This is the yearly commemoration story. With the exception of the one or two lines added to acknowledge the death of my childhood friend in WTC 2 (which I only learned about afterwards) and some minor name changes for anonymity, this entire account is as written Wednesday, September 12, 2001 at my apartment in Brooklyn.
Tuesday was primary day in New York for Democratic and Green candidates. I’d been dodging the campaign of Brad Hoylman, a Democrat running for City Council for the downtown Manhattan district. Jack C., a lawyer with whom I’ve become close friends, convinced me to attend a small fundraiser back in November, and the campaign had been bothering me to either help out or send money ever since. Though I avoided the phone calls of the campaign as much as possible (the fact that I’m not a registered Democrat didn’t seem to bother them; neither did the fact that I don’t even live in the district!), Jack finally convinced me to help hand out literature near the polling places on the morning of the primaries. I was to meet Jack on 6th avenue at 8:00 am.
Had I not volunteered to assist the campaign, I would not have left my home until 9:10 – which is to say, I would have watched on television, or from the roof, or through my window (the World Trade Center was clearly visible from my Brooklyn apartment), and would not have tried to get into Manhattan at all.
I met Jack at 8:15, at the union hall (SEIW 32) that served as the primary headquarters of both the Mark Green and Brad Hoylman campaigns. Since Jack and I both worked downtown and both had only about an hour to contribute before we headed to work, the campaign coordinator decided that we would work near the polling place at 30 Chambers street. Unfortunately (or rather, quite fortunately!), they had run out of flyers on 6th Avenue, so we had to pick some up at the campaign office on Broadway.
Just to situate. Chambers Street runs east to west just north of the World Trade Center. We were to work on the block just east of Broadway, or about four blocks north and four blocks east of the Trade Center. We reached Broadway and Chambers at about 8:40. We weren’t quite sure where the polling place was, so we headed west first and then, seeing that the building numbers were ascending (75, 77), realized we were going the wrong way. We crossed Broadway again and began looking for signs marking 100 feet from the polling place. At this point, we were concerned about violating election law by leafleting too close to the polling place. We saw no sign, and griped about the poor instructions from the campaign.
Just then, I saw a young black man, very close to me looking up at the sky. He said “Holy fuckin’ shit!” and his face was contorted and there was this unbelievable rush of noise and then the loud explosion and I’m certainly not talented enough to convey the timing of all this, very fast, seemingly all at once, but I remember it as a chronological sequence, though I don’t feel it that way. I pivoted right towards the sky, towards the loud explosion, and saw the fireball burst from the building – huge – and close: the first hit (“The First One”), North Tower (World Trade Center 1), Lower Manhattan, U.S.A.
I didn’t flinch at all – which strikes me now as improbable, almost laughable.
Jack said: “Was it a missile?” and people said “No, a plane, a plane!” A horrible accident. Everyone was on cell phones and in an instant the emergency vehicles started rushing by. It seemed like the sirens began immediately. “I can’t believe what I just saw,” I said. A man behind me said “Aw fuck. Aw fuck. That shit was like Diehard.” He was very upset. Jack called his partner, then the campaign, advising them that we wouldn’t be leafleting. I was trembling, but I stared quite intently at the thousands of documents floating peacefully eastward in the wind, wondering what they said, how they would handle the filing problems. “That’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen,” I said, “It’s like twenty floors! It’s gonna take years to fix that.” Jack said “Horrible, horrible – a lot of people just died.” We were now in a crowd, all looking up, some sobbing. We weren’t in danger because it was a horrible accident, so we stood with other New Yorkers and watched.
After ten minutes or so, Jack and I decided to get out of there; it was time to go to work. I had to take some signature pages to New Jersey, and it was important that they get there by 11:30, so the executive could sign off on them. With the emergency, it would be tough to get car service. Traffic would be a bitch. I was factoring time. I told Jack I would take the N or R Train from Cortland Street (the World Trade Center stop). He very sensibly told me to take the 4 or the 5, in order not to get caught in the rush of emergency vehicles and personnel. I wondered why I hadn’t thought of that. We dropped off the literature with another volunteer and told him not to hand it out. Go back to the office, Jack told him. The volunteer seemed curiously nonchalant, explaining the accident to a passerby.
We tried to cross Chambers, but the light wouldn’t change. Jack had to pull me back twice, pointing: Don’t Walk, Don’t Walk. Emergency vehicles were turning onto Chambers, and everybody was very careful to let them go by. Two policewomen were directing traffic, but they weren’t doing a very good job. They kept looking up at the building. “I’m nauseous,” Jack said; he was very pale and serious. I left him with a handshake at the City Hall subway stop – he had decided to walk in order to compose himself. “I’ll call you later,” I said. I looked up at the smoke pouring out of the North Tower, and I looked at its intact twin standing resolutely beside it. It would be the last time I’d ever see the South Tower. That’s when the people in the North Tower started jumping, coming off the tower in clumps, like ants off a branch.
