"New York "
I had just returned from a week of climbing in Yosemite. I had been composing the expected digital update on my adventures – complete with the usual rants, insights, and maybe more than a touch of hyperbole. I returned home from Tuolumne Meadows late Saturday night last week. On Monday morning, I boarded a plane bound for Chicago. Four hours later, I boarded another bound for New York.
The story of my vacation to unsuccessfully climb a big gray rock seems suddenly so terribly insignificant. Maybe I’ll finish it later. Maybe not.
At the time of this writing, September 14, I am still in New York.
*My Story*
IBM has a research facility in Westchester, only minutes from my place of birth, my mother’s hometown. My roots here stretch back nearly 100 years. On Tuesday, September 11, I was attending a meeting with a potential customer at IBM Hawthorne. I had a similar meeting scheduled for Friday. I had hotel reservations in NYC on Friday, and planned to spend the weekend with my friend Michelle at her new home, downtown in the financial district in New York City. I had planned to stay at the Marriott World Trade Center. Michelle had moved to New York only weeks earlier to attend Parsons School of Design.
At roughly nine in the morning, my coworker Rich interrupted our briefing and informed all of us that the World Trade Center had only just been the target of a terrorist attack, the airports were closed, and all our travel plans may well be changing.
Terrorist attack? Didn’t they try this before? Figures. This sucks. I hope no one was hurt.
Shortly after, curiosity got the better of me and I left the meeting to check the news on streaming video. As I watched the live news coverage, as I saw the damage, as I saw the tape of the second airliner explode through the tower, I watched as both towers collapsed, live to my own horror and the collective horror of millions. I watched as the towers, one after another, crumbled to the ground. Collapsed like my sense of hope. Buckled like the strength in my knees.
My hands over my mouth. My heart racing. “Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.” Aghast. Utterly and completely horrified. Convinced I had just witnessed the death of 100,000 people.
I don’t think I have ever felt so helpless. So out of control. These buildings were permanent. I have been inside those buildings. Stood on the top. They are a part of this landscape. A part of this city, a part of this country. A part of my life and my history. How could they not be there? They have to be there! Put them back God damn it! Put them back!
It was during this time that I learned that terrorists had hijacked commercial airliners and crashed them into their targets. Airlines that I fly every week. Airlines that my friends and colleagues fly every day. Two more targets have been hit. My brother is in DC. My friend Monica is in DC. My friend Jen is just outside DC. Jesus. What the hell is going on?
I shook. Not of anger, not of fear, but of shock. And the realization that Michelle could be there right now. She could see the towers from her window. She told me about her amazing view. It’s where she caught the subway. I dialed her number. No service. I tried again. No service. I dialed again. And again. And again.
I called her home in California. Her mother answered right away. Michelle had just called and told her she was OK. But her future was uncertain. Dust clouds and fires filled lower Manhattan. I began to think what it must feel like to be in New York, alone, still discovering the city, only to have your neighborhood explode into chaos.
All I could think of was getting Michelle out of the city. Making sure she was safe. I had to get her out. I suppose it was the best way for me to handle fear, get a grasp on the madness. When everything is out of control, find something, someway, someone you can help. Find something within yourself you can control.
I spent the day wandering in and out of the briefing. I had heard all the IBM pitches before. I would walk out periodically. Watch astounded as the story unfolded on CNN. My psyche bombarded with image after image of destruction and carnage. And now from a different angle… It’s difficult to focus on work when buildings are crumbling and lives are ending, and the world is changing just a few miles down the river from where you stand.
It’s difficult to care about high performance computing and genomic research when someone you love is wide-awake in a nightmare.
I returned voice mail when the phone worked – and when I could get a line. The Trade Center was a communications hub for the region. Sprint mobile service was sporadic at best. Soothing my mother. Finding my brother. Reassuring my roommate. Checking on friends and family and coworkers who live in the community. I returned voice mail from customers who wondered if I was still alive.
