My 9/11 Chronicle
The shoes I wore while covering the terrorist attacks in New York on Sept. 11, 2001.
On the evening of Sept. 10, 2001, a Newsday deputy city editor gave me – a reporter in the Queens bureau – my assignment for the following day: Starting at 10 a.m., if not called earlier, cover “all non-Election Day news” in New York City. From crime to quirky, if it happened in the five boroughs and wasn’t linked to Primary Day, I would scoot to the scene.
Here's my account of what happened that fateful next day:
Just before 9 a.m., the phone rang in my Brooklyn apartment. “What are you doing there!” an assistant city editor cried. Turn on the TV, she said. News reports told of an airplane crashing into one of the World Trade Center towers, not 10 minutes earlier. The first reports said a small plane had hit the north tower. Accidental perhaps, the reports said. My phone rang again. This time, it was the deputy city editor. Get going, she said. I hung up and, moments later, watched TV reports of a second plane smashing into the trade center's south tower.
It was horrible, huge, practically incomprehensible. I quickly dressed, said goodbye to my wife, Mira, and left our apartment, on Linden Boulevard near Brookdale Hospital Medical Center in Brownsville. My car was parked near our polling place. Only a couple of people stood in line, so I stopped to vote in the primary. Word was spreading about the trade center incident, but no one seemed particularly alarmed. I got into my car and headed for Manhattan. From the radio news, I knew it was no day to drive across the Brooklyn Bridge or look for a parking place downtown. I parked at Grand Army Plaza, across from Prospect Park, and headed for the subway, a quick 10-minute ride on the 2/3 line to the Financial District.
9:35 a.m. – On the 2/3 subway line
Carol Ann Austin is running late to work at Salomon Smith Barney. After leaving her Park Slope home, she had stopped to vote before heading to her office at 7 World Trade Center. I tell her that planes had hit the Twin Towers. “I would have been on my way,” Austin said, referring to 8:46 a.m., when the first plane hit. “I usually get in by 9.” She is visibly disturbed and agitated, her eyes watering up. She said she supervises a large number of people in the retail asset management and retirement services area and that the company had recently instituted a disaster recovery plan. Some riders on the train seem to know about the planes striking the towers but many do not seem aware. Austin is anxious. “I got to find out what the hell is going on,” she said. “I definitely have to get there, to see what I can do. This just sounds so surreal. Hopefully, a lot of people may have voted.”
9:50 a.m. – Wall and William streets
The train stops at Wall Street. Austin and I climb the stairs and emerge at Wall and William streets. She walks quickly west toward the trade center. I stop at the corner. Two dozen people are standing around a dark-colored SUV, listening to news blaring from its radio. All of a sudden, many, many people are running east on Wall Street. Fast as they can, as if their lives depend on it. I run, too. Now people are running on William Street, in both directions. Everyone is running from all directions. Some of us stop. “What are we running from?” I wonder. “Where should we run?” People are looking up at the sky but no one says why. So many people are screaming.
Questions I have now: “Is another plane up there? Are we being shot at from above? Like Pearl Harbor? Are terrorists running through the streets with guns?” I stop running. I say to myself, “Today I’m going to die.”
People are running again. “Go! Go! Go!” yells a man in shirtsleeves, waving his right arm and pointing east on Wall Street with each word. Still no one says why. But it is clear this man is telling all of us to run or we will be very sorry.
Everyone runs for their lives. Many dart into the JPMorgan office building half way up the block, at 60 Wall St. Dozens of people are already inside the lobby. Suddenly, it’s dark outside. Thick smoke is billowing down Wall Street.
“Stay inside,” a uniformed guard yells. “It’s safe here.”
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“We were getting on the subway and someone said, ‘Run,’ and we ended up in here,” said Dean Schwartz, 60, of Glenwood. The service installation manager supervises 10 of 3,500 employees at Deusche Bank. “All this smoke appeared. I don’t know where it came from.” Some people are going up into the elevators. Not a good idea, Schwartz, a Vietnam War veteran, and others agree. “Look, they’re going outside,” he said. “I think that’s smart. I’d rather be outside – in fresh air.”
Women are inconsolable. People are using sleeves and scarves to keep smoke out of their noses and mouths.
Two men walk into the lobby. One is wearing a suit, the other is missing a jacket. Both are caked with white ash and soot from head to toe. They look like ghosts.
