I was reading a Time magazine today and noticed in an illustration of the area that there is (was) a Marriot at the base of one of the towers. I never once heard anyone mention this hotel. What happened to it? Were people killed inside of it? I heard about the other buildings but not the hotel.
It was completely evacuated before the WTC came down. If any of the guests were killed, it occurred outsode the hotel, not inside it.
The hotel itself, I believe, was lost in the collapse.
People were killed in it. I have several colleagues who were at the NABE (National Association of Business Economists) conference, which was meeting in a ballroom of the first floor of the hotel (may have been a bottom floor of one of the towers, but I think it was the hotel). He said everyone dashed out at the first impact, even though management was saying everything was fine. Only problem was, his wife and daughter were in the hotel, on the 17th floor.
To make a long story short, his family was ok, though it took him about eight hours to find that out. But his story was written up in the local paper, and a woman from Boston called him because her boyfriend was also staying on the 17th floor, and she hadn’t heard from him. Turns out the fire alarm was very difficult to hear if your television was on (go figure), and the guy was on the phone with his mother discussing the plane which hit the Pentagon–only ten minutes or so before the first tower collapsed.
Aside from other things, I’m glad I’m not a member of NABE…
He, of course, being only one of the several colleagues…