'I was there too'

Leonardo Blair
Staff Reporter

Tuesday, September 11 was not like every other Tuesday for Everton C. Lewis.

Usually, every Tuesday and Thursday mornings this Jamaican stock broker is at the 87th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Centre building for the regular 8:30 a.m. meeting of his company, May Davis Group.

He tried hard to make it for the meeting, but an uncanny lack of parking space at the train station in Flatbush New York forced him to decide to drive to the Trade Centre.

On any other day, if he had found a parking space, the 33-year-old vice-president of May Davis Group, would have parked his car, hopped unto a fast train and zip to his office. But today, September 11, 2001, he decided that it would be better to try his luck on his car.

The train would have taken him 25 minutes to get to work but driving his car pushed his travelling time to 45 minutes. He was late and this isn't the norm. As he approached the parking lot outside the North tower of the world trade centre, "BOOM!"

"When I looked up, I saw all kind a debris raining down! It's amazing. The cops came and the emergency gates of the lot started to shut and the cops started shouting, 'reverse! reverse! reverse!' And everything just start to go crazy. Some people just left their cars and ran. Then 15 minutes time you hear boom again. You see the plane and a man is like him saying a watch ya! watch ya! watch ya!" said Lewis as he recalled the events of the terrorist attack on the United States on September 11.

Lewis' co-worker, 28-year-old David Donovan, had garish flashbacks of the event for an entire week. He was on the 87th floor when the first plane careened from the regular air path and made the explosive plunge into one side of the North tower. "The first week was pretty rough. I couldn't sleep at night everytime I saw a plane I got scared. Everytime the ground shook, I got scared," he says with the event still fresh in his mind.

"I had no idea it was a plane until I had got down to the 30th floor. I thought it was either an earthquake or a bomb. We were actually gonna stay up there (the 87th floor) but it had gotten too bad, the smoke started coming in so we finally left after about five minutes," said Donovan.

It took him and other workers close to an hour before he exited the tower. And as if the tower next door had held its strength until he was safe, it came tumbling as soon as he had reached Ground Zero.

"As soon as I came outside of our building, the buildings next door came down. It was already halfway down so I just jumped in a corner to cover and pray," said the thankful Donovan. Everyone on the 89th floor where the commercial jet had chopped the building, got trapped.

Lewis, who was still outside, was baffled by the gruesome spectacle. "There was this big thick dirty smoke, no matter how fast you run, it get you," he said.

"I saw where a lady was chopped in two by flying debris on Broadway. I saw four persons jump from one of the towers ­ a lady and a man held hands and just jumped."

They jumped said Lewis, because they had no other choice. It was like the children of Israel at the Red Sea, but only this time, the sea did not open up. The elevators and stairway for everyone above the 89th floor had been blown away by the blast while the jet fuel was smelting the building and singeing human bodies. "The plane came in the 87, 88, 89th floor. There was a big gap where there used to be the trading office. From the 88th floor, no one passed up. The plane came in at such a strategical position that it hit out the stairway. So that's where people were jumping from. That is why they can't find any body. The only thing they are finding are pieces and pieces and pieces. Up to now there is still smoke, 13 days after," said Lewis.

As the May Davis Group tries to get back to business, said, Lewis, they will have to do it without Harry Ramath, their chief trader who had turned back to help someone but has not been seen since.

"Right now as a broker you can't buy or sell anything. Things are not 30 per cent back to normal."

As Lewis counts his blessings, however, he is not free from regrets. "All my years as a broker I have passed this guy at the World Trade Centre. Everyday I pass him. He is a security guard. We call him Shaquille because he is very big.

"Ah pass him when ah going into the building and a pass him when I coming out and I never yet say hi to this guy. And when the building collapsed, I saw someone, his mother on TV showing a picture and it's this guy. It hurts me. You know why?

"This is exactly what his mother said, 'This is mi laaaas pickney.' His parents were Jamaican. I didn't realise, all these years working with this guy that he was a Jamaican. I never said hi to him."