9/11 Plus 24

[newyorkguy]

Today is a cool, sunny day in New York City, just like that day twenty-four years ago.

Every September 11th I post a message about that horrible day. This year I'd like to relate one of the most unforgettable first-person accounts I've ever read. This was a young man from suburban New Jersey. He was in college but with a summer job in Lower Manhattan, near but not in the World Trade Center complex. The week of September 11th was to be his last week of employment before he went back to school.

That morning he rode his usual commuter train from the suburban station where he lived into the Hoboken rail terminal, then transferred to a PATH rapid transit train for the final leg to the World Trade Center station. At WTC, the crowd from the train rode the escalator to the mezzanine level only to find a scene of pandemonium. Just a minute or two earlier the first hijacked plane had flown into the top of the North Tower. The young man said there was no smoke but a strong petroleum smell in the air. People in the mezzanine were hurrying towards the exit onto Church Street. Then he saw a cop -- a Port Authority police officer -- running towards them, waving his arms and yelling for them to, "Get out, get out!"

What in the actual hell?

The cop -- or someone -- yelled a plane had hit the top of the tower. He joined the crowd hurrying to the exits. As he reached the glass exit doors, he said the usual crowd of mostly Asian tourists were present. They were attracted by the crash and had come running to the small plaza by the exit doors. They were excitedly yelling and pointing skyward, their necks craned as they looked up at the top of the North Tower. He said at first, people trying to exit couldn't get through the crush of tourists. But then debris started falling from the top of the tower and the tourists scrambled back to the street. A couple were hit with pieces of debris and injured.

He joined a huge crowd -- mostly office workers -- milling around in the middle of Church Street. There was a bedlam of sirens as fire companies, police and ambulances began arriving from all over the city and for the time being the crowd was stuck in the middle of Church Street, just east of the North Tower. As the crowd milled about anxiously the young man decided to call home on his cell phone. By now it was almost nine o'clock and his mom would be just about to leave for work. The call went through and, sure enough, his mother answered. He tried to explain what was happening but she cut him off. "What's wrong? You're babbling!" He began yelling, "Turn on the TV, turn on the TV." She was almost certainly in their kitchen, he knew, and there was a TV set on the counter. He said there was a brief silence and then he heard his mother exclaim, "Oh my God!" She asked if he was okay. He started to assure her he was fine but the line went dead. It wouldn't come back up for a day or two.

 

[newyorkguy]

Just a few minutes after his phone went dead, still standing in the middle of Church Street with hundreds of others, fire apparatus, police cars and ambulances blocking their path as they inched along, a second plane hit the South Tower. He said there was a loud noise and people began screaming, many dropped to the pavement. He dropped to the pavement and lay with his arms over his head and his eyes closed. He said he suddenly got a very strong feeling, "This is a dream. I'm still home, I'm in bed." He said for a moment he was actually convinced, that when he opened his eyes he'd be in his bed. Only when he opened his eyes...he was still lying in the middle of Church Street in Lower Manhattan.

The crowd finally began to advance north along Church Street. He said a block or two above Vesey Street there was a pub with an open-air seating area. There were young men in suits -- he thought they looked like stock traders -- sitting outside, most holding bottles of beer. Through the doors he could see more young men inside. They were boisterous, almost exuberant, high-fiving one another and clicking beer bottles together. They were alive! But he said just a few blocks away people were dying. He yelled this at the men outside but they paid little attention. He said it was very distressing but he continued north along Church Street feeling even more shaken. But he began to notice the side streets leading east, away from World Trade Center, were mostly deserted. He said by then he was becoming emotionally numb and he decided to walk east on one of the side streets. He did, immediately noticing there were only one or two other people about.

As he walked aimlessly east, feeling both stunned and overwhelmed, the neighborhood changed, it was no longer offices but smaller buildings with ground level stores. He'd also begun to notice many of the store signs were in Chinese; he was in Chinatown. There were few people about. He guessed the residents of the tenements he was walking past were already at work. On one block a young Asian man was washing the front windows of one of the stores. As he approached the young man turned and said hello. The young man seemed oblivious to what was going on just ten or twelve blocks away, though you could actually see the tops of the burning towers from this block. The young man smiled and said something about it being a nice day. He was incredulous. At that exact moment there was a horrible roaring sound. He looked up towards the Towers in time to see the South Tower was collapsing. He said you could feel the vibration through the sidewalk. The man cleaning the windows took no note of this. He stammered, "Oh my God! Do you know what just happened?" The young man smiled and said something something about "New York good. I like." He said this was too much. He sank to his knees and for a few moments felt as if he was about to lose his mind.

Finally, he stood up and began walking east again. (The young Asian man said goodbye to him., still obliviously washing the store windows.) At some point he followed along with long lines of people walking to and over the Brooklyn Bridge to Brooklyn. Amazingly he eventually met three people he recognized from his town in New Jersey. Two young men and a young woman. They recognized him. He said they were all in a state of shock but they began to trade stories. Gradually he began to feel more -- for lack of a better word -- normal.

Eventually they walked back into Manhattan. At some point around Noon they discovered some of the subways had begun running again; they'd been shut down citywide for a couple hours following the attacks -- and they rode a subway line uptown to the Port Authority Bus Terminal in upper Manhattan. One of the guys' cell phone was working sporadically and when they got off the train he was able to get in contact with his father. He explained his situation to his father and then told the others: "My dad said to stay here" -- there was no suburban bus service anyway -- "and he'll drive in and pick us up." His father didn't arrive until after five pm -- the father said the traffic had been horrendous -- and he finally got home about 7:30 pm.