9/11 + JHW

The World Trade Center Catastrophe and JHW

Some of what follows originally appeared in e-mail messages I sent out to several people. The comments have been fleshed out and supplemented.

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Written on September 11

I am okay. I suffered no physical ill effects from the collapse of the World Trade Center (WTC) in lower Manhattan and the several buildings surrounding the WTC.

On the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, I was getting out of the PATH interstate subway in the basement shopping mall of the WTC, en route to work, when I heard a loud, dull thud. Thousands of people started screaming and stampeding through the basement shopping mall toward the exits to the streets. Meanwhile, people were stampeding into the mall! I hid behind a column for protection.

At one point, in the middle of the bedlam, this little oriental man appeared, asking me if I knew what was going on. I very sternly told him to come stand next to me behind the column and get out of the way of the rushing crowd.

WTC guards bellowed and gestured to the crowd to stop and slow down. They were largely successful. Several people had fallen in the melee but seemed unhurt. Ladies’ shoes were scattered about the floor.

I did not know what was happening at that point. Something had spooked the crowd, but I was not curious to find out. The crowd thinned out in less than a minute and I briskly walked to the exit. Outside, there was rubble, small pieces of concrete, strewn about the sidewalk. I looked up the side of the north tower and saw that it was ablaze on several floors about 70 floors above street level. There was a band of fire ringing the #1 WTC tower that was getting wider as more floors were being consumed.

Eerily enough, I had been on the observation deck atop the north tower with my family and friends only 20 days earlier. Friends from Washington State had come to NYC to see the Broadway show The Producers and I had taken them on a grand tour of lower Manhattan. The group portrait taken of us on top of the WTC along with my Observation Deck ticket is framed and sitting on a credenza in my office.

I stopped for a few minutes across Vesey Street, the northern boundary of the WTC, and watched the blaze, trying to decide whether I should attempt to get to my place of business on the other side of the WTC. My company is located in the World Financial Center (WFC), a huge building complex that is located on the Hudson River to the west of the WTC. I figured that I could just walk along Vesey Street, skirting the damaged WTC, and enter the WFC from the north end of the complex.

But, first, I needed to phone home and let my wife Linda know that I was okay. I walked off, telling gawkers that standing on the Vesey Street sidewalk opposite the blazing WTC was not the safest place to be. Sadly, that later proved to be prophetic.

I proceeded to search for a pay phone. I did’t own a cell phone at the time. Having a cell phone would not have helped anyway. Most cell phones were out of commission since they relied on the communications antennae and equipment atop the damaged WTC tower. I found a pay phone with a relatively short line a few blocks away on Broadway opposite City Hall Park.

While I was waiting to use the phone, people were trying to guess if it was a plane or a missile that hit the WTC tower. Suddenly, we heard another thud and some smoke darted by in the sky above the rooftops. (I later realized that this was the result of the second jet hitting the WTC.) Some of the folks ahead of me on line for the phone immediately left when they saw more people stampede on the nearby side street. I stayed put and advanced in the line. When I spoke to my wife who was home, I told her that I was okay. That brought a quizzical response from her. She had turned off the TV just before the disaster struck and didn’t know what was happening. I told her that I was trying to get to work and would call her again. Then I called my parents and assured them that I was okay.

I started walking back toward the WTC and stopped after a half block when I saw that the south tower had now been bombed too. It was at that point that the debate in my mind ended. This was no accident. For me to go to work in the high-profile WFC would only tempt fate. My building in the WFC could be the next target. Besides, my building’s landlord, stockbroker Merrill Lynch, has shut down the building for far less in the past.

So, I decided that my best bet would be to go home. I wasn’t going to go back into the WTC and try to take the PATH subway back to my home in New Jersey. That would be too risky. I was not going to take the subway since I figured that service would be disrupted because most of the subways in lower Manhattan travel through the WTC. Besides, there was no need to rush. The bus terminal would probably be jammed for hours. In these cases the early bird doesn’t get the worm. Instead, I was going to walk to the Port Authority Bus Terminal at 42^nd Street in midtown Manhattan some 70 blocks north.

