Sept. 11 survivor recounts experience to Cape West Rotary Club

Peter Olsen remembers feeling little panic nearly 10 years ago, the day a hijacked airplane crashed into his workplace -- the south tower of the World Trade Center complex.

Olsen, now 32, said he, with many others, were heading down the tower's stairwell when the plane struck the building.

"That was probably the only two seconds of the whole day that were scary," Olsen, a Morgan Stanley account representative at the time, told the Cape West Rotary Club members Thursday at the Elks Lodge. "It literally knocked everybody to the ground."

After the plane hit the south tower shortly after 9 a.m. local time on Sept. 11, 2001, and the building stopped shaking, Olsen said he and his colleagues spent 40 more minutes elbow to elbow with other World Trade Center employees getting out of the building. He and other Morgan Stanley representatives were working on floor 73 of the South Tower. At least six of his co-workers died in the terrorist attack, he said.

"The first time I realized this was something that was bigger than maybe getting the morning off from work was when you looked to the outside lobby, between the north tower and south tower, and there was four feet of debris caught up against the window," said Olsen, now a mutual fund executive in St. Louis.

That morning, he and other representatives were making routine calls. Around 8:30 a.m., he said, he paused to check his fantasy baseball scores. The next thing he remembers is feeling the building shake and hearing an explosion, which was the north tower being struck by an American Airlines flight.

"I don't really have a way to describe it -- the noise -- except it really does sound like it does in the movies," Olsen said. "We walked to where we saw the noise come from."

When they saw debris, it took him and a few of the other younger representatives less than five minutes to begin leaving the south tower. And when Olsen got to the WTC mall and began to walk outside, he said police were directing evacuees to run to the north. He got outside and saw both towers, from about floor 70 and up, engulfed in flames.

"It was the most confused I've been in my life. What snapped me out of it was watching something come down ... the people who were forced to jump," Olsen said.

As both buildings began to collapse, Olsen and thousands of others ran. He continued, slowing to a walk once the fog cleared, for 110 blocks to where he was staying with his aunt and uncle. Olsen said he didn't actually know what happened that Sept. 11 morning until he returned home, around 9 p.m.

"I've never been through something like that before, but I didn't feel relieved or anxious. Your body's energy is so heightened, it didn't even occur to you the tragedy," he said.

The day following the attacks, Olsen returned to Connecticut, where many of his family members resided. He said he wasn't able to get to a phone to call them until two and a half hours after leaving the south tower.

Because the market was closed for several days following 9/11, Olsen and his Morgan Stanley team didn't return to work until the following week. Now living in St. Louis, he said he returns to New York five to 10 times a year.

"I'm glad I was there that day. It's just something I've never felt or seen before ... the camaraderie," Olsen said.

ehevern@semissourian.com

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