It was September 11, 2001. Twenty-three years ago today, the winds of terror ripped through the skies of New York City.
Should it have been it long enough time to change many things, the pain of that day is still fresh in many people’s memories.
And here is one woman who will live with the memory for the rest of her life. The woman, who asked only to be identified as Kim, was born in 1943 and was working at Fuji Bank on the 79th floor of the South Tower on the day of the incident.
Throughout a 40-minute phone interview, her voice trembled as she recounted the urgency of the situation. Kim had never spoken to the media before because it was traumatizing for her to recount what happened.
However, she finally braved it for the first time because she felt everyone should remember it. “Even now, when I talk about it, I still shake,” she said, noting that she continues to struggle with her daily life after the incident. The tension and fear could be heard through the receiver.
A cloudless, sunny day
As the world watched in horror, Kim went to work that day like any other. “It was an unusually clear, cloudless day,” she said. Kim left his Scarsdale home in New York around 7:30 a.m. and arrived at her desk around 8:40 a.m. She tidied up her desk and headed to the restroom to touch up her makeup, as she always did. And then, it was 8:46 a.m. American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
When she came out from the restroom
When Kim came out after touching up her makeup, the lounge was unusually empty, and a pungent odor hit her nose. When she stepped out into the hallway, people were already running to escape, and a male staff member shouted at her to leave immediately. Kim then headed for the emergency stairs.
It was dead silent
Walking down more than 20 floors from the 79th floor to the 53rd floor, Kim didn’t exactly know what had happened. “They said a plane hit the North Tower in an accident.” She heard people talking on the way down, but she didn’t think that an airplane could have crashed on such a clear day.
The doors to the emergency stairwells were open on every floor for people to communicate, and Kim could hear a muffled sound coming from the office speakers. But even this was drowned out by the din of the crowd. “Everybody quiet!” a man downstairs yelled, and the scene instantly fell silent.
It clearly said it’s a “safe zone”
“The South Tower is a safe zone.” The loudspeaker repeated the word “safe zone”. People in the South Tower were told to go back to their offices because the people in the North Tower needed to be evacuated. Unable to walk back up, Kim leaned against the wall of the stairwell on the 52nd floor. After two or three minutes, she felt like something was grabbing and shaking the building. Hearing the wall crack, she thought, “This is terrorism.” The building shook, sending dust and debris flying. Kim held on to the handrail and barely made it down by one step down the floors at a time when there was a flash of light and something hit the top of the building. People screamed and a man yelled, “Keep walking!” From that moment on, it was chaos.
In a moment of desperation, a Beatles song plays in her head
Fearing for their lives, the people started running down the stairs, three or four steps at a time, but Kim couldn’t get down fast enough because her frightened body couldn’t keep up. Then, a young man came to her and said, “Do you wanna hold my hand?” Kim said the Beatles’ song “I Want to Hold Your Hand” popped into her head at that moment. She grabbed the young man’s hand and began to climb down, just like the song’s title. The young man reassured the panicked Kim, saying, “Sometimes the building sways in the wind, so let’s imagine it got a little worse now.” Together they made it halfway down.
Feeling bad for the young man, who had fallen out of the group and was moving slowly because of her, Kim let go of his hand, saying, “I can take care of myself now.” Still, the young man didn’t go easily and kept looking back. “I still remember vividly the way he looked back,” she said.
“Remembering the firefighter who was climbing to his death”
The world was covered in smoldering ash
After descending to the third floor, Kim heard a voice in her ear say, “When you reach underground, run north!” The moment she stepped into the basement, she knew something big had happened.
People were lined up on both sides, one meter apart, and the police looked very serious. High heels, tissues, and objects were strewn everywhere, and even though it was broad daylight, the whole world was covered in dark ash. The line led to a revolving door, and after stepping through the broken glass, Kim headed toward the river. She heard shouts to run north, but her legs were shaking so badly she couldn’t run. As she moved frantically, she glanced back. The North Tower was burning at around the 90th floor, and the South Tower was burning at around the 70th or 80th floor, where Kim’s bank was located.
Dragging herself up on shaky legs
As Kim approached the subway station, she was troubled. If it was terrorism, the inside of the station was not safe either. But there was no time to waste. She was certain that the building was going to collapse, so she had to escape somewhere. The problem was that she didn’t commute by train and knew nothing about the route. Kim blindly followed one girl. Upon arriving at the platform, a train pulled up in front of her, and she jumped on board and asked the girl for directions home. The girl told her she had to transfer at Grand Central Station, and when she got off, she was even terrified to hear the train moving. After dragging her shaky legs, she arrived at the transfer station, and the train came right away. “It was a stroke of luck,” Kim explained. When she was on the subway, the World Trade Center collapsed.
A young firefighter climbs to his death
She came home at 11 a.m. The apartment felt shaky so it was hard to open the door. Kim couldn’t sleep that night.
As she frantically ran down the stairs to save herself, she saw the faces of the firefighters who were climbing the stairs with heavy axes. “I can’t forget the young firefighter who saved my life,” she said. As she was descending the stairs, Kim collapsed from exhaustion, and a firefighter with a heavy fire hose pulled her up by the arm and pushed her back, saying, “Go down as fast as you can, the building might collapse any minute.” He knew it would, but the young firefighter, who had a bright future, continued to climb the stairs. “The image of that scene still stays with me to this day,” Kim said.
Fuji Bank, where Kim worked, lost 23 employees that day. “The bank bosses and securities died protecting company confidential information from being leaked,” she said.
Maybe it is because of her colleagues who did not make it or the young firefighter who saved her life. Many have left New York, but when asked, “Do you still live in that house in Scarsdale?” she said “Yes.”
BY JIHYE YOON, HOONSIK WOO [yoon.jihye@koreadailyny.com]
