It's become something of a tradition: Each year on Sept. 11, New Yorkers post their firsthand accounts of the Sept. 11 — the disbelief of watching the Twin Towers collapse, of the people they knew who either perished in the attacks or miraculously decided not to go to work in downtown Manhattan that particular day.
See also: Instagram Photographer Remembers 9/11 in Striking Photo Essay
On Wednesday, Arj Ugarow told his story on Reddit under the username MonsieurGuyGadbois: "I post this every year on 9/11. I cycled away from ground zero on a bike I found in the rubble AMA." He followed with a captivating narrative of watching one of the Twin Towers collapse and then riding away on a bicycle he found in the rubble.
We saw people leaping from the windows and it was surreal to see how long it took them to fall. I remember thinking how horrible it must be up there if the better choice is to jump to your death. I’m not sure how long I had stood there, but I was just thinking to myself, "How the f*ck are they going to put these fires out, they’re so high up and so huge?” when I heard the most almighty sound I’ve ever heard. It was a shrieking, tearing type of groan. Almost like God had grabbed a handful of steel H beams and ripped them in two.
Ugarow told Mashable he has posted his story in many different places over the years — on Reddit over the last few.
Then 30, Ugarow worked for a now-defunct company called Exus Networks. He witnessed the attacks while on his way to the office, located at 29 Broadway in lower Manhattan, about a half mile from the World Trade Center. We found traces of Exus online, including official documentation.
"I zigzagged down Broadway and the cross streets, looking back over my shoulder as the cloud of debris came rushing up behind me, obliterating everything in its path ," he wrote on Reddit, describing the scene after the first tower went down.
Ugarow said he was called into work at a different office location the day after the attack.
"I was really shook up and I couldn't really concentrate on work, so I ended up just typing out my experience and posting it on a forum," he told Mashable. "It kind of became a traditional thing that I did every year."
Ugarow said he has posted his story on various forums besides Reddit, including 9/11-specific sites and Yahoo groups.
It's difficult to track down his past posts because Ugarow periodically deletes his Reddit accounts and creates new ones over privacy concerns, but we located a Reddit post from Sept. 11, 2012 that is extremely similar to Ugarow's Wednesday post as MonsieurGuyGadbois. The post's author had deleted his account, but the 2012 thread is also visible on the site BestofAMA under Reddit user prof9000.
Ugarow said he immigrated to New York from the UK in 1991 and has lived in Manhattan ever since.
But why has he upheld the tradition of reposting his story year after year?
"It's something that I was an eyewitness to that was a major world event, a historic event," he said. "It was a big day in my life."
Image: Mario Tama/Getty Images