'Remember 9/11 survivors who are struggling'

A woman who escaped the World Trade Center on 9/11 has called on people to remember survivors who are still struggling, 20 years on.

Janice Brooks, who now lives in Harleston, Norfolk, was working on the 84th floor when a plane hit the neighbouring tower.

"If I close my eyes, I am there, I can hear everything," said Ms Brooks, who gives talks to schoolchildren.

"We forget at our peril what happened that day."

She said she is "more in control" of any emotional triggers but willingly faces her upset and discomfort to ensure the atrocity is not forgotten.

"The reason I do this [talk about it] is to mark the day but more importantly to remember my friends," she added.

"These were real people and they need to be remembered.

"I hope people can take some time over the next couple of days to think about everyone who died and, if I can be really indulgent, to think about the survivors, as we are still struggling."

Ms Brooks, a PA, had been given a transfer to the New York office of a moneybroker just 19 days before the attacks.

She said she was aware of a "dull thud", and only learned what had happened when she called "screaming" colleagues who were watching live news in London.

After some confusion about whether to evacuate, the second plane hit her tower while Ms Brooks was in a stairwell with eight others.

"There was a dull thud, the lights flickered, ceiling tiles came down, there was dust," she said.

"I was jostled to the wall, and a couple of girls started crying and screaming."

They rescued a group of severely injured, screaming people who were trapped behind a door, and slowly made their way down a second staircase after their initial route collapsed in flames.

About 15 floors up, a woman who was bleeding profusely from a cut to her arm went "shaky and white" and was given a piggyback the rest of the way by a man called Bob.

"We got to the top of the escalators, and a cop said 'don't look up, just run'," added Ms Brooks.

"We turned the corner and that's when I looked up and and saw the towers for the first time.

"Where our floor should have been was this huge gaping hole. I could see flames and bits of building falling.

"I just stood there, looked at Bob and cried."

She looked on in "horrified fascination" from her nearby apartment when the first tower collapsed.

"Ten minutes later there was this rumbling sound, like I would imagine the gates of hell opening and then bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

"Dust in the air, far more so than the first tower, the lights flickered on and off, the windows vibrating, the building shaking.

"I have this image now, sitting on the sofa, rocking backwards and forwards in the pitch darkness, thinking I am going to die."

She later learned sixty-one of her colleagues did not survive.

"A lot of the guys were from London, so I knew them, I knew their children - the company was like a family.

"I'm a PA and all I did, all anyone of us did that day, was go to work."

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