I am writing in response to Robert McMillan's column, 'After Katrina-Who Is at Fault?' in the Oct. 5 issue of the Mineola American.

Mr. McMillan compares the devastation of the World Trade

Center attack with that caused by Hurricane Katrina. I am not sure I agree with his conclusions about what went on right after the destruction at the World Trade Center.

I escaped from Floor 66 of the North Tower (the first one struck) on September 11, 2001. I believe I was one of the last people to escape before the towers started collapsing.

According to Mr. McMillan, the evacuation of downtown and the follow-up to the terrorist strikes went quite well because of the leadership of Mayor Guiliani, along with the immediate and unquestioning support from the state through Governor Pataki.

I wish Mr. McMillan had been more specific about this leadership and support. In my view, by the time Mayor Guiliani and Governor Pataki got involved, the disaster was over, people were either living or dead and

the living, except for a relative few who ended up in hospitals, had evacuated the area under their own power.

If downtown means the area immediately around the Trade Center it was easily evacuated not because of any particular leadership or support but because, in comparison to New Orleans, the area was not submerged

under many feet of water. In New Orleans, people had to abandon their homes and property and set out for uncertain destinations. Most New Yorkers who survived on September 11 left their offices and headed for home - or tried to. They could at least easily walk away from the disaster scene.

The bridges to and from Manhattan Island were not damaged and people walked across them. Boats and ferries carried people to New Jersey.

On the other hand, the subways and Long Island Rail Road were shut down. I don't know if Mr. Guiliani and Mr. Pataki had anything to do with closing them, and there may have been reasons for doing so, but the result was obviously to make it more difficult for many to evacuate from Manhattan. As I could not get home to Williston Park, I ended up walking to the Upper East Side apartment of a friend of a colleague who escaped with me, where I slept on the couch that night.

I remember long lines at telephone booths and people complaining that they couldn't get their cell phone to work. I was unable to call my family until the early afternoon, and even then it took several tries to get through.

Part of my uptown walk took me along Sixth Avenue, which was jammed with traffic. The driver of a pickup truck offered me a ride but our progress was so slow that after a few minutes I got out and resumed walking.

In the days that followed the attack there were also instances of looting and theft at the Trade Center site. I remember reading about them in newspaper articles.

Thus I wouldn't conclude that the evacuation of New York

went so smoothly or perhaps I would conclude that to the extent it did go smoothly, we can credit not some outstanding performance by our elected officials but the many individuals caught up in the disaster who exercised

common sense, took matters into their own hands and acted reasonably.

I don't wish to ignore the many selfless and heroic acts of uniformed police and firefighters, but I believe that the majority of us escaped without their help. It is my impression that they were carrying out specific

assignments that did not involve direct assistance to the masses of evacuees.

When a fireman appeared on our stairwell, for example, it was not to assist us. We had to move aside for him as he continued on his particular assignment.

We followed each other down the stairways; we sweated

out the unexplained and the traffic jams that stopped our progress more and more frequently as we reached the lower floors. My colleague and another of our office workers personally assisted a woman whose knees were giving out. We lacked a clear picture of what was going on outside. When we arrived at the lobby mezzanine and saw the cracked windows and pieces of steel falling from the sky it was not uniformed officers but men in shirtsleeves who guided us to the safest exit. To this day I do not know who those men were.

I'm not so sure that the police and firefighters worked together, as Mr. McMillan says they did. As he himself points out, there were communication problems, and I recall in the days following the attack reading accounts of disagreements between police and firefighters. It is my understanding that the cleanup of the wreckage was performed mostly by hard-working construction contractors.

Elsewhere Mr. McMillan refers to what differences there were, the days of advance notification before Hurricane Katrina but the September 11 attack had no notice. I tend to agree that more could have been done to prepare for Katrina, although I would point out that while there may have been advance notice, it was always possible that the storm would stall or change course, because it was not guided by human intelligence.

But we certainly had notice before the September 11 attack. We had the 1993 Trade Center bombing and statements from terrorists that they would continue trying to bring down the towers. Our intelligence agencies apparently picked up many pieces of information about the impending attacks but no one in authority connected the dots.

And in the four years since the destruction of the World Trade Center we have not gotten very far in reconstruction. The empty site seems instead to have become a focus for endless political debate, while plans change and proposals are introduced and dropped. What seems certain is that the grand Trade Center site, distinctive for its size and location, is going to be chopped up by streets and the great Twin Towers will be replaced by several smaller buildings.

What is happening is not my idea of an inspiring rebuilding program for which our elected leaders deserve praise. I'd give anything to be able to return to my old office on the 66th Floor.

Fredric Fastow