“Feels like I just escaped death,” said one of the men, John DiGregorio, 42, who works for the New York Stock Exchange. He’s drinking orange Gatorade from a bottle he took from a vending stand. It’s the only thing on him that’s not white. Now, I and others who had run between the tall buildings of the Financial District learn the “why” behind the chaos: “We were looking at it,” DiGregorio says of the trade center, “and all of a sudden we saw it collapse. And we started running as fast as we could.” With him is Michael Davis, 43. “I feel pretty fortunate,” he said. “We were walking down to the [South Street] Seaport. Guess it wasn’t in time. It was like a nuclear explosion. It just mushroomed. For two or three minutes, it was just black outside."
Both men are told to go down a flight of escalators toward the cafeteria on the lower level. Food service employees there give them wet white rags to clean off. “Anybody who has any soot on them, make sure they get a wet towel so they don’t have it on them,” one of the employees tells another.
10:15 a.m. – Outside 60 Wall St.
The smoke has dissipated enough for most people to leave the building. Police direct people east, toward the East River. It’s still so, so smoky outside. One man asks for a deli. He doesn’t know where it is. His wife works there, and he wants to see if she is safe. On doors of several buildings along Wall Street, hastily made, handwritten signs are posted. They read, simply, “There are people in this building.” I walk west, toward the trade center, the only one going this way.
About 10:20 a.m. – Wall and Broad streets
Across the street from the Federal Hall National Memorial Building, where the large statue of George Washington marks where he gave his first inaugural address as president, street merchant Robert Warren is hurriedly taking boxes from curbside tables and putting them on the steps of the original J.P. Morgan building at 23 Wall St.
There’s so much soot and ash on the boxes, the salvage effort seems like a lost cause. Besides, shouldn’t he be leaving the area? “I have to stay with the ship. I’m the captain of this little ship and I have to stay with it,” says Warren, a singer, actor and collector who lives in Bay Ridge. “It’s a lot of rare collectible stuff and I don’t want to lose it. I at least want it off the street.”
The boxes include antique stocks and bonds and old currency and coins. Warren calls his little operation the Little Stock Exchange and says he started on the corner, five blocks from the trade center, in 1998. “It’s a fascinating corner,” he says.
Warren says he was talking with a man when they noticed what looked like confetti coming from the sky. They quickly saw that what was falling was larger than confetti, and certainly much dirtier. Then they saw smoke. And then a crowded street. Next thing Warren knew, people were running and a woman fell into his arms. “I asked her what happened. She said, ‘I just saw a plane go through the World Trade Center.’ From that point on, I knew the city was under attack.”
10:29 a.m. – J/M Station, Wall and Broad streets
Suddenly, as Warren talks, dark smoke comes roiling through the streets again, between the tall buildings. People start to run along Wall Street again. “No!” Warren yells. Into the subway, he says. That’s where he ran the first time. We will be safer there, he says; the smoke won’t follow. We run down the stairs, deep into the station, as fast and far as we can get from the street.
“It’s not even for the money,” Warren said, still referring to his vending stand and still willing to keep the conversation going. “It’s for the historical value. Because if they keep blowing up buildings like this, there’s not going be anything left. I think this is going to be the one-two punch for New York City. I think this is the end of the golden era.”
We’re in the station’s waiting area, waiting for the smoke to clear, still not really knowing what’s happening. Warren, me and three others who ran down here, too, all trying to comprehend the enormity of this.
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Kenya Shord, 23, has worked for 18 months as an account coordinator for Cellhire, at 45 Broadway, four blocks southeast of the trade center. She drives two hours from her home in Elmont to Brooklyn on workdays and then catches the J train into Manhattan. Today she got off the train at 9:30 a.m. She heard of the initial drama on the radio driving in but says she didn’t know it was this serious. Made it to her office, but was sent home. This is her normal subway stop back to Brooklyn.
When Shord saw the smoke outside at the moment, she said to herself, “We’re going to die.” Now? “I just want to get home.”
She thinks of a close friend – “I hope she’s OK” – then turns her thoughts to home. “I have a son, also. Six. And he’s at home with his grandmother.” Still no contact yet with her. Shord goes to see if she can make a phone call. Ridiculously, seems we have been down here for 15 minutes before someone realizes two pay phones are 25 feet away. “I’m not at work,” Shord tells her mother on the phone. “The streets are cloudy. You can’t even see. We don’t have no train service. You can’t see outside.”
