Wednesday, September 12, 2001
Being Prepared,  and Demonstrations of Grief

I spent part of the morning at a small nearby grocery store hoping to stock up on food and water. The expanse of empty shelves showed me that everyone else had the same idea and had gotten there first. I was able to buy some jugs of water, peanuts and some canned goods. I also bought some emergency household candles thinking electricity could be affected as the phones had.

People in my neighborhood of Washington Heights and throughout the city had begun placing candles of every kind and container on the sidewalks. Rivers of wax lay in frozen motion as everyone began their early expressions of loss and pain. It was communal, and comforting to everyone.

My housemate had long been on a waiting list to get into a program to become a firefighter, but currently worked as an optician. Since most businesses were closed he found an opportunity to volunteer in a triage and supply center that had been established near Ground Zero. He told me about the enormous quantities of supplies that had poured in. Water, clothing, food and services such as massages for the workers involved in search and rescue effort. He went there each day of that week.

I continued to be vigilant at the television and the phone, talking with family and friends, updating them and being updated about the warnings they had heard. "Stay out of the subway", "Stay at home", "Be prepared". It was my occupation. It was frightening. As Wednesday wore on the anxiousness of it all was still consuming.

By evening I did decide to go outside for a walk and beheld a transformation in the neighborhood. Along with the candles that filled the sidewalks and windows, tiny Christmas lights framed windows and hung from fire-escapes, along with U.S. flags. Expression of reverie and pain and unity and defiance came from an odd juxtaposition of elements of Christmas and The Fourth of July and the candle glow inside a cathedral. It was beautiful and overwhelmingly sad. The same spontaneous combination had dressed most of Manhattan. Comfort had begun to creep into the fear.

Thursday, September 13, 2001

Pulling Myself Away from the Obsession

The worst was probably over, but after 48 hours on the island I knew so well, I knew we were indeed sealed off. We would not be allowed to leave Manhattan. No one could come in, especially trucks that were stopped and inspected in New Jersey for fear of bombs. Myriad scenarios for potential new threats were being discussed constantly, and my continued worry and anxiety were too much to continue simmering in. It felt wrong and possibly irresponsible to turn away from the television and the radio and the phone calls, but I couldn’t endure it any longer. I deliberately turned away from it, This produced a different anxiety, but I knew I couldn't continue wrapped in escalating fear. I knew I wouldn’t take the subway but I decided I would venture out and take the bus. I wasn’t quite sure where I’d go, but I headed in the direction of downtown.

An entire quarter or more of Manhattan was off limits to anyone who wasn’t a firefighter, policeman, FBI, etc. It may have been possible that people who lived in that area were allowed to go below Fourteenth Street accompanied by the authorities.

Riding the bus that day was painfully different than a usual noisy, hustling, crowded, maybe a little pushy adventure it was before that. It was silent. We were collectively caught in a void of experience. What had happened, and the thousands of people destroyed in less than two hours, the weight of it all was new to all of us. We could only be quiet.

I had tried calling Jennifer before but there had been no answer. I called again while on the bus. Jennifer answered! “Jennifer!, it’s Meredith, are you okay!?” I began crying. Although everyone else was silent I couldn’t help crying and being elated to know she was okay. My emotions were able to come out. I learned that she had not gone to work at AON Consulting that day. She had a dentist appointment. I think she had planned to go in later on the day of the attacks. We talked a bit longer, I composed myself and continued the ride, relieved but still full of emotion.

I arrived at Union Square, a medium size public park and plaza area between Fourteenth and Seventeenth Streets a little bit east of a center-line between the Hudson and East Rivers. It had become a place that drew hundreds and hundreds of us, like a huge living room where New Yorkers could just be together and experience this together. Any construction fence (temporary exterior plywood walls put up to protect passers-by when a building is being renovated) had been covered with photos and descriptions of the hundreds and hundreds of people who were now gone. Family members and co-workers had put up these photos with phone numbers to reach them in the desperate hope that their loved one was alive. My heart broke as I saw all of this, and the candles and flowers and this network of hope, pain and loss. What an existence we now were living.

As I walked along a wide sidewalk through the Union Square with people lining the park benches on either side and everywhere discussing, hugging and often crying, I saw a face I recognized. A fellow Carnegie Mellon alum, Ken had graduated a year before me from the Design Department. What a joy to see someone I was acquainted with, even if not very well. We had both ended up at Union Square for the same reasons. It was somewhere to go, to leave our apartments and hopefully find some respite. Suddenly people you barely knew were a treasure to you, a way to feel some familiarity with existence before Tuesday. As he and I were sitting and talking, Jennifer came into view! I jumped up and called her name. We hugged, and wiped some tears. She was there before me, alive and well! She assured me that all of the people that I had personally worked with had gotten out of the South Tower even before it was hit.

But she also knew that many others from AON had not. She said she knew that some had not been able to escape. Michael and my other co-workers left quickly after the North Tower was hit by the first plane. So many people had not left immediately. Why? But Michael and those in our immediate office area had left. They took the elevators. They had taken a set of elevators which end at the 78^th floor, where you must transfer to another set of elevators to take you down to the building concourse to exit.

I don’t think I would have taken the elevators had I still been working there. I would have loved to have been hired on permanently in February but that wasn’t available at the time. I had planned to go back and visit my friends and finally take photos of the view I loved. I never did go back and the photos are only, but vividly, in my head.

In March of 1998, while working on the 9^th floor of a smaller office building in Midtown, around 8:30pm the fire alarm sounded. A voice on a loud speaker said it was not a drill. One other young lady on the floor and I knew not to take the elevator, we headed down the stairs. A couple of flights down we began to smell smoke. Why did that surprise me? Because that NEVER really happens! I had not ever been in any building that was on fire. We became scared and there were different doors to choose on the way down. One of us went ahead to see where the door lead while the other held open the door we had just come through in case we had to backtrack. We did get out easily and it turned out it was a small, rather uneventful fire. That was a relief, but I was sure taking the stairs was the right thing to do.

That concept was reinforced in me while working at Swanke Hayden Connell Architects. I often designed signs which go right next to elevators illustrating where all of the stairwells are. We called them “You are Here” signs. I worked in an industry that makes signs to tell you “In case of fire, do not use elevators”. I was sure it wasn’t an option. I can be very claustrophobic and I probably would have been very likely to panic in the long and fast elevators of the WTC. I don’t know how it would have turned out. How long would it have taken to go down 101 flights of stairs? It seems selfish to say “I’m thankful I wasn’t there to find out how that would have gone”. Still, I’m thankful.

(Please click the link at the top of this page for Part 3: the conclusion)