Interview Date: October 1, 2001
I guess that's North Park. It's a big green, grassy area, and there's nothing there. As I was running up here, two or three more cars exploded on me. They weren't near any buildings at that point, they were just parked on the street. The traffic guys hadn't gotten a chance to tow anything yet, 'cause this was all during the first hour I guess of this thing happening. So there were still cars parked on the street that were completely independent of that. Three cars blew up on me, stuff was being thrown. I went home all bruised that day. Thank God it was only bruises.[Patricia Ondrovic Witness Testimony taken from: http://abclocal.go.com/images/wabc/2005/OndrovicPatricia_EMT.pdf]
I just ran into this park along with a bunch of other people, and stuff was still blowing up, I don't think I looked back, but you couldn't see anything, everything was just black. I was running and I was falling over people, 'cause people were crawling on the ground 'cause they couldn't see anymore. I just kept on running north. I could smell water, so I just kept on running towards the water, 'cause I knew that my coat was on fire, and I figured well, if I can see a boat over the water, I'm just gonna jump onto the boat and take that thing to Jersey, 'cause no one wants to blow up Jersey. Stuff is still blowing up behind me, as I'm running. I can hear stuff exploding.
I could hear rumbling, the street under me was moving like I was in an earthquake. I've been in those, so I know what they feel like. It felt like an earthquake. There was no where safe to go. As I was running north in this park, and then I could start seeing again a little bit, and I just kept looking in the sky. 'Cause the captain was saying there's another plane heading in our direction, I was looking for another plane. I saw something in the sky, it was a plane, but it was way out. It looked like it was over Jersey or something, then it wasn't there anymore. I saw a small fireball, and it was gone. I saw two other planes. One came in one way, and the other came in the other way, and there was a plane in the middle that was way far off in the distance. Then the plane in the middle just disappeared into a little fire ball. It looked like the size of a golf ball from where I could see it. And the other two planes veered off into opposite directions. I just kept on running north. About fifteen blocks later, I had no idea that that was just the first tower that had come down.
FIREFIGHTER FERNANDO CAMACHO
Interview Date: December 12, 2001
We went across the lobby of the hotel, going north, and we exited and made a right going towards the second tower, the south tower. We must have walked about 100-200 feet to revolving doors, which led into a hallway to where the mall was. I could see maybe 20, civilians and I believe Ladder 25, which was about another 100 to 150 feet ahead of us. As we came in through the revolving doors, the lights went out. A second or two later everything started to shake. You could hear explosions. We didn't know what it was. We thought it was just a small collapse.
As I looked straight ahead of me, I saw total darkness. Everything was coming our way like a wave. The firefighters that were ahead of us and the civilians that were ahead of us totally disappeared. We turned around. We were all pretty much within ten feet of each other: lieutenant, chauffeur, roof, OV, can. As we turned around, I ran probably maybe ten feet and that's when the body of the building or body of the collapse hit, and we were flying through the air basically. I must have flown 30, 40 feet through the air. Then total quiet. You couldn't breathe. You couldn't see anything.[Fernando Camacho Witness Testimony taken from: http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/20050812_WTC_GRAPHIC/9110318.PDF]
No comments:
Post a Comment