Mitchell Simmons was in his lower-midtown Manhattan office Tuesday morning when a co-worker said, “You should see this, a plane just flew into the World Trade Center.” Simmons, spokesman for e-mail list company 24/7 Media, joined staffers in CEO Dave Moore’s 28th floor office, which had a clear view of the Trade Center.
“At that point, we thought it was an accident,” Simmons said. “There were no news accounts yet.”
Simmons added, “As we watched the building burn, we saw the second plane come around. It was very surreal because it felt like a movie, but it was reality.”
As they watched the plane slam into the second tower, co-workers cried out in horror. “We knew then they were very deliberate attacks.”
When the first tower collapsed, “we made the decision to send everyone home because our offices are close to the Empire State Building and we weren’t sure if that was a target or not. The second tower collapsed when we were on our way home and it was a lot like the movie, ‘Independence Day,'” Simmons said, trying to evoke the feelings he and his co-workers experienced.
Steven Blinn of Blinn PR, which represents the Association of Interactive Media, heard the news about the hijackings after arriving at his 14th St. office, Frantically, he phoned his wife at their Battery Park City apartment building near the World Trade Center.
When there was no answer, “it dawned on me that she goes to the gym on Tuesday mornings,” said Blinn. Calling her cell phone was no use because cell phones were dead for a time after the disaster.
Blinn began the trek downtown and had almost reached his apartment when he called his parents who live in another part of Manhattan. “They said they had heard from her and she was at my office. She was leaving the apartment building when the first plane hit and she ran for her life. When I finally saw her–it was fantastic. My beautiful wife!”
Still, though, the couple doesn’t know the condition of their home, nor can they reach their building to find out. Blinn, back at work on Wednesday, said it doesn’t matter even if they are homeless. “We are together,” he said.
Craig Ganzer, a managing member at SC Trading LLC, was watching television coverage in the lounge of the American Stock Exchange, when the second plane hit. At ten o’clock, the first tower collapsed, and the Exchange, located at 86 Trinity place, began to fill up with dust and smoke.
“The exchange security guards were not letting us out because of falling debris,” Ganzer said. “I looked out of the south door, and there was a twenty-foot piece of girder, and half an inch of ash on the ground. The dust was so thick, I couldn’t see more than 10 feet in any direction.
“Five minutes later, more debris started falling and they evacuated the building. We started walking. All over the streets were charred pieces of paper, and even half a mile south there was a thick layer of ash. It was like being in a sandstorm. By the time we got to a point where we were clear–the South Street Seaport–we couldn’t see anything. We didn’t realize the towers were gone.”
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