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International award for former Telegraph man

Former Western Telegraph reporter Stephen Evans has won an American award for his on-the-spot coverage of the World Trade Centre attacks.

His work, coupled with the BBC World Service’s wider coverage of the war in Afghanistan, won the George Polk Television and Radio reporting award.

Stephen is now the BBC’s North American business reporter. He was in the lobby of the south tower waiting to interview a US economist on fears of a recession, when hijackers crashed the first airliner.

After it hit he rushed from the foyer of the World Trade Centre to a nearby shop to phone in a live report for BBC News 24.

He was cut off when the first tower collapsed and for more than an hour friends and colleagues thought he had died.

Describing the event at the time, Stephen said: “There was a huge bang. It felt to me like somebody dropped a skip full of rubbish from a great height in the yard, which separates the two towers.

“The building physically shook. Seconds later there were two or three similar huge explosions.”

The winners of the awards were announced by Long Island University, which administers the awards, named after a CBS reporter killed while covering the Greek Civil War.

Following the disaster Stephen continued reporting for both TV and radio for several weeks, and for the first few days he was the only BBC journalist in Manhattan because planes were not flying to the area.

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