Just then, I hear a faint noise behind us, it sounds likewater rumbling. No, it’s people screaming, they’re running, a mad fury, atidal wave before the crescendo. What are they running from?Someone yells to start running. We start running. Part of the undergroundgoes black. Like someone flicks off the switch. We take 3 or 4 steps; Opieslips and falls sideways to his left. People yell for us to get down. Wedive to the ground. The blast is like a hurricane. I find a small corner;I ball up as fast as I can. I cover my head with both arms. I grimace,mouth open, teeth clinched. For the second time in an hour, I think I’mabout to die. Things pelting me: shards of glass, pieces of debris. I waitfor something to sever me in two, and then the chaos subsides. Much later,I find out the blast was 2WTC coming down.I open my eyes. I’ve gone blind. Pitch black. Maybe I didn’t open myeyes. I close them tight, then open them again. Nothingness. I take abreath. Metal, ash, concrete. I cough, and breathe again. More ash. Witheach breath I take, it’s more painful. I call out for Opie and Juliette,she answers, he doesn’t. I call out again. I fear something happened tohim. I call out again. Finally, a cough, and a faint response. They’reboth alive. A few seconds pass. Somebody steps on me. What’s that downthere? A person, dude. Oh, sorry. I gather my wits, and try to get mybearings after being stepped on.Then, a glimmer of light from behind. A fireman’s floodlight. It’s hard tosee anything at all. The air is thick with dust and ash. I begin to seesilhouettes of people, I see the man who stepped on me, that’s cool man. Isee things blown all around us. I carefully stand up. I see Opie hunchedover on the ground. He coughs some more stuff up and spits it out. Opieslowly stands. The fireman starts to walk by. Others are following. Ipull Juliette to her feet. I don’t want the fireman to get away. He’s notwalking fast, but it gets dark quickly without the light. I grab for Opie’shand. The group of us develop a human chain. We follow the fireman.Another floodlight turns on in front of us.Without the firemen’s lights, we know we would be crawling, in total, pitchblack. It would take forever without their help. We navigate slowly in thedirection we had originally intended. Bill? Opie, is that you? It’sJonathan, one of our firm’s partners, in from Chicago, caught undergroundwith us. Jonathan joins our group; he knows the underground and its shopswell. We walk slowly, about eighty yards. We see light, its natural light,we walk towards it. It’s upstairs, the street level. We see anotherescalator, we walk to it, it has more debris on it. We walk up it. We getto the top, doors in front of us to the right. Broken glass. Debris. Alarge rug, or mat, it’s blocking the entrance, but only slightly. We’llhave to walk over it, through the broken glass door, to the outside. We’realmost outside. We carefully step over the rug. We’re outside.Outside, it’s a war zone. A monochromatic landscape, covered in dirt andash. Like lint, everything meshes into one color - gray. We’re in a movie,an abandoned city. Visibility is at the most 50 feet. I never once lookup. I’m still grabbing on to Juliette. I feel like I’m pulling her toomuch. I slow down. I’m amazed at the amount of soot on the ground.Several inches thick. The air is full of dust and ash. Just keep walking,don’t stop. We need to keep walking. Where’s Opie? He's in front of us, Iknow, I just can't see him.We reach a street, I think it’s a street; it’s covered in ash. We keepwalking across the street. Somebody comes running towards us, shouts out tous, look for bodies under cars. A four-inch layer of ash and dust coversthe streets. I glance around for bodies, I don’t see any. We start to walkby a church with a graveyard. We stop. I cough up the ash in my mouth andlungs, take a drink of water, and spit out blackness. I tell Juliette totake some water and do the same. Swish it around and spit it out. She asksme where her purse and jacket are. I don’t know. Opie had them. Where isOpie? I call out for him. Now I don’t know where he is. I call out forhim again, finally I see him up ahead.We start walking again. We pass the church, we get to another street, there’s less ash on the ground, the air is better, better visibility. Juliettesays she needs her purse. She has no money. She doesn’t know what to do.I’ll give you some money, don’t worry. You’re alive. Be happy you’realive. We continue walking. We meet back up with Opie. Now about 3 blocksaway from our exit, a man is standing in a store doorway. He opens the doorand tells us to come in. Juliette is exhausted; she wants to stay there.She sits down on some stairs. Opie and I want to keep moving. We tellJuliette that we have to leave. We exchange numbers. Opie and I each giveher $10 to get home. We kiss her on the forehead and wish her good luck.We walk about ten minutes. People have lined the sidewalks, looking at thebuilding on fire. We keep walking away. Then, a horrifying gasp, peoplebegin crying. We turn around to look. One World Trade Center goes down.Our building. We watch it go down, floor by floor by floor.Unbelievable. Let’s get outta here. We turn back around and keep walking.We come upon three co-workers. Thank God you’re alive. We find pay phones,with lines 20 people long. We keep walking, just trying to get away – tocall somebody, let them know we’re alive. We walk about thirty minutes. Wetake a side street. We find a corner store. It has a pay phone. Nobody isusing it. We take turns calling our wives, our parents, and our friends.We’re okay, we’re alive. We all walk home together. I walk the entirelength of Manhattan to get home to the upper west side. On the way I see mysister, I go to friends’ places, I see other New Yorkers walking home.Surreal.Wednesday, September 12, 2001.9:00 am. I receive a call from Opie. Everybody made it out okay. Marvinis alive.Monday, September 16, 2001.2:01 pm. I receive a letter from my bank. The ATM deposit went through.
