I was home sick that day and was woken by the phone, a few of my co-workers were calling to tell me that a plane had just hit the first building, the North tower. I work for an insurance company and our headquarters were in the South tower. My office is upstate but half of my unit was in the South tower, I knew a lot of people in that building that day. I got up and turned the TV on just in time to see the second plan hit...hit the building where my friends and co-workers were. I could not grasp what I was seeing, I don't think anyone really could. I spent the day on the phone with people from my office trying to get updates on where our co-workers were. We knew one girl had not gone in yet and that she was safe, one girl had left the building shortly after the North tower got hit so she was at least out of the building but that is all we knew. When the plane hit the South tower one of my managers was on a conference call/meeting, he heard the sounds of it hitting. By the time the building collapsed we still only knew the whereabouts of a handful of people.
Later that day a hotline was set up and manned by the employees in my building, a list of employees was handed out and names were checked off as they called in or were reached by phone. The hotline was up and running for a long, long time as it took forever to 'find' people, there were a lot of folks in the hospital or they hadn't been heard from at all. Two days later we saw one of our guys on the cover of Time, he was among the masses that walked out of the city on the bridge, it was good to know he was OK and he was checked off the list. The people manning the phones did a great thing that week or so, they let others from the city know who was OK but did not give any information on the ones that had not been heard from. They listened to the stories that needed to be told. They got word out for people to check in. I didn't man the phones, I just couldn't, but most of the rest of my unit did and it took a terrible toll on them, just listening to what people had been through. I received many calls from friends and talked to them day and night, I'm glad they called yet to this day wish I never heard their stories of what they saw and went through, no person should have to do and see what they did that day.
One of my good friends from my office was in the tower that day, she had to go for a meeting. She was with her friend who used to work in my building and manage my department. They were going to go get some coffee or something before the meeting, when the elevator came my friend realized she had forgotten her notes and said she would catch up in a second and with that the elevator doors closed. The plane hit seconds later and the burning jet fuel filled the elevator shafts almost immediately. She was one of 13 people who worked for my company that died that day, she was probably the first to lose her life yet was the last to be added to the list. I honestly don't know if they ever found any trace of her, last I knew they had not.
My friend who was with her will never, ever be the same girl that she was. I can't begin to describe how much she, and so many others, were changed that day but she is just a shell of her former self. You can see it in her eyes, they saw things that day and it is reflected in them.