A 9/11 True Story That Will Stay With You

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Raju Joseph Pralel left his New York home expecting an ordinary workday.

He did not know that before the day was over, he would run through the streets of Lower Manhattan beneath a sky filled with smoke, falling debris, sirens, fear—and death.

He would also witness history with his own eyes.

After taking the E train to Chambers Street on his way to work at Chase near 55 Water Street, Raju emerged into confusion. People were gathering. Something terrible had happened at the World Trade Center.

Then he looked toward the Twin Towers.

One tower was burning.

While thousands of people watched in disbelief, another aircraft appeared.

Raju witnessed the second plane strike the South Tower.

In that instant, there could be no comforting explanation. New York City was under attack.

What followed became one of the darkest mornings in American history—and one of the defining moments of Raju’s life.

He saw frightened people running through Lower Manhattan. He heard desperate cries from the streets. He watched the towers that had symbolized New York’s strength disappear into enormous clouds of smoke, ash, steel, and dust.

When the city around him became almost unrecognizable, survival became instinct.

Raju ran.

He found temporary shelter inside J&R Music. When he finally emerged, Manhattan seemed transformed into another world. Papers floated through the darkened sky. Dust and ash covered his clothes and face. Sirens echoed everywhere.

Subways had stopped.

Buses were not running.

Electricity was gone in parts of downtown.

Thousands of people were searching for a way home.

Raju kept walking.

Eventually he reached the water near Brooklyn and found something he would never forget: ordinary people using private boats to help strangers escape Manhattan.

One of those boats carried him across the water toward Glen Cove, Long Island.

There, his wife and sister were waiting.

When they saw him covered in dust and ash, he looked almost like a ghost emerging from a graveyard.

But he was alive.

Not everyone he knew came home.

Among those lost was his friend Valsa Raju, who was speaking with her daughter from the South Tower that morning. She had been reassuring her daughter that she was safe because the first plane had struck the other tower.

Then the second plane hit.

The telephone went silent.

Her name now lives among the names at the 9/11 Memorial.

Yet The Day I Ran from Death is not only a story about September 11.

It is the story of a life repeatedly tested by danger—and sustained by hope.

From a childhood in Kerala, India, to service in the Indian Air Force, immigration to America, building a career and family in New York, and earlier brushes with death, Raju’s journey asks a simple but profound question:

Why are some of us given another day?

Twenty-five years after 9/11, he does not want his story to end with collapsing buildings.

He wants it to end with life.

Where smoke once covered Lower Manhattan, trees now grow around the Memorial. Where the skyline was left painfully empty, One World Trade Center rises into the New York sky.

And where thousands of lives were taken, their names remain.

This deeply personal memoir is Raju Joseph Pralel’s testimony of survival, remembrance, family, courage, and gratitude.

Twenty-five years ago, he ran from death.

Today, he turns around to remember those who could not.

The final image is no longer smoke.

It is hope.

With living memories
Raju Joseph Pralel