Twenty-five years ago today a bomb exploded in the basement of the World Trade Center, killing six people, injuring more than 1,000 and ushering in an era of Islamic terror attacks on American soil.
This first attack on the World Trade Center failed to bring down the twin towers, as the terrorists had planned. But what followed was a preview of Sept. 11, 2001, as the streets of lower Manhattan were jammed with thousands of workers, some covered in ash and soot, fleeing their offices.
"It was a tremendous explosion," firefighter Jim Manning said that day. "The floors are all buckled. There's floor sections missing. All the way down the corridors, the walls are all cracked and falling down. I can't imagine what caused that much damage."
A 1,200-pound bomb in a Ryder truck parked in the garage beneath the World Trade Center was what caused that much damage. It was the first attack by Islamic terrorists in New York. Six men would be tried and convicted, including Ramzi Yousef, whose uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, provided funding for the bombing and went on to mastermind the far more devastating Sept. 11th attacks.
The echoes between the 1993 and 2001 don't end there. Just like on 9/11, Feb. 26, 1993, offers stories of heroic rescues — like that of Deborah Perina of Queens, who was referred to in media reports that day as the "pregnant woman plucked from the roof" of the World Trade Center.
"I think about it, and it still affects me, but it’s not as hard as it was," Perina told WNYC last week.
Perina, 59, was a technician responsible for CBS Channel 2's transmitter at the top of the building. So she was all the way up, on the 110th floor, as smoke billowed through the tower like a chimney. She and a colleague were stuck in a windowless room behind a locked door, unable to escape. She lay on the floor as the smoke consumed them.
Eleven weeks pregnant, Perina feared for her unborn baby as her coworker tried to calm her. "He was saying, 'Don’t freak out! You’re making me freak out! Stop it!'" she remembered.
After an hour or so, police officers rappelled from a helicopter and onto the roof. They broke open a door to the floor below, and let them out. Perina helped clear the roof of snow and antennas so another chopper could land a couple of hours later and lift them to safety. When she got on the ground, her colleagues at Channel 2 found her and put her on the air.
"So that’s when everyone in the world knew I was okay," she said.
Perina was briefly hospitalized for smoke inhalation. And even though the twin towers were outfitted with security and structural enhancements after the attack, she didn’t want to return to work. She left her job at the World Trade Center about a year later, fearing the terrorists would try to finish the job.
That they did. On Sept. 11, Perina lost former colleagues who still worked in the building — and that’s when she realized she suffered from PTSD, and needed therapy. "It’s something that really doesn’t go away unfortunately," she said.
Perina doesn't want Americans to forget about the first attack on the World Trade Center. Because even though it was dwarfed by Sept. 11, the bombing still caused trauma and death — including that of another woman who was pregnant.
"If there’s one thing that I’ve learned...you just take advantage of every moment of your life that you can," Perina said.
As for the baby in her belly that day? Everett Perina was born about 8 weeks premature, but he’s doing great these days, his mother said. He works at Leonard’s Palazzo banquet hall in Great Neck, Long Island, hoping to become a chef. He's almost 25 years old.
With assistance from Andy Lanset, Director of WNYC's Archives, and reporter Beth Fertig.
CORRECTION on 2/13/19: The headline has been updated to specify the year the first World Trade Center attack took place and remove the term "first attack by Islamic terrorists."