At the area we were evacuated to, one block away, we began to see people jumping out of the towers, It was absolutely horrifying. I spoke to a woman who was distraught because her husband worked in the twin towers and she had just dropped her son at school close by. I just hugged her.
I was a student in London in 2001, and in September that year I traveled to New York on vacation. I had found a website where you could indicate how much you wanted to pay for your hotel per night and how many stars you wanted the hotel to have. That's how my friend Adrian and I ended up staying in the Millennium Hilton New York Downtown in the financial district. There's no way, as 19 year old student, I would have been able to afford that otherwise.
Then, five minutes later, an announcement came over the hotel tannoy saying that a plane had flown into the World Trade Center and that we should all stay in our rooms because there was falling debris. We were ushered up the street into the general mayhem and for the first time in my life, I saw blood on the road along with shoes and someone's glasses. It was alarming. Thank God the area we were evacuated to, one block away, was on higher ground, because we began to see people jumping out of the towers, but we never saw them land. It was absolutely horrifying.
When there's a crisis, barriers between people dissolve. Everyone on the street was talking to each other. I spoke to a woman who was distraught because her husband worked in the twin towers and she had just dropped her son at school close by. She couldn't go to get either of them. I just hugged her. It was all you could do.
We were stuck in New York for 10 days, because flights were grounded. I had to get a new passport and buy clothes because I didn't have any. But everyone was so kind. A woman gave us a discount on our clothes and suddenly everyone in the city was talking to each other. The antidote to terror is that kindness.
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