Then I heard as I was walking into school that a plane had hit the World Trade Center and I was thinking a small, little plane.

So then I went running downstairs and got in the car and turned on the radio. And then they said another plane had hit the building so I raced down to the building and went to 5 World Trade Center which was where they were evacuating all the people from the building.

I was standing at that door grabbing people and asking them what floor they were on, hoping and praying that I would find some people who were on our floors, which were 101-105 floors in tower one - the one with the large antennae on the top.

That’s where I was standing when tower two collapsed. I ran from the loudest sounds you could ever hear. What was coming over my shoulders looked like a tornado.

'They were lost'

I was running from the tornado and of course it overtook me maybe 100 metres out and I was thrown to the ground and engulfed in black smoke. I thought I had died.

I think when the smoke cleared and I realised I was going to live, the world went from being perfectly black to being grey and I could see my hands for the first time. I knew that my friends and colleagues and my brother were lost, they were gone, they would have perished.

If I had almost died outside how could they possibly survive inside?

And so when tower two had fallen, I knew in my soul that they were all gone in that moment. I think it helped me that I knew that.

I thought I had lost everybody in the office which was about 1,000 people. As it turns out because it was 8.46am there were 350 people who had not yet made it to work.

We lost each and every person who had made it to work that day who was on those floors, save two people who had come downstairs – one to get a customer and one to go to another customer’s location.

But other than those two gentlemen, everyone else was lost.