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Amit Varshney had never reported late to work during his one and half-year-stint with Smith, Solomon and Barney on Wall Street.
But on Tuesday morning, the young computer programmer from India could not make it on time -- and now believes his tardiness was god-sent.
"I shudder to think what would have happened (to me) if I had reached work as usual," a shocked Varshney, who has to pass through World Trade Center (WTC) Towers to reach work, told rediff.com.
Varshney is not the only one. Sangeeta Bhowmik, who works on the 82nd floor of the First Tower, was just about to enter the elevator at around 9 am when she was stopped by a policewoman.
"I was told that there had been some explosion on top of the building, and ordered to leave," she recalls.
Bhowmik exited the WTC and was heading for the railroad station, when a thunderclap of sound was heard, signalling the collapse of the twin towers that are a symbol of New York city.
"I could not believe what I was seeing," computer programmer Santosh Tamhane, who witnessed the incident from a building across the street, recalls. "In front of my eyes, one of the towers just melted, like an ice-cream cone. I saw people jumping out, from the 20th, 30th floors."
The likes of Santosh and Varshney believe that the tragedy could have been much greater had the terrorists struck a half hour later.
"Many people who work in the WTC have flexible timings and come in well after 9 in the morning," says computer programmer Vimal Patel, a resident of Piscataway in central New Jersey. In the aftermath of the terrorist strikes, Patel took the ferry from the WTC, then walked a mile to reach Jersey City.
All subways in New Jersey and New York were shut down less than an hour after the attack and remained down for the better part of the day, forcing thousands of office goers to swarm the streets in search of public transport for New York and elsewhere.
The Attack on America: The Complete Coverage
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