The 4 Train came right away. I got on the train. I thought I must be the only person on the train to know about the accident. I wanted to yell “A plane just hit the World Trade Center!” I had an image of myself as a 1930’s newsboy: Extra! Extra! I was growing increasingly nauseous, and I was angry at the people on the train for not knowing what had happened, for not seeing what I had just seen. We pulled out of Fulton Street and I was becoming ill. I would get off at Wall Street and walk from there. I had to compose myself.
I got off at the Wall Street station. The rotating device that allows people to exit but prevents entry was not at its usual place in front of the stairs. I found this very odd, as people could then simply enter the Subway without paying. Was it always like this at the southbound Wall Street station? Couldn’t be. I remembered taking the train here and having to walk through the gates – even in the morning with heavy traffic. How did they move it to the side? I headed for the steps anyway, wondering why the device would be out of place. A teenager to my left walked through the device anyway, even though she could walk around it. Strange. I was among the first ten or fifteen people to hit the steps, but there was a huge crowd behind me: Wall Street, 9 am – no surprise.
I was about halfway up the steps – almost to the street – when I heard it again, the same unbelievable rush of noise, the same loud explosion. Not the same – closer this time. I can’t describe to you how quickly the thought entered me:
That was no accident. And then: Oh fuck, they’ll kill us all.
This time, I couldn’t see the explosion; I didn’t know where it was: the second hit (“The Second One”), South Tower (World Trade Center 2), Lower Manhattan, U.S.A.
People, screaming, began to run down into the subway station and I took two steps back down the stairs. It’s like the London Underground, I thought. Shelter. But the people behind were pushing up – they wanted to get out of the Subway, so then I wanted to get out of the Subway, so I went up, out on to Broadway.
It was dark, as if overcast. The debris was falling everywhere, and hundreds of people were running back and forth in the street. People were screaming; women were taking off their shoes. I kept wiping the falling debris off my head and shoulders – it was only charred pieces of paper, thousands of them falling everywhere. It looked like panic on the streets, the danger was heavy and palpable, so I had to collect myself in case I needed to defend myself. I ducked into a doorway with a tall bald man, and wondered if I would have to fight for the spot. It may have been thousands of people at that point, running in all directions. A woman fell while taking off her shoe and a man ran right over her, leaving a bleeding gash on her forehead. Shit. This will be bad, I thought, and ventured out into the street. “Another plane!” someone yelled. “They hit us again!” But would they hit us again?
I saw a group of men, some men in business suits, some traders in their Exchange smocks, a construction worker, standing in the middle of Broadway yelling “Don’t run! Don’t run! Stay calm! Don’t panic.” They looked steady, so I decided to join them. The debris was coming down harder now, and our efforts were not particularly effective, so I started heading down Broadway. I saw what I thought was the Stock Exchange (it wasn’t the Stock Exchange – I was disoriented) ahead of me and thought “Oh, no. I’m not heading that way. They’ll hit that next.” So I cut down an alley just south of the Stock Exchange connecting Broadway to Broad Street, and started running. I saw Broad Street (the street on which I work) ahead of me and felt some level of comfort. I was alone and wanted to see people I knew. I got my bearings and walked quickly down Broad Street toward the East River. I stopped in the doorway of a building where many people had gathered to get out from under the falling debris. A trader with an army hair cut was telling anyone who would listen: “I SAW the second plane! It came in like this” (he tilted a downward-turned open palm from horizontal to vertical) “and hit right into the Trade Center.” “That’s the second one,” I said. “That’s the second one. I saw the first one hit.” Was I proud? Or bragging? Some people were joking:
“Holy shit!”
“Holy shit!”
“Jesus Christ, did you SEE that!” Some people were smiling, shaking their heads. People weren’t running so much on Broad Street. I wondered how the attackers could have gotten planes. It hadn’t occurred to me that they were hijacked.
I decided to head towards my building, with a vague idea of going to work. I wiped debris off my head and shoulders as it settled on me. My mouth was parched from the ash in the air, so I walked into a magazine store, probably quite dazed, and asked the man at the counter if he had Snapple. As if nothing was wrong, he gestured toward a sandwich area in the back of the store. I went back and said to the attendant, “Gimme a Snapple.” He hesitated and said “What flavor?” “Uh, Iced tea,” I said, looking toward the front door. “Not the Peach kind. Regular. Regular Iced Tea. With the lemon.” He was already handing it to me. I pulled two dollars from my pocket and handed it to him, then waited for my change.
