Lucky escape for IT professionals

By Our Staff Reporter

HYDERABAD, SEPT. 12. As the first tower of the World Trade Center in New York toppled on Tuesday, the next 18 minutes were the longest in the lives of nine employees of the Intelli Group, hailing from Hyderabad working in the second tower.

Following frantic calls from the police for evacuation, the software engineers made a scramble to the exit door. They rushed out and scurried to safety minutes before the second jetliner crashed into the building, resulting in the collapse of the twin towers.

Intelli Group officials in the city refused to divulge the names of the software personnel saying, it was not their policy. ``They are safe'' was all they could say.

For software professionals from Andhra Pradesh, the Big Apple has been the El Dorado, their destination for a better tomorrow after years of toil in the world of chips and bytes. Several of them had made New Jersey their home. Even as news of the attacks trickled in, hundreds of Hyderabadis jammed the telephone lines to check on friends and relatives living in distant America.

With the lines clogged and television going blank the whole of Tuesday - the State plunged into darkness following the collapse of the Southern Grid - they turned to Internet for help. For friends and relatives of Sarada, a software engineer hailing from Visakhapatnam and working for one of the American insurance companies, housed in the 30th floor of the World Trade Center, Tuesday was a harrowing day.

``I spent all night on the Internet trying to get in touch with my friends in New York,'' she said. Much to her relief, she stumbled across another friend of hers, Sonu, doing a fashion design course in New York.

``Hundreds of Indians, many of them from Andhra Pradesh and other Southern States, work in the World Trade Center. So desperate are they in the wake of recession that many of them have come to New York from the Silicon Valley banking on the smallest of projects spanning a week or two. Such is their desperation. I fear many among the dead are Indians.''

For Sairam, it was a close shave with death. He works in a building bang opposite the World Trade Center.

For Kirtana, working with a software consultancy firm in New York, it was a case of all her dreams coming down crashing right in front of her eyes.

For Pramila Rani, a native of Hyderabad and now a resident of a New York suburb, it was sheer somnolence that saved her. She had an interview to attend in one of the offices in the World Trade Center on Tuesday morning. But, she failed to make it as she overslept.

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