“19 years later the memories are still alive in my life”

On the morning of that fateful Tuesday, more than 3,000 people lost their lives in an episode that will be forever present in our lives.

19 years later we went to meet Joe Salgado, a Portuguese-American who survived the attack on the World Trade Center. Joe was in the south tower, on the 47th floor, when at 8:46 in the morning the first impact took place, “19 years later the memories are still alive and very present, I was in a meeting when the first impact happened, five minutes passed before I decided to evacuate and close the office, not knowing that I would ever go back there ”. Then, the journey to get to the first floor, “where I saw firefighters and policemen going up, while we went down, these faces are still engraved in my head, and then on the 1st floor, I and another coworker went out through the right door, other colleagues went through the left door and stayed there because everything collapsed at that very moment ”.

Emotions take hold of Salgado, “we crossed the street and looked up and that image of the falling buildings – it is a constant presence”. Then another excursion, arriving in New Jersey, “we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge, and then we started to hear reports of a possible bomb attack on the bridge, the panic was once again widespread, fortunately, nothing happened. We walked to Staten Island, where I finally got a payphone and contacted my wife ”.

The encounter was scheduled for the Goethals Bridge, where at 6:30 pm the encounter finally took place, “it was a feeling of great joy, which remained until I got home and after contacting my mother who was in Spain on vacation, contact made through an amateur radio ”.

Then, another painful moment, “I received a phone call from the husband of one of my colleagues, asking if I had seen her, as she had not yet arrived home, she was one of the people who went to the left”, he says with a shallow breath, “maybe if we had left the office earlier, who knows …”.

Joe keeps memories, “the keys to the office, the bathroom, the metro card, the access card, and the employee card, as well as the“ business cards ”, are all kept in a box, after all, they are memories of a day that I will never forget ”.

Joe Salgado, the story of a survivor.