Just after leaving the store, I bumped into a man who said, “I know you.” I recognized him immediately. It was John R., who I haven’t seen since the sixth grade. We went to PS 29 together in Queens. He seemed calm: “What the fuck’s goin’ on?” I told him what I knew, and what I’d heard. As we spoke, a car at the corner of Broad and Stone Street backfired. Everyone around jumped, some ducking for the doorways. The car pulled off and a burly man in a business suit yelled after it: “Yer a real fuckin’ asshole, aren’t you?” John and I wished each other good luck, and I headed south again towards my building. As I would learn weeks later, another friend from elementary and junior high school, Michael E. (Engine 22), died in WTC 2 when it collapsed.
I reached Water Street, which I had to cross to get to my building. People were everywhere, looking up. I suddenly realized that it wasn’t a good idea to go into a high rise building at this point, and wondered if I should take the subway to Brooklyn. Almost simultaneously, somebody shouted, “The subway’s closed. The subway’s closed.”
Trapped.
As I crossed Water Street, a man stepped to the middle of the street, pointed a camera toward the air and snapped a picture. This infuriated me beyond measure. One woman was freaking out completely on the front steps of One New York Plaza. Two other women were holding her up, begging her to calm down. They seemed completely calm. It occurred to me that the freak-out was too severe to be only fear; she has people up there, I thought. Gotta be. All three women were young, and were wearing black clothing.
I made it to the front of 125 Broad Street (my building), where many people were congregated. The building had been evacuated; many people had watched The Second One hit, as they’d been attracted to windows to watch the events after The First One hit. People were shaken up, some choosing to stand right in the doorway, others preferring the open area closer to South Street and the East River. I preferred the water side myself – at least you could see the planes coming if they were coming.
I found my manager. He told me to round up other people in the department and wait for instructions. The partners and managers were huddled around a radio, trying to decide what to do. I don’t think they had any idea of how bad it would get. Mostly, we stood around for half an hour, trading stories and feeling stunned. One man was joking and laughing, but I didn’t hold it against him. Many of the people seemed too calm, holding conversations on work related topics, discussing dinners, making plans for conference calls. I couldn’t imagine how they felt safe. I stayed at the far end of the building, watching the skies. Brad, a co-worker, found me in the crowd and said, to my disbelief, “What’s going on? What happened?” The thick smoke from the burning towers damn near blocked the sun over us. What happened? Are you kidding? Everybody was trying to use cell phones, but they were all out. Things were calm, but it would get worse.
Finally, I decided to leave, to try to get uptown. I had to find she. I had convinced myself that she was on an N Train running under the Trade Center when the planes hit. I would walk to 23rd Street and find her at her job. Brad, headed for the Upper East Side, decided to walk with me. He brought two women with him, though I didn’t ask their names. We headed north on South Street, a major north-south route that has the interior of Manhattan to the left, and the East River to the right, home to the famous South Street Seaport, about six blocks north of where we were. As far south as we were, the street first runs beside, then crosses under the FDR Drive.
It hadn’t even occurred to me that the buildings would come down, but we were worried about more attacks. Everyone was walking quickly, looking at the sky. From our position, we could not see the towers. We got about two blocks when suddenly people started pouring out of the east-west side streets – Old Slip, Gouvernor’s Lane, Wall Street – pouring out of the interior of the island, trying to get toward the water. They were running, screaming. I immediately thought that another bombing was in progress, close to us. I reversed direction and told Brad and the women to head south. But by this time, everybody was running. It was a chain reaction. Once we saw the people running out of the side streets, everybody on South Street began running. I heard: “It’s coming down! It’s coming down!” I began to run south, as fast as I could. I thought that I’d dropped my wallet, but I didn’t care. Everyone seemed sure, although it strikes me as completely irrational now, that the South Tower was toppling on to our heads. Or perhaps it was another building, closer. Or a plane. Something was coming down, though it wasn’t clear what. But it was coming down on us. I thought – a kind of random and baseless calculation, hopeful magic – it would come down on an east – west axis, so I tried to get south, to get clear of the building. People were trying to get as far east as possible, running out on to the piers jutting out into the East River. You could see them scurrying out on to the South Street Seaport piers, shelter in the malls, maybe. What the fuck could it be?
