Most people remember where they were 20 years ago on 9/11. Bimpe Archer speaks to one Co Armagh woman who will never forget.
LOUISE Traynor was in New York's Twin Towers on September 11 2001 because she had won the lottery.
She had applied for the Green Card visa lottery, more in hope than expectation, after a holiday to the Big Apple with her sister confirmed her love for the US, first kindled while spending a university gap-year studying in Pittsburgh.
The 24-year-old "got the green card in 2001 and flew out", finding herself sharing a house in the Bronx with fellow Armagh natives and searching for jobs in Irish American newspapers and immigration services.
A temporary post with insurance company AON took the Ulster University communication and advertising graduate to downtown Manhattan and Tower Two at the World Trade Centre.
It was a Tuesday much like any other in September, with brilliant sunny skies above the city following an evening of thunderstorms.
New York was having a slightly sluggish start due to voting in Democratic and Republican mayoral primaries and borough president and city council elections taking place.
As the financial district stirred to life, the morning sun was glinting off the famous Twin Towers - the tallest buildings on earth - at the large complex of seven buildings which made up the landmark World Trade Center.
"When I got the job I was copying down directions and asked `Will I know where to go?' I remember [the job agency boss] laughed and said `Oh yes, you'll know'," Louise recalls.
"When I saw if for the first time I realised why he laughed. It was so big, it had its own security and a mall underneath, where all the shops, restaurants and takeaways were, with the office above and the Observation Deck.
"It was a lovely place to work. The offices were lovely and bright and they did feel really secure, on the 78th floor Sky Lobby there were separate elevators to the offices and we had a security card that granted access to the elevators."
Louise felt lucky to be working up on the 101st out of 105 floors.
"It was a beautiful view. My windows were right behind by desk and I could look down on the Statue of Liberty and the harbour.
"In a way you got used to it, but in a way you didn't - you would look out of the window and see Fourth of July celebrations and all that and just think `Wow'."
She was at her desk for 8.30am, but the office was fairly empty, with most colleagues not in yet or working at other sites.
"I remember a phone call coming in and just as I was on the phone I heard a really, really crashing loud sound, like a roll of thunder then a big bang crash at the end of it. The whole building shook.
"The building themselves would sway in high winds, they were built that way, but this was different, this shook the building. And then it was quiet."
Having grown up in Armagh through the Troubles, her first thought "was there had been a bomb on the ground around Wall Street", but despite the clear views she could see nothing from her window.
Her office was on the side of the building looking out over the city and harbour, so she did not know that hi-jackers had just flown a Boeing 767 jet into the same floor on the other tower.
"Then there was lots of paper going past the windows and I wondered if a bomb had blown stuff up this far. There was no smoke or anything."
She told others on her floor that she was "going to get my bag and we'll leave and it was then that I smelt the smoke. The windows don't open and it had got taken in through the air conditioning. It was a toxic smell, like burning cushions".
"I thought, `Oh there's smoke and we're very far up. We need to get down'.
"I said to my friend Tara, `We need to get out of here'. People were still hanging around making phonecalls."
Seeing queues of people waiting for the express lifts to the Sky Lobby, Louise realised "they know something we don't know".
Her colleague Len took them to a door that opened onto a stairwell which was already thronged with people.
"There were still no fire alarms and almost no-one was rushing. We didn't know anything had happened in the other building."
At the Sky Lobby, she and Tara managed to get into a lift to the ground floor just as the doors were closing.
The shops and restaurants were deserted but incongruously the Muzak was still playing and a Port Authority policeman was shouting `go, go' and warning: `Do not go to the Plaza'.
"It was very surreal."
When they got out "the street was covered in grey dust, like the first falling of snow when everything is the same colour".
"I looked up then and I saw the tower was on fire and what had happened. I was looking at the blue skies and couldn't understand how that could happen.
"Then I could hear another aeroplane noise getting louder and louder, but I couldn't see where it was coming from, I couldn't see where to run. I thought `I have nowhere to run, it's going to crash into me, this is it.' I remember screaming and thinking `I'm facing my own mortality. I'm dead.'"
What follows is a melange of sharp memories and out-of-focus impressions - The noise and sensation as her tower "crashed and exploded above me" - was she knocked off her feet by the blast or by people pushing past? Hiding under a box-lorry, then the sudden fear its fuel tank would explode. Starting to run again. Making her way with Tara to a hotel where the latter had friends staying. Asking a policeman how she was going to get home. His helpless shrug. Collapsing on the pavement too tired to walk any further. Being helped home by a passing couple. Receiving a call from the Irish Consulate: "Will you please phone your family?"
"Mummy was sure I was dead. My two sisters had been watching it on TV and one was alone at the time just screaming at the television. They didn't know which tower I was in.
"Mummy wouldn't believe there was nothing wrong with me."
Later she would find out Len - whose knowledge about the staircase helped save her life - never made it home to his wife and young family.
He was around 200 employees AON lost that day - had it not been for the elections and the relatively early hour that number would have been higher.
After a short trip home to reassure her shaken family, Louise returned to work, but found it hard to settle back in the new offices in a company and city still grappling with a visceral sense of loss.
"Because it happened in America a lot of it was American songs and vigils. I didn't know any of it, didn't know the songs they were singing. It ended up it was too much for me to keep in contact with anyone, even Tara.
"I just didn't want to talk about it. I was suffering from Post Traumatic Stress. Over the years - many years and years - I learned to deal with it though cognitive behaviour therapy and to talk about it a little at times like this anniversary.
"There are people who have known me for 15 years and don't know I was there that day.
"I had to realise it is a piece of history, I have a historical viewpoint to share."
Just a month later she met Paul Traynor, the man she would go on to marry, and after a year-long trip around Australia the pair decided to return to Armagh and build a house and a life together.
They now live in Silverbridge with their two children and Louise works in Southern Regional College.
"It changed me as a person. I don't concern myself with all the nitty-gritty, I don't go into how much money I'm making, what car I have outside.
"I work three days a week so I can get the kids and that may mean we don't have the big holidays but that doesn't matter to me.
"Some people lose perspective with what's important in life. That has never left me - when you realise how we're not immortal, how quickly life can change within seconds and how lucky we are."