And all the while, trying to find Michelle. At one thirty, finally a voice mail with her dormitory phone. At last a land line! I finally connected with her around two in the afternoon. She told me she was OK, but sounded distant. Sounded shell-shocked and overwhelmed.
She didn’t know what to do. She only knew she wanted to get away – get out of the city. I told her that whatever she needed was already taken care of. If she wanted to get out of the city, she could stay with me in Westchester. I had a room at the Westchester Marriott in Tarrytown. I had family all over the county. Cousins, aunts, uncles, old neighbors. If she wanted a flight to anywhere, my travel agent will take care of it. If she wanted to drive anywhere, my family in Dallas, her brother in Mississippi, all the way back to her home in California, we would get in my rented Lincoln Town Car and go. No questions, no problems. I had already been in contact with IBM. Getting home and how was up to my discretion.
Michelle was able to reach her friend Rieko in midtown by nightfall. And by that time, although I still couldn’t get into the city, the trains were running again. They were running out of the city, running out of the dust, out of the quagmire, out into the green hills of New York State, out toward me.
Michelle was going to be safe. It was the only thing I could hold onto, the only thing that made sense. At 9:30 I met Michelle and Rieko at the Tarrytown station. They looked dusty, disheveled and weary.
But safe.
*Her story*
Michelle has asked me to tell her story. Several days after the tragic events of September 11, we sat on an obnoxious floral bedspread in the relative solace of our room Marriott, and talked into the early hours of the morning. Michelle told me what she saw, what she heard, what she felt. I’m going to tell it to you as best I can.
Michelle was sleeping during the first attack. Irritated, she was interrupted from sleep shortly before nine on Tuesday morning by a call from her father who was traveling in Wisconsin. “Michelle, are you OK?“
“Uh, yeah, Why?”
“A plane has crashed into the World Trade Center.”
Her sleep-deprived mind tried to process the information. The Trade Center was just outside her window. Perhaps three, maybe four blocks away. She opened her blinds to a sight surreal. Shocking. Fire. Thick black smoke. Papers, letters, office supplies flying all over city. Falling like confetti. And people running through the streets.
“Dad, I’ll call you back.“
Suddenly very awake, she woke her roommate Rey and ran downstairs to watch the dormitory’s community television for news. Then came the second attack. Although Michelle couldn’t hear the crash, she watched in horror with the rest of as it was broadcast to the world on CNN.
Michelle went to the lobby of her dorm and borrowed Rey’s cell phone. She called her mother as she started to feel the first pangs of real fear. It was both unreal and yet so terribly real. She didn’t know what to feel or think. “I didn’t know what was going to happen.” She told her mother she was really scared.
Michelle watched from outside as huge chunks of debris fell from the building. Watched as the giant towers literally fell apart before her eyes. She watched as smaller objects plummeted from the building, only later to learn to her horror those objects were people. People who jumped. People who fell. It was all so insane. It made her scared. Left her heartbroken. And yet despite the overwhelming tragedy, the distress, she couldn’t cry. It was all too much to process.
“Watching the debris fall was terrifying. Watching the paper swirling and spreading like snow falling all over the city.” The papers fell like confetti in some evil, dreadful parade.
Her building began to shake. Rumbled up from the ground and into her feet like an earthquake. An immense, billowing cloud of smoke filled the entire street top to bottom and rushed toward her. The street shook. And from downtown came a deep rumbling crash. Nothing like she or anyone had ever heard before. Like an earthquake. Like a thunderstorm. Only moving toward her.
That’s when everyone began screaming. That’s when the last thread of normalcy was severed and world was turned upside down. Chaos reigned. Terrified, Michelle ran as fast as she could to the second floor. Tried desperately to get behind walls, get behind something to escape the encroaching and encompassing cloud of concrete, smoke and debris.
“Oh my God…What happened?” Was it a bomb? Another plane? Confusion. People were crying. Everyone was crying or screaming. Michelle was in shock. Her only thought: “We need to get out of here.”