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Abul Hossaim, 56, of Richmond Hill, is director of engineering review, division of bridges, for the city Department of Transportation. Hossaim got to work at 8 a.m. When the first plane hit, he was working in his office on the sixth floor at 2 Rector St. More than 150 people work in the building, which has 24 floors, he says. Hossaim says he didn’t hear the first boom, but the second explosion was very loud. He turned on the small radio he had bought for his office after the attack on the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993. He supervises 100 people, but his boss is on vacation, so he was in charge.
People started screaming. Hossaim told them to stay calm while he checked with the building’s chief engineer. Everyone moved to evacuate except for him and other key personnel; they moved to an eighth-floor room and had a teleconference call with the city transportation commissioner. Within 15 minutes of the second explosion, he said, they decided to shut down all East River bridges. When the south tower collapsed, pandemonium erupted in his building. The 15 people in the room rushed down the stairs to the basement. It was so full of smoke they almost suffocated. Ten to 15 minutes later, they made it to the lobby and into the street. It was pitch black. “I couldn’t see three feet from me,” Hossaim says. He found his way into another building and stayed there 30 minutes with a colleague. When it cleared a little, the two headed to the East Side, to try to catch a J train. Then they heard another explosion – the north tower collapse – and that’s when he ended up in this subway station.
Soon, firefighters yell down from the street, telling us to come from down in the station. Head to the East River, I hear again.
11 a.m. – Water Street, near New York Plaza
Makeia Davis, 25, of Canarsie, is asking about the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. His mother had planned to take a chartered bus on a group outing. He fears the bus might have been in the tunnel when the towers fell. A paralegal with the city Law Department on Park Place, Davis came into Manhattan on the No. 4 train at about 9:30 a.m. He remembers people getting off at Wall Street, then the doors shutting and the conductor saying the next stop would be Fulton Street, then Brooklyn Bridge. Someone had called his house to tell him planes had hit the trade center, so he took the No. 4 because he wanted to be far from the towers.
All of a sudden, a strong wind sound popped everybody’s ears. The train stopped. “I told myself I should have gotten off at Wall Street,” Davis said. After five minutes, they were told to go to the front of the train to exit. But it was too smoky, so they moved to the back of the train and waited there as the train backed up to the Wall Street station.
Davis walked up to the street and looked around in disbelief. “It reminded me of the movie ‘Volcano,’ when it was pitch black.”
11:15 a.m. – William and Broad streets
Five well-dressed men – corporate-looking, in suits – are in the smoking lounge of Barclay-Rex cigar store at 75 Broad St., sitting in plush chairs and smoking cigars as they watch replays of the tower collapses on a 13-inch TV situated on a wooden corner shelf. They seem very calm.
It’s a far different scene outside the store’s large window. Several men are trying to console a man whose brother worked in the trade center. This man fears the worst, even as his friends strive to be optimistic. “He was on the 95th floor,” the man shot back. “How was he going to come down? ”The men leave from the window. Others take their place, looking inside to see the TV replays of the catastrophe only blocks away or what it was that had chased them through the streets an hour earlier.
11:30 a.m. – Broadway and Liberty Street
Eerie silence. You can't see the street signs for all the white ash and soot, but the traffic lights are still working. Dust and debris and soot are inches thick on the ground. Two banks are missing their storefront windows. The Marine Midland Building has a gaping hole in its second-floor window. Two men are standing at the corner, looking up at where the trade center used to be.
One, bicycle messenger Alvaro Hernandez, 32, of Harlem, is in shock. He was delivering materials on the 46th floor of the north tower when the jet struck it. “I’m grateful,” he says. “You don’t know how happy I am.” Hernandez is trying to reach his wife. He had just called her before going into the building to say he was making his shift’s last delivery, and that he was heading home right after. She said she would make lunch for them. “She probably thinks I’m dead, now,” he says.
He has lost his cell phone – not that it would work anyway – and his bicycle, both of which he left on the 46th floor. “I thought it was a bomb,” Hernandez says. He immediately joined others heading down the stairs and outside. The elevator was not an option. “Nobody went by the book. Everybody ran out crazy.” And now? “This is something out of a movie. I never felt like this. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. But I see it around me.” Hernandez holds out his arms and looks himself over, down to his feet and back up again. “Not even a scratch,” he says.
