'Armegeddon'-- New Yorkers react to attacks

Michael Miroddi\nWorks on the 74th floor in Tower 2.\nI got in about 8:30 (a.m.), and people usually come in around 9 a.m. My friend Ron and I were the only people in the area and there were maybe 30 people on the floor. I looked out the window, and heard someone shout. I noticed papers from looking out the windows. It just looked like confetti but I couldn't tell. Then I saw others running out in the hallway. So I just ran and didn't think much of it, but saw people panicking. A group of us took the elevator from the 74th floor to the 44th floor. I still didn't know much, except for the security directing us to take the stairs. We all hopped on the stairs moving briskly. We saw it as an inconvenience, and when we got to the first floor it was a mess. So we ran into the mall area and decided to get out. We weren't scared, but then we felt the building rumble, so we started running to a familiar exit as fast as we could. I've been working there for a year and I was not sure what was going on.\nWhen we were a block before Broadway I saw a man bleeding, with debris all over the street. When we stopped to look the top 20 percent of the buildings were on fire. We kept running, and when we stopped and turned around, the streets were filled with people. We were looking in disbelief, and a guy said to us that a second ago people were jumping out of the building. We ran into a girl that works on our floor, grabbed her and kept running east through Chinatown. \nAfter running 10-15 minutes, we stopped in Chinatown, turned around and saw the first building collapse. We stopped at payphones when we felt somewhat safe to call loved ones. We got to the east side of Manhattan and just kept walking fast uptown, out of the smoke filled area. As we were further uptown we heard the second building collapse. I felt in shock, disbelief. When I left the building I was so sure that everything was going to be OK and just left everything in there, but I felt lucky that we made it out of there. \nManhattan is a ghost town right now. There is just a cloud of black smoke where the Twin Towers used to be. We are in mid-town Manhattan and it is unbelievable -- unbelievable to see the streets just dead.\nNeil O\'Leary\nWorks in Tower 2.\nI was getting out of the subway, and I was going to get out, but Courtland Street was closed because of smoke. I didn't think of this as a big deal because there have been little fires before which will make you go to Rector Street. Then I was getting out at Rector Street, and all of a sudden the second plane hit. People were running in a different direction from the World Trade Center. Papers from the buildings were getting blown from everywhere. My co-workers and friends live on the 74th floor, so then I went into a bar to see what was going on and all of a sudden the building collapsed. Smoke was just running through there, so I just ran until I got to the Brooklyn Bridge, then walked about an hour and a half home. \nAdam Vary\nIntern working for Time Inc. in New York.\nEverything here is surreal. Fighter planes are patrolling the airspace, the streets are filled with people and virtually deserted of car traffic. You cannot get onto or off of the island of Manhattan, so people who came into work from the other boroughs before Manhattan was sealed are now stranded trying to find a place to sleep for the night. Personally, this morning as I walked into my room after shaving, I flipped on the TV and became quickly confused -- why are they showing 'Armageddon' on TV at this hour? It took flipping through three channels before I was convinced that this is real. After hearing about the attacks in D.C., I resolved to leave my West 105th Street apartment and walk to work purely because that was obviously the only way I was going to be able to reach my loved ones -- my cell phone is the only personal phone I have. Now that I'm here, we are in the midst of closing an issue with a skeleton crew of support, and I actually prefer it this way: it keeps my mind occupied. Everyone's TV is on, but other than updates on rescue efforts, very little new news has happened since about 2 p.m. I am just glad I am safe, all my loved ones are (as far as I know now) safe.\nNow the question becomes, how do we cope? Life, in its persnickity way, will defiantly go on and carry all of us with it. I just hope that our leaders will keep their heads cool, their hearts calm, and their options open.\nCurtis Wong \nIntern for Crain Communications in New York City.\nAt about 8:55 a.m., I left my apartment in Queens to catch the subway into Manhattan for work. I hadn't turned on the TV or the radio, so I did not have any idea as to the events going on in the city. \nThe subway train in Queens is on an elevated platform that actually gives an impressive view of the Manhattan skyline. Oddly enough, the mood at the subway station was quite calm -- I assume many people were in my position and hadn't heard of the catastrophe just yet. \nThe first thing I noticed was a thick tendril of lack smoke swirling over the horizon. It was tremendous. From where I stood, it wasn't immediately possible to locate where all of the smoke was coming from. Once I boarded the train and we rounded the bend onto the Queensboro Bridge, I stared - dumfounded - out the windows at the World Trade Center's twin towers, the upper levels of were obliterated in black smoke clouds. \nOnce I exited the train in Manhattan, it was as if I'd landed in a war zone. There a mood of frantic desperation mixed with morbid curiosity. Completely chaotic -- I'd honestly never seen anything like it.\nHordes of frantic people were jamming the sidewalks, headed for uptown -- lots of yelling, pushing and shoving. Tourists and passers-by were frantically snapping photos of the smoke clouds above with disposable cameras. The whole thing didn't even seem real -- it was like a bad scene from an incredibly bad movie.\nLuckily for me, my newsroom is located in midtown, a good distance from the center of the catastrophe. Phones were ringing off the wall with calls from worried friends and family. Most employees did not show up for work. When watching the live coverage, one of the employees audibly screamed when the second tower collapsed. Her husband works on Wall Street, just blocks from the World Trade Center. I watched the frenzy on the sidewalks from my window, afraid to go outside. \nSince this morning, the mood has calmed down. Right now, the whole uptown section of city is like a ghost town. It's eerily quiet. This is New York, it's never quiet! Literally all of the stores are closed, there are no taxis or buses running, and there are no pedestrians or anything. The gates of the park across the street are closed and locked, and those gates are never locked.\nMore than anything, I'm continuing to be in a state of utter disbelief.