The dorm’s Resident Assistants had everyone congregate on the second floor. It was then, from the TV, they all learned that the first tower had in fact collapsed. No one knew what to do. “What to do we do? What do I do? Evacuate? Stay?”
It was still early. But it was dark outside. Brown. Thick. Dangerous.
Michelle and Rey went back to their room to collect some things should they have to evacuate. The packed whatever they could grab. A quick change of clothes. Their room was filling up with smoke. It was then the second tower began to collapse. Again, a rumble like a massive earthquake. And again, the horror that the other tower had collapsed and seemingly countless lives had ended.
The streets turned black. Dark as night. Michelle could see no further than a few yards. A block at best. The streets, the air, the city was choked in smoke and dust. Brown. Thick. Asphyxiating. More chaos in the street. Screams and panic. People running away. And a thousand sirens.
People were terrified. Lines quickly formed at the payphones since nobody could use the mobile phones normally glued to every New Yorker’s ear. Most of the cell phone signals were gone. The men and women of New York’s financial district emptied into the streets in a daze. Everyone in suits. Designer suits caked with gray dust. Masks, shirts, tissues to their faces to defend against the choking dust. Rushing uptown. Rushing away.
Within a few hours, the streets of downtown were completely empty. Empty in the busiest city in the world. It was surreal. It was frightening. And in those dusty, darkened and empty streets of Lower Manhattan, she felt they were forgotten and completely left alone. “Does the school even know we are here?” Her fear was amplified by the awareness that they live directly next to the Federal Reserve. Was it a target? Would her new home explode or collapse or worse? Would bombs or planes or God knows what be targeting her? She wanted to get out.
As they waited in the dorm for some kind of instruction, Michelle sat with her head between her knees to control the sickness, contain the fear that seemed to fill her. Waiting. Waiting. The endless, insufferable waiting. The power went out, only adding to the insanity of the day.
All she could do was pray. It was the only thing she could do. The only thing she could control. And the only response that made any sense or brought light into the darkness. Praying with Rey. Praying for peace. “Please stop the violence. Please stop the violence and bring peace. God you are bigger than this.”
“God you are bigger than all this.”
Sitting in the quiet darkness, from this prayer she found strength. Through this prayer, she was able to find calm. She realized she wasn’t in control, and the all she could do was wait. Put it all in God’s hands.
Their rooms were choked with soot. Filled with dust. The air reeked of smoke – tasted chemical. Dry. Every breath hurt. It burned. It was nauseating. She tried to make calls. Let her family know she was all right. Find some control in the madness. Her parents told her to listen to the authorities. Her parents became a force of calm in the chaos of the day.
By three, the students became impatient, and they assembled a group who wanted, no, who needed to leave. At this time, Mayor Giulliani ordered everyone below Canal Street to evacuate. By five, the school let them leave.
Assembling the group took about an hour. Everyone was required to record their name, where they were going and be checked out one by one. Dress in jeans, sweats, sunglasses, and keep a mask or damp washcloth over your mouth. Michelle walked in a group of twenty back to the university. Walked up the east side of city. Walked out of the nightmare that had arrived in lower Manhattan.
“It was like it had snowed. You could not see the sidewalk. It was smooth and gray all the way cross the road.” The street was filled with dust and ash. The city felt abandoned and quiet. She had never heard it so quiet.
By the Brooklyn Bridge, the air was finally breathable, and they could remove their glasses and makeshift masks. Soon the streets were clear of the encompassing ash and dust. Everything was abandoned. The city that never sleeps was empty. Right then, Tower Seven collapsed. And again that unmistakable sound. Like an explosion. Two loud BOOMS. And they all stopped.
“Everyone was in a daze.” Expressionless. Numb. Empty.
