HAD I BEEN ON TIME THAT MORNING
Christopher McComas 5/3/02 
The morning of September 11 was a strange one for me. That day I overslept
which I usually don�t do. I finally got up when my pager went off, the message
read world trade center on fire turn on TV. It was from my then girlfriend
Amalie. She works in Jersey City and had a front row seat for the destruction.
When I got the page I jumped from bed and went into the other room to look
out the window. I live in New Jersey but I have a limited view of New York
City from the side windows of the house. I was not able to see anything out
the window so I decided to turn the TV on and see if the news was covering
the story yet. I was in front of the TV when the buildings collapsed. All
that I could think of is that I was glad Amalie didn�t work at Morgan Stanley
anymore. She office was in the trade center in tower 5. Apart from her I did
not know anyone personally who worked in the building. I tried to call Amalie,
so that I could get her to come home. She was not able to take the train,
and the roads were closed so she had to walk to Rt 1&9. It was quite a hike
for her and took most of the day. Once she made it one of her co-workers mom
picked her up and dropped her off at my house. She was tired and upset so
I tried to calm her down for the rest of the night.
Had I been on time that morning I would have had a front row seat for the mayhem. My office is in Harborside Financial Center in Jersey City. Many of the office have a view of the city and one of the large conference rooms is name the world trade center room. After the attack we actually closed the doors to the office. Everyone was forced out of the building and the doors were locked. This is very unusual because we are a 24x7x365 operation. All network control was transferred out to Santa Clara and the building was vacated. In the days after the attack we were very busy accommodating many of the businesses that were affected. We installed NYMEX in record time, as well as some other big name companies that were without data center and equipment. I�m proud that our company was able to help some of the businesses get back on there feet fast. I personally worked with Merrill Lynch to help keep ML.com on-line. Merrill was hit really hard because most of the mainframes were on West Street or in the world financial center. The computers were up until the generators ran out of fuel, which didn�t take long. Now that it�s over, the skyline looks really strange. The sad part is as the days go by it�s harder to tell exactly where the towers were. It�s something I just took for granted daily.