At the time of the September 11th 2001 attack, I was working at the Heart of Chelsea Animal Hospital. What follows is a five-part account of September 11th and the work that I did at the World Trade Towers after the terrorist attack.
A World Changing Event Began With A Clear Blue Sky
On September 11th, 2001, I was still in bed in my NYC apartment when the phone rang. Too lazy to
move, I let the answering machine pick up . It was my mother saying something about a plane crash, about how there had not been just one but two crashes. She sounded frantic. Where was I? Was I okay? She wanted me to call her back and fill her in. I could hear her television in the background, so I knew that whatever it was, was on the news. I tuned my radio to the 24 hour news station. The disaster was getting fervent coverage. I called my mother back, told her I was okay, put on my clothes and my rollerblades, grabbed my camera, and headed for the West Side Highway where I knew I would have an unobstructed view of the event and see for myself the extent of the damage. I should note that my apartment is less than a mile from the World Trade Towers.
A Looming, Smoking Hole
While I skated (it’s about four blocks to the West Side Highway, the most western aspect of the city), I imagined something small, a news item that was being overblown by the media, yet when I got to the corner of 18th street and the West Side Highway the sight was arresting. Set against the backdrop of a perfect, blue sky, I could clearly see both towers. There was a hole in each of them from which poured black smoke. The
holes were so large and black that they looked as if they had been drawn in the special effects department of some movie studio. I continued to skate south along the Highway as I met the first of thousands that were fleeing the site by walking calmly up the adjacent Esplanade. These men and women, all sharply dressed for business, showed no signs of having walked out of the disaster that was in the background. Women briskly moved in high heels and fashionable skirts. Men kept pace in suits and hand-held briefcases. Some looked at paperwork while others tried to make connections on cellular telephones. It was as if someone had organized a surprise fire drill and the kids hadn’t been given enough time to clear their desks; everyone was busy. No one stopped to turn around and look at the awesome spectacle that was behind them. Perhaps they had been through the 1992 attack and were now bored with terrorism, perhaps they were in shock; it could have been they were annoyed. Whatever the case, all looked bewilderingly uninterested.
September 11th 2001 : Are We At War?
I stopped to take several photos. By the time that I got to Christopher Street (about a ½ mile from the site) the Esplanade was thick with watchers and evacuees. I saw no one that appeared to have been harmed in the assault. Several cars were parked along the way with their doors open and their radio speakers shaking with volume. Every car had a group of people around it listening to the newscasters guess their way through what was happening. Rumors were tearing through the crowd that Washington had been hit and that there were more hijackers on aircraft destined for other U.S. cities. Those of us that had gone down to watch were frenzied by the news, but those evacuating proceeded at a constant, concentrated pace. There were many, many hundreds of people streaming up.
Oh My God…Those Are People!
By the time that I was near Canal Street, now less than 1/8th of a mile from the crash, I could see flames on the corner of the South Tower near the base of where the aircraft had exited. Huge plumes of black and grey smoke roiled from the holes in both towers. Through this veil, you could see things falling from the top floors. Some of the objects fluttered like they were pieces of house siding, but every now and then, smaller, denser objects fell directly down. With horror we began to realize that these denser objects were people! They were quite dwarfed by the spectacle, so it was hard to wrap your head around the fact that each one was a separate, horrific death. They fell or jumped (it was impossible to tell) without warning, noise, or fanfare and consequently the images of these many (I witnessed at least a dozen) did not seem real. The thick stream of evacuees continued to pass. The line stretched as far as one could see down the length of the Esplanade; past Stuyvesant High School (later the makeshift human hospital); and out towards the great lawn of the residential units of Battery Park City, a 14 acre, urbane complex built upon the landfill excavated during the construction of the World Trade Towers.
[…] Read Part I […]