Blockades kept them changing route. Michelle, Rey, and another girl from the dorm split off from the main group of students and tried to walk up to Rieko’s apartment, about fourteen blocks away. Fourteen blocks that took nearly an hour and half because of the blockades. The students from the dorm were forced to spend the night in the cafeteria.
It was at Rieko’s that Michelle reached me, and found passage out of the city and out of the monster that swallowed New York.
Rieko and Michelle found themselves on the subway. An empty New York subway. Desperately lonely. “Yet I was still numb.” The subway brought them to Grand Central Station. Also empty. Virtually deserted. Beautiful, and yet haunted and lonely.
During the long ride to Westchester, Michelle talked with Rieko. She became scared as the lights of the train flickered on and off. This combined with the day’s tragic events made her paranoid. Why was the train moving so slow? It was all so uncomfortable. Was this also normal? Was the bridge there? Was there a malfunction? Was the train taking her toward another tragedy? She was thinking the worst. There were police officers on the train. They seemed calm. This calmed her.
As the train approached Tarrytown, Michelle felt glad getting out of the city. A profound sense of relief washed over her. She finally felt safe. “I felt rescued” she confessed to me. As she exited the train, she found me waiting for her on the ramp. She was glad Rieko escaped with her and would be safe too. “I couldn’t have been in a better place. Exactly where I needed to be. I felt swept of my feet and placed in a safe and calm environment.”
“I didn’t have to be scared anymore.“
*Her Story Today*
In the aftermath of Tuesday’s attack, Michelle still doesn’t know how to feel. She feels sad, feels she has lost something. She fears for the future. “ If this could happen now, what is going to happen next?”
She is tired. And she isn’t sure how to feel about the city. Will it feel the same? Should it feel the same? No, it won’t be the same. The area that she lived in will never be the same. 50,000 people who worked there won’t be working there anymore. Will it be empty? “How can I look out my window where the towers once stood? What will my view be like?” When they collapsed, all she could see was smoke. What remains behind that curtain of crushed concrete and burning ash? Will there be crime? Looting? Can it be safe?
Michelle recalls the story of a girl who witnessed people jumping from the towers as they burned. She saw them actually jump to their death. This terrifies her still in its abject horror. It remains the most terrible thing she has ever heard. And she realized that she was only four blocks away. She lived in the wake of this terror. She stood beneath the doomed towers only Sunday. She runs in Battery Park. Had just taken pictures to show her parents of the beauty and urban grandeur of her new home.
Her new pictures tell a different story. She took a picture of the first crash, a picture of the rising smoke cloud. But she didn’t want to take any more pictures. “I felt guilty. Felt like it was wrong to exploit a tragedy. I put my camera away. Maybe I just didn’t want something to remember all this by.”
Most importantly, throughout the ordeal and the days to come, Michelle felt an unprecedented outpouring of love from all the people around her. She felt unwaveringly supported from her family, friends and people who care about her.
“The experience has brought me closer to my family. They have never communicated like this. I have never felt closer to my stepfather. He acted as if I was his own daughter. I didn’t know he loved me so much. My sister never expressed an emotional connection like now. It brought us together.”
She has been nearly overwhelmed by the generosity of friends, her brother, her sister. It all means so much. More than she can repay or communicate.
But, more than anything now, she feels really, really, really grateful.
*New York Today*
It’s September 16th. I’m en route to Dallas. I’ll have to spend the night there before catching a flight to Orange County. Three previous flights were cancelled. Don’t know when I will make it home. I hope tomorrow. Only time will tell. I’m sitting next to a pilot for American Airlines. Like many people I have met, he is apprehensive about what comes next. Dozens of flight attendants have just quit. The flights have been half full – if that. The intensified (albeit welcome) security at the airport combined with the constant delays, cancellations, and changes can require several hours for even an experienced traveler to overcome.
And I still might get stuck. As is, I have been scheduled for nine different flights just today, in six different airports. Who knows? It’s just good to know I’m closer to home.
