Quote from Landis82:
That was my last year in NYC.
I was there in WTC #4 when the bomb went off (van filled with fertilizer) in the parking garage near the Vista Hotel, back in 1993.
I was just sliding my tray and lunch down to the cashier in the cafeteria when you could here a muffled "blast" go off underneath the World Trade Center Plaza down below. No one thought anything of it, and continued to trade for the next 90 minutes. Shortly thereafter, it was an eery scene for sure.
The ventilation system was shut-off and the temperature on the trading floor surged to 85 degrees or so. I remember looking over to the COMEX part of the floor and noticed that no one was standing in the gold or silver pits, even though it wasn't time for those contracts to close yet. I wondered how the metals every got "settled".
My Dad had called the Spear, Leeds booth wondering what was going on because CNN was reporting that a subway may have jumped the track down below. Lots of "stories" were being rumored about, but no one knew for sure what had happened till much later.
Next thing you knew, the lights were shut off, and people were all lined-up at the coat check room trying to get their jackets because it was cold outside with some light snowflakes falling. Everyone was very calm, except for a security guy who was sweating bullets and yelling on a bullhorn at everyone. He kept telling everyone to leave out the staircase ( and take the 8 flights down to the Street ), but no one budged . . .
We all wanted our coats!
The coat checkers knew who "buttered" their "bread" at Xmas time so they were very loyal and stayed; manually grabbing everyone's coat off these huge coat-racks via flashlight.
I casually walked down the stairwell to Broadway and as I popped out onto the street I noticed a TON of emergency vehicles, patrol cars, you name it. Even some fire hose scattered about. But no sirens, and no noise. Just some light snowflakes falling . . .
It was extremely surreal.
On another note, my commute was a breeze after the World Financial Center got built. I no longer had to walk across the west side highway because they installed a glass enclosed walkway that exited on the other side of the highway, right across the street from the WTC.
Actually, if the weather was REALLY bad on a brisk Winter day, I could walk outside my apartment complex at Gateway Plaza, head right into the Dow Jones building, up the escalator to the 2nd floor, and then walk over into the American Express Tower ( where the Atrium is with Palm Trees ) and then cut back right into the World Trade Center via another enclosed "overcross".
Never had to be exposed to the elements for more than 30 seconds.
interesting read.
