A voice echoes through the speakers over the hotel alarm. "Return to your rooms. Everything is under control." A boy runs up and down the hallway banging on room doors in panic. The building sways as if an earthquake is shaking its foundations. Through the windows of the Marriott World Trade Center, thick black smoke enters, and a rain of documents can be seen falling amidst the smoke. It is 8:46 in the morning in New York. It is September 11, 2001, and a plane has just crashed into the North Tower. In 17 minutes, another will do the same to the South Tower, and that place will become a mountain of rubble, iron, and buried bodies.
Laura Iturbide, director of the Anáhuac Business Development Institute, linked to one of Mexico's most prestigious private universities, has just gotten out of bed. She and her colleague, Eunice Meyer, have decided not to attend the breakfast organized by the National Business Economics Association as part of the conference they have attended in New York. That afternoon they fly back to Mexico City and prefer to rest a little more after several days of conferences and meetings. And suddenly, the Marriott World Trade Center where they are staying begins to shake, a voice advises them to stay inside, and they decide to rush out onto the street ignoring the loudspeaker orders.
"I have never felt anything like the first impact, I can't even describe it. I had experienced a very high-level earthquake in 1985 in Mexico City [8.1 on the Richter scale], but this was a sharp and terrible blow. My room was in the interior area of the tower, but I could see an office paper rain falling," she recalls now, from her home in Mexico, 25 years after that morning. That blow was the first plane crashing into the Twin Towers, dropping its landing gear onto the hotel that connected both towers.
In the 17 minutes it would take for the second plane to crash into the South Tower, she managed to get dressed, grab her colleague, descend 17 floors by stairs, go out onto the street, run through the wreckage, cross a couple of blocks, and find safety on the shore of the Hudson River to witness the towers collapse, including the hotel where they were staying, and from which she still keeps framed in her house the room key card. "I saw the hole in the first building when I was crossing the street, when I managed to escape from the South Tower. As we were going down the stairs, the heat was rising. Inside the complex, there was black smoke that darkened everything and made visibility very difficult. When we stepped out onto the street, it was as if we had arrived in hell and were seeing it with our own eyes."
That hell resulted in the business complex being destroyed, people jumping out of windows, nearly 3,000 dead, and a few thousand rescued by U.S. authorities. Among them, Laura Iturbide. "I have thought many times about what would have happened if I had followed the instructions. Although I was far away, I saw those towers fall perfectly, and I had been inside." An African-American man with whom she shared a hallway on the 17th floor of the building decided to follow them. A few months after the attack, through the hotel's mediation, his family sent a photo to the businesswoman's home to see if she recognized him. They were still looking for him among the rubble. "What saved me was knowing how to act because of the training we have received in Mexico against earthquakes. We went down 17 floors by stairs, and it was the best decision we made."
Laura and her colleague were transported by members of the U.S. Navy to the other side of the river, to New Jersey; they were attended to by volunteers who gave them some food, and they were able to enter the bathroom of a technology company because a worker opened the doors for them. "When I looked at myself in the mirror, I was horrified. I was covered in soot, only my face and mouth were visible. My body was sore, and the back of my hair was burned." She pauses, breathes, and continues. "It was probably because of everything that fell from the second plane as we fled, but my hair was falling out in chunks. When I shook myself, wearing a white striped blouse, the blouse was already gray and had a bloodstain near the chest. Then I developed hives on my hands and face... and luckily my colleague found an antihistamine because otherwise, they would have taken me to the hospital with the injured."
In that office, full of computers, they saw that there had been another attack on the Pentagon, that the other side of the Hudson was covered by a cloud of smoke, and they were able to contact the airline that was supposed to take them back to Mexico. Surprisingly, the person who answered on the other end knew Laura Iturbide from her academic work, and they began to arrange a flight to get them out of New York. "That first day was terrible watching the news. They burned our clothes, opened a shopping center for us, cut our hair because it was burning, and we couldn't stop coughing. It was one of the longest days of my life. The next day, they opened a chapel for us, and we prayed for all the fallen," recalls the businesswoman, who two days later managed to cross the city, reach John F. Kennedy Airport, and board a plane. It was Friday, September 13, two days after the Twin Towers had been brought down, and she was already flying back to Mexico. "That flight was complicated, it didn't take the usual route, and we also experienced turbulence. Imagine the trip. I'm not certain about this, but I have the impression that we were escorted by a fighter jet until we crossed the border."
Upon arriving home, Laura Iturbide showered and went back to sleep in a bed, like the night before 9/11. "When I lay down, I couldn't stop thinking about that whole nightmare, but at least I was home." The next morning, her older sister had organized a family gathering to welcome the survivor. "Seeing my family again was one of the most beautiful and most difficult moments of my life. They were all there. Among them, my father, who had been living with my husband and me since he was widowed in 1998. And I will never forget the phrase he told me that day: 'I never doubted that you would come back'. That was very beautiful, and above all, knowing that you have a family network that loves and cares for you," she recalls, with a tear about to fall, this Mexican woman.
For a year, the businesswoman underwent therapy, and it was her own psychologist who recommended that she return to New York, where she had already lived as a student. To the same place where she had been on 9/11. In 2002, the Mexican returned to the shores of the Hudson. "It was strange, but I was there." Just before the pandemic, she returned. This time to visit the museum that was built where the World Trade Center once stood to honor the victims. "I was able to do the first part of the visit without a problem, but when I reached the section with the testimonies and objects of the people who were trapped there, I went through it quickly. I couldn't listen to many of their stories."
-It has been 25 years since that day, many memories are still fresh, but what remains of 9/11 in you?
-Time has passed, and I no longer have that feeling of not wanting to return to New York and relive everything I experienced. It's not the same intensity as in the early years, but it's something that I will always carry with me in my life.