Twenty-five years later, the morning remains

On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Laura Yribia was underground at the World Trade Center, headed to her second day of work, when the people in front of her suddenly turned and began running the other way. 

She had not heard the first plane strike and did not yet know what had happened above her. What she remembers from those first moments was the sudden reversal of the crowd and the sound that followed. 

“All I heard was just hundreds, thousands of feet, all just kind of hitting the ground,” Yribia said. 

Twenty-five years later, Yribia lives in Las Cruces, where she has spent the past five years working as a self-employed proposal consultant. She has largely kept the details of that morning among friends and family, but with the anniversary approaching, she decided she was ready to speak publicly about what she experienced. 

Originally from Denver, Yribia moved to New York in 1998 after spending a semester there as a college intern. A friend later pointed her toward a temporary job with American Express, a company Yribia hoped could offer a way to get her foot in the door. Sept. 10, 2001, was her first day on the job, and she said the office where she was working was in the 7 World Trade Center. She remained with American Express for nearly five years. 

Wanting to make a good impression, Yribia arrived early the next morning. At about 8:40 a.m., she got off the subway at the World Trade Center stop and entered the underground concourse, an area she remembered as both a shopping center and a busy commuter hub. Minutes later, while Yribia was still below ground, the first plane struck. 

She followed the crowd toward a stairway and emerged at ground level inside the 5 World Trade Center. Through the building’s windows, Yribia saw sheets of paper drifting toward the street but could not see the Twin Towers themselves. With little information about what had happened, she believed a bomb had gone off. 

“I really don’t know what to do, but I know that I’m getting out of here,” she recalled. “My reaction is flight.” 

Yribia remembered a Borders bookstore she had visited only weeks earlier and knew it had an exit. She made her way through the store and onto the street, where she saw one of the towers burning for the first time. 

“Even if you were to see the images on an IMAX screen, it could not convey the scale of what was going on,” Yribia said. “The fire that was shooting out of there, it was massive.” 

Determined not to return to the subway, Yribia began walking toward Spring Street, hoping to catch a cab toward the Williamsburg Bridge and her apartment in Brooklyn. Her cell phone was still working, so she stopped to call a friend in Midtown and tell her what was happening. As Yribia continued walking, the people around her suddenly reacted again. 

She turned toward the World Trade Center and saw the second plane strike. 

“That’s when people on the street lost it,” Yribia said. “Grown men crying.” 

While some people began moving toward the scene, Yribia continued in the opposite direction and eventually reached Brooklyn. By then, her cell phone no longer worked, and neither did the landline in her apartment. She walked to a nearby library, where she was able to use the internet to email friends and family that she was safe. 

From the front of her apartment building, Yribia had previously been able to see the Twin Towers. Later that day, looking toward Manhattan, she realized one was gone. Back inside her apartment, the immediate escape was over, but the sense that she might need to move again had not. Yribia spent much of the day alone, pacing in the short Chelsea boots she had worn to work. 

“I could not take my boots off all day just in case I had to run again,” she said. “It’s a horrible feeling to have.” 

Yribia said she never reached a point where she believed she would not survive. As she walked away from Lower Manhattan, however, memories of previously living in London during IRA bombing campaigns made her wonder whether another attack could follow somewhere ahead of her. Looking back, what stayed with her was how differently the morning could have unfolded had she arrived only a few minutes earlier. 

In the days and years that followed, Sept. 11 became a point of perspective. Yribia recalled people around her reevaluating their jobs, where they lived, and what they wanted from their lives. Her own conclusion was different: she realized she was already living the life she wanted. 

“Sometimes it takes a big event like that for you to kind of look at your life in that way,” she said. 

That perspective stayed with Yribia as she later lived in Miami and Atlanta. Five years ago, she moved to Las Cruces to be closer to her mother, a decision she connected to continuing to build a life that felt right for her. 

Yribia was not inside either of the Twin Towers. She was among the many people moving through the larger World Trade Center complex — underground, inside surrounding buildings and on nearby streets — when the attacks began. 

“People find out that I was at the World Trade Center on 9/11, they kind of assume I was in one of the towers,” she said. “There were thousands, tens of thousands of other people who were there.” 

During a more recent trip to New York, Yribia returned to the World Trade Center site and visited the 9/11 memorial. She began walking through part of an exhibit but stopped after encountering a display of shoes. 

“It was too much,” Yribia said. 

She continued through other areas of the memorial, including the reflecting pools, and said returning to the site reinforced the sense of gratitude she has carried since 2001. 

“Twenty-five years is a long time, but it’s also no time at all,” she said. “The memories are still there, and the emotions are still there and exactly as they were before, so live the life that you want to be living — This is your one shot.”