9/11 relived by British woman who worked in South Tower

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By Emily Payne | Yahoo! News – Thu, Sep 8, 2011



Ten years ago the 9/11 terrorist attacks directly changed thousands of lives forever - from the families of those who died, to people who were actually in the Twin Towers when the planes struck. To commemorate the event, we have spoken to two victims to hear their stories of that fateful day.


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Janice Brook

Janice Brook, 51, from Essex, had recently moved to New York. She had just started working for Eurobrokers on the 84th floor of the World Trade Centre, South Tower. The company had 285 employers working on the site. On 11 September they lost 61 of them, six of whom were British.

It was Janice’s boss over 3000 miles away in London, who informed her on the telephone of the chaos occurring just metres away in the neighbouring tower.

In the 11 September Digital Archive, she explains: “I remember picking up the telephone to dial London, and I heard a loud bang, my PC screen flickered, the lights flashed on and off, and I saw paper and dust floating through the office window opposite where I sat.

“I ran around the corner to see [a colleague] Brian Clark, who told me not to panic, that it was probably a construction explosion, and that he would investigate. I went back to my desk, sat down, and then I heard a man's voice shouting 'everybody out'.”

Janice vividly remembers the phone call she made to Robin Clark, the Managing Director of her London office. “I said: 'Rob, something's happening next door, we're all okay, but we're leaving.'

“He said: 'Something's happening next door? F****** hell Janice, a plane's gone into the building - get the f*** out of there!'”

In shock, Janice made her way out into the corridor where several of her colleagues stood. Torn between staying with them and hurriedly escaping the building, her mind was made up when another colleague called her to follow him down the stairs.

She says: “I was about five steps into the corridor when I felt a dull thud, the building shook for about five seconds, and I fell back against the wall, I also remember the ceiling coming down behind me, with smoke and dust filling the air.”

She narrowly missed the impact of the second plane which demolished her office and killed many of her colleagues, including those she had been with just seconds before.

Janice has now been back in the UK for five years and is returning to New York for the first time since the tragedy to join in the remembrance with the 9/11 survivors network.Janice features in 9/11: THE WORLD'S FALLEN Thursday 8th September on the National
Geographic Channel.
 
I was at work listening to the radio... I reported the first plane that hit the tower to my coworkers. We spoke about it, at that time they were reporting that it could be a "small plane" and we weren't very disturbed at all. But then I reported that we were under attack when the second plane hit, I knew it instantly. I immediately e-mailed to the people I worked "with" every day in the towers asking them if they were okay and telling them to get the heck out but got no answers and I called my wife and told her to turn on the tv.

We got my small portable TV out of the truck and spent the rest of the time watching it unfold. When the towers fell, the reaction was simple horror. Some were reporting that there were as many as 30,000 people in the towers...

About an hour after the second tower fell, I received an e-mail from one of the girls that worked in the towers... She had actually gotten out almost right away and went home, she sent me an e-mail from her personal account and hadn't read the one I sent to my friends there, she told me everybody from my company had left after the first plane hit and all were safe and sound. I was nearly in tears that she had actually thought about us and did something to reassure us...

I'll never forget the images of the people falling from the tower. (we had a regular TV by that time) One of the ladies at work asked if that was paper falling there, and I told her that the images we were viewing wouldn't really show paper as they were from too far away... She asked me what they were, but just then they zoomed on a dude who was standing in a window who then jumped... we were horrified... The silence as we all watched what unfolded before us. What I remember most about that day was how danged quiet it was at work before they told us that network changes were frozen and sent us home.
 
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