11:45 a.m. – Broadway and Liberty Street
Pieces of a building nearby are starting to fall off, or so it seems. Everyone runs into an office building at 150 Broadway. People inside implore against panic. “I feel bad. This lady was coming out and a big thing fell on her,” Hernandez continues – as a security guard leads a dozen others and us to the basement, through a maze to the rear of the building, then outside at Nassau and Liberty streets. A nearby police officer is holding a rifle or machine gun with the biggest bullets or shells I’ve ever seen.
Noon – City Hall Park
Two MTA buses filled with uniformed police and firefighters arrive to help with the rescue and recovery effort. Lots of other members of the media are on the scene, too. Strangely, the only thing that seems to be working as if nothing had happened, besides the traffic signals, is the park fountain. It’s sprouting water full blast.
12:45 p.m. – Church and Vesey streets
Five men wearing various uniforms carry out a woman’s body on a gurney. Groups of men, all authorities, carry out large pieces of the trade center. Is this is the country’s largest crime scene ever?
1:15 p.m. – Broadway, between Reade and Duane streets
The Rev. George Rutler speaks to reporters about what he has seen at the trade center site, having been down there an hour earlier. Rutler is pastor of the Church of Our Savior at 59 Park Ave. He was in his old church, a block from Grand Central Station, when he heard a plane go by. “I don’t know if it was just the acoustics, but it sounded like it was flying very low, right over Grand Central,” Rutler said. The pastor said some of the first last rites of Sept. 11.
The surrounding buildings are all covered with the white ash and soot. So many ambulances, one can only imagine coordination will be crucial and hard. “They seem very well-organized,” Rutler said. A lot of volunteers are in the triage centers, but not a lot of people are coming in. “Either they fled…” Rutler pauses, “or were killed.”
The pastor said he watched authorities set up a makeshift morgue in the Millennium Hotel. A reporter asks, “Why did this happen?” “I believe in the devil,” Rutler said. “This is the devil, no question about it. No matter who did it, it was the devil doing it. It’s so diabolic, so vicious. Two or three of the policemen were saying to me, here we are in the midst of a political campaign, mayor and everything – this makes everything seem so trivial.”
He continues: “All the questions we’re asking, all our debates, the way we handle things, in the face of this horror. We’ve taken so much of our civilization for granted. We’re not grateful for what we have. We’re not asking the right questions and we’re not dealing with them in a proper way. We’re being too superficial.”
Epilogue
It’s about 1:30 p.m. and my cellphone, out of commission for four hours, is finally working. I know this because a friend from South Carolina has called and is screaming at me: “Are you OK!” Thirty seconds later, the deputy city editor beeps in. She asks the very same question, and has equal relief in her voice. Just that quick, the moment is gone. I’m to dump my notes to a reporter back in the office. By then, a special edition already was on its way to the presses, without any of my stuff.
I am to stay as close to Ground Zero as possible and report often with updates. I was in a corner deli, desperate for food, when Mayor Rudy Giuliani said over the radio that the day’s loss of life would be “more than we can bear.” Later, after police pushed the media back a few blocks, I am still close enough to watch 7 World Trade Center crumble at 5:20 p.m. I phone that news into the newsroom, well before it is reported on TV. Same drill, later, to say there’s no electrical power in Lower Manhattan.
As dusk sets in, my wife calls on my cell phone. Herself a news editor at Newsday, she had gone in early to help with the copy crunch. We are speaking for the first time since the morning. She says my mother demands to speak with me. My phone is running on empty, but I reach my mother and assure her I am all right.
About 8 p.m., my editor gives me the OK to head home. With no trains running nearby, I walk to and across the Brooklyn Bridge. From there, the view of Manhattan – so dark, so quiet, so stark, still smoking – is unforgettable.
It takes me nearly 90 minutes to reach the Atlantic Avenue subway station in downtown Brooklyn. A 2/3 train takes me back to Grand Army Plaza and the car I parked some 12 hours earlier. At home, I take the longest shower of my life.
- "Marquette Educator Reported Near Ground Zero on 9/11" – "Live at Daybreak" segment on WTMJ-TV (Milwaukee) on Sunday, Sept. 11, 2011.
