Riverdale resident Jacques Brooks recalls surviving 9/11 attacks from World Trade Center

Jacques Brooks, 64, had stayed overnight at his office in the World Trade Center’s south tower the day of the 9/11 attacks.

The Riverdale resident was living on the Upper West Side at the time, doing trade management for Bridge Information Systems, a market data and analytics company that worked from the building’s 57th and 58th floors.

The Monday before the attacks, the company realized there were issues with a new trading software it had released, Brooks recalled. The plan was for Brooks to rework the software, make sure it was up to par when the stock market opened at 9:30 a.m., then head home for some much-needed sleep.

A little before 9 a.m., Brooks said he heard a boom, followed by an explosion. He and his colleagues stood puzzled, their instinct to head down the stairs to reach the elevators on the 44th floor that would take them to the lobby. The stairwell was congested, and Brooks and his colleagues made little progress by the time an announcement came over the loudspeakers — a plane had hit 1 World Trade Center.

The announcer reassured the south tower was fine, and that employees could either leave or return to their offices, Brooks recalled. Already exhausted, Brooks was further defeated by the idea of trudging down a staircase for an hour. He went back up to his office.

He stood at the window with the others, gazing out at roaring flames and billowing smoke. To his right, data inputter Linda Lucas, now 79, cried “Oh my god!” People were falling, or jumping, from the north tower. Brooks said he and his colleagues looked to the street and could see red circles of blood.

Unable to watch any longer, Brooks went back to his office and started returning calls to friends who had left messages asking if he was okay. Phone to his ear, he heard a low, swelling whir that erupted into a boom similar to the last. The building shook, his office door slowly closing shut from the shock wave. He turned toward the window to find the sky filled with fragments of the tower and clouds of debris.

Though in shock, Brooks said he didn’t feel like he was in any immediate danger. He said he had previously been the victim of other building fires in his life, and emerged unscathed. Beyond that, Brooks said he had a rough upbringing and knew how to manage chaos well. He circled the office to make sure no one was left behind, and made his way down the now much less crowded stairs.

He and his colleagues emerged exhausted and drenched in sweat, and joined other onlookers in a line on the street, staring at the south tower shrouded in flames. Someone told Brooks what had happened.

“I said to my coworkers, ‘Guys, we need to get out of here,’” Brooks said. “One plane — possible accident. Two planes — terrorists. We need to get as far, as quickly as we can.”

They made it a few blocks along Fulton Street. Brooks took note of his surroundings — still standing in line with the World Trade Center. If a tower fell, they could be struck by hurtling debris. Could they take cover in a building? No, Brooks thought, too many glass doors that would surely shatter.  He and the others kept moving until the Brooklyn Bridge was in sight. Could they cross over into another borough? No, this was a terrorist attack, the possibility of another landmark being targeted was too high, he thought.

Despite the commotion, Brooks said his thoughts were clear. The group stopped at a payphone and called their company’s headquarters in St. Louis. Each one gave the company the name and contact information for a loved one to call and assure they were alive, viewing it as the quickest course of action with the best chance of reaching someone.

Brooks passed through the Lower East Side, unaware that at this point the south tower had collapsed. He and his colleagues came upon a group of people huddled around a car radio, its announcers speaking in Spanish. Brooks didn’t catch much until “ … American Airlines Flight 11…,” marking the moment he realized it was large, commercial flights that were used to strike U.S. soil.

He heard another low, rising whir, instinctively sprinting in search of cover. He looked up to see it was American fighter jets.

By noon, Brooks and the others were starving, and stopped at a deli in the East Village for lunch. They tried for the nearest subway station to make it back to their homes, but found out the system had been shut down.

They continued on, wandering into a Radio Shack in Murray Hill for air conditioning and maybe access to a news station. Brooks sat with his colleagues, staring in disbelief at a wall of TVs, every make and model showing footage of their building crumbling to the ground. It was here they found out about the third plane that crashed into the Pentagon, and the fourth in a field in Pennsylvania — the country was under attack, Brooks realized.

Trains were back up and running shortly after, and the colleagues parted ways. One to Brooklyn, another to Long Island, Lucas back to New Jersey, and Brooks to West 67th Street where he was met with warm embraces from worried family members.

Later that night, he turned on the TV and watched the day’s devastation once more, the same footage that had been flooding the airwaves since that morning — the fire, the smoke, the building’s collapse.

“What am I doing sitting here?,” he remembered thinking. “I should be dead.”

Twenty-five years later, Brooks still doesn’t recall ever feeling like his life was in jeopardy during the attacks — save for one moment while walking down the stairs of the south tower, when he saw a large crack running the length of the wall. He attributed his clarity to feeling like he needed to take on a leadership role for his colleagues — something Lucas echoed —  and a lifetime of situations before that which required him to stay level-headed.

His lasting advice — “In a crisis situation, just try to keep your head on.”