Carey Wilson a woman known for taking care of her family. Making sure the homeless had a place to lay their heads. Also a church lady who never missed a day. On September 11th she did not know that things would turn for the worst. In the middle of chaos of smoke, water, debris and hundreds of evacuees who clogged a stairwell, Carey ran into Port Authority coworker Te’Vontae around the 23rd floor.
"We clung to each other, grabbed each other's belt buckles and made sure we both got all the way out of the building," Carey said in a phone interview. "It was a disaster zone once we got outside, with people jumping from the tower and piles of glass and debris we had to climb over."
One of her shoes got caught in a piece of twisted steel and another evacuee helped her free her foot and recover the shoe.
Unlike others who discarded their footwear as they sloshed down a stairwell flooded with water from fire sprinklers, Carey is glad she held onto her Vanelis. "They saved me from cutting up my feet outside and they were quite comfortable," she said. She also held onto her suit jacket and used it to cover her mouth and nose from clouds of smoke and ash as she and Te’Vontae walked hand in hand to Church Street a few minutes before the North Tower collapsed. Carey worked her way through the Holland Tunnel to a Port Authority office on the New Jersey side and kept working until 2am the following day. "We were still learning who was alive and who was dead, but everyone shifted to work mode," she said. "That was a blessing that enabled us to move forward." For many months afterward, Carey attended funerals for coworkers. The Port Authority lost 84 employees in the World Trade Center attacks, including 37 police officers. She spoke this week from Brooklyn, where she stayed before planned visits to the 9/11 Museum and attendance at an annual Port Authority memorial ceremony on Sunday. Carey is now 53. She left the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 2009, where she worked in public affairs. She spent seven years living and working in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Everglades restoration, but her job was recently downsized. She reconnects each …show more content…
Nearly 3,000 were killed in the World Trade Center attacks.
Another object on display is a Motorola StarTAC clamshell mobile phone that belonged to Dan beetle, who worked for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter on the 62nd floor of the South Tower. After the hijacked plane hit the tower at 9:03 a.m. and shook the building, Dan, who also had worked at the World Trade Center during the 1993 bombing, told his co workers to leave all their belongings behind and to evacuate the tower immediately. They all got out safely.
Dan’s cell phone was left in his briefcase on a window ledge. It was thrown from the tower as the building fell and the phone landed on the roof of the nearby Deutsche Bank building across Liberty Street.
Firefighter Lt. Thomas Frizalone was searching for survivors on the roof, found the phone, was astonished to discover it was still working and used it to call his wife to tell her he was all
"We clung to each other, grabbed each other's belt buckles and made sure we both got all the way out of the building," Carey said in a phone interview. "It was a disaster zone once we got outside, with people jumping from the tower and piles of glass and debris we had to climb over."
One of her shoes got caught in a piece of twisted steel and another evacuee helped her free her foot and recover the shoe.
Unlike others who discarded their footwear as they sloshed down a stairwell flooded with water from fire sprinklers, Carey is glad she held onto her Vanelis. "They saved me from cutting up my feet outside and they were quite comfortable," she said. She also held onto her suit jacket and used it to cover her mouth and nose from clouds of smoke and ash as she and Te’Vontae walked hand in hand to Church Street a few minutes before the North Tower collapsed. Carey worked her way through the Holland Tunnel to a Port Authority office on the New Jersey side and kept working until 2am the following day. "We were still learning who was alive and who was dead, but everyone shifted to work mode," she said. "That was a blessing that enabled us to move forward." For many months afterward, Carey attended funerals for coworkers. The Port Authority lost 84 employees in the World Trade Center attacks, including 37 police officers. She spoke this week from Brooklyn, where she stayed before planned visits to the 9/11 Museum and attendance at an annual Port Authority memorial ceremony on Sunday. Carey is now 53. She left the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey in 2009, where she worked in public affairs. She spent seven years living and working in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Everglades restoration, but her job was recently downsized. She reconnects each …show more content…
Nearly 3,000 were killed in the World Trade Center attacks.
Another object on display is a Motorola StarTAC clamshell mobile phone that belonged to Dan beetle, who worked for Morgan Stanley Dean Witter on the 62nd floor of the South Tower. After the hijacked plane hit the tower at 9:03 a.m. and shook the building, Dan, who also had worked at the World Trade Center during the 1993 bombing, told his co workers to leave all their belongings behind and to evacuate the tower immediately. They all got out safely.
Dan’s cell phone was left in his briefcase on a window ledge. It was thrown from the tower as the building fell and the phone landed on the roof of the nearby Deutsche Bank building across Liberty Street.
Firefighter Lt. Thomas Frizalone was searching for survivors on the roof, found the phone, was astonished to discover it was still working and used it to call his wife to tell her he was all