- "A Reporter's Account, Minute by Minute" – abridged version of this text published in the Sunday, Sept. 11, 2011, edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.
- "Remembrance and Rebirth After 9/11" – "Lake Effect" segment on WUWM (89.7 FM), on Friday, Sept. 9, 2011.
- "Flashback 9/11: Herbert Lowe" – video interview by journalism major Katie Doherty for The Marquette Tribune, released Thursday, Sept. 8, 2008.
- "Zero Hour: Reflections on September 11" – posted Tuesday, Sept. 6, 2011, on Communic8, the Diederich College of Communication blog.
Here's my account of what happened that fateful next day:
Just before 9 a.m., the phone rang in my Brooklyn apartment. “What are you doing there!” an assistant city editor cried. Turn on the TV, she said. News reports told of an airplane crashing into one of the World Trade Center towers, not 10 minutes earlier. The first reports said a small plane had hit the north tower. Accidental perhaps, the reports said. My phone rang again. This time, it was the deputy city editor. Get going, she said. I hung up and, moments later, watched TV reports of a second plane smashing into the trade center's south tower.
It was horrible, huge, practically incomprehensible. I quickly dressed, said goodbye to my wife, Mira, and left our apartment, on Linden Boulevard near Brookdale Hospital Medical Center in Brownsville. My car was parked near our polling place. Only a couple of people stood in line, so I stopped to vote in the primary. Word was spreading about the trade center incident, but no one seemed particularly alarmed. I got into my car and headed for Manhattan. From the radio news, I knew it was no day to drive across the Brooklyn Bridge or look for a parking place downtown. I parked at Grand Army Plaza, across from Prospect Park, and headed for the subway, a quick 10-minute ride on the 2/3 line to the Financial District.
9:35 a.m. – On the 2/3 subway line
Carol Ann Austin is running late to work at Salomon Smith Barney. After leaving her Park Slope home, she had stopped to vote before heading to her office at 7 World Trade Center. I tell her that planes had hit the Twin Towers. “I would have been on my way,” Austin said, referring to 8:46 a.m., when the first plane hit. “I usually get in by 9.” She is visibly disturbed and agitated, her eyes watering up. She said she supervises a large number of people in the retail asset management and retirement services area and that the company had recently instituted a disaster recovery plan. Some riders on the train seem to know about the planes striking the towers but many do not seem aware. Austin is anxious. “I got to find out what the hell is going on,” she said. “I definitely have to get there, to see what I can do. This just sounds so surreal. Hopefully, a lot of people may have voted.”
9:50 a.m. – Wall and William streets
The train stops at Wall Street. Austin and I climb the stairs and emerge at Wall and William streets. She walks quickly west toward the trade center. I stop at the corner. Two dozen people are standing around a dark-colored SUV, listening to news blaring from its radio. All of a sudden, many, many people are running east on Wall Street. Fast as they can, as if their lives depend on it. I run, too. Now people are running on William Street, in both directions. Everyone is running from all directions. Some of us stop. “What are we running from?” I wonder. “Where should we run?” People are looking up at the sky but no one says why. So many people are screaming.
Questions I have now: “Is another plane up there? Are we being shot at from above? Like Pearl Harbor? Are terrorists running through the streets with guns?” I stop running. I say to myself, “Today I’m going to die.”
People are running again. “Go! Go! Go!” yells a man in shirtsleeves, waving his right arm and pointing east on Wall Street with each word. Still no one says why. But it is clear this man is telling all of us to run or we will be very sorry.
Everyone runs for their lives. Many dart into the JPMorgan office building half way up the block, at 60 Wall St. Dozens of people are already inside the lobby. Suddenly, it’s dark outside. Thick smoke is billowing down Wall Street.
“Stay inside,” a uniformed guard yells. “It’s safe here.”
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“We were getting on the subway and someone said, ‘Run,’ and we ended up in here,” said Dean Schwartz, 60, of Glenwood. The service installation manager supervises 10 of 3,500 employees at Deusche Bank. “All this smoke appeared. I don’t know where it came from.” Some people are going up into the elevators. Not a good idea, Schwartz, a Vietnam War veteran, and others agree. “Look, they’re going outside,” he said. “I think that’s smart. I’d rather be outside – in fresh air.”
Women are inconsolable. People are using sleeves and scarves to keep smoke out of their noses and mouths.
