Feb. 26, 1993. When all went quiet. The first World Trade Center bombing.

On this day every year, I vividly remember this same day 28 years ago.

I was late. It was 12:10 and I was rushing through the World Trade Center concourse on my way to Building 2 and my shift at Metro Traffic. I had actually meant to get there early that day. Dan Rice - our intern - was doing his first week producing and wouldn't be able to leave until I got there. But transportation conspired against me and - damnit - I'm late.

I'm in and out of the elevator in no time and I rush into the studio. Well..."studio". In the main room we had these makeshift spaces, kind of like scattered isolated office cubicles with sound isolation foam attached to the sides and thrown above. At the back by the windows was a long desk and on it were police scanners, two-way radios, a computer and a printer, all going at the same time. We were used to it. The crosstalk from different agencies, patrols, police, fire, EMS, stringers, random channels - it was a chaotic soundscape. But our ears could easily pick out information relevant to our work. We, the traffic reporters, would line up at the printer before our reports to pull off sheets of the latest info the producer was inputting to the computer. I worked as a fill-in traffic reporter, but that day I was working a mid-day producing shift. And I was late.

It takes Dan only a minute or so to update me and I sit at the desk. Dan is ready to walk out of the door to head to his PATH train home and all of a sudden the building...sat. It’s the only way I can describe it. It felt as though the entire building abruptly sat down. Then I noticed the silence. With all of the scanners and two-way radios you never really noticed the cacophony. But all of a sudden the silence was deafening.

Dan, reporters Oscar Serra and Tina Lang, and the NYNEX (precursor to Verizon) phone guy - who always seemed to be there - and I look at each other.

Oscar runs out to see what's going on, we stay behind trying to raise anyone on the two-way who could tell us what happened, while listening to the scanners to see if there's any mention. Thankfully, the two-way and scanners were sitting in their charging cradles so the batteries were fully charged. The only response from the two-way comes from one of our regulars wanting to know if there was traffic at the Brooklyn Bridge - and has no idea what we're talking about.

Then the smoke we see outside starts to filter into the hallway from the far staircase and we figure it's time to leave. Dan, Tina and I grab a scanner and two-way radio and keep trying to figure out what's going on as we make our way down the staircase in the dark - down 21 flights - with hundreds of others leaving the building as the smoke gets thicker and thicker. It's just the 3 of us, hunched together over the scanner and two-way as we walk down the stairs trying to hear something, anything, that can tell us what was happening. The phone guy had disappeared - and Oscar had left earlier. Those nearest us, seeing we had communications, keep asking if we can hear anything, if we know what's going on. At some point we learn a bomb had gone off in the underground parking garage of the Vista hotel - which was sandwiched in between Towers 1 and 2.

We finally burst out of the building to a sort of orderly panic everywhere. People running. Others lining up patiently at phone booths waiting to make calls. There was snow on the ground. Dan, Tina and I run up to the head of one line and abruptly excuse ourselves to the person about to grab the phone. It's perfect organic teamwork, with attitude, adrenaline and Dan's bulk combining to throw them off guard, allowing Tina - with a traffic report coming up in less than a minute - to grab the phone and call her station - hey, the show must go on. Tina does her report as I hold the sponsorship copy in front of her (a report doesn't count without the sponsor) and Dan holds the line back. Listeners get a lot more than they bargained for in that report and the ones that follow.

At some point Tina realizes that while she grabbed the copy book, she left her handbag in the studio.

We never went back.

We made our way over to the Millennium Hotel, where Mike Weinstein was staying after working all night and dragged him out of bed. Mike got on the phone and arrangements were made for us to work out of the hotel where we spent more than a week - 2 I think. I only got home for a quick trip to grab some clothes during that time. It was a crazy time – working ‘til exhaustion and gorging on seafood fountains that were in abundance all over the place and just magically appeared whenever anyone was hungry. Oscar made sure they were always there, and he invited the officers, firefighters and EMS workers on duty up to share. There had to be a dozen of us working out of the hotel (and walking around in enormous plush white hotel robes.) And I think we used up all the hotel trade we had - and probably more. After that we ended up working out of individual radio stations for weeks, sometimes months. I ended up over at WBLS / WLIB – until our new studios were built out in midtown.

This time every year a few thoughts go through my mind.

6 people died in that bombing. John DiGiovanni, Robert (Bob) Kirkpatrick, Stephen Knapp, Bill Macko, Wilfredo Mercado and Monica Rodriguez Smith who was pregnant and about to go on maternity leave - her child didn't survive. More than a thousand were injured.

The ceiling and walls of the PATH station under the towers collapsed trapping those who were there – the station where Dan would have been waiting for a train at that moment had I not been late to work that day. And today I learned that Tom Casola, our other producer would also have been in the PATH station at that moment, had he not decided to leave early that day.

There had been talk of us moving our studios from the 21st floor of Tower 2 to the observation deck. For a long time I wondered if we would have been there on 9/11 had that move taken place. I learned last year that it had been decided we'd move to midtown instead, before the bombing.

Though 2/26/1993 sometimes gets lost in the aftermath of 9/11/2001, I remember this date and those who died every year. A few years back I got to narrate the initial marketing video for the new tower, One WTC, for which I won an award. When I booked it I thought it only fitting that it was to be narrated by a New Yorker, with history at the towers.

Take a moment today to remember those who died that day.

melissa eXelberth - bilingual narrator / voiceover actor

melissaexelberth.com

femalevoiceovertalent.org