09/11/2026
My 9/11 Story
For two weeks before 9/11, I had the same nightmare: I was standing in a marble lobby with two enormous escalators as badly burned people ran toward me. Then I would find myself boarding a plane, overwhelmed with fear. The dreams disturbed me so deeply that I told my mother about them.
On September 11, I had a 9:00 a.m. appointment at World Trade Center 5, but the night before, it was moved to an office in downtown Brooklyn.
My grandmother and I were approaching the building when smoke and debris began falling around us. When we reached the 14th floor, we found a crowd gathered at the windows. The North Tower was in flames. It looked like something from a movie—too surreal to comprehend.
Minutes later, the building shook as we watched the second plane strike the South Tower. Everyone scattered. My grandmother and I ran down 14 flights of stairs and into streets filled with smoke and debris.
With no cell service, I found a pay phone and called my mother, who worked in EMS and had responded to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. I begged her not to go. I felt certain that if she did, she would not come home. She later told me that after our call, she went to operations—but her supervisor said every ambulance had already been deployed. My nightmare and that phone call had delayed her.
As the NYPD evacuated downtown Brooklyn, my grandmother pushed me onto one of the city buses being used as shuttles, then made her way back to her apartment. When I finally reached home, I went to the roof, where my neighbors stood watching the towers burn in stunned silence. My younger sister, released early from school, joined me there.
Together, we watched the towers collapse. 25 years passed, but it is still very fresh in my memory and in my heart.
RIP to all First Responders including Yamel Merino, Fluffy and many other EMS friends that I grew up with and are gone now who heroically assisted with clean up and the aftermath and those that are still alive and dealing with ailments today. 💔🙏