This was certainly the moment of extreme panic. At that moment, running south, I thought for the first time that I would not make it through this. The screaming was unbelievable. The crowd in front of me slowed down, so several people started saying “Don’t panic. Keep moving.” There must have been 10,000 people on that street, still trying to get out from under whatever it was that was falling. As I approached my own building again, I saw people pouring off the front platform, trying to get north. This made it even worse, as the people in the area I thought was safe were running toward us, thinking we were safer. We came to a standstill where the two crowds met. Then the cloud of debris from the collapsed south tower came speeding on to Water Street from two directions, then rolled at us thirty feet high over the Vietnam War Memorial. Oh, shit. Within seconds, it enveloped us.
In the cloud now and still breathing. One of the towers had collapsed, it was said. I took off my shirt and covered my face. I was still holding my Snapple. I took a long sip, and held it in my mouth. Several people were shaking the locked gate of the South Street Heliport, yelling at a police officer to let people on. He looked terrified, which made it worse. He said “Go north, go north.” Everyone started walking north, coughing in the cloud. You could hear the rush of jet engines and people began to scream again. Somebody said, “It’s the Air Force,” but you couldn’t see anything – who could be sure? I decided to get myself home to Brooklyn, but I was worried about the Brooklyn Bridge. Would they hit that next? I looked at the bridge, then at the sky, calculating – hopeful magic. Fuck it. Anything to get out of this. I had to get off that island. Several men in front of me were helping an obese woman over the railing that separated South Street from the ascending ramp of the FDR Drive. I jumped over the railing, almost dropping my Snapple, and helped them from the ramp side. “You alright, sweet,” one of the guys said to the woman, who was wheezing and crying.
In a huge crowd, I headed up the FDR Drive. Every few minutes, the shouts of “Get right! Get right!” rang out, and though the crowd seemed to fill up the entire width of the road, it managed to surge to the right in an impossible contraction to allow emergency vehicles – mostly black SUVs with dashboard sirens – to pass on the left. Every time this happened, several young Latino guys with no shirts on ran behind the emergency vehicles as they passed, and I thought it was a damn smart way to avoid the slow pace and maddening congestion of the crowd. I considered following their example, but nixed the idea. I was exhausted already, and wanted to save my energy. I wasn’t sure if I would need it more desperately later.
As the crowd crawled up the FDR Drive, I saw two of my coworkers ahead of me. I pushed and slid to catch up to them. I told them I was headed to Brooklyn, and that they were welcome to come to my place if they liked. They agreed, so we took the exit for the Brooklyn Bridge. The ramp from the FDR northbound to the Brooklyn Bridge is perhaps 500 feet long and heads due west, toward the interior of the island. At its end it makes a 160-degree turn onto the bridge. While we were on the ramp, another coworker joined us, also headed to Brooklyn. Above we could see the dust and smoke everywhere, and the North Tower, standing, on fire. For some reason, I already believed that the South Tower had collapsed, so it didn’t shock me not to see it there.
As we approached the turn, we heard a bizarre screech, and watched as the second tower came down. Impossible, but there it is. Some people began to run, but most were calm (you could see that it wasn’t falling on us this time), keeping a brisk pace to stay ahead of the dark dust cloud that shot out of the center of the island and crossed the 1200 or so yards that separated us from the collapsing tower, high and fast. I moved quickly and jumped over the fence on to the pedestrian walkway. Two men ran by me: one of them said, “You can’t breathe in that shit.” I thought that was plausible. I helped a female coworker over the railing, but I was impatient with her pace. Then she dropped her shoe and left it where it fell. We began to cross the bridge. We finally reached fresh air, and began to relax a little, although everyone seemed eager to get on solid ground as the Air Force jets roared above us.
Soon we were in Brooklyn, safe. On the Brooklyn side a man was fighting with four police officers, trying to get into Manhattan. The police were stopping people from going in-bound, but this guy was intent, desperate. The police let him flail away, let his glancing punches at them go. Impossible, I thought, yet there it is. When we got closer, I could see him crying, screaming “I gotta get in, I gotta get in!” He has people down there, I thought. Gotta be. The last coworker to join us lived right over the bridge, so the two I’d met previously went to stay with her. I stopped in for some water and called my father, but I had no word from she, so I left soon after. I walked home on Bergen Street, my dress shirt in my hand and covered in dust; many people asked me if I was alright, so I must have looked stunned. One guy outside a bodega offered me a beer, and I took it with a smile, tossing my lemon Snapple in a trashcan. Everyone had face filters but me. I didn’t think I needed one. I made calls, and finally got in touch with she, who was waiting for me at 23rd Street. From her vantage, all of Lower Manhattan looked destroyed, and she knew I was down there. It took her six more hours to get home.
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