AN East Lancashire man caught up in the terrorist attack in America has spoke of his terrifying efforts to escape the collapsing North tower of New York's World Trade Centre.

Foreign Office worker Dermot Finch, 33, was attending a meeting in an annex of the doomed tower when the hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 Boeing 767 smashed into it leaving thousands dead.

And today Foreign Secretary and Blackburn MP Jack Straw said of his colleague: "I am absolutely delighted for him and for his family.

"It's one piece of good news in what is otherwise a desperate tragedy for everyone.

"It does bring home how this dreadful act of terrorism affects, directly and indirectly, British people and the UK."

After escaping the falling rubble that entombed thousands, Dermot called his father, Wilf, at the family home in Hollin Hall Farm, Clitheroe to say: "Dad - I'm alive".

Speaking from his home in Washington, Dermot said he was sitting down to breakfast in his room at a hotel connected to the World Trade Centre when he heard the first plane crash into the tower above him.

Dermot said: "The building shook and outside of my window I could see burning debris fall to the ground.

"The connecting roof between my room and the tower was alight. I just thought a bomb had gone off. As people were pushing to get out the second plane hit, causing panic."

Moments later Mr Finch dashed from his adjoining hotel as one of a group of three people ushered out by waiting security guards.

He said: "There was a strange sort of cinematic half-an-hour when people were just watching it all happen, watching the people fall from the towers.

"But I made a conscious effort just to get out of the area. There were some people taking photographs, others were watching and I was just walking away from it.

"If you see that once you don't stand a look at it again."

By the time he reached the junction of Wall Street and Broad Street the towers began to collapse.

"There was, as you have probably seen on the television, an avalanche of flying debris whizzing down the road.

Mr Finch then spent more than two hours inside the building before making the two-hour walk to the British Consulate where he telephoned his father Wilf at the family home in Clitheroe to let him know he was safe and well.

He said: "If I had been standing outside 20 seconds longer I would have been overcome by the debris.

"A lot of people will have been in the same position that I was in and I'm not celebrating the fact that I got into the building.

"I'm not popping champagne corks. I'm just lucky to be home. I was there by accident and in a very quiet way I just got out."