You’ve Gotta Read This

Posted on September 12, 2003

In observation of yesterday’s 9/11 anniversary, Michael Wilson, a survivor of the WTC attack, has written up what happened to him on that fateful day two years ago and how he managed to escape. It’s harrowing stuff:

A very well dressed oriental gentleman approached me and my fly-by-night coterie (my clothes, hair, skin, and backpack white with ash after having been through the sprinklers, then the cloud, gave me away.) He was wearing a bow tie. Who wears a bow tie? He held out his business card towards me with a shaking hand. “I…I…Iwwwas llllate.” He stuttered. “I worked on the 82nd floor of building 2. Are any of the people I worked with alive?” Somewhere in there he said that he wasn’t sure he was making himself clear, so that’s why he was holding out his card.
“Well, they started evacuating tower 2 as soon as the plane hit tower 1, which was a 20 minute time difference. It’s just chaotic down here. I wouldn’t worry too much.” In the immortal words of Edward Norton “I’d like to thank the academy.” There was no way I was going to tell this poor guy that no, I think everybody he worked with was just blasted off the face of the Earth.

It’s long, but it’s worth it. Read it.