Survivor Kristi Foggo reflected on how she narrowly escaped the Twin Towers collapse after being in one of the buildings on the day of the horror attacks.

Back then she had been working in Wall Street as a trader and on September 11, 2001 was in a bank depositing money.

She still has the transaction receipt along with the dust-encrusted shoes she wore on a long walk to get home.

The day had started like any other for Ms Foggo, with a two-stop train journey from her home in New Jersey City to Manhattan.

She added of her job: “I had ended up working at the American Stock Exchange at Wall Street on the trading floor, which was a block-and-a-half away from the Twin Towers.

“Before I went to work, I went into the World Trade Centre to the third floor, where the Chase Manhattan Bank was, to make a deposit. I have the receipt stamped September 11, 2001 and an hour later that branch was gone.

“When I got to the exchange I would change my shoes, from sneakers then into shoes because I did a lot of walking on the trading floor.

“By the time I went on to the trading floor … everything was at a standstill and I was wondering what was going on because there are lots of monitors that go around the perimeter with all the ticker tape and the trading going on.

“When I looked up you could see everything focused on this one plane that had gone into the tower and at first I thought someone had hit the tower by mistake.

“Then the second plane came in and that’s when all chaos happened and we knew it was a terrorist attack. But coming from a place like Bermuda I had never heard those words before.

“I was not aware of terrorist attacks.

“We went outside to see what was going on and the buildings were on fire and we witnessed what was happening. We could see everything because the buildings are really high and we could see people trying to get out and save themselves.

“At my work they wanted us to go into the basement for safety purposes, but I refused.

“I was not going to go into a basement in case our building collapsed.”

Ms Foggo ran south, covered in dust, to a seaport at the tip of Manhattan.

However, there were fears that the attacks would continue with more planes targeting the area or that buildings were booby trapped.

“There were people going across the bridge and there was a lot of fear that it might be blown up,” Ms Foggo recalled. “There was a lot of uncertainty, fear and tremendous shock.

“I had never experienced shock like that before and it took me years to deal with.

“The sky that day went from a bright, bright day to absolutely black. The sun was covered with debris as it was so high and it was like it went from day to night.

“It was very eerie and the only thing that kept me going was my son, Anthony, who was in school in New Jersey. But of course all the communications were down. So I just had to walk and walk and walk to Union Square, where I got a ferry to New Jersey then walk again. I was walking about ten hours to get home.”

Ms Foggo’s husband Anthony, a police officer then, was unable to confirm her whereabouts or safety and was also trying to locate their child, who it was eventually determined was with a neighbour.

Yet she recalled: “I didn't know where he was and that was my driving force to get home. I remember now looking back across the water and seeing the devastation, the towers had gone and it was just fire and smoke and debris. It was a nightmare.”

Ms Foggo was among a skeleton crew that returned to work on a relocated trading floor about four days after the attacks.

She said: “I had a special pass and had to go through it all; the fire was still burning. I could smell the flesh, everything — and that was very hard.

“I had to wear a mask because of the smell but I did go back and I think that was part of the trauma for me to go right back days later.

“I stayed there working for another two-and-a-half years until I got my master’s degree in education and it was my mentor, Rudy, I was thinking of.

“He was big on education and I thought he would want me to do that because I could no longer work in the area. So I came back to Bermuda in 2004 and decided to go into education as a teacher.

“My mentor, Eustace Rudy Bacchus, who we called Rudy, had trained me and perished in the World Trade Centre. I think of him all the time.

“He was a very special person, vice-president and instrumental in his church in New Jersey. He used to make a lot of money and gave out scholarships to children in his neighbourhood to boost their education.”

Ms Foggo noted that she visited the twin towers memorial site several times — including with her mother, Elaine Fox — but found it very difficult to look at images of the horrific incident.

“The thing that kept me going was my family — my mom and my dad Glaggett Foggo, my sister, Chari, and my sister, Komlah, who were instrumental in supporting me through PTSD, and also my son and my ex-husband,” she said.

Ms Foggo added: “It’s maybe 25 years and a long time ago but the feeling is very real and it is like a memory from yesterday.

“It still causes me to get very emotional and causes me fear and causes me pain even today. But I don't watch it on TV and I don't read about it.

“There are triggers that if there is an earthquake in the world it makes me feel like this even today.

“This was catastrophic and not only changed America but it changed the whole world.”