18 Years Later: Reflections of the 1993 World Trade Center Bombing

Over the next three days, the National September 11 Memorial & Museum will commemorate the anniversary of the Feb. 26, 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center with stories from that tragic day. Help pay tribute to the six individuals killed with your comments, memories and reflections. At a quarter after noon on a snowy  Feb. 26, 1993, Linda Horan and her colleagues at Fiduciary Trust had just placed a lunch delivery order, but it would never reach her 94th-floor office in the south tower. Although thousands were unaware of the cause, a bomb had just been detonated in the B-2 level of the World Trade Center parking garage. Power went out, causing the complex to grow cold and once-lit stairwells turned dark.By the time Horan received the announcement to begin an evacuation of the building, smoke had risen to her office floor. A colleague handed Linda a red, Port Authority-issued fire warden’s flashlight she used on her two-hour decent from the upper floors. At 5:30 p.m., she emerged from the south tower and connected with her mother who informed her that she had just survived a terrorist attack.

After the 1993 bombing, Horan kept her fire warden’s flashlight as a reminder of her ordeal.  On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, it was one of the few items she made a point of grabbing before escaping the terrorist strike that years later destroyed the WTC complex. Earlier this year, she donated the flashlight, among other items, to the museum’s permanent collection.

Jan Ramirez, Chief Curator of the 9/11 Memorial and Museum