(The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is a bi-state agency charged with running interstate transportation facilities within a radius of 90 miles of New York City. It owns and operates the NYC metropolitan area’s three airports, the tunnels and bridges between the two states, the piers, the PATH interstate subway, the Manhattan bus terminals, and the six buildings that compose the WTC located atop PATH’s downtown Manhattan terminal.)

As I walked uptown on Broadway along with thousands of other people, I reflected on how this was the way New Yorkers went to and from work back in the 1880s before the building of the subways. The sidewalks were jammed with people walking away from downtown. The jarring difference with the past were the many emergency vehicles heading south with sirens blaring. Within an hour, vehicular traffic except for emergency vehicles, was almost non-existent. Naturally, everyone walking was talking.

One fellow, who must have exited the PATH and the WTC at the same time I did, told me that he watched huge amounts of papers falling down from the blazing floors when he suddenly realized that some of that was not paper. It was bodies of people.

Another gentleman, a portly sort smoking a pipe, told me that he saw the first plane hit the WTC. I asked him to clarify that. How exactly did he come to see that? He explained that he was sitting at his desk in his place of business on Broadway and remarked to a co-worker, "Isn’t that plane flying rather low?" Together they watched the plane fly into the tower.

(A friend who works in Jersey City, across the Hudson River from the WTC, later told me that he and his co-workers watched the second plane hit the second tower.)

An hour later, at 10:30, I was at 8^th Street in the picturesque Greenwich Village section of Manhattan and heard from other walkers that the WTC fell down. Fell down? How can it fall down? I could see the top floors collapse, but how could all 110 floors fall down? I veered off Broadway and walked over to 4^th Avenue which would afford me a clear view of the WTC. I saw neither tower. I still discounted what I was told.

I tried to enter my brother Ray’s place of business on 25^th Street, but it was closed.

By 11 AM I was at Pennsylvania Station at 34^th Street but found that no trains were running. This resulted in huge throngs of people milling about. A few cars parked in front of the Pennsylvania Hotel had their windows open and their radios blared away with the news. I stopped for a few minutes and listened, but didn’t hear anything I didn’t already know. I didn’t hear anything about the towers falling. It wasn’t until I went into an electronics shop on 37^th Street and saw the legend on a TV screen that I realized that the WTC was gone. The collapse of the towers had killed and injured many spectators, helpless WTC workers, and uniformed rescuers. Most assuredly, the collapse killed any spectators still on Vesey Street where I had stopped momentarily to watch the north tower on fire.

At that point I knew that I had to phone home again. I had last told Linda that I might try to go to work. Now I had to let her know that I was far away from the collapse and was safe. Our home phone was busy, probably due to people phoning her. So I called my parents and got through. They said they would call Linda and told me that my brother Ray was in his business now. I told them to call him and say I was coming over.

I spent the rest of the day with Ray watching the news reports on TV and the Internet. I sent out e-mails to friend and relatives who had already been trying to contact me.

By 6 PM the trains were running again out of NYC and I headed home. Linda and the kids met me as I got off the train. I took NYC Mayor Guiliani's advice and went out to dinner with family and friends so as to cherish what we had.

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A few days thereafter I wrote...

My office on television!

Two days after the fall of the twin towers my wife and I were watching the endless news coverage on TV. It was shortly after 10 PM and we were admittedly dozing off on the couch in the den when something on CNN caught my attention.

A reporter and a camera crew were televising live. They were walking in the corridors of an office building and through the windows ahead of them could be seen the smoldering wreckage of the World Trade Center.

"We're in the World Financial Center," intoned the reporter. That caught my attention because I work there.

"Number Two building," he continued. Wow, that's my building!

"Nineteenth floor." That woke me up!

The next thing I knew, the cameraman was transmitting pictures over CNN of my own office!

The windows were blown in by the force of the collapse of the WTC directly across the street. Everything in my office was covered with one to two inches of gray dust and fine debris. All the items on my desk and credenza were discernible, but oddly mutated by this rich dusting. My phone, PC, books, framed photographs and miscellaneous "tchatkes" looked like a child's efforts with Play-Doh. I didn't know if I was more shocked at seeing my office on TV, the appearance of my office, or the audacity of the CNN crew in trespassing!

