I was walking from Third Avenue to the 28th Street number 6 subway station at Park Avenue South to head downtown to work at the World Trade Center ("WTC"). At Third Avenue I noticed what a gorgeous blue sky it was. Not a cloud in the sky. History would dictate it had to have been about 8:46:00 AM, because after 8:46:40 AM that day, that clear blue sky would change forever.
I saw the change when I reached Lexington Avenue, and I looked south and saw this huge cloud of grey smoke high in the sky, moving from west to east into that pure blue day.
"Is there some kind of fire downtown" I asked a fellow at the corner with me.
In typical New York fashion, he shrugged and grumbled non-commitally. I continued up 29th Street and at some point overheard some nonsense about a plane hitting the WTC. "Yeah right" I chuckled. I wasn't the only one who knew how ridiculous that was.
I crossed Park Avenue South and got into the subway station at 28th Street, eventually getting on a downtown number 6 train. At either 23rd or 18th street an Asian firefighter got on the subway. He was heading down to the WTC. The report was a plane definitely had hit one of the buildings.
"What a shitty pilot" everyone on the subway said.
"How could you possibly miss the twin towers?" we wondered aloud as we talked to ourselves.
"Must have been an amateur pilot or something."
"Why are you taking the subway, where is your truck?"
"They're all down there already, they called everybody in to work and I'm not waiting for a ride". Impressive. Not your typical civil servant, this fellow.
"It must have been some guy learning to fly one of those little planes" we said. "Yeah, that's got to be what happened. Nothing else would make sense."
At 14th street the firefighter got off to get the express train, the number 4 or 5, for the rest of his trip downtown. He was obviously in a bigger hurry than I was. I decided to stay on the number 6, which would make all local stops to City Hall station, it's final stop. The 4/5 express was always crowded, and I had a seat on the 6, which I wouldn't have on the 4 or 5 train. I was going to be a little late, but with a fire at the WTC, nobody was going to care much. Besides, I'd worked really late last night, and the fellow I was working for said I could come in late.
Hell, was I even going to be able to get into the building? Well, we'll find out.
Whatever the case was, I hadn't been walking towards 7 WTC at 8:46:40 AM, right by the north face of the north tower as I would have been almost every other morning.
The train started moving really slowly. It was taking forever. More people got on. More firefighters were seen on the passing platforms, ready to get on the train downtown.
"Another plane hit the other tower" some new passenger informed us.
"No way"
"Are you serious?"
"Come on, that's impossible"
"That what they said"
"Holy shit. How could that happen?"
"There must be so much smoke from the first plane crash, that the other plane couldn't see where he was going" I said.
"You think that could be it"?
"Yeah, it could be."
"Either way, that's just crazy"
"Yeah"
The normally slow wait to get into City Hall station, the terminal for the number 6 local train, was taking forever. Finally, I exited the train onto City Hall station platform, with an express train standing there across the platform, perfect. Would I get on the express to Wall Street so I could get that delicious potato and egg hero for breakfast from Mike the Greek at his cart at Zuccotti Park? Mmmm, that would be awesome.
"All subway service is suspended below City Hall station" the public address announcer barked. "Due to a fire at the World Trade Center, all subway service in or through lower Manhattan is temporarily suspended."
Damnit, no egg sandwich. Oh well, the crap from the deli it is.
Sure there was a fire, but it's not like I can just not go to work. The fire wasn't in Tower 7, right?
I emerged from station at the northern end, that tunnel that is just south east of City Hall, along Park Row. As that beautiful autumn morning came into view, so did the startling scene of dozens, no, hundreds of people standing around. Many of the were milling about, some going this way and that, but the majority of folks were staring up and to the west. Staring at the most absurd thing I could have imagined. There was a cartoonish giant black scar across the top half of the south tower. The top of north tower was engulfed in smoke that was coming out of a similar black gash.
This was no Piper cub with a trainee pilot. These were big planes, and this was a big deal.
Oh well, time to head to work. With my late start and the slow subways, it must have been close to 9:30.
I started walking down Park Row towards the end of City Hall Park and Broadway. At that point, I would begin the zig-zag heading southwest towards Tower 7. Park Row was full of business people, walking around unsurely, pairs and even groups of people staring an stopping and pointing up at the burning towers.
I had never really experienced what the word "surreal" meant. I knew it now, and I will know it forever.
I was moving towards that fire, those burning towers. Ahead of me people began to move a bit erratically. Within a few seconds that erratic movement turned into a surging crowd rush towards me, away from the direction of the Towers. Women began to scream. I stopped in place.
