I’m alive – Diary Entry by Christopher Wallace

is out of the office, I'm out of the file area. Everyone else in our area is suddenly gathered in front of the main workspace. Earthquakes do not occur in just one building. The rain of glass and debris from above roars outside of our own windows. At this point, I am convinced the building is going to fall and that we are going to die. I'm thinking "How many seconds will it take?" Someone asks, "What should we do?" but they know the answer. We all head for the exit nearby. We are about five floors down before the first alarms are heard. Somehow the shaking stopped and we feel like everything is going to be OK for us. Others and I in the stairs finally voice our thoughts of death and start guessing that it was likely a plane because of the glass from above. Workers diving into the stairwell from another floor look panicked and could of started a stampede. We directed them to slow it down. At other times, we got people to keep it moving. Various little emergencies on the stairs got handled together. Things start slowing down because of the crowd. We start to smell smoke. Maybe it was a bomb after all. Somewhere around 25, we finally see building personnel. They are directing us onto the floor because the smoke is getting a little thicker and the air is better on that floor. People are ignoring the door people and filing past the floor. We decide. We are going too. I could see on a TV on that floor that it was a plane after all. Terrorists. Some floors below, we all make room for some burn victims to descend past us. There are two of them. They are black from the burned jet fuel. They look numb. The first looks relatively better though he holds his arms in front in obvious pain. The second is blistered and has almost "melted" patches on her face. A large patch of her arm looks raw where her skin was burned off. Sheets of it look like they will soon follow. As we descend, we are also making a path for fire fighters to ascend. A group of about 12 pass us. We probably made way for them to die. 200 of the 400 responding fire fighters died. The last flights are slippery from the torrent of water cascading down the stairs. No one is being particular about clothes or shoes. We finally splash out of the stairwell into our first view of the plaza. It looks like a war-zone. Glass, debris, burning chunks of who-knows-what and ash everywhere. We are all on the move. No time (or inclination) for a closer look. John said he sees bodies. We shoot across 30 feet of no-man's-land to the overhang of another building with arms over our heads. We start heading across the pedestrian bridge towards the river. No one brought anything. Jackets, wallets, keys, etc. are still 35 floors above. No one has a phone to let loved ones know we are OK. The others from the office aren’t with us at this point though it would be pointless to look for them. John is obviously shaken by the bodies in the plaza, and by the jumpers. "I'm going to look for a phone," I said. "Call my wife and let her know I'm OK.” No place is open. Whatever public phones are near have crowds waiting to use them. I think to get to the other side of town to go to a friend's office to use their phone. I couldn't wait for a pay phone. I finally see the holes in the building I just came from. Fire in both buildings. It finally hits me. I can see the area that those holes and the fire zone cover and know that hundreds or thousands are dead. How can anyone above those floors of fire get past them? "Oh my God!" someone shrieks. "They're jumping!" I can't get myself to look. Adrenaline keeps my legs going. I need to get to my friends’ phone. Amongst all the thoughts and emotions, I keep thinking of all of our families who must be going through Hell not knowing. I still don't know the course of events but think that the plane that hit our building must have passed through and hit the other tower. The fire at tower two looked too low though. From the snatches of passing conversations, I come to understand that there were two crashes. (The second must have occurred while we were in the stairwell still.) I make it to my friends’ office. They are a mess of emotion. Whatever composure I had is lost as they tackle me with hugs of relief and tears. Ralph gives me his office to use for calls. I look at my watch for the first time since 8:30. My wife probably hasn’t left for work yet. We can barely talk between our sobs. There is a TV on. Between calls and talking with everyone there I'm getting the media perspective. It looks so unreal on the TV. The impact is strong but somehow diluted from the first person perspective. I'm on the phone with my sister-in-law Joan. I can see the trade centre burning as I talk.  Debris, ash, smoke. It's already dusk in lower Manhattan though it's not yet 11:00am. The clouds of smoke are flowing east. The TV doesn't see the perspective I do. Suddenly, I'm distracted from my talking. The corner windows of two are starting to blow out in a horrifying "unzipping" motion from top to bottom. I have no idea what is happening and my first thought is that the heat has created some kind of domino effect. Then I see the plume of the top floors collapsing down on the others even as the horrible sound of the unzipping reaches us. The roar and cloud are too much. I can only babble to Joan. "Oh my God... Oh my God... Oh my God... Oh my God..." Joan sounds frantic to know what is happening too. I can barely breath no less speak. Somehow I say something and am diving out of the room to be with the others.  Emotions are high. It gets dark. When my old building follows shortly after, it becomes a dusty night for a short while. The snow that covers everything is soot, and ash, and powdered concrete. It's thick. My friends at Unlocked (a record label) were on the 92nd floor of #2. Fortunately, a friend who recently transferred from their NY office to LA told me that he knows several who made it out. Another friend told me he was held up 15 minutes for a meeting.  He could be another of the "unaccounted for" if it weren't for the hold-up. He was walking to our building when he watched the first plane hit.  He saw about twenty people jumping from the flames before going home.  I'm glad I'm home myself but still coming to grips with it all. I feel anger and the need for revenge mixed with my other emotions. I was so happy to hear Bush say that we will make no distinction between the terrorists and those who harboured the terrorists. If it turns out that those responsible were shielded or harboured by a country like, say Afghanistan, then we should go to war and make that country pay so badly for this atrocity that no one will think to repeat it. I do not want a protractor war.  I said it half-jokingly to someone that we should drop the bomb in such an instance. The more I thought of it, the more I actually started to believe it might be the ONLY response that would serve the purpose of protecting Americans from this sort of evil again. Anything less might start a Jihad. What good are weapons of "deterrence" if they will never be used?