The day brought back memories of 1992 bombing, because I worked at the WTC from 1986 to 1995.
I woke up that morning around 6:00 in order to get into work early. I was starting a new semester of graduate school that day. But earlier in the night, I had terrible stomach problems (almost a premonition) that had me in the bathroom for about an hour at around 3:00 AM. I remember being annoyed that I was stuck in the bathroom for so long when I had to be up so early.
I worked in Queens in 2001. Some of our senior staff were at a meeting at a hospital in lower Manhattan and my boss called me to tell me that, “Some idiot had flown his airplane into the Trade Center.” We thought it was an accident, so we settled into our 9:00 daily meeting and started that meeting with a moment of silence. As soon as we came out of the meeting, the second plane hit. It was chaos in my office. But, as the senior manager in Queens that day and a former EMT, I had to take control of the situation.
My wife worked in Manhattan at the time, but just north of 14th Street. She called me to tell me that she was okay, but that her express bus had come out of the tunnel just as the first plane hit and she saw the debris falling. She told me I should get home and get the kids, who were in school. I replied that I had a crisis on my hands in the office that I needed to handle and that school was probably the safest place for the kids to be.
I remember taking the train home that night and seeing the plume of smoke coming up from lower Manhattan as the F train rounded the bend before Smith & 9th Street. “My” buildings were gone.