It’s only one change as a result of the tragedy. More is sure to come. It’s bound to get worse before it gets better. But that’s a conversation for a different time.
I was in Connecticut visiting friends on Friday. At seven in the evening, people and candles filled the streets. I saw that email circulating too. I suppose you did too. Never thought I would see such an outpouring of support, of patriotism, of community. On my way out of White Plains today, I stopped at Broadway Pizza, a local pizzaria owned by an old friend of my family. Broadway Pizza is located right in front of a White Plains Fire Station. Today they were taking donations for the victims. Nearly every car and pedestrian stopped to donate. They got all my cash. And I was not alone. That boot was teeming with twenties. The boots they held out to commuters were quickly filled and they had to get new ones.
Michelle, Rieko and I finally went into the city yesterday. They are going to try to get their lives back in order. Get on with work, get on with school. Wash away the dust of the week and begin fresh.
We took the Hudson Line in from Tarrytown, past the ghosts of my ancestors. Past White Plains past Yonkers past Harlem and into Grand Central Station. I could feel my own history in places where I have never been. It’s a little unnerving.
Most unnerving, the billowing cloud of white smoke rising still from lower Manhattan, and the remarkable empty space that remains in the location in New York’s famous skyline where the city’s tallest buildings only recently stood. It’s one thing to see it on CNN. It’s another entirely to see with your own eyes.
Lower Manhattan is still reeling. A thin acrid smoke burns your eyes and irritates your throat even in midtown. Blockades fill streets. And the sirens. Regular. Relentless.
Onlookers peer through the streets to get but a glimpse of the aftermath. Everyone is still trying to get used to a city without the World Trade Center. Rescue workers walk the streets, coated in dirt. Their eyes glazed. They look exhausted. They force a smile and a weak wave when you greet them, reassure them. Thank them.
The city is alive, if still not well. People still fill the street. Perhaps not as many. Not yet. But the sense of patriotism and community is palpable. It’s thick. Flags wave everywhere. They are pinned to lapels, tied to cars, pasted to windows, wrapped around bodies, tied around heads as bandannas, raised gallantly above the chaos and the noise of Manhattan. The terror has broken New York’s skyline, but has not broken New York’s pride.
Never have the notoriously independent and famously rude citizens of America’s most celebrated city come together in this way. I never thought I would see a New York like this – I suppose in more ways than one. Restaurants in the lower East Side post signs offering free food to rescue workers, fire fighters and anyone who donates blood. Candles, flowers, shrines to the lost heroes glow in front of every firehouse. The people are moving not only with purpose but with conviction.
Most touching and simultaneously most unsettling, are the posters, the flyers, the pictures of the missing, hundreds and hundreds of them, that are pasted on every street corner, every subway terminal, every light post in New York City. People are canvassing the city and posting images of their lost loved ones. Hanging on to the one shred of hope that remains, clinging to what little they have left and the belief that there’s still a chance a lost love may be found in some hospital, in some alley, dazed, unconscious, injured, but alive. It’s all they have. It’s all they can do. It’s turned the city into a living memorial for the lost.
Those fliers, more than even the burning smoke and foreign skyline, are a potent reminder of the human toll of this atrocity. A close coworker of mine has apparently lost his son who worked on the upper floors of the first tower to be attacked. A friend knows three people who have not been found. Another friend of mine lost his last employer on one of the doomed flights. In many ways this week has touched us all. But for some, for thousands, the tragedy will be felt in quiet homes, in empty living rooms, in dark lonely bedrooms, and through the debilitating pangs of grief.
But despite the fact that these acts of terror have torn apart so many lives, ripped apart the world for so many, it seems to have brought New York together as a people. As a community. My mother has always said that New Yorkers are the strongest, most community driven people in the world, and the most reliable neighbors. I’ve been to New York in the aftermath. I’ve seen the response of the people. Someone’s dark vision, someone’s blinding hatred tried to break the spirit of New York.
I can tell you first hand that they failed.
