Details of how several Irish people survived the World Trade Centre attack emerged yesterday.
Mr Michael O'Neill (37), from Kilkenny and now living in New Jersey, was working on the 63rd floor when the plane hit the first tower.
Mr O'Neill's father, who is also called Michael, had an anxious three-hour wait before learning that the three of his five children, who were working in the area, were safe.
One of his other sons, Mr Sean O'Neill, was working only a block away and his daughter, Ms Siobhβn O'Neill, was in the financial district nearby. "Some lady called to say that Michael was alright. She said her husband had left a massage.
"An hour later Michael rang himself. They all somehow met up. They came home together. All I can say is thank God for cellphones," he said.
"Michael was very upset at what he saw. He could hardly talk." His father said it took Michael 45 minutes to get out of the centre because of the crowds in the stairwell.
Mr Brian Moran, from Cork, made his escape from the 92nd floor of the second tower. The 31-year-old, who works for Aon Corp, said he was shocked at the devastation that awaited him on the streets of Manhattan. "It was a sight I never want to see again as long as I live," he said.
An Irish employee of financial services company Morgan Stanley Dean Witter, who worked on the 68th floor of the second tower, said yesterday he also felt lucky to be alive. Mr David Bailey (26),from Clonsilla, Dublin, recently changed his working hours and watched the events on television at home.
"I saw the second plane pretty much hit my floors. I was basically just shocked. I'm still very, very shocked and surprised. I'm so bloody relieved," he said.
"I can pretty much guarantee that had I been on that floor I would have been dead. I can't believe my lucky stars." Mr Bailey had been back in Ireland last week for a cousin's wedding, where he had joked with family and friends about working in a building that had been targeted by terrorists in 1993.
He estimated that one in 20 of his company's employees were Irish or Irish-American and said the company regularly brought workers over from Ireland to work in New York for a year. Mr Cronin described the impact of the aircraft on the tower he was working in as "like a nuclear blast".
"I heard this god-awful crackle of the bending of steel and the whole building jostled four or five feet like a pendulum in each direction. Everybody was getting thrown around and some fell over the bannisters," he said.
"When we got out I remember looking back and seeing the whole 10 floors where my office was on fire. I remember seeing people in the first tower falling out and hitting the ground.
"People in the street were hit by debris. There was blood everywhere."