“There is a plane coming straight to the tower”, the incredible dialogue of an Argentinian with his wife before the drama

September 11, 2001 was a radiant morning, those bright autumn days that invite you to be in the sun or at least to feel close to its warmth. To enjoy this golden landscape, Cristian González, a native of Buenos Aires from the Belgrano district, approached the huge windows of his office on the 46th floor of the North Tower of the World Trade Center, in New York, to speak on the phone with his wife who She was with her one year old daughter in a Manhattan hotel about 70 blocks away.

What he saw at that moment was terrifying and is the first time that Cristian speaks publicly about this day which marked his life and that of his family. There was a pivotal and dramatic moment when, as he marks the 20th anniversary of the worst bombing in US history, he recounted in shock to Bugle: “I was looking at the horizon on the 46th floor, talking on the phone and I see that a plane is leaving the normal pattern, the usual route, and at that moment I say to my wife: ‘Do you know that this is very rare? There is a plane coming directly to the tower. ‘ And my wife said to me, “How are you going to get to the tower? Stop messing around! “.

“We continued to talk and I told him not to be afraid but that the plane was coming to the tower. Literally within seconds the plane struck the top of the tower”.

What follows is a story of terror, jostling, flight and despair of this man who in the early morning was an executive in a suit and tie and at noon was covered in dust ”,turned into a ghost”.

Cristian’s name is “Kily” – like the footballer – and, after studying business administration at Catholic University, he came to the United States in 1999. He traveled frequently between Miami and New York as he worked for the Solomon Brothers cabinet in both cities.

He used to stay in a hotel in the same building as the World Trade Center, but this time, as he traveled with his wife, Cynthia Basin, and their 1.5-year-old daughter Denise, he chose a more central hotel. “For some reason I didn’t want to bring them downtown”, Lower Manhattan where the Twin Towers were located.

His schedule indicated that at 8:15 a.m. he had met a Mexican client at the firm’s offices. on the 46th floor. “I arrived early. It was an extraordinary day, there was not a cloud. The client was late and in the middle of the wait my wife called me on the phone. The day was so beautiful that I went to the window to enjoy it”.

Cristian says he saw the planes had a specific route and they were coming and going on a file to La Guardia airport. “Suddenly I see one who gets lost», He recalled. And it happened on incredible dialogue with his wife while the plane crashed into the floors above its very tower.

It was 8:46 a.m. American Airlines Flight 11 had left Boston for Los Angeles, but on the way it was hijacked by Egyptian terrorist Mohamed Atta and diverted to New York. It was the first that hit, then another hit the South Tower, another at the Pentagon, and a room – supposed to go to the White House or the Capitol – was run over by passengers in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Cristian thought it was an accident: “The plane was heading, wobbling towards the tower. It didn’t come straight, it came half askew. I thought I was adrift with a mechanical problem. At that time I did not interpret it as a terrorist act”.

Great chaos erupted in the office: “When the plane hits the upper floors, we fall and people start screaming bombs! because the noise was enormous. The sprinklers started to work, the glass broke and everyone started to panic.”.

“When I got up, my first reaction was to try to talk to my wife again. I grabbed the cell phone, but I couldn’t find it anymore, the call had been cut. I tried to call him from the landline and it doesn’t worka”.

Cristian says his first instinct was to protect his computer from watering: “It sounds a little weird, but I figured it was just an accident and I had to go later to do the client meeting somewhere else. Then I took the computer and I never realized”.

“But in the middle, things started to get complicated. When I started to go out I saw all the broken glass, people were screaming and running. Many have been beaten, bad. I started trying to reassure them, telling them it wasn’t a bomb, it was a plane crash. They were trampling. Others had also seen the plane and we, instead of going out, stayed to help.”.

But in that moment of unreality, there was a moment that made him realize the gravity of what was happening. Cristian stops his story. Breathe in, take a sip of mate to try to hold back the tears. He can not.

