Northern Ireland man tells of narrow escape
A Co Tyrone man who was working in the World Trade Centre when the first plane struck last Tuesday, barely escaped with his life, he told reporters yesterday.
Jimmy Loughran, a 47-year-old electrician had started work in the centre last month, having just returned to the US from a holiday in his home town of Cookstown.
Mr Loughran was on the 34th floor of the north tower when the first hijacked plane crashed into the building. ‘Everybody froze, we didn’t know what happened’ he said. ‘Then there was a massive explosion, it must have been the fuel from the plane exploding after the initial impact’.
When he then saw huge showers of glass, metal and other debris falling down on the outside of the building, he made for the stairs. He managed to make his way to the plaza level and then to the street where he saw a delivery-man lying dead outside the revolving door. The packages he had come to deliver were still in his hands.
As he fled, Mr Loughran saw bodies and huge fireballs raining down on survivors as they fled the burning building. Then he felt a second explosion as he ran to a nearby building. ‘I never looked up or back, I just kept on running’, he said. Thanking God for his escape, he said it ‘just wasn’t my day to die’.
