(Trends Wide Español) — On the morning of September 11, 2001, while most were trying to leave Manhattan, Panamanian David Cabrera remembers traveling in the opposite direction. After having put his family in a safe place, he was going to the so-called Ground Zero, when the Twin Towers had already fallen.
Cabrera had lived in New York for 13 years. He worked at a car rental firm, but he was also part of the Red Cross disaster relief team in that city.
The images, he told Trends Wide, he remembers as scenes from a nightmare. He looked and looked and couldn’t believe it.
“The scene was very devastating. People who had lost their lives, seeing thrown shoes, on the one hand. Obviously, you started to think about the anguish that all those people who lived through that moment went through,” said Cabrera.
20 years have passed since that fateful day, but the rescuer says he remembers the carousel of emotions as if it were yesterday. He relates that there was joy every time they found a person alive, but at the same time pain reigned when they found more corpses.
Despite the time that has elapsed, David explains that it is difficult for him to talk about it. There are those who once suggested that he give lectures about that experience, but he revealed that it is something he does not like to share.
“I don’t know … It’s something I keep deep inside me,” he replied and his voice broke. “Every year I go to New York for exams, just like everyone else who attended there. So there, we kind of talk about it when we go to the hospital, to make sure we’re okay.”
This Panamanian is part of the monitoring program for those who were in the affected area. Fortunately, for now there are no sequelae in his body, but emotional traces remain.
As a rescuer, he assures that he had been in disasters due to a plane crash, in fires, but never in such magnitude as what he experienced in those days due to the attacks on the Twin Towers.
