“Imagine the apocalypse. It’s worse.”
“The number of casualties will be more than any of us can bear.”
New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, asked to estimate the number of people hurt in the World Trade Center attack
“The sad thing is that at this point, I think it’s all going to be dead on arrival.”
“For a while it was crowded. Then it was quiet. It was really kind of eerie. That was the worst sign we could get.”
Phil Brochard, an Episcopal seminarian describing the arrival of casualties at the St. Vincent’s Hospital emergency room
“I could feel debris up to my knees. People were throwing up. People were yelling ‘I’m going to die.’ Other people were yelling ‘I’m not going to die.’ I was very touched by how helpful people were.”
Karen Seong, a New York architect who was in a street near the World Trade Center when the towers collapsed
“A lot of our brothers are missing. At least 100. We don’t know where they are.”
“Well, we hope mummy is all right.”
“When we saw it, we just knew that people had died. It was very traumatizing.”
Melissa Vasquez, who saw the first plane fly into the building
“Paper and glass were showering down. I walked down all 77 floors.”
Barbara Chandler, World Trade Center office worker
“I saw about 15 people jump out [of the windows]. You’d hear a gasp in the crowd, and you’d look up, and the person would still fall for about 10 or 15 seconds. Some flailed their arms, some kept them straight.”
Eyewitness Jeremy Davids
“It was the scariest thing in the world.”
Eyewitness Peter T. Kohn
“It’s an act of war. Nothing’s happened like this since Pearl Harbor.”
Dan Bratone, one of hundreds of people who watched coverage of the attack from Times Square
“There was a huge pile of smoke and debris. To protect myself, I jumped on a pile of people.”
Timothy Jackoboice, a New York Stock Exchange employee who fled the scene
“It was pitch black for three or four minutes.”
Volunteer emergency worker Bryan Melchionda, describing the scene at a triage area when the towers collapsed
“We’ll not be accepting any more donors today. We are packed.”
“This changes our history. This changes America.”
Todd Slutzky, a visitor to New York from Atlanta
“This is war. This is an act of war. They’re going to go to war for this.”
New Yorker Deepak Jain
“It’s like a graveyard of [emergency] vehicles on the West Side Highway.”
Eyewitness Cathy Guerriero, describing New York’s downtown area after the Towers’ collapse
“We built this city and we’re going to make sure to build it back up.”
Trade union member Brian Ramos
