That Amazing View

September 11, 2001

I’d been living back in New York a little more than a week, returning from a brief time to Ohio, anticipating new job opportunities when my mother’s call woke me Tuesday morning. She wasn’t panicked or upset but told me to turn on the TV: a small plane had crashed into the World Trade Center. She knew it would especially matter to me since I had worked in the buildings. I think I was watching ABC news and saw that almost cartoon-like black silhouette where the plane had simply entered the building.  It was shocking and not fully comprehensible in a moment. I saw on screen the situation as most of us understood it. It was fascinating and awful, but initially seemed like a freak accident, something that would pass, terribly sad, but an incident, an oddity.

My mom asked me questions about where I had worked in the buildings. That wasn’t my building, not the one that held the offices of AON Consulting. But they both become “my” buildings three years ago. Within 5 months of moving to New York the first time in January 1998 I was proud and happy to be working at Swanke Hayden Connell Architects on La Fayette and Houston streets in Manhattan. Hired as an environmental graphic designer (creating signs and other elements which enhanced the experience of being in a building, and aided people in finding their way through a building) my first task was to be the technical designer for the Holiday Decorations for the World Trade Center that Christmas.

I had gotten to know the buildings well since part of my task was to recreate drawings of the ceiling layouts of the all of the buildings' lobbies. The original drawings were forgotten or lost years ago and we just needed a version where we could plot the locations of hundreds of large white snowflakes which would hang from the ceilings. I spent many hours over many days at the WTC measuring distances between columns and doors, from fire sprinklers to light fixtures and tops of stores to the ceiling. We wanted to create an easy layout for the WTC maintenance staff to hang up the snowflakes and the large red letters reading “Peace On Earth”.

My mom and I talked a while longer and since she knew I was safe and knew about what had happened she needed to finish getting ready for the one of her friends to pick her up to go to quilting circle at church. I was left to watch the story by myself in the living room of the 10^th floor apartment in a 16 story building on Broadway at 151^st Street. I had barely moved in there and was barely acquainted with my housemate, James, who was sleeping in his bedroom off the living room. I watched and listened to speculation of what had happened exactly, with the news anchors being about as handicapped as we all were. How big was the plane? Was it, in fact, an internal explosion? What had just happened?

I watched longer and filled with the vibrant shock of nerves jittering through me when I saw the second jet pierce and explode into the South Tower. I feel that vibration again as I’m writing this. The extreme alertness and fear and urgency are still easily accessed when I watch the videos of the broadcasts from that morning. I had to wake my housemate and tell him what had happened. I knocked on his door and sheepishly called his name until he woke. I told this sleepy guy, who I hardly knew, that two planes had hit the World Trade Center towers.

“What!?”

I repeated that inconceivable announcement.

He rushed to join me and sat on the couch as the horror sank in. My mother had left home and I don’t recall other calls in that first hour. Still, the trouble was far downtown, not where we lived, over 150 blocks to the north. I had learned some about the structure of the buildings from my work there and from studying design and architecture. The first plane hitting Tower 1 seemed perhaps repairable, but now that both had been hit I knew that the buildings were far too damaged at this point, and couldn’t be safely occupied again. “Those buildings are going to have to come down” I told James. He responded “No” and thought it wasn’t quite so bad. I thought I did have an accurate idea though of the structural loss, however I had no idea what was coming in the following hour.

James said he knew how to get to the roof of our apartment building and we could see the towers and smoke from there. We hurried to the roof, and far downtown was that scene, just as on TV, but real, and yet still surreal even with no cameras or television between us and it, just a few miles. We went back inside. Focused on the television, the stunning announcement that the Pentagon had been hit by a plane drew me further into shock in my mind and body. “I think we’re at war” came out of me from an almost detached place; a place of calm disbelief. What had begun? And what was next? What was next became a question that inhabited me for days. There were plenty of times that question was urgent and caused even more anxiety than those first few hours.

I think James had started getting ready for work and I continued to watch. It took a while to realize that the home phone didn’t work. But my cell phone did. My close college friend David, living and working in Chicago, called. It was comforting, but not really normalizing, to know my friends and family were starting to reach me and see how I was. Talking about what happened and explaining the events from my vantage point, I continued to watch the news with him on the phone. When I began exclaiming loudly “Oh My God!...Oh My God…Oh My God!....” David, panicked, kept asking me “What, what, what!” I couldn’t answer him until it was over. I had watched the south tower collapse, turning to dust. Impossible. Those buildings were gigantic, each occupying about an entire city block, like mountains; permanent and monumental. I had to regain composure to at least answer David and tell him what just happened. He couldn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it. Now we were all living something I had only seen in the movie “Independence Day”, something only cinema special effects could have created. But it was happening, and buildings that I had once really disliked for their dated 1970’s marble and reflective stainless-steel lobbies were disappearing, taking with them thousands of people. How many of the people did I know?

Now, the moments more urgent and more real, brought to mind the people I knew working there on the 101^st floor of the south tower. My former supervisor, my co-worker Michael, who else? I guess I had room in my head by this time to realize who I should call. Ronette!! My very close friend from grad school had been on assignment in the World Financial Center, next to the towers. The enormous vaulted glass arch over the Winter Garden where I had enjoyed shopping and met Ronette for lunches was part of that complex. I had to reach her. In terror, fear and hope I called her. She answered. “Oh my God, Ronette, where are you!?” She was okay, at home on Staten Island. Her assignment had finished the Friday before. Her coworkers were still there, hiding under their desks, seeing victims of the towers fall past their windows, not knowing what was safe to do. Ronette was watching the TV from home just as I was. I was reassured, but numbed by the stories she told me of phone calls with her friends in their offices.

I'm unsure about the order of calls after that. I’m sure my family members called me - my sister Sheri, probably Cindy, other friends. My housemate used my cell phone. Most phones weren’t working and it was a huge relief that we had one working phone between us. That helped but it didn’t relieve any of the stress and anxiety building in me as I watched the news, going from channel to channel, trying to see what was happening next, and unfortunately watching the events replay again and again on screen. Learning some details about this unique, well-planned and carried out attack only heightened my own fears and uncontrollable desire to be alert and wary for what might happen next.

I don’t remember how quickly the Island of Manhattan was cut off from the rest of the world. No vehicles were allowed in. The subways had been shut down for fear of bombs and gas attacks. I lived several blocks from the George Washington Bridge. I began to realize, about when everyone else did, that no food, etc. would be arriving in Manhattan. We could be cut off for days. I wondered: If I had to, could I swim across the Hudson River to New Jersey? My mind raced with awful possibilities of what was next. I felt a responsibility to be vigilant, aware and ready for whatever might happen.

I also continued to call friends. My friend Jeff had joined thousands of others who walked home across the Brooklyn Bridge that day, the only option to get to Brooklyn. John, a close friend from undergrad told that he had walked home to East 31st Street from Lower Manhattan, acquiring on himself a layer of the gray dust that had covered everything in a huge part of the city. He showered it off when he got to his apartment. He and his coworkers had watched out the windows after the first tower was hit, saw the other tower get hit, and then they all, almost mechanically, turned toward the Empire State Building in Midtown, assuming that was the next target.

I managed to sleep later that night, although it didn’t seem safe, or right, to turn away from the constant stream of news, analysis, speculation, re-cap, re-enforcement of the fear that was now deeply set, like a stain, in all of us.

Part 2 - Search for Relief leads to Being Trapped between 14th and 23rd Streets
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