I am an architect/Irish Dance teacher from Dublin in New York for the last five years. I live a few miles north of where the towers stood. I went out on to the street to witness the buildings burn and then collapse. People stood around in disbelief. There were huge screams on both occasions as first one and then the other tower collapsed. People were also collapsing in the street in terror. A man started shouting racist slogans. I succeeded in calming him down. A young woman further up the street described how she had seen an aeroplane pass by her window in a nearby office. I am too young to have seen Nelson's Pillar collapse, but that was nothing compared to this.
Niall O'Leary
nialloleary@ireland.com
With some colleagues I was at a client meeting in the offices of Deloitte & Touche in the World Financial Centre directly across West Street from the main doors of the WFC. We were in a fourth floor conference room when we heard of the incident across the road. Looking out the window we could see the hole far above us in the Nor th Tower with smoke and flames coming out.
We saw the fire trucks beginning to arrive and firemen flooding out of the trucks and into the lobby - not one seemed to hesitate. On the road there were a few injured people and one person in flames. Colleagues saw a couple of bodies fall from further up in the building and groaned in horror at what they saw. We were very lucky to get away from Lower Manhattan before the buildings collapsed. I should just add thanks to the staff in the Irish Consulate who assisted me in replacing the passport lost in my hotel and the staff in the Australian consulate who helped a colleague who was with me. We are looking forward to getting home when the flights recommence.
Mary Fulton
mary.fulton@deloitte.ie
New York, 11 September at about 9.05am this morning, New York time, I was roused by the sound of fire engines in Manhattan racing southwards. I looked out of my apartment on the 31st floor in mid-town, to a panoramic view of southern Manhattan, including its famous twin towers of the world trade center. I was shocked to see a pillar of smoke flowing westwards towards brooklyn from the World Trade Center (WTC). I will never see those towers again. worse, I had friends who live and others who worked there. they were of many, if not all, nationalities, just like in the UN where i work. Americans, Irish, Russians, New Zealanders, Kenyans, and many others. they, an d thousands, perhaps tens of thousands of others, have lost their lives today in the most astounding catastrophe that has ever struck this city.September 12, 2001 today, the residual smoke from the WTC has drifted northwards, and reached my apartment, three and a half miles away on the east side adjacent to the UN. It has infiltrated even through the building's air-conditioning filters.
it leaves a fine black powder. it smells of sharp ash. Death.
I am slowly learning the identities of friends I will likely and tragically never see again.
frank o'donnell
tyrconnell@aol.com
frank o'donnell is the United Nations' development project representative in Yugoslavia
I am an Irish-Australian who works in mid-town Manhattan. My office is closed today, but I had to go in to get an address book and put a message on my phone. It is very tense in the city. I got the bus into work today instead of the subway. no-one was talking. It was very depressed. There was no chatting on the bus. There is very little traffic. People were walking up the middle of the road, which is very strange for here. most mid-town offices are closed. a lot of small businesses are closed too. The planes crashed into the World Trade Center while I was on the subway..
rachel lonergan
padraigcollins@ireland.com
When the first plane hit this morning everyone was like, this is an accident, and people were looking out from the 48th floor over at the twin towers. Then the second plane flew in and a fireball erupted, _ people freaked and were shouting and there was a mass exodus to the fire escapes.
People were thinking there was planes flying into every tall building in Manhattan.
Crazy scenes outside but I hoofed it over the Manhattan bridge into Brooklyn with about 10,000 others so all's well. Can't think what the casualties are going to be.
Sean McCullagh
frank.mccullagh@eei.ericsson.se
Sean McCullagh works for Lehman Brothers