Two men walk into the lobby. One is wearing a suit, the other is missing a jacket. Both are caked with white ash and soot from head to toe. They look like ghosts.
“Feels like I just escaped death,” said one of the men, John DiGregorio, 42, who works for the New York Stock Exchange. He’s drinking orange Gatorade from a bottle he took from a vending stand. It’s the only thing on him that’s not white. Now, I and others who had run between the tall buildings of the Financial District learn the “why” behind the chaos: “We were looking at it,” DiGregorio says of the trade center, “and all of a sudden we saw it collapse. And we started running as fast as we could.” With him is Michael Davis, 43. “I feel pretty fortunate,” he said. “We were walking down to the [South Street] Seaport. Guess it wasn’t in time. It was like a nuclear explosion. It just mushroomed. For two or three minutes, it was just black outside."
Both men are told to go down a flight of escalators toward the cafeteria on the lower level. Food service employees there give them wet white rags to clean off. “Anybody who has any soot on them, make sure they get a wet towel so they don’t have it on them,” one of the employees tells another.
10:15 a.m. – Outside 60 Wall St.
The smoke has dissipated enough for most people to leave the building. Police direct people east, toward the East River. It’s still so, so smoky outside. One man asks for a deli. He doesn’t know where it is. His wife works there, and he wants to see if she is safe. On doors of several buildings along Wall Street, hastily made, handwritten signs are posted. They read, simply, “There are people in this building.” I walk west, toward the trade center, the only one going this way.
About 10:20 a.m. – Wall and Broad streets
Across the street from the Federal Hall National Memorial Building, where the large statue of George Washington marks where he gave his first inaugural address as president, street merchant Robert Warren is hurriedly taking boxes from curbside tables and putting them on the steps of the original J.P. Morgan building at 23 Wall St.
There’s so much soot and ash on the boxes, the salvage effort seems like a lost cause. Besides, shouldn’t he be leaving the area? “I have to stay with the ship. I’m the captain of this little ship and I have to stay with it,” says Warren, a singer, actor and collector who lives in Bay Ridge. “It’s a lot of rare collectible stuff and I don’t want to lose it. I at least want it off the street.”
The boxes include antique stocks and bonds and old currency and coins. Warren calls his little operation the Little Stock Exchange and says he started on the corner, five blocks from the trade center, in 1998. “It’s a fascinating corner,” he says.
Warren says he was talking with a man when they noticed what looked like confetti coming from the sky. They quickly saw that what was falling was larger than confetti, and certainly much dirtier. Then they saw smoke. And then a crowded street. Next thing Warren knew, people were running and a woman fell into his arms. “I asked her what happened. She said, ‘I just saw a plane go through the World Trade Center.’ From that point on, I knew the city was under attack.”
10:29 a.m. – J/M Station, Wall and Broad streets
Suddenly, as Warren talks, dark smoke comes roiling through the streets again, between the tall buildings. People start to run along Wall Street again. “No!” Warren yells. Into the subway, he says. That’s where he ran the first time. We will be safer there, he says; the smoke won’t follow. We run down the stairs, deep into the station, as fast and far as we can get from the street.
“It’s not even for the money,” Warren said, still referring to his vending stand and still willing to keep the conversation going. “It’s for the historical value. Because if they keep blowing up buildings like this, there’s not going be anything left. I think this is going to be the one-two punch for New York City. I think this is the end of the golden era.”
We’re in the station’s waiting area, waiting for the smoke to clear, still not really knowing what’s happening. Warren, me and three others who ran down here, too, all trying to comprehend the enormity of this.
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Kenya Shord, 23, has worked for 18 months as an account coordinator for Cellhire, at 45 Broadway, four blocks southeast of the trade center. She drives two hours from her home in Elmont to Brooklyn on workdays and then catches the J train into Manhattan. Today she got off the train at 9:30 a.m. She heard of the initial drama on the radio driving in but says she didn’t know it was this serious. Made it to her office, but was sent home. This is her normal subway stop back to Brooklyn.
When Shord saw the smoke outside at the moment, she said to herself, “We’re going to die.” Now? “I just want to get home.”
