100th FSS civilian shares 9/11 memories

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  • 100th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs
RAF MILDENHALL, England --  Hillary Chlebisch, 100th Force Support Squadron, remembers the day the world stood still ...

Back in 2001, I worked at the New York Stock Exchange, which was about a 45 minute train ride from where I lived.

I was standing in my booth doing my pre-opening duties, checking trades from the day before, when someone noticed the TV cameras were now focusing on the World Trade Center. Then a guy suddenly said, "Some idiot just flew his Cessna into one of the twin towers!'"

Looking back on it, we were so innocent before that moment. Our country would never have fathomed that would happen to us - we were reborn that day. We never really believed something bad would happen; even after it happened, it just didn't make sense.

We immediately looked at the TV, and sure enough, the first tower was on fire. Now, of course, all the TV cameras were on the World Trade Center.

I think we were just really ticked off because we figured some idiot didn't know how to fly his plane and had just crashed into the towers that had been there for a great many years.

Then I panicked for a moment, because my uncle worked at the top of tower two, for a bond-trading company. There was also a restaurant on the top floor where people would go for breakfast every morning.

I (was scared) because you could see the building was clearly on fire, and where the plane had hit was well below the top floors where my uncle's company was located. I suddenly couldn't remember which tower it was that he worked in, so I went to ask somebody higher up in the NYSE, but she wasn't sure. She tried looking it up but couldn't find out, so at that point I called my mom, who lived in California.

It was 5 a.m. there, but I didn't care; I had to call her. I woke her up and told her what happened, and asked her to get a hold of my aunt (who was in California at the time), because I didn't have her number.

My mom wasn't worried about my safety, because we all still thought it was just some idiot who'd flown into the tower by accident. She managed to get hold of my aunt, and it turned out that my uncle was on a business trip that morning.

Later, I found out that the tower that had been hit was the one he worked in. My uncle found out at the beginning of the week that he was being sent to the Montreal office - where he hadn't visited in over 40 years. For some reason, that week he needed to go up there.

It turned out that 20 minutes before the WTC was hit, he was flying over it, on his way to Montreal.

A lot of the people in the other firms were able to get out of the building - but everyone who was at work for my uncle's firm that day, died.

The first tower had been hit, but the second hadn't. A bunch of us were standing around talking about it, and how (not knowing the circumstances of the crash) it would mess up the markets that day. From a business stand-point, we were trying to figure it out.

I remember standing there, when some guy stopped and said, "You guys are idiots! This is a terrorist attack!"

The moment he said that, the second plane hit and the building exploded.

I remember screaming. We didn't know what to do, and the panic had set in. By then, everyone knew something terrible had happened. I then decided to call my brother, who was also in California, and told him to turn the TV on, before telling him, "The country is under attack!"

We watched the TV for a little longer, before agreeing that we needed to leave the building. We went across the street, still in the mindset of 'the worst that can happen has happened.' The street and downtown had been closed off as we tried to figure out what to do.

A couple of people decided to go home, but I wasn't sure what to do because where I lived wasn't easily accessible for me. The subway I needed to go on ran right underneath the WTC; I decided to hang out with one of my friends I worked with.

We went outside, and a friend of my aunt's, who was an admiral in the Navy, was coming out of the World Trade Center at the time. The subway ran through there, and I asked him, "What does this mean? This is bad, right?"

He just said, (unknowingly predicting the Global War on Terrorism), "Oh, the country's at war."

I'd seen Operation Desert Storm, but it wasn't something that happened on our soil - it was just something you saw on TV. My country was involved, but it wasn't affecting me, per se.

They were about to lock the doors of the NYSE, and we had to decide whether or not to go back inside. I decided that because it had steel doors, would be locked up tight, and had its own bomb squad, I'd go back in. After doing so, I called my mom. By that time, she and everyone else knew it wasn't a Cessna that had hit the towers.

Suddenly, someone screamed "Bomb!" on the floor of the exchange. The effect was like someone shouting "Fire!" in a movie theater. Everyone panicked and started running around.

We found out soon after that as the panic outside had started to increase, some guy outside had jumped the turnstile. He was a worker at the exchange, but had jumped the stile instead of using his name plate to scan it open; everyone panicked, and started beating him up. It was chaos.
We were in a separate area of the building and were waiting there by the exit, watching the TV.

Someone got on the loudspeaker, and yelled out, "Everybody stop!" He calmly continued that there was no need to panic, and there was no bomb (as the commotion had started because of the guy jumping the turnstile).

