![]() It almost certainly came from severed sprinkler pipes. He heard nothing but water cascading down the stairs. McIntyre recalls peering into a dim, shattered stairwell billowing with smoke. McIntyre, Shark and nine other employees, all uninjured, hustled out of the ABS reception area in the north-west corner and turned toward the elevators and stairways in the tower's core. In their accounts of hunting for a way out, they provide a survey of a border territory, an impregnable zone through which the people imprisoned above would never pass. Only later would the two men realise the slender margin of their escape. ![]() 'We got to get the hell out of here!' yelled Greg Shark, an American Bureau of Shipping engineer, who was bracing himself in the swaying while he stood outside McIntyre's office. It bounced from the top to the bottom of the tower, three or four seconds one way and then back, rocking the building like a huge boat in a storm. A powerful shock wave radiated from the impact zone. McIntyre found himself in front of a computer that was still on. ![]() Not the family snapshots propped up on a bookcase. ![]() Not the slate paperweight shaped like a sailing ship. Just three floors below the impact zone, not a thing budged in Steve McIntyre's office. The plane's landing gear hurtled through the south side of the building, winding up on Rector Street, five blocks away. Its fuel ignited and incinerated everything in its way. The plane ripped a path across floors 94 to 98, directly into the office of Marsh & McLennan, shredding steel columns, wallboard, filing cabinets and computer-laden desks. At that speed, it covered the final two blocks to the North Tower in 1.2 seconds. American Airlines Flight 11, a Boeing 767 carrying 10,000 gallons of fuel was moving at 470mph. It was 8.44 am.Ġ8:48 - North Tower, 91st floor, Bureau of Shipping, 1 hour 42 minutes to collapse. The doors closed and the last people ever to leave Windows on the World began their descent. Nestor held the elevator, so they hopped in quickly. But Nestor had a meeting downstairs, so they headed for the elevators, stopping at Levin's table to say goodbye. He and Tierney were a little curious to see whom Levin, their boss, was meeting for breakfast. Upstairs, Levin read his newspaper, Nestor recalled. But when the guest arrived, the two luckily boarded the wrong elevator, so they had to return to the lobby to wait for another one. In the lobby, 107 floors below, an assistant to Levin waited for his breakfast guest. Stuart Lee and Garth Feeney, two vice-presidents of Data Synapse, ran displays of their company's software. Some exhibitors were already tending to their booths, set up in the Horizon Suite just across the hallway.Ī picture taken that morning showed two exhibitors, Peter Alderman and William Kelly, salesmen for Bloomberg LP, chatting with a colleague beside a table filled with a multi-screened computer display. Many were enjoying coffee and sliced smoked salmon in the restaurant's ballroom. Already 87 people had arrived, including top executives from Merrill Lynch and UBS Warburg. Most of the 72 Windows employees were on the 106th floor, where Risk Waters Group was holding a conference on information technology. Maciejewski was one of several restaurant workers on the 107th floor. But his secretary requested a table days earlier and now he sat waiting for a banker friend.Įvery minute or so a waiter, Jan Maciejewski, swept through the room refilling coffee cups and taking orders, Nestor recalls. He had never joined them for breakfast before. Sitting by himself at a window table overlooking the Statue of Liberty was a relative newcomer, Neil D Levin, executive director of the Port Authority. Roinnel says he asked Eng to give them to Harvey. The night before, one of the restaurant's managers, Jules Roinnel, had given Eng two impossibly hard-to-get Broadway tickets for The Producers. Eng had a treat for one of them, Emeric Harvey. At the next table sat Michael Nestor, deputy inspector-general of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, and one of his investigators, Richard Tierney.Īt a third table were six stockbrokers, several of whom came every Tuesday. Thompson, executive director of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, was eating with Geoffrey Wharton, an executive with Silverstein Properties, which had just leased the towers. As much as any one place, that single room captured the sweep of humanity who worked and played at the World Trade Centre. Familiar faces occupied many of the tables in Wild Blue, the intimate eyrie to Windows that Eng helped to manage.
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