Within a few more seconds, as quickly as the surge began, it disappated. I stood milling about like everyone else, unsure of what to do.
Why the hell am I going to work?
If I do eventually get down there, are they even going to let me in the area? That's a big fucking fire, even if it looks small and fake from where I am standing now. Look at all that smoke. That's a serious fucking deal there.
Get a hold of yourself, your building isn't on fire. This project is taking longer than it should have anyway. It's going to start costing you money if you don't get it finished off soon; you'll be working for free. All right, keep moving.
So I headed forward again. Again, the crowd began to surge and run away. Women screamed. I wondered if it was the same women each time.
Fuck this. I am going to go around City Hall, and come to Tower 7 from the north and avoid this whole nonsense entirely. So I headed up Park Row towards Chambers Street. I'd head west along Chambers then head down Chuch Street to get into the building where I worked. I'll be later than I should have been, but I at least have a decent excuse at this point.
As I walked, I kept stopping every time those surges would take place and the women would start screaming. I was not the only one walking away from the area, I noticed. Maybe they all had ideas for alternate routes to work. While I was stopped in front in the courthouse, an NYPD officer was calling out, imploring us all in the crowd to move along. Despite there definitely being something to see here.
"Keep moving everybody, don't stand around here! This is exactly what the terrorists want! To get people to mill around at secondary targets and launch attacks there!"
Terrorists? Terrorists... Terrorists! Holy shit!
It's hard to believe, but this was a shock to my conscious mind. I realize now that in the back of my mind there was a voice calling out "this is a terrorist attack!" But I had that voice shut down but good. There is obviously some kind of internal defense mechanism we all have, that rejects something that is just too hard for us to accept. Many people had it kick in on that day it never turned off, but up until that cop shocked me out of it, I was still on my way to work.
Oh fuck this. I am getting the hell out of here. I am not going to be one of those people you see on TV in history who kept going towards a situation that offers nothing but risk and danger, when I have nothing to offer to the situation. Where there is only risk and the only thing I would do would be get in the way. Just because I think I should go to work.
I am taking a personal day.
And with that I headed to Broadway, looked southward to the left, and saw only the black smoke blowing eastward, greying as it was sent towards Brooklyn. I turned away north and headed walking home.
Occasionally on the way I would ask folks who were perhaps looking at or listening to the news for an update, but nobody really knew anything. Timing is everything, they say, and if true then I am perfectly useless. I turned off of Broadway and headed East, and I know for certain it was about sixty seconds before 9:59 AM. Because as I was heading eastward on this side street I'll never remember, women's screams rose up from in front and behind me. As I approached the corner, crowds of people began to run southward, and just as quickly they began to run back away.
When I arrived at the corner I looked down to see what I had missed, all I saw was grey. The grey clouds that had been moving high across the sky when I had left Broadway only two minutes ago had turned into a wall of cloudy dust all the way to the ground.
"What happened?" I asked those standing at the corner.
"I don't know"
"The towers fell!"
"What?"
"The towers fell down!"
"They did not."
"I think it was just the one."
"People get crazy during situations like this, they overreact to everything"
"But something definitely happened down there."
"Yeah, but there's no way the towers could have fallen. When I was down there it was just fires high up. They were bad, but the firemen were going in there to put it out. The buildings wouldn't fall down" I reassured.
But they had. Eventually, as I headed further back uptown, everyone was agreed. One of the towers had fallen.
"All those firemen. Those poor bastards. All those firemen that were in there fighting the fire" I said at loud to someone, to everyone around, and I am sure no one heard.
After that, I walked back uptown numbly. Shocked. Helpless.
I could go down and help. But for better or for worse, common sense was quick to override any emotional response. I had no emergency services skills. I would be in the way, and the reality is that firemen and police from everywhere would descend upon The City to help, and sooner or later even they would be in the way as well.
I would give blood. There were going to be lots of injuries from this. So I set my sights on some hospitals on NYU hospital on First Avenue in Murray Hill. Before I got there, I passed a different hospital (which one I've long forgotten), and walked in and asked about giving blood for this emergency. I was told to wait outside, with the others. I went back outside and there was a group of other people who had been assembling for the same purpose. Wow, I thought. Everyone coming together in a crisis. There is a silver lining in that awful dark cloud covering downtown Manhattan.
Eventually, some medical folks came out of the hospital to the crowd.
"We're really not set up at the moment to have all of you give blood. If there is a need for blood, there will definitely be a call put out on TV and the radio, and you can give blood then, at the locations they designate later. For now, thank you for coming, but you can go."
