A man who was in the Twin Towers on 9/11 has explained the haunting moment a plane hit his building.
The tragedy took place 24 years ago when two planes, which were hijacked by al-Qaeda terrorists, hit both towers of the World Trade Center in New York City.
Now, Joe Dittmar has spoken about his experience on that fateful day as he was called to a meeting on the 105th floor of the south tower.
Out of 54 people who attended that meeting, just seven survived, with Joe being one of them.
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In a clip posted to YouTube by LADbible Stories, Dittmar described the horrendous ordeal of escaping the burning tower, his final moments with the many friends he lost that day and how he made his way back home.
He described the decision to take the stairs instead of the elevator as arguably the best one ‘I’ve made in what is still my life’.
Reflecting on the moment that the plane hit his building, Dittmar said: “We were between floor 74 and 72 when the second plane ploughed through our building and the plane went through our building between floor 77 and 82. We were just a few storeys below that strike zone. Never felt anything like that.
“This fire stairwell, this concrete bunker that we’re inside starts to shake so violently back and forth at angles it shouldn’t be shaking. The concrete spidering out, the handrails breaking away from the walls, the steps undulating underneath our feet like waves in the ocean. We feel this heat ball blowing by as we smell this jet fuel. And this thing’s just rocking back and forth and back and forth and back. It felt like forever.
“And you would think there would be this massive pandemonium. There was nothing in that stairwell at that point, but just this stunned silence. Stunned silence. Everybody was going in the same direction. We were all heading down.”
It wasn’t until Dittmar reached the 35th floor that he first encountered police, firefighters and paramedics making their way up the stairs.
He continued: “Just the looks in their eyes told the whole story. No words, just the looks in their eyes. They knew. They knew that they were going up those steps to try to fight a fire that they couldn’t beat. They knew that they were going up those steps to try to save lives that they probably could not save. And they knew that they were going up and they knew that they were never coming back.”