The camera crew walked over to another office and televised the torn facade of the American Express building through another imploded window. A corner of that edifice had been opened by falling debris from the WTC. It looked as if a giant can opener had been pulled down a few floors, ripping away windows and exterior walls. You could see the floors exposed to the elements, looking like bizarre, ragged balconies with desks and office equipment making for very odd outdoor furniture.

I've yet to come across anyone else in my firm who caught this broadcast of our office's interior.

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A few days thereafter I wrote...

Frightening aftermath

By now, we’ve all seen the horrifying sights on TV and in newspapers. The news coverage is pervasive and unending. Thousands have lost their lives in this cruel, vicious attack. The pleas that are appearing on TV for information on the whereabouts of missing people is heartbreaking and testimony of the disaster’s widening effects. So far, I personally don’t know any of the missing. All of the 60 people in my department have been accounted for and are safe. I can’t say the same for the other 900 people in my firm. Hopefully, they are okay.

Meanwhile, the WTC is gone. I have caught glimpses of my building in the World Financial Center on TV and the sight supports what I’ve read on my company’s website. The building is extensively damaged. The pedestrian bridge that connected the WTC and WFC is now laying on West Street which it used to ford. That would seriously compromise access to my building. I also spotted a corner of my building some distance up from the ground with several floors ripped open. We probably won’t be going back to work in the WFC for months, if ever.

Several buildings around the WTC were impacted by the collapse of the twin towers. You don’t have 220 floors falling to the ground without inflicting damage on neighboring buildings. Three or four buildings that were to the north and east of the WTC have also collapsed.

My company is gearing up to continue operations in our computer center in Piscataway, NJ. This will be very, very difficult. Fortunately for me, it is only a few miles away from my home.

The days of taking walks during lunchtime through the WTC shopping mall and enjoying the sun on the plaza between the towers are gone. The many shops and restaurants are gone. I used to take a short cut, dashing across the plaza to catch my bus to go home. A lot of what we used to take for granted in that section of lower Manhattan is forever gone.

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Meanwhile... back in my office as the WTC fires raged across the street.

Fortunately for me I did NOT head to my office in the WFC but instead sought out a pay phone to call Linda at home. I still could have reached my office even after the second tower was hit. But I decided not to go even after the first hit because I did not care to be swayed or coerced by executives of my firm who would tell me to stay at my desk.

I found out that the head of my department told my fellow co-workers to remain at their desks even after the second plane hit. When they ignored him and headed for the emergency stairs, the head of the Building Services Dept. asked who gave them permission to open the emergency doors and to leave. My co-workers ignored him, too.

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Written on 9/11/02, a year later

I caught the early bus today.

I didn’t do so a year ago. I didn’t want to run for the bus then. Besides, I wanted to get my newspaper fix at the vending machines before boarding. So, I let the bus leave without me even though one of my bus buddies waiting on line was waving and gesturing to me that he’d get the bus driver to wait.

It probably saved my life.

Instead of being in harm’s way in the lobby of the World Trade Center when the first jet struck the north tower, I was a city block away ---albeit still within the WTC complex--- alighting from the interstate subway’s escalator. I was spared the harm inflicted on others who died in that lobby or on the street just outside its exits.

I called my wife Linda this morning.

I don’t usually do so when I get to my desk in the office. A year ago as I stood next to the post office across the street from the burning north tower, I decided I had to phone Linda and let her know I was okay. As I went off to search for a pay phone, I started telling the stunned people staring upward at the ghastly sight that this couldn’t be a safe place to remain, that they should move on. I found a pay phone about six blocks away alongside City Hall on Broadway that had a relatively short line and phoned home.

It probably saved my life.

I read in the Times yesterday of a woman who ---to this day--- remains hospitalized from injuries she received when the second jet slammed into and through the south tower, raining debris on people on the street below. She got hurt alongside that post office across from the WTC. I was standing there just minutes before it happened.

I was fortunate. Mine was not a unique case. There are thousands who were fortunate, many more thousands than the thousands whose lives were lost or devastated that day.

We have to be thankful for our good fortune nonetheless and be certain to realize and cherish it.

Today is a day of memorial. My office is tinted red from the sun streaming through the immense flag of the United States draped across the windows of the front of my building. The big bosses have told us that it’s supposed to be business as usual today. But, I doubt it. As I said, we should recognize our good fortune and those who can no longer partake of it.