[Erin524]

Back on September 11th, there were 14 people who were staying in the Marriott World Trade Center Hotel.

One of them was a woman who had MS and was in a motorized wheelchair/scooter. (on the show, she's using a scooter, think they said she was in a wheelchair back in 2001)

The show is telling how these 14 people's experiences and how they got out of the area.

The lady with MS is really amazing me. She was on an upper floor of the hotel when the South Tower came down. (I missed the part where they said how she got down from her hotel room. Have to see if they're going to repeat this later)

I'm just impressed that she AND her mom survived the building coming down. They'd gotten separated somehow once they got down, and I'm sitting here on pins and needles waiting for her to tell how she got away (she was stuck outside, her mom had been grabbed by a firefighter and taken into a restaurant to get out of the dust)

The other people in the show stories are pretty amazing too. I've avoided a lot of the tv coverage today because it gets me too emotional sometimes to watch it.

[Lady]

My whole family worked in NYC at the time. I had the day off. My DH was at work there, saw it all from the roof of his building 15 blocks away. Two of my sons, two of my daughter in law's, my brother and nieces worked very close too. I could not get a hold of anyone.

One worked across the street, saw everything. One worked in the building that came down the next day, but was late that day and watched it from the bus coming into NYC.

It was the worst day of my life. No pay phones, no cells phones, or anything worked. I could not get in touch with any of them until that evening. They all made it safely to my husband's building and I finally got a phone call, TG.

I will never forget. God bless those that lost their lives, and those that lost their loved ones.



My friend at work lost her only child, her son, and his bride of one year, and her first grandchild that was not born yet. Both worked together on the 83rd floor of tower one. Her DIL was 7 months pregnant.
May God Bless them all.

[Erin524]

I didnt know anyone there.

I did see Air Force One flying over West Omaha when I was driving down the street to get to my job at WalMart that day. I was late for work (took my mom to the ER for chest pains...my dad worked at that hosp, so he stayed with her) When I first saw AF1, (when he was arriving) It scared the hell out of me. There was this huge airplane in the sky, and I knew all planes had been grounded. Then I looked again. I'd seen AF1 before a few times, I've even been on one of the planes that had been used as AF1 once. (at an air show)

Then I saw the fighter jets, and realized it was the Air Force escort. (I'm an Air Force brat) At the time, seeing the fighter jets made me feel better...at the time I thought that seeing AF1 was what made me feel better, but now I think it was seeing those fighters.

I got to work, and the ladies I worked with in the fabric dept were just nasty to me for being late. At the time, I thought they were just <a bad word> but now that it's been a few years, they were probably just as freaked out as I was.

The store manager came up to me later, handed me a really ugly hat with American flags stuck all over it, and had me walk around with a sign and a basket, told me to ask people for donations to the Red Cross.

Later that day, another one of the managers grabbed me and asked me to come up with something "crafty" to sell at the front of the store in exchange for donations to the Red Cross. I sat and crocheted little yarn circles with red, white and blue yarn for the next three days. Taught a couple of other people to crochet to help me keep up. We raised something like $3,000 for the Red Cross that Walmart matched.

Got fired two weeks later. No one was shopping, (everyone was home, glued to their tv's or scared to go out) so the management panicked and started firing everyone they could. Interesting that the only department making money those two weeks was the craft department (my department) because everyone was coming in buying anything that resembled something patriotic.

A few weeks after 9-11, I bought a bracelet with the name of an FDNY firefighter who died at the WTC. I wear it every year on 9-11 to remember him and everyone else who died.

The firefighter's name was George DiPasquale, of Ladder Company 2. I never knew him, his name was chosen randomly for the bracelet I got. From the news reports I've read about him, he and his ladder company were in Tower 2 when it fell.

I'm scared that day will happen again somewhere else (and it has...London, Mumbai...) I guess I dont understand why people feel that they need to kill in the name of god. Must be the atheist in me. I just dont get it. I think killing in the name of whatever god someone happens to be killing in the name of...it's just an excuse to justify the killing. There's no reason to it.

[Dejibo]

I had a medical appointment in NYC. St Vincents. We got to the city nice and early. It was about 8 when we arrived at the hospital. Since my DH is a fire fighter, and I a medic, we know tons of the NYC fire fighters, and medics. We see them at conferences all the time. We were shocked when a couple of our buddies told us that an airplane had been flown into the Trade Center. The city was buckling down for emergent conditions, and the ERs went into full trauma mode. Another friend who was dropping off patients told us a second plane was into the other tower. Asked if we were busy and asked us to ride along to the scene.

It took us more than a week to get back home. It was horrible. It was mind bending. It was like being in a movie, and you kept expecting to hear the director yell "cut!" it was one event after the other. We were stunned and shocked.

Its an experience I pray to never repeat.

[Kitt]

Does this sound like that woman? I saw part of the show last night too but not all of it.

Originally Posted by Erin524

Back on September 11th, there were 14 people who were staying in the Marriott World Trade Center Hotel.

One of them was a woman who had MS and was in a motorized wheelchair/scooter. (on the show, she's using a scooter, think they said she was in a wheelchair back in 2001)

The show is telling how these 14 people's experiences and how they got out of the area.

The lady with MS is really amazing me. She was on an upper floor of the hotel when the South Tower came down. (I missed the part where they said how she got down from her hotel room. Have to see if they're going to repeat this later)

I'm just impressed that she AND her mom survived the building coming down. They'd gotten separated somehow once they got down, and I'm sitting here on pins and needles waiting for her to tell how she got away (she was stuck outside, her mom had been grabbed by a firefighter and taken into a restaurant to get out of the dust)

The other people in the show stories are pretty amazing too. I've avoided a lot of the tv coverage today because it gets me too emotional sometimes to watch it.

http://www.wral.com/news/local/story/159181/

[Erin524]

No, there were actually two handicapped women who were helped out of the towers that day.

Josephine Harris was the one of the survivors of Stairway B. That's where 12 firefighters and two other people (one of them Harris) ended up after the tower fell down on them. They were in the right place at the right time. Only spot that would have protected them.

The woman who was in the show I watched last night was Leigh Gilmore. She has MS and was inside the WTC Marriott Hotel, on like the 6th floor or something. Since they turned off the passenger elevators, she had no way to get out of the hotel. She sat in the hall with her mom, waiting for some maintenance men to come and help her get out on a service elevator.

She had to wait more than 40 minutes, while people walked past her, not offering to help. She and her mom came within 90 seconds of being crushed to death by one of the Towers. Her mom was pulled into a taco shop by a firefighter, who wouldnt let her go back out to look for her daughter.

Leigh Gilmore was outside in the dust cloud. She pulled her scooter up as close to a wall as she could get. She and her mom were reunited at a hospital.

She and a senator for Illinois (not sure who it was) had a bill that made it a law that buildings taller than 80 feet had to have an evacuation plan that included handicapped people. Not sure if the bill was ever signed into law.