People trapped in buildings in Manhattan in the wake of the attacks on the World Trade Center are finding that e-mail and instant messaging are the best ways to contact their friends and loved ones, as the cell and land phone service in the city has been disrupted.
"E-mail is best -- I've been using IM to contact friends and have asked them to call my family," said Timothy Brooks, an Internet Strategy consultant stuck on the 27th floor of a building on Wall Street, about 10 blocks away from the World Trade Center. He communicated through AOL Instant Messenger.
Brooks lives in Maine, but he was in Manhattan Tuesday to meet with a client. He arrived at the building -- the National Association for Specialty Food Trade, at 120 Wall Street -- about 15 minutes before the first plane hit one of the Trade towers.
"We saw paper flying all around. Some of it was scorched. Suddenly there were millions of pages flying through the air," Brooks said of what people in his office first noticed. "When the first (plane) hit, they all went outside to look. Many, many people saw the second plane hit."
About four hours after the Trade Center was hit, Brooks and others in his building were still trapped, both on their floor and in the city. "The air on the ground is so bad, that you can't go outside," he said. "In our office, like in every office down town, people are just trying to figure out how to get home. Bridges are open to foot traffic, and transportation seems to be running up town -- but nothing down here is operational."
"There were millions -- and I do mean millions -- of people out in the street, just looking up. I came back in before the collapse. We were just having a discussion about how hard it would be to rebuild the top floors when the news came in that it had collapsed."
Brooks described everyone in the office as being "stunned, lots of crying," but he said that many had managed to contact their relatives to notify them that they were alive.
"No one in this office had friends or family in the building. One guy walked through the WTC two minutes before it happened," he said. "He and his wife already have talked about moving out of NYC ASAP."
On Brooks' floor, a manager spoke to everyone to make sure they had a place to go in the evening, and people have been e-mailing each other making arrangements.
As for Brooks himself, he said he's just trying to stay alive, and was confused about what to do. "(We're) 30 some floors high, and I imagine there are other offices just like this one with people trying to figure out where to go. Is it safer to try to get somewhere -- anywhere -- or is it safer to stay put for a while? Very hard to know."
He added: "I'll try to get as far from Manhattan as I can today, hopefully home tomorrow. We're just waiting for the air to clear a little. The chaos cannot be described."
