'There were huge explosions, the building literally shook' (From Western Telegraph)

'There were huge explosions, the building literally shook'

Former Western Telegraph reporter Steve Evans was sitting in the ground floor of the World Trade Centre as the two hijacked passenger airliners crashed into the buildings twin towers.

Steve the BBC's North American Business Correspondent, gave his eyewitness account live to BBC News 24 and BBC One as the disaster unfolded around him.

He said: 'It felt to me like somebody dropped a skip full of rubbish from a great height in the yard which separates the two huge towers which are the World Trade Centre.

'The building physically shook. Its one of those situations where you think, well somethings happened on a building site.

'That's the way it is.

'But seconds later, there were two or three similar huge explosions and the building literally shook.'

He said people were not screaming but began to stream out of the building in a mild panic.

At the same time, smoke appeared everywhere as if a mist had settled on the building'.

'We all streamed out,' he said. 'Some people running, some people crying, nobody really screaming.'

Around 50,000 people were employed in the centres twin towers.

'You've got one of the biggest office complexes in the world,' he said.

'There has clearly been a very big explosion in one of the towers and perhaps an even bigger explosion in the other tower at the very top.

'I think it is inconceivable that numbers of people have not been killed or seriously injured.'

Steve, aged 47, started his career as a reporter on the Western Telegraph in the late 70s after reading economics at Cambridge.

He joined BBC Wales in 1983 and started freelancing with BBC World at One in 1989. In January 1991 he rejoined the BBC as Trade and Industry reporter, and in March this year he was appointed to the new role of North America Business correspondent, based in New York.

Steve grew up in Bridgend, but had close family connections with Pembrokeshire. Both sets of grandparents lived at Druidston, near Broad Haven and his grandfather George John (known as G. W. John) was a headteacher at Camrose South School. Mr John wrote the 'Peep into the Past' column for the Western Telegraph for many years.

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