An Ayrshire woman has relived the horror of the 9/11 terror attacks 20 years on after narrowly escaping with her life
Vanessa Lawrence was on the 91st floor north tower of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 when Flight 11 plunged into the New York skyscraper.
Nobody above the 91st floor survived the attacks.
Vanessa, who is renowned artist throughout Ayrshire, clambered down 91 flights of stairs for 50 minutes and even then she had not escaped immediate danger.
As she emerged from the building the south tower collapsed and Vanessa was enveloped in dust and debris.
Vanessa was two months into an artist in residence post at the Twin Towers and has been interviewed by the BBC for a documentary — Surviving 9/11 — to mark the 20th anniversary of the terror attacks.

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She told filmmakers about the morning of the attacks: "I had made it in early because I wanted to work in the sunrise painting that I’d been working on.
"The light, everything was just so perfect for the painting that I didn’t want to stop.
"I wanted to keep going but I knew I needed to get a drink or something and so I thought ‘no I’ll go now’, took a break and went down.
"Literally the second I stepped out the elevator it was like a big *imitates explosion* and the building shook and smoke and debris came blasting down the corridor.

"The elevator as soon as we’d been thrown out of it, it went into a fireball and dropped."
Vanessa had gone down to the lobby and returned back to the 91st floor with the plane hitting the side of the building where her 30,000 sq ft studio was — the elevator was at the opposite side of the building.
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Asked what she thought would’ve happened if she hadn’t gone down to the lobby to get a drink, Vanessa replied: "I would’ve seen the plane coming right towards me because it was right at that window, from the direction it was coming.
"It probably would’ve happened so quickly that you don’t really get the chance to take in what’s coming towards you and what’s actually happening."
Vanessa raced down the 91 floors after the plane hit.

"The instinct was to make your way down because you were so high up," she told the BBC.
"You made your way to the stairwells and I remember them just being dark, obviously the lights were all out so they were just dark. The sprinklers were on. It felt like a really small space.
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"There’d be certain points that panic would kind of kick I and you’d suddenly realise that you can’t see what’s going on and you don’t know what’s going on but everyone’s making their way down very slowly.
"I still remember the faces on the firemen as they were making their way up as we were going down. Their job was to come up and help people and there wasn’t panic on their faces. People didn’t know what was going on. But they did [the firefighters] but didn’t let that on to anybody."

Vanessa lost a flip-flop as she scrambled to safety after vacating the north tower and remarkably was only left with a cut on her foot.
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Speaking on managing to flee the Twin Towers, Vanessa added: "In my memory it was silent and slow motion but it must’ve been so loud because the noise made me look up and I look up to see the south tower collapse.
"This big cloud coming down. There was a fire engine on the other side of the road. I hadn’t even made it and it was down.
"You could see the sun sort of coming through this haze. An officer had come up to me and said ‘do you want me to take you away from this?’
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"I’d seen my flip-flop pearling out from the rubble and I turned and said, ‘I need to get my flip-flop’. He said to me, ‘I think we’ve got more important things to worry about'. We just walked away."
Almost 3,000 people were killed in the deadly 9/11 attacks — around 2,750 of which were in New York.

As the world marks the 20th anniversary, Vanessa says she constantly questions why she escaped with her life.
She said: "It’s almost got worse over time I think.
"I go into a mode of completely irrational thinking.
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"This fear, this panic comes over me knowing something like that can happen.
"There is always that question of 'why did I make it out? Why did I escape?'
"It’s become a huge part of who I am."
You can watch Surviving 9/11 on iPlayer now.
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