“It was the hardest part for me, I could never get it out of my head: I saw two people fall, holding hands. We saw them fall in front of us, pass before our eyes through the window. When we saw that, we came back and said, “What are we doing here?“They are the ones who, desperate at not being able to come out and die in the flames, threw themselves into the void of the 110-story tower.

“At that point, I can’t remember how, I grabbed the computer and we started down the stairs, the 46 floors. This is the part where the memories start to fade. The only thing I know about is seeing the firefighters going up and thinking, what do these people doing going up when I try to get out? I remember asking God to let me see my wife and daughter once more. I thought of these firefighters who were arriving and it gave me the feeling of an extraordinary vocation. They were going to a place that I was running from. I thought they also had parents, wives, children. I remember it very well”.

When he got to the lobby, people were flocking there because the security guards wouldn’t let them out. “Outside rubble was falling and people were falling, it was horrible, that’s why they didn’t want us to go out», Says Cristian moved.

At that precise moment, at precisely 9:03 am, the second plane crashed into the South Tower: “We felt a crush, the foundations were shaken, and many people fell on top of each other. It was chaos. That’s when I realized what was going on was way more serious than an accident”.

Cristian says that at that time the the situation has become “a door 12”, the 1968 drama on the court of the River where more than 70 people died crushed: “People started to run away, but there were other people walking past them.”

The Argentinian, who was with a Brazilian colleague, saw young people heading the other way and started to follow them. They walked through a service area they had never seen and they miraculously managed to get out through a place where the goods entered.

Once outside, Cristian saw the hole the plane had left in the tower and thought that everything was going to fall “like a domino”. Then he started to run.

“From that point on it was working and for some reason my head erased parts of those memories. What I do know is I ran to the hotel on 55th Street, I don’t even remember how I got there. I saw when the first tower fell and thought if it caught up with me I was going to throw myself into the river. I also remember the huge cloud of dust”.

The only thing Cristian thought about was his wife and baby girl.

When communication with her husband was cut off, Cynthia turned on the television. Cristian says when she saw the hole in the tower she thought: “He is dead“ and went into shock.

Cristian ran and ran to get to the hotel. He finally succeeded, around 11:30 in the morning, approximately 3 hours after the interruption of the dialogue. He still had his dark suit, tie, shoes, but everything was covered in dust, completely dislodged. Exceptionally, he always carried the computer in his hand.

“When I entered the hotel, all dirty, the only thing I remember was opening the door and seeing my wife looking at me like i saw a ghost. She was sitting on the base of the bed in the bedroom and my daughter was lying hugging her leg. When she sees me, my daughter says daddy! and ran to hug me. It was the moment that I turned the page of my life”.

They immediately moved to Miami because his wife wanted to know nothing more than to move to New York. Soon they had a second daughter, Michelle, now 19. “There were times when I needed psychologists. But analysts tell me that time at the hotel was the key to turning the page”.

Cristian is now 50 years old and is a senior executive in an investment banking and financial services bank. “I have been back to New York several times, it’s still part of my life“, account.

But there was something in particular that touched him very hard. It was 5 years ago, when her eldest daughter, now 22, was looking to enter college and wrote an essay with her little girl experience, to see this father turn into a ghost.

Cristian breaks again. You have to mince your words. “I find it hard to talk about this stuff, I buried it“He’s trying to explain. “She wrote the essay based on that moment and how my wife and I taught her how to live life. I never got to finish reading it, but it was about how life gave me a second chapter. The idea is to try to honor life and to live it. There is not much else in this story”.

These days are painful for Cristian. “When those moments approach, like now, it hurts and I feel like a part of it. At first I didn’t want to go to New York, but in 2014 we went on a trip with the family and I found the place because I was able to tell the story to my other daughter who at the time of the attack had not been born. Now every time I go there I feel like I have to cross the place”. Even her oldest daughter works in Manhattan today.

He had never told the story because he always wanted a “low profile”. “I am simply an Argentinian who had the chance to live the second chapter of a life. It didn’t touch me and from then on I dedicated myself to paying homage to him. Give the best. Knowing that tomorrow may or may not exist. Nobody bought life, you have to live it fully”.

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