|
Home > News & Opinion > Local News Coverage
| Photo Gallery | 
Joyce Ng was staying at the Marriott World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. (Photo: Lisa Cassidy) |
| |
| | |
WTC survivor reflects
By D. Craig MacCormack / News Staff Writer
Friday, September 10, 2004FRAMINGHAM -- Three years after terrorists crashed a pair of planes into the World Trade Center, a Framingham woman who was staying in a hotel that shared that financial hub is returning to the scene of her horror.
Joyce Ng will be at Ground Zero with her husband tomorrow, mourning for those who perished and perhaps sharing a moment or two with those who survived the atrocity and still live with the memories.
"There's more of a support system in New York for all people affected by Sept. 11," she said, adding that the Marriott and its survivors are forgotten with the media's focus primarily on the twin towers.
"It's part of coping and healing to revisit the place where this all went on," she said.
Ng, was one of about 1,000 guests at the Marriott Hotel -- a building nestled between the towers - which was later obliterated by debris from the planes and the crumbling towers.
Ng, a consultant, was at the Marriott on business, staying there after a regular visit to some of her New York-based clients.
Last year Ng, 30, launched the Marriott WTC Survivors group to give other survivors a place to share their stories. So far, more than 17,000 people have logged on to the site to reflect.
Some of the survivors have talked about meeting in 2006 for a five-year look back at all they went through, said Ng. One woman, whose husband was killed at the Marriott, has been able to piece together his final moments through the site.
Shortly after she returned home to Framingham, Ng said she posted an account of her day at 3 World Trade Center on Internet sites. Soon she began hearing from some of the guests who shared their experiences at the Marriott on 9/11 with her.
The site features a picture of the Marriott in the shadow of the ominous towers. It includes hotel information, a timeline of events, including when the towers fell, as well as links to trauma Web sites for survivors.
The organization with Web site -- www.sept11marriottsurvivors.org -- is to remember a day that continues to haunt her in sight and sound. Ng said as time goes by people are not as sympathetic to the continuing trauma she must face.
"Not many people are sympathetic to the lifelong trauma of survivors," she said. "This is a group that's marginalized because they survived. This was a very traumatic experience and a horrific day.
"You have to live every day with all we saw, smelled and heard," she said.
Ng recalled a loud explosion that shook the building. She later learned it was the first plane slamming into the north tower, and she looked out her hotel window to see glass and debris falling from the building.
She grabbed her cell phone and wallet and raced down 13 flights of stairs to the ground floor. As huge chunks of building crashed to the ground -- some hitting fleeing people -- Ng went up one floor to the hotel lobby.
There, a police officer was directing people out of the hotel telling them not to look up. Instinct forced Ng and others to look up.
"I saw the tower burning in flames," she said. "You don't expect to see bodies falling out of a building. I was horrified."
The next thing Ng knew, a plane was flying low overhead. At first she thought it was the military coming to help. It was the second plane hitting the south tower at 9:03 a.m.
"That's when it got really terrifying," she said. "It was a deafening sound. Everything shook. I thought there would be more planes coming, and I think a lot of other people did, too."
She ran to a subway and got on the first train she saw. Passengers started to complain when the train -- heading north into Manhattan -- stopped. They were going to be late for work. The train headed south away from the devastation.
Ng eventually made it to 42nd Street, where she stayed overnight in a hotel lobby that was turned into a shelter. She reached her husband after several hours of trying and came home early the next morning.
"You didn't just die from being in the Twin Towers," she said. "You died from being in that area."
( Craig MacCormack can be reached at 508-626-4429 or cmaccorm@cnc.com. )
|
|
|