"And to be honest, in a situation like this, there is not going to be a need for a lot of blood. These kinds of disasters don't lead to a lot of injured, and even then it's not a problem of blood loss. It's usually broken bones and the like."
That was odd, I thought. But whatever, that makes sense, and why would they lie to us?
So with that, I headed back home. As I turned up 29th Street from Second Avenue, I passed the firehouse. That source of screaming sirens that went past my window, 30 feet from my ears, at least once every night for the past 5 years or so I had lived there. There was one young fellow pacing outside the bay where there were no trucks, where normally there were two.
"How are you guys doing?" I asked.
"I don't know. They left me here to watch the station" he replied, still pacing back and forth, itching with anticipation.
"I hate to ask, but were the guys from here down at the World Trade Center?"
"Yeah, everybody went. Everybody but me, they left me here."
"Oh man. Do you know what happened yet?"
"Yeah, the towers came down"
"They both did?"
"Yeah"
"Oh God"
"Yeah"
"Are the guys alright?"
"I don't think know. They were all in there."
"Oh God, I'm so sorry. Can I do anything to help?"
"I don't know"
"i'm sorry man"
"Mmmhmmm" he replied fairly absently, and continued pacing, listening to the radio calling out all sorts of things that he was in no place to act upon.
"Alright, good luck, man. I'll try to come back later if I can help." Stupid, yes. But what the hell else was I going to say. All the guys he worked with might be dead or dying, and all he wanted to do was get down there to help. And this schmuck talking to him wasn't helping.
In the end, about a half dozen of the guys had died. Guys I would say hello to as I'd pass by on the way to the corner bar. Guys I'd sometimes talk to down in the corner bar. Guys I recognized, not that I knew, but I knew who they were when their memorial pictures ended up posted on the windows.
"Okay" I replied, and slipped away, retiring the last couple of doors to my apartment building. I went upstairs, entered my apartment and turned on my television. All I got was static. I grabbed the aerials and started to fidget with them to get some news. Apparently, every television station in New York City had their antennaes atop the WTC. And in 2001, believe it or not, I was still not paying for cable television and, like many others, was reliant on television antennaes for reception. I know this because I remember the weeks after September 11th, spending the entirely of it curled up on the couch, with CBS channel 2 on, because for some reason it was the only channel that had any sort of discernable reception where I lived.
But for the time being there was not one iota of information. There was no televsion, and I had no radio. I suspsect that radios might have suffered the same problem, though in fact they hadn't. So at the moment, I was stuck in my living room, dripping with sweat from the hour long walk from City hall back home on a warm, beautiful September morning. I called my mother at home, and assured her that I was OK.
"Have you heard from anybody" I asked.
"I spoke to your father on the phone" she said. "He was in his office on Wall Street, and he watched the second plane come in and hit the tower"
"Oh God, he saw the plane hit?"
"Yeah. He said it was so low and so close, he saw people in the windows"
"No way"
"That's what he said"
"Wow. What about Chris (my brother in law who worked just west of the WTC at the World Financial Center)? Mary Jo (my cousin who worked a block north of 7 WTC)? MIke and Sheila and the kids (who lived just west of WTC south of the World Financial Center)? Were either of the kids in that day care center there at the trade center?"
"I don't know anything" she replied. "Apparently everyone's cell phones aren't working in The City"
"Yeah, people were saying the networks are probably jammed with people making calls."
While possible, the reality was that taking out the WTC severely crippled wireless communications in NYC.
As I stood on the phone, I was startled by the apartment buzzer.
"Hold on mom, someone's at the door"
"Alright, let me know if you learn anything" she replied, hanging up.
"I will" I replied, and pressing the intercom. "Hello?"
"Hi Sean, is Maria there?"
It was my roommates father. He worked in Manhattan, so I guess he worked downtown and was trekking north like everyone else.
"No, but come on up" I replied, buzzing him in. I opened the apartment door, and tried to straighten up some of the mess in the living room. It wasn't bad, his daughter kept an orderly apartment and kept me in line fairly well. As I waited for her father to come up, I wondered what the rest of the day was going to bring.
Little did I realize that my apartment would become a sort of depot for for friends, family and associates of mine and my roommate's. A place to get a cold drink or a bit to to eat; rest, use the toilet, borrow some clothes, clean up from coverings asbestos-laden dust, debris and what not. And what would be most important, use a land-line telephone to call loved ones to reassure them that all was well.
By the end of the evening everyone would return to their homes and families, and my family would suffer no direct losses despite so many of us working downtown that day. It was a day that could have gone so badly for so many, and certainly did for others.
Everything changed forever.
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