She thinks of a close friend – “I hope she’s OK” – then turns her thoughts to home. “I have a son, also. Six. And he’s at home with his grandmother.” Still no contact yet with her. Shord goes to see if she can make a phone call. Ridiculously, seems we have been down here for 15 minutes before someone realizes two pay phones are 25 feet away. “I’m not at work,” Shord tells her mother on the phone. “The streets are cloudy. You can’t even see. We don’t have no train service. You can’t see outside.”
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Abul Hossaim, 56, of Richmond Hill, is director of engineering review, division of bridges, for the city Department of Transportation. Hossaim got to work at 8 a.m. When the first plane hit, he was working in his office on the sixth floor at 2 Rector St. More than 150 people work in the building, which has 24 floors, he says. Hossaim says he didn’t hear the first boom, but the second explosion was very loud. He turned on the small radio he had bought for his office after the attack on the World Trade Center on Feb. 26, 1993. He supervises 100 people, but his boss is on vacation, so he was in charge.
People started screaming. Hossaim told them to stay calm while he checked with the building’s chief engineer. Everyone moved to evacuate except for him and other key personnel; they moved to an eighth-floor room and had a teleconference call with the city transportation commissioner. Within 15 minutes of the second explosion, he said, they decided to shut down all East River bridges. When the south tower collapsed, pandemonium erupted in his building. The 15 people in the room rushed down the stairs to the basement. It was so full of smoke they almost suffocated. Ten to 15 minutes later, they made it to the lobby and into the street. It was pitch black. “I couldn’t see three feet from me,” Hossaim says. He found his way into another building and stayed there 30 minutes with a colleague. When it cleared a little, the two headed to the East Side, to try to catch a J train. Then they heard another explosion – the north tower collapse – and that’s when he ended up in this subway station.
Soon, firefighters yell down from the street, telling us to come from down in the station. Head to the East River, I hear again.
11 a.m. – Water Street, near New York Plaza
Makeia Davis, 25, of Canarsie, is asking about the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel. His mother had planned to take a chartered bus on a group outing. He fears the bus might have been in the tunnel when the towers fell. A paralegal with the city Law Department on Park Place, Davis came into Manhattan on the No. 4 train at about 9:30 a.m. He remembers people getting off at Wall Street, then the doors shutting and the conductor saying the next stop would be Fulton Street, then Brooklyn Bridge. Someone had called his house to tell him planes had hit the trade center, so he took the No. 4 because he wanted to be far from the towers.
All of a sudden, a strong wind sound popped everybody’s ears. The train stopped. “I told myself I should have gotten off at Wall Street,” Davis said. After five minutes, they were told to go to the front of the train to exit. But it was too smoky, so they moved to the back of the train and waited there as the train backed up to the Wall Street station.
Davis walked up to the street and looked around in disbelief. “It reminded me of the movie ‘Volcano,’ when it was pitch black.”
11:15 a.m. – William and Broad streets
Five well-dressed men – corporate-looking, in suits – are in the smoking lounge of Barclay-Rex cigar store at 75 Broad St., sitting in plush chairs and smoking cigars as they watch replays of the tower collapses on a 13-inch TV situated on a wooden corner shelf. They seem very calm.
It’s a far different scene outside the store’s large window. Several men are trying to console a man whose brother worked in the trade center. This man fears the worst, even as his friends strive to be optimistic. “He was on the 95th floor,” the man shot back. “How was he going to come down? ”The men leave from the window. Others take their place, looking inside to see the TV replays of the catastrophe only blocks away or what it was that had chased them through the streets an hour earlier.
11:30 a.m. – Broadway and Liberty Street
Eerie silence. You can't see the street signs for all the white ash and soot, but the traffic lights are still working. Dust and debris and soot are inches thick on the ground. Two banks are missing their storefront windows. The Marine Midland Building has a gaping hole in its second-floor window. Two men are standing at the corner, looking up at where the trade center used to be.
One, bicycle messenger Alvaro Hernandez, 32, of Harlem, is in shock. He was delivering materials on the 46th floor of the north tower when the jet struck it. “I’m grateful,” he says. “You don’t know how happy I am.” Hernandez is trying to reach his wife. He had just called her before going into the building to say he was making his shift’s last delivery, and that he was heading home right after. She said she would make lunch for them. “She probably thinks I’m dead, now,” he says.
