A BLACKBURN woman was today still anxiously waiting for news that relatives living in a penthouse in disaster-hit Manhattan were safe and well.

Advertising production worker for the Lancashire Evening Telegraph Sophia Jones said: "I'm just in shock. I've not been able to make contact.

"I just feel so guilty that I managed to sleep last night."

Sophia, of Hozier Street, Intack, explained that her adopted brother Stefan, 33, had traced all his birth family and many were scattered across the United States. "His aunt lives in Manhattan in a penthouse with her husband. He's a surgeon. We don't know what's happened to them.

"I watched the TV pictures last night and it was like looking at a film. After a bit I just thought, 'I don't want to hear this.'"

"But this morning it suddenly hit me," she said.

Stefan had been working as a cargo handler and courier at Heathrow Airport, but is about to go to Manchester University.

"Somebody said yesterday at work, ' There's been a plane crash at the World Trade Centre, and I didn't even know where the World Trade Centre was. I just keep ringing . . . it's not having any news that's the worst," Sophia said.