| Some of the most upsetting moments of the WTC attacks were those agonizing images of the desperate men and women who jumped or fell from the towers. WTC rises to 1300 feet. On the broken window ledges, for how long did these innocent people contemplate that unimaginable fall? - Absolutely all of the WTC victims and their families deserve our utmost sympathy. God bless America and her friends ______________________________________________________ From a Sept. 8, 2009 Esquire article by Tom Junod titled "The Falling Man" They began jumping not long after the first plane hit the North Tower, not long after the fire started. They kept jumping until the tower fell. They jumped through windows already broken and then, later, through windows they broke themselves. They jumped to escape the smoke and the fire; they jumped when the ceilings fell and the floors collapsed; they jumped just to breathe once more before they died. They jumped continually, from all four sides of the building, and from all floors above and around the building's fatal wound. They jumped from the offices of Marsh & McLennan, the insurance company; from the offices of Cantor Fitzgerald, the bond-trading company; from Windows on the World, the restaurant on the 106th and 107th floors -- the top. For more than an hour and a half, they streamed from the building, one after another, consecutively rather than en masse, as if each individual required the sight of another individual jumping before mustering the ... |