He has lost his cell phone – not that it would work anyway – and his bicycle, both of which he left on the 46th floor. “I thought it was a bomb,” Hernandez says. He immediately joined others heading down the stairs and outside. The elevator was not an option. “Nobody went by the book. Everybody ran out crazy.” And now? “This is something out of a movie. I never felt like this. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. But I see it around me.” Hernandez holds out his arms and looks himself over, down to his feet and back up again. “Not even a scratch,” he says.
11:45 a.m. – Broadway and Liberty Street
Pieces of a building nearby are starting to fall off, or so it seems. Everyone runs into an office building at 150 Broadway. People inside implore against panic. “I feel bad. This lady was coming out and a big thing fell on her,” Hernandez continues – as a security guard leads a dozen others and us to the basement, through a maze to the rear of the building, then outside at Nassau and Liberty streets. A nearby police officer is holding a rifle or machine gun with the biggest bullets or shells I’ve ever seen.
Noon – City Hall Park
Two MTA buses filled with uniformed police and firefighters arrive to help with the rescue and recovery effort. Lots of other members of the media are on the scene, too. Strangely, the only thing that seems to be working as if nothing had happened, besides the traffic signals, is the park fountain. It’s sprouting water full blast.
12:45 p.m. – Church and Vesey streets
Five men wearing various uniforms carry out a woman’s body on a gurney. Groups of men, all authorities, carry out large pieces of the trade center. Is this is the country’s largest crime scene ever?
1:15 p.m. – Broadway, between Reade and Duane streets
The Rev. George Rutler speaks to reporters about what he has seen at the trade center site, having been down there an hour earlier. Rutler is pastor of the Church of Our Savior at 59 Park Ave. He was in his old church, a block from Grand Central Station, when he heard a plane go by. “I don’t know if it was just the acoustics, but it sounded like it was flying very low, right over Grand Central,” Rutler said. The pastor said some of the first last rites of Sept. 11.
The surrounding buildings are all covered with the white ash and soot. So many ambulances, one can only imagine coordination will be crucial and hard. “They seem very well-organized,” Rutler said. A lot of volunteers are in the triage centers, but not a lot of people are coming in. “Either they fled…” Rutler pauses, “or were killed.”
The pastor said he watched authorities set up a makeshift morgue in the Millennium Hotel. A reporter asks, “Why did this happen?” “I believe in the devil,” Rutler said. “This is the devil, no question about it. No matter who did it, it was the devil doing it. It’s so diabolic, so vicious. Two or three of the policemen were saying to me, here we are in the midst of a political campaign, mayor and everything – this makes everything seem so trivial.”
He continues: “All the questions we’re asking, all our debates, the way we handle things, in the face of this horror. We’ve taken so much of our civilization for granted. We’re not grateful for what we have. We’re not asking the right questions and we’re not dealing with them in a proper way. We’re being too superficial.”
Epilogue
It’s about 1:30 p.m. and my cellphone, out of commission for four hours, is finally working. I know this because a friend from South Carolina has called and is screaming at me: “Are you OK!” Thirty seconds later, the deputy city editor beeps in. She asks the very same question, and has equal relief in her voice. Just that quick, the moment is gone. I’m to dump my notes to a reporter back in the office. By then, a special edition already was on its way to the presses, without any of my stuff.
I am to stay as close to Ground Zero as possible and report often with updates. I was in a corner deli, desperate for food, when Mayor Rudy Giuliani said over the radio that the day’s loss of life would be “more than we can bear.” Later, after police pushed the media back a few blocks, I am still close enough to watch 7 World Trade Center crumble at 5:20 p.m. I phone that news into the newsroom, well before it is reported on TV. Same drill, later, to say there’s no electrical power in Lower Manhattan.
As dusk sets in, my wife calls on my cell phone. Herself a news editor at Newsday, she had gone in early to help with the copy crunch. We are speaking for the first time since the morning. She says my mother demands to speak with me. My phone is running on empty, but I reach my mother and assure her I am all right.
About 8 p.m., my editor gives me the OK to head home. With no trains running nearby, I walk to and across the Brooklyn Bridge. From there, the view of Manhattan – so dark, so quiet, so stark, still smoking – is unforgettable.
It takes me nearly 90 minutes to reach the Atlantic Avenue subway station in downtown Brooklyn. A 2/3 train takes me back to Grand Army Plaza and the car I parked some 12 hours earlier. At home, I take the longest shower of my life.