The World Trade Center was about two blocks away from our building. I found out afterwards that the buildings were structurally designed to implode; they were also designed to handle the impact of a 707 aircraft. But obviously, planes got bigger, and after being hit by a 767, the WTC was going down.

We watched the first building fall, and started talking and saying how we couldn't believe there was only one tower left now! But we still thought things couldn't get any worse.

Then it was announced there'd been a plane crash in a Pennsylvania field. We thought the White House was next. The Pentagon was hit after that, before the second tower fell. It was a massive chain of events that happened so fast.

The bomb squad came into our building after the first tower fell because outside where the towers had fallen, a vacuum had been created and there was no oxygen. They were covered from head-to-toe in ash. We were giving them water, when one guy told us, "Look guys, we've got to get you out of here; we believe you're the next target."

The NYSE is built very low, and there's no way you could fly a plane into it; but because everything that was going on outside, people could be planting bombs and we were a big financial target.

But there was a small problem, since there was no oxygen - we had to wait until the dust literally settled. Once it was safe to go back outside, the Brooklyn Bridge was going to be opened up to foot traffic - but that didn't really help me, as I lived in the opposite direction. I just wanted to be at home.

Then the second tower came down.

We couldn't believe that suddenly there was no World Trade Center, that it was gone. I remember watching people jumping out of the windows.

I was convinced I was going to die that day. When that person shouted, "bomb", I was wondering to myself, "What does a bomb feel like? How do I prepare for this, because I'm going to die today ... "

Death is an emotion unto itself. It was an emotion I'd never felt before - it wasn't fear, but more like, "Okay, what do I do?" It was the oddest feeling.

When we finally got out of the building, I met up with another friend of mine who was also walking to Grand Central Station, so we started walking together.

There was such a silence on the streets. Nobody knew what to say; we just were all wondering what the heck just happened. It was insane - we were walking through 3 inches of ash. It looked like "the day after;" it looked like an atomic bomb had gone off.

Once we reached Grand Central Station, we managed to get on a train. Again, nobody spoke. I finally made it home to my apartment, and my answering machine had about 25 messages, and I made a couple of calls.

I remember nothing from after I got home, or any of the week after that.

My mom said I called her several times, screaming in the middle of the night, but I don't remember doing that. I finished a needlepoint, but I don't remember that either.

What I do remember is going back to work the following Monday, and being extremely scared. There was no fencing up around the towers. They had to let the fires burn down, as there was so much jet fuel.

In addition to that, below the trade center was a parking garage full of cars. When the towers came down, the cars were crushed and there was even more fuel spread around. It burned for months afterwards.

I remember standing there, wondering to myself what had gone on. You just couldn't comprehend that this pile of rubble had been the World Trade Center. It was like a movie set for a film.

I knew I was lucky to have survived - but it could have easily been me who'd died in there.

The reason I came to New York in the first place was to interview for a job at my uncle's company. I left my master's progam to move to New York - but I didn't get the job.

Luckily, I'd been offered a summer internship on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, so I went to visit one day and the boss told me to come there and things would work out.

Sure enough, I got hired by a company on the NYSE; if I'd gotten the job at my uncle's company, I would have died.

Later, I ended up moving to Las Vegas, and married into the military.

Every Sept. 11 - especially with the 'twin towers' trees outside where I work at RAF Mildenhall - I don't get choked-up emotional but it brings back memories. More often than not, I just get chills.

But I didn't die that day, and I didn't lose anything, except maybe my innocence.

Our country changed drastically that day. Now I have kids, I will always tell them I was there the absolute second the mentality of our country changed. I was an integral part of that. We didn't live this way before Sept. 11; we didn't live in fear.

As a country, we were still one step detached from things that were happening around the world; we didn't feel personally involved. Sept. 11 changed all that, and made America finally realize that we are involved. We're just as vulnerable as everyone else.

Although that day will forever haunt the memories of Americans, something very special came out of it. After the Twin Towers fell, America's sense of pride and camaraderie hit a level unseen for decades. Everyone was wearing clothes with the American flag on them and crying tears of pride during the singing of the national anthem. Songs on the radio focused on the sacrifice and duty of American citizens and the troops fighting overseas. Sept. 11, 2001, may have killed our innocence, but it also reawakened our sense of pride for our special country.

Editor's note: This story is the personal recollection of the events of Sept. 11, 2001, based on interviews with the subject. It is compiled and written by Karen Abeyasekere, 100th Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs.