A witness to horror

Tuesday started as just another work day for Herb Spencer.

Spencer and his coworkers were gathered on the 29th floor of a building near the waterfront in Brooklyn, talking about putting New York City students' grades and attendance records online for parents, when Spencer's boss approached.

"He told me a plane had hit the north tower of the World Trade Center," said Spencer, a Big Lake resident who has been working since May on a year-long computer consulting contract for the New York City Board of Education. "The first thing that crossed my mind was that some idiot pilot was out joyriding in a Cessna.

He and his coworkers rushed to the window and looked at the twin 1,300-foot towers piercing the crystal-blue sky just a mile and a half away, across the East River in Manhattan. Instantly, he knew a Cessna couldn't have caused the hellish flames he saw.

"All of us were 'Oh my God, what's going on here?' We could see the top 20 floors were virtually cut off, and if firemen didn't get there there was no chance for those people," he said. "My first thought was terrorists and then I thought maybe a pilot going to LaGuardia [airport] had a heart attack. That lasted until we saw the second plane."

That plane was veering over the Statue of Liberty when Spencer first saw it -- so close Spencer could tell by its paint scheme and the "U" on the side that it was a United Airlines jet.

"I knew as soon as I saw it that it was going to hit. It was coming around hard, so far it was literally vertical with its wings. It banked so hard I was surprised it was still climbing," Spencer said. "As soon as it finished that bank and started flattening out, it seemed to be going faster and faster, coming toward me and Manhattan."

Spencer said the plane was very low when he first saw it, climbed a little, and then turned horizontal again.

"The left wing caught on the south tower's 60th floor. The very end of the left wing tip caught on the glass panel and it was like someone shot a machine gun at the windows -- from left to right like a machine gun and they were gone," he said.

Spencer said he saw the jet clip the building, cartwheel into it and then disintegrate.

"I was more than a little shellshocked," he said. "I saw the explosion where the plane nose hit, and a big ball of fire just came out of the side of the building. From where we were it was like crystal clear. It's like one of those movies where terrorists invade New York City.

This was real life, but it was so clear it looked like a movie. A lot of people started crying, 'Oh, those poor people.' Others were confused. When the second plane hit the south tower, other than a broken line of glass, it didn't look like that much damage was done. Unfortunately, it proved to be incorrect, because that was the first tower that fell."

Spencer and his coworkers were soon told to evacuate the building from which they had been watching the horror across the river.

He headed for the Brooklyn waterfront six blocks away, which also had an unobstructed view of Manhattan.

"The first reaction I encountered was no one could believe it. It was almost unearthly quiet. Some people were crying, some praying. Some people turned up a car radio so we could hear it and we were catching news about Washington, D.C.," he said. "Most of the top of the south tower was in flames but the bottom was OK. As we were watching, all of a sudden it went 'boom.' No one was expecting it. Everybody just gasped. It was such a shock that it went down. I think it was a bigger shock to people watching than when they saw the plane hit."

The second building collapsed 20 minutes later. "But no one could see it because there was such a cloud of dust," he said. "We heard it on the radio. Then the dust started blowing toward us, so we all got out of that area."

Spencer called his fiancŽe, Debbie Hoover, six times on his cell phone, but couldn't get through to Alaska right away. "A lot of the cell phone antennas were on the World Trade Center and they went."

Hoover didn't know about the New York catastrophe until she went to her neighbor's house Tuesday morning. "She was watching TV and she said, 'Look at this,'" Hoover said Wednesday. "I said, 'I gotta go, I gotta go call Herb. He only works a mile away.'"

Spencer eventually reached Hoover at 8 a.m. Alaska time, three hours after the disaster. "It was pretty nerve-wracking for her," he said.

Spencer said he was heartened by the city's response to the tragedy, and by the people lining up to give blood.

"I never expected this city to recover as fast as it did," he said. "I'm actually getting kind of proud. By and large, New Yorkers are in your face more often than not. But people I wouldn't normally associate with are pulling through like people I associate with."

The most devastating part of the ordeal for Spencer was "spotting that second plane and knowing immediately what was going to happen and unable to do a thing about it."

"When it was happening I was hoping there was no one else on that plane. People just got on a plane and ended up dead. They realized where they were, how low they were and what was happening. It had to be terrifying," he said. "Talking to you right now, I see that plane in my mind and it's more times than I want to see it again."